The entire increase in drug crime arrests during the past decade was due to growing numbers of arrests involving adults ages 25 and older. Youth under age 18 and even young adults under age 25 were far less likely to be arrested for drug crimes in 2018 than any time in the past two decades.
As Jeffrey Butts, director of the John Jay College of Criminal Justice research and evaluation center in New York City, noted four years ago, “the public health approach of [Cure Violence] CV currently merits the label ‘promising’ rather than ‘effective.’” “CV, however, offers something to communities that other well-known violence reduction models cannot,” he added. “It is potentially very cost-efficient, and it places less demand on the political and administrative resources of law enforcement and the larger criminal justice system. "
Based on the latest statistics compiled by the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), the national violent crime arrest rate declined 38 percent overall between 1988 and 2018, but the steepest declines were observed among youth ages 10 to 14 (–53%) and 15 to 17 (–54%). The arrest rate for 18-20 year-olds dropped 47 percent while the arrest rates for adults ages 21-24 and 25-49 declined 42 percent and 23 percent, respectively.
Though alternatives to incarceration (ATI) courts have existed in the state system for 30 years, such courts are a relatively new phenomena at the federal level. We assess the impact of participation in an ATI program on a number of outcomes using a quasi-experimental matching design. Results suggest that defendants who successfully completed an ATI program were employed a greater percentage of the days, and received favorable case dispositions and less severe sentences.
In October 2018, the U.S. Department of Justice announced that it had “smashed records” by charging more than 15,300 defendants with federal firearms offenses, 17 percent more than the previous record. The press release from the Justice Department didn’t cite the year or number for the previous record, and we were unable to reach a Justice spokesperson by deadline.
Jeffrey Butts of John Jay College of Criminal Justice says studies show those with guns are at greater risk of becoming victims of gun violence.
Take the Cure Violence program, a core part of CMS. It has proven to be effective in combating gun violence by treating shootings as a public-health issue that can be contained, just like the outbreak of a disease. According to a study from John Jay College, after Cure Violence was implemented in East New York in 2010, the neighborhood saw a 50% drop in gun injuries.
Sheyla Delgado, JohnJayREC Deputy Director for Analytics, appeared on a NY1 talk show as part of a panel discussing violent crime in New York City neighborhoods.
