ACJS Needs Your InputThoughts from my fellow bloggers or our readers? What types of research would you tell NIJ to fund? From where you sit, what are the key crime and justice research needs? I'll share my thoughts in the comments, but I'm curious to hear from others, too.
ACJS has been invited to meet with Kristina Rose, Acting Director of the National Institute of Justice, for the purpose of sharing our thoughts on the greatest research needs from the perspective of our membership and what matters to us regarding the NIJ role. To that end, we need your assistance. Janice Joseph, ACJS President, and I will represent ACJS at this meeting. We solicit your input as we prepare for this meeting.
As you are aware, the National Institute of Justice (NIJ) is the research, development, and evaluation agency of the Office of Justice Programs (OJP) in the U.S. Department of Justice. NIJ’s mission is to provide objective, independent, evidence-based knowledge and tools to meet the challenges of crime and justice, particularly at the state and local levels.
Please reply to this message and share your thoughts by entering your responses to the questions below...
Please provide your response to any or all of the following questions by noon EST, Thursday, October 29, 2009:
1. What priorities should NIJ pursue?
2. From your perspective, what is/are the greatest research need/s in the field of criminal justice/criminology?
3. Please indicate what, if any, changes you would recommend regarding NIJ funding?
4. What are the most important innovations that could be made in funding for research?
5. What do you want us to be sure to discuss with the NIJ Acting Director that wasn’t covered in any of the previous questions?
Monday, October 26, 2009
What Types of Research Should NIJ Fund?
Today I received this call for input from the ACJS Executive Director:
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6 comments:
What's strange about this is that the meeting is with Kristina Rose, the acting director, and not John Laub, the incoming director, or will he be there too?
More money for cyberbullying research! According to the Internet Safety Technical Task Force of the Berkman Center at Harvard (2009): “Bullying and harassment, most often by peers, are the most frequent threat that minors face, both online and off…” Show me the money!!!
I thought that was odd, too, Anon. Perhaps he will be there? Or maybe he is still in transition, or has not yet begun in his official capacity? I'm not sure.
This brings me to a similar observation: is anyone else surprised that ASC is not making big, GIANT news out of Laub's appointment? It is, after all, big, GIANT news.
Anyway, back to NIJ funding: my first choice would be drug policy research. I think that contemporary U.S. drug policy has been the biggest source of CJ system injustice in the last 20 years, so I'd love to see NIJ fund some research on long-term rehabilitation programs (which we know are costly to implement and maintain, let alone to evaluate). I feel like sometimes "well-worn" CJ issues like drugs get passed over for topics that presently are more salient (like, say, homeland security). That's not to suggest that homeland security isn't important; instead I mean that issues that don't have the backing of current public awareness and/or media attention are at a disadvantage. (I can almost hear the skepticism: "Drugs?" Isn't that problem, like, sooo 1980s?")
Patch: please let us know if you & Pap get a mega-sized NIJ grant for your CB research. That'd be sweet. : )
I think there are a couple of important priorities that NIJ should pursue. First, I think prisoner reentry continues to be a big issue, but we still have a lot to learn about effective strategies.
Second, I think more research is needed on the etiology, prediction, and prevention of violence. Al Blumstein's NCOVR consortium on violence research at CMU has been de-funded for a couple of years now, but much research is left to be done. Del Elliot's "Blueprints for Violence Prevention" is another important research initiative in this area. I realize "violence research" is a broad topic, but it certainly touches a lot of lives in one form or another. It covers everything from gang violence to domestic violence. And speaking of domestic violence, this is an area that could use some research funding.
Third, I think much more research on criminal desistance is needed. We gotta keep some of these important longitudinal studies going that will allow us to really untangle criminal careers over the lifecourse (don't think you're gonna have a problem convincing John Laub of the importance of this).
There are a lot more important areas that need funding. But I think more important that focusing on a list of funding priorities is for NIJ to expand an open category of funding that will allow researchers to set the research agenda from the bottom up instead of dictating so much of the funding from the top down and based on a political agenda. Less money for targeted categories and more money for open categories.
That's my "two cents"
Mystery solved!
I was curious about the lack of fanfare about the NIJ nomination on ASC's webpage, so I emailed Todd Clear. He said that ASC cannot do anything until John is confirmed, which in turn will not happen until Laurie Robinson is confirmed.
It's a bummer that there won't be any official recognition of John in Philly this year, but I'm sure there will be plenty of informal congratulating! : )
P.S. Bux: I agree completely about both re-entry and violence broadly defined. I was going to mention re-entry in my previous comment, but got sidetracked and forgot!
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