Police have announced a suspect in the Brooklyn subway shooting that left many wounded Tuesday. We discuss the implications of the apparently random gun violence with Jeffrey Butts, director of the Research and Evaluation Center at John Jay College of Criminal Justice.
Tag: crime
Baltimore Sun — After killings of 3 workers, Baltimore’s Safe Streets anti-violence program at a crossroads: ‘We have to continue to evolve’
Understanding what work is being done, anything that lets researchers “pull back the curtain,” is important, said Jeffrey Butts, director of the Research and Evaluation Center at John Jay College of Criminal Justice in New York.
The Virginian-Pilot — In Portsmouth, Violence Interrupters Defuse Tense Scenes Before the Bullets Fly
Jeffrey Butts, a researcher at John Jay College of Criminal Justice, likens it to the decades-long — and eventually successful — campaign to end smoking. “So can that strategy be used to reduce the incidence of gun violence? And that’s the big question,” Butts said.
NYTimes — Shootings Rise in New York, Coloring Perceptions of City’s Safety
. “It reminds me of the 1990s, in the sense that every incident of violence becomes a major news story,” said Jeffrey Butts, director of the research and evaluation center at the John Jay College of Criminal Justice.
NY1 — Shootings Data Show New Trends in Gun Violence
“The things that cause crime to go up and down are largely societal, structural,” said Jeffrey Butts, a professor at John Jay College of Criminal Justice. “It’s about employment, poverty rates, drug abuse, types of drug being abused, neighborhood conditions.”
National Catholic Register — How Restorative Justice Helped Make the Justice System Work Better in Seattle
If done properly, restorative justice can foster “the most natural human response to crime — to try to talk things through and resolve the conflict,” said Jeffrey Butts, director of the Research and Evaluation Center at John Jay College of Criminal Justice in New York City.
Vital City — Balancing Deterrence and Prevention: The Role of Research
Prevention is different than deterrence, and it uses other tools and resources. It lowers risks and builds assets. Risks are obstacles to safety that often metastasize across individuals and increase harm to entire communities, including substance abuse, antisocial peers, unemployment, and family violence.
San Francisco Chronicle — Crime Statistics and Politics are a Deadly Mix
“Sadly, I’ve dedicated my life to using facts and data to influence crime policy. I don’t think we’re any better at it than we were 30 years ago,” Butts said. He has seen both Democrats and Republicans try to use crime stats to scare voters. It’s hard to stop them because “politics was way out ahead of information and the facts.”
Slate Magazine — It’s Time for a New Crime Bill
Democrats should cue up a more enlightened sequel full of popular ideas that will make communities safer without resorting to simply locking more Americans up. Think summer jobs for teens. Think funding for drug rehab centers. And yes, maybe think about more money for better-trained police.
Washington Post — Taking on Racism and Crime Should be the Same Fight
In New York, a study by the John Jay College of Criminal Justice found that violence interrupters helped reduce crime in the East New York and South Bronx neighborhoods.
ABC7 Newscenter, New York, June 10, 2021
Jeffrey Butts interviewed by N.J. Burkett of ABC7 New York on June 10, 2021 about the rise in shooting incidents across New York City.
Sinclair News Networks — As Cities Begin to Emerge from Pandemic, Homicide Rates Remain High
Homicide rates in many U.S. cities remained elevated through early 2021, a distressing trend that began before the coronavirus pandemic struck, and experts are still trying to determine exactly why it is happening and how long it might last.
Opinions and Perceptions of Residents in New York City Public Housing: More Findings from Household Surveys in MAP Communities and non-MAP Communities
Surveys of New York City public housing residents suggest that changes in some public safety outcomes might be mediated by gains in community well-being, social cohesion, engagement with government, and citizen trust in the competence of government agencies and actors. As communities become more tightly connected and more supported, they may experience gains in public safety.
WNYC –30 Issues: Who is the Real Law and Order Candidate?
Brian Lehrer of WNYC asks Jeffrey Butts about the Trump administration's "law and order" policies and rhetoric as they relate to the 2020 presidential election.
San Francisco Chronicle — Trump’s ‘Law and Order’: Ignoring Facts as he Plays to Fears
Trump isn’t the first national politician to poke at those anxieties. George Wallace, Richard Nixon, George H.W. Bush and George W. Bush, and Bill Clinton all raised fears of crime, said Jeffrey Butts, who directs the Research and Evaluation Center at the John Jay College of Criminal Justice in New York.
Reported Crime in MAP Communities Compared with Other NYC Areas
A rigorous test of the Mayor’s Action Plan for Neighborhood Safety indicates that New York City’s effort to improve the safety of public housing communities was beginning to show benefits by the end of 2019 and could be considered a promising intervention.
Opinions and Perceptions of Residents in New York City Public Housing
As part of an evaluation of the New York City Mayor’s Action Plan for Neighborhood Safety (MAP), researchers from John Jay College of Criminal Justice collaborated with survey specialists from NORC at the University Chicago to collect data from two probability samples of residents in public housing developments in New York City. One sample of residents came from communities involved in the MAP initiative. A second sample was from statistically matched housing developments not involved in MAP.
Albany Times Union — Reason for Drop in Youth Arrests Hard to Pin Down
Over the last five years the number of police stops and arrests involving Capital Region youths has fallen more than 45 percent, according to state data. It’s a stunning drop — but one without a clear single reason, say law enforcement and juvenile justice system professionals.
Older Adults Responsible for Total Growth in Drug Arrests
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.
Youth Still Leading Violent Crime Drop: 1988-2018
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.
Public Safety Trends in MAP Communities and Matched Comparison Areas
Was the presence of the MAP initiative in some NYCHA developments associated with greater improvements in crime and victimization outcomes compared with the same outcomes in NYCHA developments not involved in MAP? The results presented here do not answer the question in full, but they offer an early look at efforts by the research team to generate more precise answers. Additional analyses are needed to rule out competing explanations and to examine the complex series of relationships among all the study’s variables. Based on the preliminary findings in this report, however, the results of MAP to date may be considered promising.
Measurement Plan and Analytic Strategies for Evaluating the Mayor’s Action Plan for Neighborhood Safety
This second in a series of reports about the evaluation of the New York City Mayor’s Action Plan for Neighborhood Safety (MAP). This Evaluation Update: summarizes the goals and methods used to evaluate the Mayor’s Action Plan; describes the quasi-experimental design used to test the outcomes and impacts of MAP as well as the data sources assembled by the research team and how they are used; and portrays a logical framework the research team used initially to identify causal pathways through which various elements of MAP were intended to achieve their desired effect.
Mixed News About Youth Violence in Recent FBI Crime Data
The FBI’s Uniform Crime Reporting series tracks violent crime trends using the four offenses of murder, rape, robbery, and aggravated assault. According to the FBI, youth arrests for these offenses grew one percent between 2016 and 2017.
Considering the Mediating Effects of Drug and Alcohol Use, Mental Health, and Their Co-Occurrence on the Adverse Childhood Experiences–Recidivism Relationship
Using data from a large sample of adjudicated juveniles in Florida, this study examines the mediating effects of drug and alcohol use, mental health problems, and their co-occurrence on the relationship between adverse childhood experiences (ACE) and recidivism.
Quasi-Experimental Comparison Design for Evaluating the Mayor’s Action Plan for Neighborhood Safety
To evaluate the New York City Mayor's Action Plan for Neighborhood Safety (MAP), an initiative to improve the safety of public housing developments, researchers estimated the counterfactual (no intervention) by selecting a set of comparison housing developments not involved in the initiative. The study relied on the statistical method known as propensity score analysis (PSA) to select the comparison group.