Jeffrey Butts, a John Jay College professor who has spent his career researching juvenile justice, said the problem is too wrapped up in politics and rhetoric. What it really needs is thoughtfulness and nuance.
Tag: prevention
New York State Investments in Public Safety
Researchers at JohnJayREC were contracted to support the New York Governor’s Office in assessing the public safety benefits of financial investments in four key anti-violence initiatives across the state.
New York City’s Crisis Management System
John Jay Research and Evaluation Center (JJREC) collaborated with NORC at the University of Chicago to assess the implementation of violence interruption services, wraparound services, and technical assistance services coordinated by community-based organizations supported through New York City’s “Crisis Management System” (CMS).
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.
What America’s shoplifting panic is really about
“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.”
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.