Researching Public Safety Since 1976
The John Jay College Research and Evaluation Center started as the research team in the Criminal Justice Center (CJC), a different office that no longer exists. In 1976, the REC became a separate office. It would go on to be a prominent research center at the College. Since that day in 1976, the mission has been to produce credible research evidence that can be accessed, understood, and utilized by varying audiences working to improve public safety and community well-being. The REC team works with community partners to collect and analyze data, create accessible research products, and help non-researchers understand the importance of credible evidence. Projects evaluate crime prevention strategies and estimate the effectiveness of justice systems while controlling for the impact and origin of disadvantages rooted in political conflict, economic and class bias, racial and ethnic inequity, and other inappropriate influences on the policies and practices of the criminal justice system.*
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* The name “justice system” has always been aspirational. JohnJayREC does not embrace the popular alternative name “legal system,” which derives from a presumption that system-related harms and injustices are inevitable and permanent. “Justice” remains the goal — even when it is clearly not yet a reliable reality.
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History of the Research and Evaluation Center
John Jay College of Criminal Justice began in 1964/1965 as a “comprehensive college” in the City University of New York (CUNY), offering only associate and baccalaureate degrees. During the 1970s and 1980s, due in part to the fiscal crises affecting New York City, John Jay was limited to criminal justice majors and courses related to criminal justice. In the mid-2000s, the College’s new president, Jeremy Travis, worked with the CUNY Chancellor to elevate John Jay to the status of a CUNY “senior college.” This allowed the College to begin ending admissions to associate degree programs and to expand graduate and undergraduate curricula to include not only criminal justice, criminology, and policing degrees, but also languages, mathematics, social and behavioral sciences, economics, history, forensic science, public administration, and a wide array of other specialties.
Even before it became a senior college, campus leadership saw the need to organize the College’s research and training efforts that did not fit neatly into teaching and scholarship. Faculty and staff were receiving increasing amounts of external funding and forming groups to work collaboratively on projects. Early efforts included: the Institute for Criminal Justice Ethics, headed by John Kleinig; the Security Management Institute, directed by Robert Hair; and the Institute for Investigative Services, led by Harry O’Reilly. Consistent with the College’s origins, other faculty groups in the 1970s and 1980s concentrated on law enforcement.
In 1975, John Jay’s then-President, Gerald Lynch, had begun to formalize the coordination of sponsored activities located outside academic departments. Several groups were combined into the Criminal Justice Center (CJC). Some staff members in the CJC provided research and evaluation support, but their work was not designated with a separate name. They were CJC staff who took on specialized research tasks as needed, and their efforts were led by a senior researcher in the CJC, Nancy Jacobs.
That structure soon evolved. In 1976, the CJC research team became a distinct unit known as the John Jay College Research and Evaluation Center (JohnJayREC), still directed by Nancy Jacobs. For nearly 30 years, the College hosted both the CJC and the REC. In the late 1990s, John Jay’s “Undergraduate Bulletin” listed the Criminal Justice Center and the Research and Evaluation Center as distinct groups that shared office space in the College’s main campus building on Manhattan’s 10th Avenue. The director of the CJC was Robert Louden, who joined the faculty of the Department of Public Management in 1999. Nancy Jacobs continued to lead the REC.
The 2003-2005 Undergraduate Bulletin listed both the CJC and REC, but in different office locations. The Criminal Justice Center remained in the 10th Avenue building, while the Research and Evaluation Center had moved into an office suite in the BMW Building on West 57th Street, where it would continue to operate for more than 20 years. Soon thereafter, CJC director Robert Louden accepted a faculty position at a different college. When the 2005-2007 Undergraduate Bulletin was published, the Research and Evaluation Center was still located in the BMW Building, but the Criminal Justice Center was no longer included as a campus office.
In the ensuing years, the College continued to expand and diversify its roster of research centers, including the Center for International Human Rights, the Center for Cybercrime Studies, the Data Collaborative for Justice, the Corrections Lab, the Institute for Innovation in Prosecution, the Institute for Justice and Opportunity, and the National Network for Safe Communities. Most centers were located in the BMW Building.
The Research and Evaluation Center remained one of the more prominent centers at the College. The founding director retired in 2009, and President Travis appointed a second director, Jeffrey Butts, who joined the JohnJayREC team in 2010.
Since 2010, with the support of President Travis and his successor, President Karol Mason, JohnJayREC developed and managed projects with combined budgets of $48 Million ($60M in constant dollars). Some projects generate academic publications, but the Center’s focus continues to reflect the mission pursued by its founding director: actionable, accessible research for diverse audiences across the broad public safety sector. In recent years, the mission also included training for future researchers and the mentoring and support of students, preparing them for careers in applied research, policy analysis, and evaluation.
For the past 50 years, JohnJayREC has worked to create research evidence characterized by:
- Relevance: Serving the needs of communities, practitioners, and policymakers.
- Rigor: Products created with integrity and transparency.
- Impact: Useful results for building community well-being.
1976-2026
