Jeffrey Butts, director of the Research and Evaluation Center at the John Jay College of Criminal Justice, said that there was no discernible migrant crime wave. “I would interpret a ‘wave’ to mean something significant, meaningful, and a departure from the norm,” he said. “So far, what we have are individual incidents of crime.”
“The things that make communities safe have nothing to do with patrol cars and badges.”
A recent report from John Jay College of Criminal Justice found that the share of felony dangerous weapons offenses committed by people under 18 in New York City has actually decreased since Raise the Age was passed in 2017.
“The best way to understand evaluation research and the development of evidence in youth justice today is to view it as a contentious and evolving process constantly affected by theoretical differences, political ideology, financial interest, bureaucratic dysfunction, and the practical concerns of measurement and data collection.”
“If punishment was the key to public safety, we’d be the safest country in the world,” said Jeffrey Butts, the director of the Research and Evaluation Center at John Jay College of Criminal Justice. “You get more public safety by working on underlying problems.”
New York City’s Department of Youth and Community Development implemented three potentially effective programs to prevent violence, reduce crime, and support resident well-being. Effective evaluations rely on detailed frameworks that guide data collection, data analysis, and the interpretation of results. To design reliable evaluations of complex programs, researchers collaborate with policymakers, agency leaders, program staff, and community residents to create detailed evaluation frameworks, revising them as necessary to account for changes in policy and practice. The evaluation frameworks presented here are draft versions offered as starting points for efforts to employ evidence-based public safety strategies in New York City.
