The Osborne Association Prepare Program: Recidivism Analysis

New York’s Osborne Association operates a reentry program called “Prepare” for fathers and father figures returning home from prison. With funding from the Office of Family Assistance within the Administration for Children and Families in the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, the Prepare program aims to improve relationships between formerly incarcerated fathers and their children using a family-centered approach focusing on parenting and workforce skills with one year of follow-up support.

Youth Justice Innovations in Maryland

The Research and Evaluation Center is developing a policy analysis and review about the Thrive Academy in Maryland, an effort to prevent youth gun violence in partnership with the State’s Department of Juvenile Justice and a multi-government agency and community stakeholder program known as the Community Investment Initiative (CII).

Designing Safety

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.

New York City rolls out most detailed plan yet to reduce gun violence

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.”

NYC Juvenile Detention Staffer Arrested, Fired for Sex with Teenage Detainee

Some experts believe sending teenagers back to adult jails isn’t a solution to the chaos at the juvenile centers. Jeffrey Butts, director of the Research and Evaluation Center at John Jay College of Criminal Justice, thinks the city and ACS need to rethink forced confinement for young people charged with major crimes.