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.”
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.”
“You’re watching this like it’s a pandemic starting to take off, and you want to intervene now so to head off further increases,” said Dr. Jeffrey Butts, director of the Research and Evaluation Center at the John Jay College of Criminal Justice.
“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.”
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.”
