What Types of Research Should NIJ Fund?

Today I received this call for input from the ACJS Executive Director:

ACJS Needs Your Input

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?

Thoughts 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.