“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.” Continue reading What America’s shoplifting panic is really about
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. Continue reading Designing Safety
“If a politician tells someone with basic math skills to go through advocacy materials and extrapolate from those numbers to make an argument, you can do that,” [Jeffrey] Butts said. “Of course, you end up saying things that are ridiculous.” Continue reading Missouri AG claims crime will go up if KC tightens gun laws. Experts debunk his logic.
Researcher Jeffrey Butts said the city should partner with a third-party to monitor and analyze the data in a way that is “systematic and unbiased.” “As long as the internal people answer to the same boss, it’s really hard to deliver bad news,” said Butts, director of the Research and Evaluation Center at the John Jay College of Criminal Justice. “The chief executive often hears how great things are going and never hears that there were indicators of things not going that great.” Continue reading New York City rolls out most detailed plan yet to reduce gun violence
While the Council on Criminal Justice’s findings paint an encouraging picture for the country, the director of the Research and Evaluation Center at John Jay College in New York cautioned against reading too much into them. “You can learn something by looking at city-specific trends, but don’t rush to broad conclusions based on an incomplete sample,” Jeffrey Butts said. Continue reading Violent crime is down in U.S. cities but still above pre-pandemic levels, report says
Between 2010 and 2022, the cost of initial hospital treatment for gun violence victims in New York City was borne primarily by Medicare and Medicaid, which covered at least 70% of the costs, according to a study published in December by Gina Moreno, a senior research analyst at the Research and Evaluation Center at John Jay College. Continue reading Who pays for medical bills after mass shootings?
