Title: National Institute of Justice Journal Issue No. 248, 2002
Series: Journal
Author: National Institute of Justice
Published: March 2002
Subject: criminal justice system
68 pages
142,000 bytes

--------------------------------

Figures, charts, forms, and tables are not included in this ASCII plain-text
file. To view this document in its entirety, download the Adobe Acrobat
graphic file available from this Web site or order a print copy from
NCJRS at 800-851-3420 (877-712-9279 for TTY users).

--------------------------------

U.S. Department of Justice
Office of Justice Programs
National Institute of Justice

NATIONAL INSTITUTE OF JUSTICE
Journal

Kids, Prosecutors, and Domestic Violence
by Debra Whitcomb

Preventing School Shootings 
A Summary of a U.S. Secret Service Safe School Initiative Report

Tired Cops
by Bryan Vila and Dennis Jay Kenney

Trust and Confidence in Criminal Justice
by Lawrence W. Sherman

and

At-A-Glance 

o Distinguishing Between Crack and Powder in Urine Tests
by K. Jack Riley, Natalie T. Lu, et al.

o Keeping Mentally Ill People Out of Jails
by Henry J. Steadman et al.

o Inside Chinese Smuggling Organizations
by Sheldon Zhang and Ko-lin Chin

o Breaking the Cycle of Drug Use and Crime
by Adele Harrell

o Compstat and Organizational Change
by David Weisburd

--------------------------------

Building Knowledge to Meet the Challenge of Crime and Justice

National Institute of Justice

Sarah V. Hart
Director

The NIJ Journal is published by the National Institute of Justice, the
research arm of the U.S. Department of Justice, to announce the Institute's
policy-relevant research results and initiatives. The Attorney General has
determined that publication of this periodical is necessary in the
transaction of the public business required by law of the Department of
Justice. 

Opinions or points of view expressed in this document are those of the
authors and do not necessarily reflect the official position of the U.S.
Department of Justice.

Subscription information

email
puborder@ncjrs.org
In the subject line, put "NIJ Journal Subscription"

phone
301-519-5500
800-851-3420

mail
NCJRS
P. O. Box 6000
Rockville, MD 20849-6000

World Wide Web address
http://www.ojp.usdoj.gov/nij/journals

Contact NIJ 
National Institute of Justice
810 7th Street, N.W., Washington, DC 20531, U.S.A. 

NIJ Journal Editorial Board

Glenn R. Schmitt
Deputy Director

David Boyd
Director, Office of Science and Technology

Sally T. Hillsman
Director, Office of Research and Evaluation

Michael J. Dalich
Director, Office of Development and Communications

Patrick M. Clark
Sharla P. Rausch
A. Trent DePersia
Gerald P. Soucy
James O. Finckenauer
Cheryl C. Watson
Lee Mockensturm

Editor
Jolene Hernon

Production by: Palladian Partners, Inc.

Amy Benavides, Managing Editor
Catharine Rankin, Assistant Editor
Felicia Barlow, Contributing Writer

--------------------------------

Director's Message

This issue of the NIJ Journal discusses a wide range of issues--public trust
and confidence in criminal justice, how to identify potential school
shooters, protecting children exposed to domestic violence, and solving
the problem of tired police on the job. 

The first article, "Trust and Confidence in Criminal Justice" by Lawrence
W. Sherman, investigates why public trust and confidence rates are falling
just as law enforcement becomes more effective. It discusses the racial
divide, current demands for change, and potential solutions.

The second article summarizes the interim report of the United States
Secret Service Safe School Initiative, which focused on a rare, but
significant component of school violence--incidents of targeted violence
on school grounds. Because of the Secret Service's knowledge and
expertise in researching, understanding, and preventing targeted violence,
NIJ funded the Secret Service to study school shootings. Their report will
help schools understand the behavior and thinking of young persons who
commit targeted violence at school.

In the third article, Debra Whitcomb discusses how prosecutors have been
drawn into the debate over how best to protect children in the context of
domestic violence. As research reveals more about the effects of domestic
violence on children, there are raised expectations as to what prosecutors
can do for children who are exposed to domestic violence. Whitcomb
explores the challenges facing prosecutors when children are exposed to
domestic violence, how new State laws are affecting practice, and what
prosecutors can do to help battered women and their children.

In the fourth article, Bryan Vila and Dennis Jay Kenney explain that
fatigue is a widespread problem that can seriously degrade police officers'
health, safety, interpersonal skills, and decisionmaking. The National
Commission on Sleep Disorders Research heard testimony in 1991 from
officers about terrible work schedules, high stress, and overwhelming
fatigue. But the Commission had no way to determine whether the
witnesses' experiences were representative of police officers in general
because of a lack of scientific data documenting the prevalence of police
fatigue. Now, data are available from the first comprehensive research on
police work hours. The article also provides instructive suggestions as to
how police departments can address this serious, challenging problem.

During my tenure as director, NIJ will continue to research the challenges
faced by the criminal justice community and suggest strategies to address
these challenges.

Sarah V. Hart
Director

--------------------------------

Contents

March 2002

features
Prosecutors, Kids, and Domestic Violence Cases
o Debra Whitcomb

Preventing School Shootings
o A Summary of a U.S. Secret Service Safe School Initiative Report

Tired Cops: The Prevalence and Potential Consequences of Police Fatigue 
o Bryan Vila and Dennis Jay Kenney

Trust and Confidence in Criminal Justice
o Lawrence W. Sherman

at-a-glance
Recent Research Findings

o New Method for Monitoring Crack Use 
--K. Jack Riley, Natalie T. Lu, et al.

o Responding to Emergencies Involving People With Mental Illness
--Henry J. Steadman et al.

o Enter the Dragon: Inside Chinese Smuggling Organizations
--Sheldon Zhang and Ko-lin Chin

o Breaking the Cycle of Drug Use and Crime 
--Adele Harrell

o Compstat and Organizational Change 
--David Weisburd

departments
New & Noteworthy
Events
Solicitations

Preventing School Violence:
School shootings are not a new phenomenon, and a recent series of attacks
has prompted efforts to identify, assess, and manage persons who might
pose a threat. Researchers have discovered, however, that there is no
single reason why school shootings occur nor one type of student who
becomes a shooter. School shooters can be of any age, ethnic group, race,
or family situation. And contrary to assumptions that some of our youth
"just snap"--they don't. They plan. See "Preventing School Shootings: A
Summary of a U.S. Secret Service Safe School Initiative Report."

Tired Cops:
The first comprehensive research on police work hours and fatigue found
that shift length, shift assignment policies, personal circumstances,
commuting, and work-hour regularity are the main causes of police
fatigue. Work weeks of up to 130 hours have been recorded, involving
overtime assignments, shift work, night school, and waiting to testify.
What does fatigue do to an officer's ability to interact with people in their
communities and make sound decisions? See "Tired Cops: The Prevalence
and Potential Consequences of Police Fatigue." 

--------------------------------

Prosecutors, Kids, and Domestic Violence Cases
by Debra Whitcomb

Police and prosecutors say they sometimes feel like they are walking a
tightrope when they intervene in domestic violence cases. Each step into a
heated domestic situation requires careful balance. On the one hand, the
justice system must hold batterers accountable for their violent behavior;
on the other hand, a woman needs to control her life and find safety and
security for herself and her children as best she can.

As research reveals more about the effects of domestic violence on
children, prosecutors are finding that both the law and public opinion have
raised expectations for what criminal justice professionals should do and
actually can do.

Some States have enacted legislation to better protect children exposed to
violence, but the new laws are raising concern about the impact on
mothers. Critics hypothesize that battered women will be increasingly
charged with criminal child abuse or failure to protect their children if they
do not take action against their batterer and could eventually lose custody.
Others fear that children who are exposed to domestic violence will
increasingly be forced to testify and therefore to "choose sides" in the
cases against their mother or father. 

This article describes some of the issues prosecutors should be aware of
when they handle domestic violence cases involving children, especially
in light of recent legislation aimed to protect children. It is the product of
an NIJ-funded exploratory study that relied on two sources of data: a
national telephone survey of prosecutors and field research in five
jurisdictions. (See "The Survey and Its Findings.")

The exploratory study sought answers to the following questions: 

o How are new laws, now in effect in a small number of States, affecting
practice?

o What challenges do prosecutors face when children are exposed to
domestic violence? 

o What can prosecutors do to help battered women and their children? 

Why the New Laws?

Children who witness domestic violence often manifest behavioral and
emotional problems, poor academic performance, and delinquency.[1]
Sadly, violence against women and violence against children often coexist
in families--the frequency of child abuse doubles in families experiencing
intimate partner violence, compared to families with nonviolent partners,
and the rate of child abuse escalates with the severity and frequency of the
abuse against the mother.[2] 

Domestic violence is also a known risk factor for recurring child abuse
reports[3] and for child fatalities.[4] In addition, domestic violence
frequently coexists with substance abuse, so that children are exposed to
the effects of dangerous substances and the parental neglect that usually
comes with addiction.[5] One large study involving 9,500 HMO members
revealed that the 1,010 people who reported that their mothers had been
treated violently also reported being exposed to other adverse childhood
experiences, such as substance abuse (59 percent reported exposure),
mental illness (38 percent), sexual abuse (41 percent), psychological abuse
(34 percent), and physical abuse (31 percent).[6] 

It is generally recognized that the well-being of children who witness
domestic violence is tied closely to that of their mothers,[7] but the
mother's interests and the child's may not always be identical or even
compatible. A mother may face serious concerns about her financial and
physical well-being if she separates from her violent partner. She may lack
resources or social networks to extricate herself from dangerous
relationships, and the community's support system may be inadequate. Her
efforts to seek help may be thwarted by waiting lists, lack of insurance, or
high fees for services. She may believe that she and her children are better
off staying with the violent partner despite the consequences.[8]

Meanwhile, the children remain in perilous environments. Child protection
agencies may feel compelled to intervene to forestall the escalating risk of
harm to children. Unfortunately, in many jurisdictions, a referral to the
child protection agency is perceived as a mixed blessing. Many child
protection agencies do not have adequate resources to respond to the
volume of domestic violence reports they receive when exposure to
violence is defined as a form of child maltreatment by law or policy.
Elsewhere, critics charge, protective services workers are too quick to
remove children from violent homes, inappropriately blaming women for
the actions of their abusive partners.

How Are New Laws Affecting Practice? 

The words of San Diego City Attorney Casey Gwinn capture the climate
of growing concerns related to children and violence in the home: 

...children must be a central focus of all we do in the civil and criminal
justice system...from the initial police investigation through the
probationary period, we must prioritize children's issues.[9]

Police officers are being encouraged to note the presence of children when
they respond to domestic violence incidents and to collaborate with mental
health professionals to address the children's trauma and anxiety.[10]
Battered women's shelters are hiring staff to work with children and
developing policy for alerting child protection agencies when needed.[11]
Juvenile and family courts are sponsoring programs to meet the needs of
battered women whose children are at risk for maltreatment.[12] Child
protection agencies are instituting training and protocols to better identify
domestic violence; some are hiring domestic violence specialists to help
develop appropriate case plans.[13] Legislators, too, are taking action by
enhancing penalties when domestic violence occurs in front of children
and creating new criminal child abuse offenses for cases involving
children who are exposed to domestic violence. 

The new laws are affecting prosecutors in different ways. For example,
district attorneys in Multnomah County, Oregon, where a new law
recently upgraded domestic violence offenses to felonies when children
are present,[14] issued nearly 150 percent more felony domestic violence
cases in the year that the new law was passed. 

In both Salt Lake County, Utah, and Houston County, Georgia, where
committing domestic violence in the presence of a child is a new crime of
child abuse,[15] prosecutors tend to use these charges as "bargaining
chips" to exert leverage toward guilty pleas on domestic violence charges. 

In these jurisdictions, the new State laws remind law enforcement
investigators to document children as witnesses and to take statements
from them whenever possible, which may strengthen prosecutors'
domestic violence cases even if the children cannot testify.

To understand how prosecutors are responding to the changing attitudes,
researchers asked them to explain how they would respond to three
different scenarios involving children and domestic violence:

1. An abused mother is alleged to have abused her children. 

2. Both mother and children are abused by the same male perpetrator. 

3. Children are exposed to domestic violence, but not abused themselves. 

For each scenario, respondents answered these questions: 

o Would your office report the mother to the child protection agency? 

o Would your office prosecute the mother in the first scenario for the
abuse of her children? 

o Would your office report or prosecute the mother in scenarios 2 and 3
for failure to protect her children from abuse or exposure to domestic
violence? 

Many respondents noted the lack of statutory authority in their States to
prosecute mothers for failure to protect their children, especially from
exposure to domestic violence. Some explained that they consider
mothers' experience of victimization in their decisions to report or
prosecute battered mothers for their children's exposure to abuse or
domestic violence. 

Factors in these decisions commonly include the severity of injury to the
child, chronicity of the domestic violence, the degree to which the mother
actively participated in the abuse of her child, and prior history of failure
to comply with services or treatment plans.

Prosecutors in States with laws either creating or enhancing penalties for
domestic violence in the presence of children were significantly more
likely to report battered mothers for failure to protect their children from
abuse or from exposure to domestic violence, but there was no significant
difference in the likelihood of prosecution. (See table 1.) 

The more tangible benefits of the new laws--particularly those in Utah and
Georgia--may accrue to the children. By identifying children as victims,
these statutes:

o Allow children access to crime victims compensation funds to address
health or mental health needs resulting from their exposure to domestic
violence.

o Enable the courts to issue protective orders on the children's behalf
(potentially affording prosecutors another tool for monitoring offenders'
behavior).

o Signal a need to file a report with the child protection agency, even in
the absence of laws naming domestic violence as a condition of mandatory
reporting.

What Can Prosecutors Do? 

Research suggests a number of steps prosecutors can take to help children
who are exposed to domestic violence:

o Employ every available avenue to enforce the terms of no-contact orders
and probationary sentences. Field research suggests that these measures
may offer the most powerful means of holding domestic violence
offenders accountable for their behavior. 

o Establish protocols within prosecutors' offices to encourage information
sharing among prosecutors with responsibility for domestic violence and
child abuse caseloads. 

o Identify avenues for early intervention (e.g., by placing greater emphasis
on misdemeanor prosecution). 

o Train law enforcement investigators to note the presence of children in
domestic violence incidents and to take statements from them whenever
appropriate to do so. 

o Encourage law enforcement agencies to adopt a model of law
enforcement--mental health partnership that was pioneered in New Haven,
Connecticut, as a means of ensuring that children who are exposed to
violence receive timely and appropriate therapeutic intervention.[16] Be
prepared, however, to develop policies or protocols to guide law
enforcement officers' decisions to report these incidents to the child
protection agency.

o Wherever possible, prosecute domestic violence offenders on concurrent
charges of child endangerment, emotional abuse, or other available
charges reflecting the danger to children who witness violence. These
additional charges can be used to argue for stricter conditions of pretrial
release or probation, or perhaps for upward deviation from sentencing
guidelines.

o Provide training on domestic violence, child abuse, and the impact of
domestic violence on children for all prosecutors, victim advocates, and
other court personnel whose job responsibilities include responding to
allegations of family violence. 

o Promote increased attention to services for battered women. Women
cannot reasonably be expected to extricate themselves from dangerous
relationships if the financial and social supports are not available in their
communities. Particular attention should be paid to substance abuse
treatment; one recent study suggests that substance abuse predicts
noncooperation with prosecution among battered women.[17]

o Ensure that social service agencies will connect with families that have
been reported for domestic violence, both to offer referrals for needed
services and to monitor future incidents. Some avenues need to be
available for offering needed services to children in troubled families
before they suffer serious harm. 

No other institution in the community has the capacity and power to force
offenders to confront and change their behavior. As political leaders in
their communities, prosecutors have the status and opportunity to advocate
for needed change, whether legislative, fiscal, or programmatic in nature.
Prosecutors can bring together people with disparate views and hammer
out ways to overcome distrust and conflict toward a common goal:
protection of battered women and their children. 

NCJ 190632

Notes

1. For a comprehensive review, see Edleson, J., "Children's Witnessing of
Adult Domestic Violence," Journal of Interpersonal Violence, 14(1999):
839-870.

2. Strauss, M., R.J. Gelles, and S. Steinmetz, Behind Closed Doors:
Violence in the American Family, New York: Doubleday/Anchor, 1980.

3. English, D.J., D.B. Marshall, S. Brummel, and M. Orme,
"Characteristics of Repeated Referrals to Child Protective Services in
Washington State," Child Maltreatment, 4(1999): 297-307.

4. U.S. Advisory Board on Child Abuse and Neglect, A Nation's Shame:
Fatal Child Abuse and Neglect in the United States, Washington, DC: U.S.
Department of Health and Human Services, Administration for Children
and Families, 1995.

5. U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, Blending Perspectives
and Building Common Ground: A Report to Congress on Substance 
Abuse and Child Protection, Washington, DC: Administration for
Children and Families, Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services
Administration, Assistant Secretary for Planning and Evaluation, 1999.

6. Felitti, V.J., R.F. Anda, D. Nordenberg, et al., "Relationship of
Childhood Abuse and House-hold Dysfunction to Many of the Leading
Causes of Death in Adults," American Journal of Preventive Medicine, 14
(1998): 250.

7. Osofsky, J.D., "The Impact of Violence on Children," The Future of
Children: Domestic Violence and Children, 9(1999): 33-49. 

8. Hilton, N.Z., "Battered Women's Concerns About Their Children
Witnessing Wife Assault," Journal of Interpersonal Violence, 7(1992): 77-
86.

9. Personal communication, January 2000.

10. Marans, S., S.J. Berkowitz, and D.J. Cohen, "Police and Mental Health
Professionals: Collaborative Responses to the Impact of Violence on
Children and Families," Child and Adolescent Psychiatric Clinics of North
America, 7(1998): 635-651.

11. Saathoff, A.J., and E.A. Stoffel, "Community-Based Domestic
Violence Services," The Future of Children: Domestic Violence and
Children, 9(1999): 97-110.

12. See, e.g., Lecklitner, G.L., N.M. Malik, S.M. Aaron, and C.S.
Lederman, "Promoting Safety for Abused Children and Battered Mothers:
Miami-Dade County's Model Dependency Court Intervention Program,"
Child Maltreatment, 4(1999): 175-182.

13. Whitney, P., and L. Davis, "Child Abuse and Domestic Violence in
Massachusetts: Can Practice Be Integrated in a Public Child Welfare
Setting?" Child Maltreatment, 4(1999): 158-166.

14. Oregon's legislation can be found at ORS 163.160(3)(b).

15. Utah: U.C.A. Section 76-5-109.1; Georgia: O.C.G.A. Section 16-5-70.

16. Marans, Berkowitz, and Cohen, "Police and Mental Health
Professionals," see note 10.

17. Goodman, L., L. Bennett, and M.A. Bennett, "Obstacles to Victims'
Cooperation with the Criminal Prosecution of Their Abusers: The Role of
Social Support," Violence and Victims, 14(1999): 427-444.

--------------------------------

about the author

Debra Whitcomb conducted this research while she was an NIJ Research
Fellow. Whitcomb is Director, Grant Programs and Development,
American Prosecutors Research Institute, 99 Canal Center Plaza, Suite
510, Alexandria, Virginia 22314, 703-519-1675,
debra.whitcomb@ndaa-apri.org.

--------------------------------

The Survey and Its Findings

The study involved a telephone survey of prosecutors and in-depth site
visits to five jurisdictions to collect information about current practice and
to identify "promising practices in response to cases involving domestic
violence and child victims or witnesses. 

The final report, Children and Domestic Violence: Challenges for
Prosecutors, (NCJ 185355; grant 99-WT-VX-0001) is available from
NCJRS for $15. To order a copy, call 1-800-851-3420. 

Findings from the Telephone Survey 

The 128 prosecutors who completed the telephone survey worked in 93
offices in 49 States. The offices had jurisdiction over both felony and
misdemeanor cases at either the county or district level. Nearly half (48
percent) of the jurisdictions had units or prosecutors responsible for all
family violence cases, 38 percent had separate domestic violence and child
abuse prosecutors or units. The other respondents represented the singular
perspectives of domestic violence (10 percent) or child abuse (4 percent). 

Specific findings include the following: 

Most respondents (78 percent) agreed that the presence of children
provides added incentive to prosecute domestic violence cases. A few
individuals pointed to the children's capacity to testify as an important
factor in their decisions.

A majority of prosecutors' offices (59 percent) are aggressively pursuing
enhanced sanctions for domestic violence offenders when incidents
involve children as victims or witnesses. Most commonly, prosecutors
argue for harsher sentencing or file separate charges of child
endangerment. Responding offices in which prosecutors had received at
least some training on the co-occurrence of domestic violence and child
maltreatment (65 percent) were significantly more likely to report
employing these avenues in applicable cases. 

Most jurisdictions lack a policy for prosecutors and investigators to
identify co-occurring cases of domestic violence and child maltreatment.
None of the 35 responding offices with separate domestic violence and
child abuse units had protocols directing prosecutors in these units to
inquire about co-occurrence or to communicate with one another when
relevant cases arise. About half were aware of protocols directing law
enforcement officers to ask about child victims or witnesses when
investigating domestic violence reports. About one-fourth knew of
protocols directing investigators to inquire about domestic violence when
responding to child abuse reports. 

Findings From the In-Depth Site Visits

Dallas, Texas. Prosecutors in Dallas pursue a fairly strict "no-drop" policy
for domestic violence cases, and the presence of children only strengthens
their resolve to move cases forward. However, with reluctant women, the
officials can offer the option of filing an "affidavit of nonprosecution."
This document helps women who fear retribution from their abusive
partners because it allows the women to demonstrate their efforts to
terminate law enforcement's intervention. However, it has no effect on the
prosecutor's decision making or the court's proceedings.

Where there are concurrent charges of domestic violence and child abuse,
prosecutors try to coordinate the cases to optimize the sanctions against
the offender and the safety of the mother and children. For example, the
family violence prosecutor can use child abuse cases to support the
domestic violence charge. Even if the child abuse is a felony and the
domestic violence is a misdemeanor, prosecutors may accept a plea to jail
time on the domestic violence charge and a 10-year deferred adjudication
on the child abuse charge, which typically carries with it numerous
conditions (e.g., no contact, participation in substance abuse treatment,
and so on). This avenue ensures a domestic violence conviction while
imposing strict court oversight on the child abuse charge. 

Respondents observed that deferred adjudication or a probation sentence
is, in some ways, more severe and more effective than jail time, precisely
because of the conditions that can be imposed, the length of time that the
offender can remain under the court's supervision, and the threat of
revocation and incarceration.

San Diego, California. Prosecutors in San Diego are both aggressive and
creative in finding ways to enhance sanctions for perpetrators of domestic
violence and child abuse. For example, domestic violence offenders can be
charged with child endangerment when a child:

o Calls 911 to report domestic violence.

o Appears fearful, upset, or hysterical at the scene.

o Is an eyewitness to the incident.

o Is present in a room where objects are being thrown.

o Is in a car during a domestic violence incident.

o Is in the arms of the victim or suspect during an incident.[1] 

Anyone convicted of child endangerment and sentenced to probation will
be required to complete a yearlong child abuser's treatment program.

Several programs support the prosecutors. For example, the Child
Advocacy Project (CAP) provides services to children and families in
reported incidents of abuse, neglect, exploitation, or domestic violence
that are not investigated for criminal justice system intervention. Through
a collaboration with the San Diego Police Department and Children's
Hospital Center for Child Protection, the San Diego City Attorney's Office
reviews these reports with an eye toward any angle that might support a
misdemeanor prosecution with the goal of creating an avenue for service
delivery. Most defendants plead guilty and receive informal probation
with referrals to parenting and counseling programs.

Salt Lake County, Utah. In May 1997, Utah became the first State to enact
legislation specifically addressing the issue of children who witness
domestic violence. Notable elements of this statute include the following:

o It creates a crime of child abuse, not domestic violence.

o It does not require the child to be physically present during the incident
of domestic violence. The perpetrator simply must be aware that a child
may see or hear it.

o Unless the precipitating domestic violence incident is quite severe, it
requires at least one previous violation or act of domestic violence in the
presence of a child. A police incident report documenting an earlier act in
the presence of a child will suffice for this purpose.

Although criminal justice agencies in Salt Lake County were not able to
provide statistical data, anecdotal evidence suggests that:

o The law is infrequently applied to mothers. But it could be applied if the
women were arrested in the underlying incident of domestic violence.

o The law is largely symbolic. It adds minimal time to the offender's
sentence--perhaps 6 months if the sentences for the domestic violence and
child abuse charges run consecutively.

o The crime is relatively easy to prove, requiring either (a) testimony from
the responding officer, (b) testimony or excited utterances from the victim
parent, or (c) a 911 tape that records children's voices.

Concurrent with the enactment of the new criminal statute, Utah's
Department of Child and Family Services created a new category of child
abuse and neglect: "Domestic Violence-Related Child Abuse," or
DVRCA, defined as "violent physical or verbal interaction between
cohabitants in a household in the presence of a child." 

In adopting the new category, the department hired domestic violence
advocates and developed a protocol to guide child protection workers in
their determinations.

Houston County, Georgia. Prosecutors in Houston County, Georgia,
actively use new provisions of Georgia's "cruelty to children" statute that
pertain to domestic violence committed in the presence of children.
Because cruelty to children is almost always a misdemeanor offense, it
makes little difference in the penalties imposed on a batterer; indeed, the
sentence typically runs by concurrently with the underlying domestic
violence charge. However, the law does give prosecutors a stronger
argument for no contact as a condition of bond. Violations of no-contact
orders are charged as aggravated stalking, a felony offense in Georgia. 

Prosecutors perceive the severe consequences of violating no-contact
orders as perhaps the most effective response to domestic violence among
the sanctions available to them.

Also, by identifying children as victims of the family violence battery, the
new law accomplishes at least three things:

o It helps to counter batterers' threats to gain custody of a child.

o It makes the children eligible for crime victims compensation.

o It enables the court to impose no-contact orders on the children's behalf.

Multnomah County, Oregon. The study team selected Multnomah County
(Portland), Oregon, be-cause Oregon enacted legislation upgrading certain
assault offenses from misdemeanors to felonies when a child witnesses the
crime. The felony upgrade applies only to assault in the fourth degree, a
misdemeanor offense that applies to many incidents of domestic violence.
Assaults in the first, second, or third degree are felonies that require more
serious injuries or the use of weapons. 

Even though the felony upgrade applies to defendants with prior
convictions (either one against the same victim or three against any
victims) regardless of the presence of children, prosecutors observe that
the large majority of elevated cases are those involving child witnesses. 

The felony upgrade law has had a noteworthy impact on the District
Attorney's Office: The number of felonies reviewed more than tripled in
1998 (the year in which the law became effective), while the number of
misdemeanors reviewed remained nearly constant. Also, the number of
felonies issued exceeded the number of misdemeanors for the first time.

In that same year, the proportion of issued domestic violence cases
declined. This pattern held true for misdemeanors as well as felonies.
Prosecutors may have imposed higher standards as they began to interpret
and apply the new law.

1. Gwinn, C., "Domestic Violence and Children: Difficult Issues,"
Presentation for the National College of District Attorneys, 1998.

--------------------------------

Preventing School Shootings 
A Summary of a U.S. Secret Service Safe School Initiative Report

The 18-year-old honor student brought guns and a homemade bomb to
school. He set off the fire alarm and shot at the janitors and fire-fighters
who responded. The boy hung himself while awaiting trial. This story
sounds as current as today's media headlines, but it happened in 1974.
School shootings are not a new phenomenon. 

There is no one reason why school shootings occur, and no one type of
student who becomes a shooter. 

This article dispels the myths and stereotypes about school shooters.
Children who attack can be any age and from any ethnic group, race, or
family situation. Contrary to assumptions that some of our youth "just
snap"--they don't. They plan.

Most official statistics show a steady decline in the rates of school
violence. Reports from the U.S. Department of Education show school to
be one of the safest places for our children.[1] However, several
high-profile shootings in schools over the past decade have resulted in
increased fear among students, parents, and educators. 

The National Institute of Justice has joined forces with the U.S. Secret
Service and the U.S. Department of Education to assess ways to prevent
school shootings. The Secret Service has a long tradition of protecting our
Nation's leaders by identifying, assessing, and managing persons who
might pose a threat of targeted violence. 

Targeted violence is a term developed by the Secret Service to refer to any
incident of violence where a known (or knowable) attacker selects a
particular target prior to the act of violence. Because of the Secret
Service's expertise in the study and prevention of targeted violence, the
Secretary of Education asked the agency to conduct a similar operational
study of school shootings. (See "Editor's Note," above, and "The Study
Specifics," page 13.)

Study Implications

The findings clearly emphasize the importance of paying attention and
listening to America's young people. More than a handful of
adults--parents, teachers, school administrators and counselors, coaches,
and law enforcement--can make an important contribution to and play a
key role in preventing violence on school grounds. 

Young people who need help often do not keep it a secret. They may
exhibit obvious warning signs either through behavior or remarks, such as
voicing problems or grievances, complaining about persecution or
bullying, or showing signs of depression or desperation. 

The Secret Service found that when young people plan targeted violence
they often tell at least one person about their plans, give out specifics
before the event takes place, and obtain weapons they need--usually from
their own home or a relative's home. 

An important effort in prevention may be to ensure that young people have
opportunities to talk and connect with caring adults.

What We Know 

Attackers Talk About Their Plans

Prior to most incidents, the attacker told someone about his idea or plan. In
more than three-fourths of the cases examined in the Safe School
Initiative, the attacker told a friend, schoolmate, or sibling about his idea
for a possible attack before taking action. In one case, an attacker made
comments to at least 24 friends and classmates about his interest in killing
other students, building bombs, or carrying out an attack at the school.
Some of the conversations were long enough that peers conveyed detailed
information about the plans, including the date it would happen.

However, the study identified a major barrier to the prevention of targeted
school violence. In nearly all of the cases, the person who was told about
the impending incident was a peer, and rarely did anyone bring the
information to an adult's attention. It is important, therefore, that threat
assessment inquiries involve efforts to gather information from anyone
who may have contact with the student in question. It also is important to
decrease barriers that may prevent students who have information from
coming forward. In addition, both schools and investigators need a
thoughtful, effective system for handling and analyzing any information
that is provided.

Although some attackers did make threats, most did not threaten their
target directly. The researchers indicate it is helpful to distinguish between
making a threat (telling people they intend to harm someone) and posing a
threat (engaging in behaviors that indicate intent, planning, or preparation
for an attack). The study notes that plans to prevent school violence should
involve adults attending to concerns when someone poses a threat rather
than waiting for a direct threat.

Attackers Make Plans

Incidents of targeted violence at school are rarely impulsive. In almost all
incidents, the attacker developed the idea to harm the target before the
attack. In many cases, the attacker formulated the idea for the attack at
least 2 weeks in advance and planned out the incident. Targeted violence
is typically the end result of an understandable, often discernible, process
of thinking and behavior. For more than half of the attackers, the motive
was revenge. In several cases, students made efforts to acquire
firearms--often from their own home--or bomb-making equipment, and
solicited the assistance of friends to do so.

Because information about intent and planning was potentially knowable
before the incident, the findings suggest some violent events may be
preventable. Quick efforts to inquire and intervene are extremely
important because the time span may be short between the attacker's
decision to attack and the actual incident. An inquiry should include
investigation of, and attention to, grievances and bad feelings a student
may be experiencing about school or potential targets.

There Is No Stereotype or Profile

There is no accurate or useful profile of "the school shooter." The
personality and social characteristics of the shooters varied substantially.
They came from a variety of racial and ethnic backgrounds and varied in
age from 11 to 21 years. Family situations ranged from intact families to
foster homes. Academic performance ranged from excellent to failing.
Few had been diagnosed with any mental disorder prior to the incident,
and less than one-third had histories of drug or alcohol abuse.

Thus profiling is not effective for identifying students who may pose a risk
for targeted violence at school. Knowing that an individual shares
characteristics, features, or traits with prior school shooters does not
advance the appraisal of risk. The use of profiles carries a risk of
over-identification, and the vast majority of students who fit any given
profile will not actually pose a risk. The use of these stereotypes will fail
to identify some students who do, in fact, pose a risk of violence, but who
share few characteristics with prior attackers.

A fact-based approach may be more productive in preventing school
shootings than a trait-based approach. This study indicates that an inquiry
based on a student's behaviors and communications will be more
productive than attempts to determine risk by attending to students'
characteristics or traits. The aim should be to determine if the student
appears to be planning or preparing for an attack. If so, how far along are
the plans, and when or where would intervention be possible?

Attackers Had Easy Access to Guns

Most attackers had used guns previously and had access to guns. 
In nearly two-thirds of the incidents, the attackers obtained the gun(s) used
in the attack from their own home or that of a relative. In some cases, the
guns were gifts from the students' parents.

While access to weapons among students may be common, when the idea
of an attack exists, any effort to acquire, prepare, or use a weapon may
signal an attacker's progression from idea to action. A threat assessment
inquiry should include investigation of weapon access and use and
attention to communication about weapons. The large number of attackers
who acquired their guns from home highlights the need to consider issues
of safe gun storage.

School Staff Are Often First Responders

Most shooting incidents were not resolved by law enforcement
intervention. More than half of the attacks ended before law enforcement
responded to the scene--despite law enforcement's often prompt response.
In these cases, faculty or fellow students stopped the attacker, or the
attacker either stopped shooting on his own or committed suicide. Many of
the incidents lasted 20 minutes or less.

Schools can make the best use of their resources by working with law
enforcement on prevention efforts as well as critical incident response
plans.

Attackers Are Encouraged by Others

In many cases, other students were involved in some capacity. The
attackers acted alone in at least two-thirds of the cases. However, in almost
half of the cases, friends or fellow students influenced or encouraged the
attacker to act. 

In one case, the student planned to bring a gun to school in an attempt to
appear tough to other students who had been harassing him. The attacker
shared his plan with two friends who convinced him to actually shoot
students at the school to persuade others to leave him alone. Several days
later, he did just that. The attacker schemed to shoot fellow students in the
lobby of his school at a specific time in the morning. On the morning of
the attack, he asked three others to meet him in the mezzanine overlooking
the lobby, where only a few students could be found every morning. The
students told so many others that by the time the attacker opened fire in
the lobby--killing 2 and injuring 2--a total of 24 students were in the
mezzanine watching the attack. One student brought a camera to record
the event.

Advance knowledge among students about the planned incidents
contradicts the assumption that shooters are "loners" and that they "just
snap." The research suggests that an inquiry should not only include
efforts to gather information from a student's friends and schoolmates, but
also give attention to the influence that a student's friends or peers may
have on intent, planning, and preparations.

Bullying Can Be a Factor

In a number of cases, bullying played a key role in the decision to attack.
A number of attackers had experienced bullying and harassment that were
longstanding and severe. In those cases, the experience of bullying
appeared to play a major role in motivating the attack at school. Bullying
was not a factor in every case, and clearly not every child who is bullied in
school will pose a risk. However, in a number of cases, attackers described
experiences of being bullied in terms that approached torment.

Attackers told of behaviors that, if they occurred in the workplace, would
meet the legal definition of harassment. That bullying played a major role
in a number of school shootings should strongly support ongoing efforts to
combat bullying in American schools.

Two recent cases not included in the Secret Service's interim report
brought the issue of bullying to the Nation's attention. One boy
experienced the torment of kids burning their cigarette lighters and then
pressing the hot metal against his neck. He was constantly picked on, even
by his friends. To stop the daily taunting, he opened fire on his classmates,
killing two.[2] 

In the second case, a girl had been the victim of such severe harassment
that she frequently skipped school; administrators threatened legal action
if she did not begin to attend school regularly. Students called her names
and threw stones at her as she walked home. Increasingly concerned, her
parents transferred her to a small parochial school. The teasing continued.
In an effort to stop the pain, the student planned to commit suicide in front
of a classmate to whom she had revealed personal information. Instead of
killing herself, she pointed the gun at her classmate and wounded her in
the shoulder.[3]

Warning Signs Are Common

Most attackers engaged in some behavior prior to the incident that caused
concern or indicated a need for help. In more than half of the cases, the
attacker's behavior caught the attention of more than one person.
Behaviors that led others (e.g., school officials, police, fellow students) to
be concerned included those related to the attack, such as efforts to obtain
a gun. But they also included behaviors not clearly related to the attack.
More than three-fourths of the attackers threatened to kill themselves,
made suicidal gestures, or tried to kill themselves before their attacks. In
one case, a student wrote several poems for English class that involved
themes of homicide and suicide as possible solutions to feelings of
hopelessness. School authorities ultimately determined that his was a
family problem and did not intervene. He later went to school and killed
two people. Many attackers had a history of feeling extremely depressed
or desperate. 

A significant problem in preventing targeted violence is determining how
best to respond to students who are already known to be in trouble. This
study indicates the importance of giving attention to students who are
having difficulty coping with major losses or perceived failures,
particularly when feelings of desperation and hopelessness are involved.

NCJ 190633

Notes

1. Snyder, Thomas, and Charlene Hoffman, Digest of Education
Statistics, 2000, Washington, DC: National Center for Education
Statistics, April 2001.

2. McCarthy, Terry, "Warning," Time, 157(11)(March 2001): 24-28.

3. ABCNews.com, "Sticks and Stones,"
http://abcnews.go.com/sections/2020/2020/010412_shooter.html.
Retrieved from the World Wide Web on December 17, 2001.

--------------------------------

editor's note

This article summarizes USSS Safe School Initiative: An Interim Report
on the Prevention of Targeted Violence in Schools (Washington, DC: U.S.
Secret Service, National Threat Assessment Center, 2000). The summary
is published with permission from NTAC. 

The full report, with expanded findings, is anticipated in early 2002. The
research was funded in part through NIJ grant number 00-MU-MU-A003.

For more information, visit the National Threat Assessment Center online
at http://www.treas.gov/usss/ntac.

--------------------------------

The Study Specifics

Since September 1999, the National Threat Assessment Center (NTAC)
has studied 37 school shootings involving 41 attackers. The attackers were
current or recent students at the school and chose to attack the school for a
particular purpose, not simply as a site of opportunity. The study excluded
school shootings that were clearly related to gang or drug activity or to an
interpersonal or relationship dispute. All of the incidents were committed
by boys or young men.

Researchers reviewed primary source materials for each incident,
including investigative, school, court, and mental health records.
Information gathered about each case included facts about how the
attacker developed the idea to harm, selected the target(s), planned the
attack, and chose to communicate an intent to cause harm.

Each case file also identified the motivation behind the attack, the method
used to acquire weapons, and demographic and background information
about each attacker. In addition, NTAC personnel conducted interviews
with 10 of the attackers. The interviews provided an opportunity to hear
the attacker's perspective on his decision to engage in a school-based
attack. 

The results of the study overturn stereotypes and suggest ways to
prevent shootings and other school violence.

--------------------------------

For More Information

o M. Reddy, R. Borum, B. Vossekuil, R. Fein, J. Berglund, and W.
Modzeleski, "Evaluating Risk for Targeted Violence in Schools:
Comparing Risk Assessment, Threat Assessment, and Other Approaches,"
Psychology in the Schools 38(2)(2001): 157-171.

o R. Borum, "Assessing Violence Risk Among Youth," Journal of
Clinical Psychology 56(2000): 1263-1288.

o R. Borum, R. Fein, B. Vossekuil, and J. Berglund, "Threat Assessment:
Defining an Approach for Evaluating Risk of Targeted Violence,"
Behavioral Sciences & the Law 17(1999): 323-337.

o R.A. Fein and B. Vossekuil, Protective Intelligence and Threat
Assessment Investigations: A Guide for State and Local Law Enforcement
Officials, Washington, DC: U.S. Department of Justice, 1997 (NCJ
167556).

o R.A. Fein, B. Vossekuil, and G.A. Holden, Threat Assessment: An
Approach to Prevent Targeted Violence, Research in Action, Washington,
DC: U.S. Department of Justice, National Institute of Justice, September
1995 (NCJ 155000).

--------------------------------

Tired Cops: The Prevalence and Potential Consequences of Police Fatigue
by Bryan Vila and Dennis Jay Kenney

A Michigan police officer working nearly 24 hours straight crashes his
cruiser while chasing a fleeing motorist. He is critically injured. In
California, a sheriff's deputy working alone drifts off a deserted highway
and is killed instantly when his patrol car crashes into a tree. An officer in
Florida, who has had trouble staying awake, runs a red light in her patrol
car and crashes into a van driven by a deputy sheriff, injuring him
severely. A police officer driving home from work in Ohio nods off at the
wheel, begins swerving in and out of traffic, and runs off the road, striking
and killing a man jogging down the sidewalk. These are just a few of the
news stories about tired cops that come in from around the Nation with
distressing regularity.

Accounts of tragedies associated with police fatigue are not new. The
National Commission on Sleep Disorders Research heard testimony in
1991 from officers who described terrible work schedules, high stress, and
overwhelming fatigue. But the Commission had no way of determining
whether or not the witnesses' experiences were representative of police
officers in general because of a lack of scientific data documenting the
prevalence of police fatigue. Now, data are available from the first
comprehensive research on the topic--and the news is not good. (See
"About the Tired Cops Study.")

Weary from overtime assignments, shift work, night school, endless hours
spent waiting to testify, and the emotional and physical demands of the
job--not to mention trying to patch together a family and social life during
irregular breaks of off-duty time--police officers fend off fatigue with
coffee and hard-bitten humor. The authors of the study spoke to hundreds
of officers, supervisors, and managers, most of whom reported personal
experiences with fatigue, exhaustion, and extreme drowsiness. 

What's Causing Police Fatigue?

The work hours in many professions (for example, airline pilots and truck
drivers) are standardized and regulated. No such structure exists for police
officers. There are scattered reports of officers working stupendous
amounts of overtime or extra-duty details. The Boston Globe's detailed
review of timekeeping records for one police agency found 16 officers
who each averaged more than 80 total work hours per week (including
regular and overtime hours) during a 12-month period. Two officers
averaged more than 100 hours per week. And another officer once worked
130 hours in a single week--averaging less than 6 hours off each day. A
few officers in both Florida and Massachusetts jurisdictions reportedly
work overtime or moonlight as many as 3,000 hours per year in addition to
their regular work shifts.[1] 

A series of surveys conducted in 1999 with police chiefs and supervisors
supports the idea that overtime work contributes greatly to police
fatigue.[2] The results, compiled from more than 60 jurisdictions in the
United States, reveal that at least a few officers in most departments work
substantial amounts of overtime and that more than half of the officers in
many departments moonlight. Among 49 respondents from the largest of
the surveys, the authors found that, on average, patrol officers worked a
reasonable 17.5 hours of overtime per month. In all, about a third of the
departments reported that their officers work 20 or more hours of overtime
per month. At the high end, one department reported that its officers
worked an average of 100 overtime hours per month, and two reported an
average of 40 overtime hours per month. However, none of these findings
tell how evenly the overtime was distributed. Experience suggests that
overtime seldom is evenly distributed--some officers work extreme
amounts of overtime while others work little or none.

On average, officers attributed 35 percent of the overtime they worked to
off-duty court appearances; 20 percent to making late arrests or writing
reports; 11 percent to taking extra shift assignments to fill in for someone
who was sick, on vacation, or disabled; and 9 percent to covering special
circumstances, such as crowd control, parades, or missing children.

Other Possible Causes and Correlates of Fatigue

Specific causes and effects are difficult to establish for something as
complex as fatigue. But when the findings from the Tired Cops study are
combined with what is known from the research on sleep and fatigue in
general, the following causes and correlates take shape:

Shift length: In the two departments that used compressed shifts, officers
appeared to have significantly fewer sleep problems and reported
significantly less fatigue at the beginning of their work shifts.[3] Officers
who worked 10- and 12-hour shifts for fewer days repeatedly emphasized
that such shifts were less fatiguing.[4]

Shift assignment policies: People are less able to cope with fatigue and
sleep disruption as they age.[5] Thus, the way in which departments assign
people to their shifts tends to affect older and experienced officers more.
Age and experience explained a substantial amount of the fatigue reported
by night-shift officers in departments that made shift assignments based on
department needs alone. The reverse was true in departments where
preference in shift assignment was based on seniority. In brief, older
officers who could select their own shift tended to be less fatigued.

Personal circumstances: No relationship was found between marital status
and fatigue, although many of the officers who were surveyed listed
having young children at home as a major source of fatigue and sleep
disruption. Although women officers tended to show poorer quality sleep
on standard scientific measures than men, few women reported feeling
tired at the start of their shifts.[6] 

Commuting: Longer commutes are significantly related to more
self-reported fatigue and to lower quality sleep for day-shift officers, but
not for officers on other shifts. The authors theorize that this is because
day-shift commuters encounter more traffic. Overall, there was a
moderately strong, positive correlation between commuting distance and
fatigue-related impairment, as measured by a computerized eye
movement/pupil response test that is nearly impossible to falsify.[7] This
finding was consistent for evening shift officers in all departments and
among officers in the department located in an area with some of the worst
traffic in the United States.

Work-hour regularity: The study revealed one finding that is counter to
research on the fatigue-inducing effects of schedule disruption: Officers
with regular work hours (i.e., whose regular work schedules were
disrupted less often by overtime or extra shift assignments) reported
significantly more tiredness at the beginning of their work shifts and
significantly poorer quality sleep. One possible interpretation of this
finding could be that the officers who were having problems with fatigue
were actually avoiding or minimizing overtime work--perhaps by making
fewer arrests or court appearances. It also is possible that these officers
had outside jobs, child-care responsibilities, or other external demands on
their time that encouraged them to keep regular hours, yet also promoted
fatigue.

To summarize, the research still is a long way from fully explaining the
role fatigue plays in police officer accidents, injuries, and citizen
complaints--but the limited data available suggest that fatigue contributes
to these problems. Prudence suggests that we take concrete steps to
manage police fatigue and better understand its causes and circumstances.

What Can Be Done

Although there is still much to learn about police fatigue, enough is known
to begin developing policies and programs to address these critical issues
safely and constructively. At a minimum, the existing research suggests
four steps every police agency can take to assess the extent to which
fatigue puts its officers and the community they serve at risk:

o Review the policies, procedures, and practices that affect shift
scheduling and rotation, overtime, moonlighting, the number of
consecutive work hours allowed, and the way in which the department
deals with overly tired employees.

o Assess how much of a voice officers are given in work-hour and
shift-scheduling decisions. The number of hours officers work and the
time of day they are assigned to work affect their personal, social, family,
and professional lives. Excluding officers from decisions affecting this
arena increases stress, which in turn reduces their ability to deal with
fatigue and tends to diminish their job performance and ability to deal with
stress.

o Assess the level of fatigue officers experience, the quality of their sleep,
and how tired they are while on the job as well as their attitudes toward
fatigue and work-hour issues. 

o Review recruit and in-service training programs to determine if officers
are receiving adequate information about the importance of good sleep
habits, the hazards associated with fatigue and shift work, and strategies
for managing them. Are officers taught to view fatigue as a safety issue?
Are they trained to recognize drowsiness as a factor in vehicle crashes?

If this review and assessment uncover problems, the agency should
develop fatigue or alertness management policies and programs and
implement them.[8] 

Police fatigue presents managers with a unique set of thorny problems. It
also provides an excellent example of the importance of partnerships
between practitioners and researchers. Involving qualified researchers in
policy analysis and program evaluation can help departments develop the
best practices possible. It also may help limit civil liability associated with
fatigue-related accidents, injuries, and misconduct by providing evidence
that a department has conscientiously attempted to ensure that its officers
are not impaired by fatigue. 

Looking Forward

Fatigue is a serious, challenging problem--the kind of problem that
requires creative leadership. Researchers and police managers need to
work together to minimize the threat fatigue poses to our communities and
to our officers. 

Distinguished sleep researcher William C. Dement[9] summed up the
problem this way:

Police work is the one profession in which we would want all practitioners
to have adequate and healthful sleep to perform their duties at peak
alertness levels. Not only is fatigue associated with individual misery, but
it can also lead to counterproductive behavior. It is well known that
impulsiveness, aggression, irritability, and angry outbursts are associated
with sleep deprivation. It is totally reprehensible that the cops we expect to
protect us, come to our aid, and respond to our needs when victimized
should be allowed to have the worst fatigue and sleep conditions of any
profession in our society.[10]

NCJ 190634

Notes

1. A 40-hour per week job with a 4-week vacation totals 1,920 work hours
per year.

2. The largest of these surveys was conducted through the Police
Executive Research Forum (PERF) with Lorie Fridell, PERF's Director of
Research. These surveys were not part of the Tired Cops study.

3. A compressed shift compresses the traditional 40-hour work week into
fewer than 5 days.

4. In this study, the authors couldn't test how officers on compressed
shifts compared with those on regular 8-hour shifts within the same
agency. Thus, it is not known if it was compressed shifts that caused less
fatigue or some other factors associated with the departments themselves.

5. This is consistent with a substantial body of research indicating that
adults have more difficulty adjusting to the challenges of shift work as
they age.

6. The Tired Cops study administered to 298 officers the Pittsburgh Sleep
Quality Index, a well-validated questionnaire that clinicians use to
diagnose sleep disorders.

7. The FIT[TM] Workplace Safety Screener was used to test officers'
involuntary pupil responses and the speed of voluntary eye movements.
Both of these measurements are sensitive to the performance and risk
factors associated with excessive sleepiness and are almost impossible for
subjects to falsify.

8. Many of the resources listed in the "For More Information" section of
this article will be helpful in this regard. Tired Cops: The Importance of
Managing Police Fatigue provides a step-by-step plan for developing
fatigue and alertness policies and programs.

9. William C. Dement, M.D., Ph.D., is the Founder and Director of the
Stanford University Sleep Research Center. He served as Chairman of the
National Commission on Sleep Disorders Research in 1991.

10. Vila, Bryan, Tired Cops: The Importance of Managing Police
Fatigue, Washington, DC: Police Executive Research Forum, 2000: xiv.

--------------------------------

about the authors

Bryan Vila is an associate professor at the Department of Criminal Justice,
University of Wyoming, and senior research fellow with PolicyLab, a
Washington, DC, think tank specializing in criminal justice policy issues.
Dennis Jay Kenney is a criminal justice professor at John Jay College of
Criminal Justice. Together, they conducted the study that formed an
important part of Vila's book, Tired Cops: The Importance of Managing 
Police Fatigue, published last year by the Police Executive Research
Forum. This study is based in part on work conducted under NIJ grant
96-IJ-CX-0046. Bryan Vila can be reached at 307-766-2177 or
bjvila@uwyo.edu.

--------------------------------

About the Tired Cops Study

Beginning in 1996, the authors conducted studies in four mid-sized
municipal law enforcement agencies located in different parts of the
United States. The agencies were representative in terms of staffing levels,
work-shift arrangements, calls-for-service, and other potentially relevant
variables. The National Institute of Justice funded the research, and staff
from the Police Executive Research Forum conducted the study. The goals
were to identify effective strategies for measuring fatigue among police
officers and to better understand the prevalence of fatigue among field
police officers. The authors also wanted to identify the causes of fatigue in
the police environment and begin to evaluate the impact of fatigue on
officer performance, health, and safety. 

With the help of executives, supervisors, and officers, the researchers
collected information about the number of hours worked by individual
officers, the regularity of their work hours, and related accident and
on-the-job injury data. 

To obtain an objective measure of the level of fatigue at the start of each
day's shift, the authors used a computerized device called the FIT[TM]
Workplace Safety Screener. With this tool, the researchers could test the
officers' involuntary pupil responses and the speed of voluntary eye
movements. Both measurements are sensitive to the performance and risk
factors associated with excessive sleepiness and are almost impossible for
subjects to falsify. 

The authors also surveyed the officers using the Pittsburgh Sleep Quality
Index, a well-validated questionnaire that clinicians use to diagnose sleep
disorders. The officers answered questions about how they perceived their
own level of fatigue and that of their peers. They also responded to
questions about how much of their fatigue should be attributed to their
jobs and how they thought fatigue affected their job performance and
family life.

--------------------------------

Federal Support to Identify and Reduce Stress

In 1994, the U.S. Congress authorized the Law Enforcement Family
Support (LEFS) program to assist in reducing the harmful effects of stress
experienced by law enforcement officers and their families. The National
Institute of Justice was given administrative responsibility for the
program. After the Department of Justice Office of General Counsel
clarified the term "law enforcement personnel" to include correctional,
probation, and parole officers, the program was renamed Corrections and 
Law Enforcement Family Support (CLEFS).

To date, NIJ has awarded 34 grants, totaling more than $3 million, that
meet the objectives of CLEFS. These awards have focused on expanding
knowledge about the development, implementation, and coordination of
services; the feasibility and efficacy of specific program elements and
approaches; and the causes, consequences, and nature of officer and family
stress. 

The subsequently developed services and studies have included critical
incident stress debriefing and management techniques, peer support
services, police organizational change and well-being, stress management
training methods, police psychological services referral networks, police
chaplaincy services, rookie stress counseling, and spouse academies.

For more information about NIJ's CLEFS program, visit
http://www.ojp.usdoj.gov/nij/clefs/welcome.html.

--------------------------------

For More Information

Books and Articles 

o William C. Dement and Christopher Vaughn, The Promise of Sleep: A
Pioneer in Sleep Medicine Explores the Vital Connection Between Health,
Happiness, and a Good Night's Sleep, New York: Delacorte Press, 1999.

o Bernard K. Melekian, "Alternative Work Schedules and the 12-Hour
Shift," Subject to Debate 13(1999): 1-3.

o Mark R. Rosekind et al. "Managing Fatigue in Operational Settings 1:
Physiological Considerations and Countermeasures," Behavioral Medicine
21(1996): 157-165.

o Mark R. Rosekind et al. "Managing Fatigue in Operational Settings 2:
An Integrated Approach," Behavioral Medicine 21(1996): 166-170.

o Bryan Vila, Tired Cops: The Importance of Managing Police Fatigue,
Washington, DC: Police Executive Research Forum, 2000.

Web Sites

o Alertness Solutions, http://www.alertness-solutions.com.

o NASA Ames Research Center Fatigue Countermeasures Group,
http://human-factors.arc.nasa.gov/zteam.

o National Sleep Foundation, http://www.sleepfoundation.org.

o PMI, Inc., Fitness-for-Duty Impairment Screener (FIT),
http://www.pmifit.com.

o Police Executive Research Forum, http://www.policeforum.org.

o University of North Carolina Highway Safety Research Center,
http://www.hsrc.unc.edu.

--------------------------------

Trust and Confidence in Criminal Justice
by Lawrence W. Sherman

Criminal justice in America today is a paradox of progress: While the
fairness and effectiveness of criminal justice have improved, public trust
and confidence apparently have not. 

Criminal justice is far less corrupt, brutal, and racially unfair than it has
been in the past. It is arguably more effective at preventing crime. It has
far greater diversity in its staffing. Yet these objectively defined
improvements seem to have had little impact on American attitudes
toward criminal justice. 

Understanding this paradox--better work but low marks--is central to
improving public trust and confidence in the criminal justice system. 

How Low Is Public Confidence? 

Gallup polls over the last few years have consistently found that
Americans have less confidence in the criminal justice system than in
other institutions, such as banking, the medical system, public schools,
television news, newspapers, big business, and organized labor.[1] 

The most striking finding in the Gallup poll is the difference between the
low evaluation of "criminal justice" and the high evaluation given to the
police and the Supreme Court. Other sources of data show similar
attitudes: Confidence in local courts and prisons is far lower than it is for
the police.[2] These large differences suggest that Americans may not
think of police in the same way as they do the criminal justice system. 

The Racial Divide

A 1998 Gallup poll reports little overall demographic difference among
the respondents saying they had confidence in the criminal justice system.
But what is most clear is the difference in opinion between whites and
blacks about the individual components of the criminal justice system and
especially the police. Whites express considerably more confidence in the
police, local court system, and State prison system than blacks (see exhibit
1).

Race, Victimization, and Punishment. Racial differences also appear in
rates of victimization and punishment: Blacks are 31 percent more likely
to be victimized by personal crime than whites and twice as likely as
whites to suffer a completed violent crime.[3]

Young black males are historically 10 times more likely to be murdered
than white males.[4] 

Arrest rates for robbery are five times higher for blacks than for whites;
four times higher for murder and rape; and three times higher for drug
violations and weapons possession.[5]

Blacks are eight times more likely to be in a State or Federal prison than
non-Hispanic whites (and three times more likely than Hispanic whites).
Almost 2 percent of the black population, or 1 of every 63 blacks, was in
prison in 1996.[6]

Race and Neighborhood. What these data fail to show, however, is the
extent to which the racial differences in attitudes, victimization, and
punishment may be largely related to more blacks being the residents of a
small number of high-crime, high-poverty areas concentrated in a small
fraction of urban neighborhoods. This is the case even though Harvard
University sociologist Orlando Patterson has estimated that only 1 in every
30 black adults resides in these high-crime, high-poverty areas; the
proportion is higher for children. 

What we may understand as a problem of race in America may largely
reflect conditions in those neighborhoods that are generalized by both
blacks and whites to conditions of the larger society. 

Due to limited national data, it is difficult to determine what precisely
drives the lower levels of confidence in criminal justice among blacks, but
insights from city-by-city analysis suggest two conclusions: 

o There is no race-based subculture of violence. Blacks and whites who
live in neighborhoods with similar conditions have similar views on the
legitimacy of law. To the extent that race is associated with attitudes
toward law, it may be a reflection of the greater likelihood that blacks
reside in poverty areas.

o There is no race-based hostility to police in high-crime areas. High
levels of dissatisfaction with police are endemic to high-crime areas.
Whites residing in such areas express attitudes just as hostile as blacks
toward police.[7] The distrust of police in high-crime areas may be related
to the prevalence of crime rather than to police practice. If negative
attitudes are driven by police practice, it may be because those practices
fail to prevent crime rather than because police presence or behavior is
excessive. Or it may be that the practice of policing in such areas offers
less recognition and dignity to citizen consumers than is found in lower
crime areas.

Strong Demands for Change

The findings and responses from a random digit-dialing telephone survey
of 4,000 residents of 10 northeastern States in 1998 found that more than
80 percent--four out of five respondents--preferred the idea of "totally
revamping the way the [criminal justice] system works" for violent crime;
75 percent said the same for all crime.[8] The responses varied little from
State to State or from one demographic group to another. The majority of
respondents believed that:

o Victims are not accorded sufficient rights in the criminal justice
process.

o Victims are not informed enough about the status of their cases.

o Victims are not able to talk to prosecutors enough.

o Victims should be able to tell the court what impact the crime had on
them, but most victims do not get that chance.

o Offenders, even if jailed, should reimburse victims for the cost of the
crime.

o Offenders should acknowledge their responsibility for the crime.

o Victims should have the opportunity to meet with the offender to find
out why the crime occurred and to learn whether the offender accepted
responsibility.

o Ordinary citizens, not courts, should set penalties for non-violent
crimes.

o Drug treatment should be used more widely for drug-using offenders.

The personal opinions of the survey respondents are consistent with a
major theory about the declining public confidence in all government--not
just criminal justice--in all modern nations, not just the United States. The
concerns arise from the decline of hierarchy and the rise of equality in all
walks of life. The rise in egalitarian culture increases the demand for
government officials to show more respect to citizens.[9]

Egalitarianism in Modern Culture: Raised Expectations, Reduced Trust 

Americans' trust in government has declined sharply in the last quarter
century.[10] A similar loss of trust has been found in 18 other
democracies. Citizens now expect higher levels of recognition, respect,
and status from the government. Criminal justice serves as a flashpoint for
this change in citizen attitudes because so many Americans have contact
with the criminal justice system and because the hierarchical design of
criminal justice institutions juxtaposes so starkly with the egalitarian
demands of the public.

As the spread of equality has combined with growing freedom from want,
political culture has shifted away from Puritan views of a hierarchical
communal democracy to Quaker views of a more egalitarian
individualistic democracy. 

Indeed, the consistently greater support for police than for courts may
result from a perception of police as egalitarian individualists (the new
cultural ideal) while judges are seen as bossy conformists (the outdated
ideal). 

The massive three-decade decline of public trust in liberal democratic
governments suggests a deeper paradox of success: As democracies
become more materially successful and better educated, the perceived
need for governance declines and expectations of government for
appropriate conduct increase.[11] The crisis of government legitimacy has
thus been prompted less by declining quality of government conduct than
by increasing public dissatisfaction with institutions in general, driven by
what Ronald F. Inglehart, Professor, University of Michigan, calls
"postmaterialist values."[12]

Social changes taking place around the globe appear to be resulting in
challenges to the legitimacy of virtually all forms of social hierarchy of
authority (although not hierarchy of wealth)--of husbands over wives,
doctors over patients, schoolteachers over students and parents, parents
over children, and government officials over citizens. This evolution may
have led to widespread preference for the recognition of individual dignity
over the recognition of communal authority.[13] 

Thus, what Robert J. Sampson, Professor of Sociology, University of
Chicago, and other scholars refer to as "legal cynicism"-- the extent to
which people feel that laws are not binding--is not the product of a
criminal subculture.[14] It is a 400-year-old Christian political theology
that has become globally accepted across people of all religions in a more
egalitarian and individualistic modern culture. 

In such a world, people are less likely to obey the law out of a sense of
communal obligation, and more likely to obey laws they support through a
personal sense of what is moral.

Trust and Recognition

What changing culture may be creating is a world in which people trust
laws but not legal institutions. This new world may be one in which trust
in criminal justice is no longer automatic; it must be earned every day,
with each encounter between legal agents and citizens. 

The research of Tom R. Tyler, Department of Psychology, New York
University, shows that Americans--especially members of minority
groups--are extremely sensitive to the respect they perceive and the
procedures employed when they come into contact with criminal
justice.[15] Tyler's evidence suggests that in building citizen trust in the
legal system, it may matter less whether you receive the speeding ticket
than whether the police officer addresses you politely or rudely during the
traffic stop. Similarly, sentencing guidelines that punish possession of
crack more harshly than possession of powdered cocaine may discriminate
against blacks. But dissatisfaction may be greater with some police
officers engaged in drug enforcement who treat suspects and arrestees like
people who are enemies rather than like people who are equal fellow
citizens.

Tyler concludes that the procedural justice perceived in treatment by legal
officials affects the level of trust citizens have in government.[16] That
level of trust, in turn, affects the pride we have in our government and the
degree to which we feel we are respected by other members of our
democracy--including the government. 

Tyler further concludes that the odds of citizens reaching the conclusion
that the law is morally right are much higher when citizens feel that the
law has given each of them adequate recognition and respect. 

Rather than creating a willingness to defer to the power of the law, Tyler
suggests that respectful treatment creates a stronger consensus about what
is moral and what the law must be. The consensus model assumes more
equality than the deference model on which our legal institutions were
designed.[17]

Consensus thus appears to be a much better fit to the new political culture.
Standing up when judges enter a room and obeying orders barked out by
police, for example, are procedural forms that may imply officials are
more important than citizens. Such forms may do more to undermine legal
trust than to build respect for the law.

Fitting Legal Institutions to the Culture: The Canberra Experiments

For all Americans, regardless of race, the central cause of declining trust
may be the misfit of hierarchical legal institutions in an egalitarian culture.
In many ways, citizens may experience the conduct of judges, prosecutors,
and police as being overly "bossy" and unnecessarily authoritarian.

Results of experiments in Canberra, Australia, suggest that an egalitarian,
consensual procedure of stakeholder citizens deciding the sentence for a
crime creates more legitimacy in the eyes of both offenders and victims
than the hierarchical, deferential process of sentencing by a judge.[18]

The experiments compared traditional court sentencing of youthful violent
and property offenders to an alternative community justice conference
making the same decisions.

Offenders who were sent to conferences were far less likely than offenders
who were sent to traditional court to say that they were pushed around;
disadvantaged by their age, income, or education; treated as if they were
untrust-worthy; or not listened to. They also were more likely to report
that their experience increased their respect for the justice system and the
police, as well as their feeling that the crime they had committed was
morally wrong. 

Victims also were far more satisfied with community justice conferences
than with court proceedings. Much of this difference may be because most
victims of criminals sent to court were never informed of the offenders'
court appearances, either before or after sentencing. The victims invited to
community justice conferences with offenders, in sharp contrast, gained
increased trust in police and justice, as well as decreased fear of and anger
at the offender. (For more details, see "Alternative Community Justice
Conferences," page 28.)

Building Trust One Case at a Time

The Canberra experiments suggest the highly personal nature of citizen
trust in criminal justice. The personal legitimacy of legal agents may
depend on a leveling of distinctions in rank between citizen and official. 

As Albert J. Reiss, Jr., Professor Emeritus, Sociology Department, Yale
University, observed, the legitimacy of police authority in the eyes of
citizens varies widely from one situation to the next.[19] Thus, officials
must earn the legitimacy of their authority one case at a time. 

The most dramatic demonstration of this principle is the finding that how
police make arrests for domestic violence affects the rate of repeat
offending. Raymond Paternoster, Ph.D., University of Maryland, et al.
demonstrated that offenders who were arrested for domestic violence and
who perceived that the police officers' arresting procedures were fair were
less likely to repeat the offense than offenders who perceived the arresting
procedures as unfair.[20] Actions that constituted "procedural justice"
included the police taking the time to listen to both the offender and the
victim, not handcuffing the offender in front of the victim, and not using
physical force. 

As exhibit 2 shows, the risk of repeat offending was 40 percent for
offenders who had a low perception of police procedural fairness, but only
25 percent for those who perceived a high level of police fairness. The
estimate of offending risk took prior levels of violence into account; hence
the findings shown in exhibit 2 increase our confidence that how the
police make an arrest may affect the crime rate (much of which comes
from repeat offending)--through trust and confidence in the criminal
justice system. 

Reducing Complaints Against Police. Other tests of the hypothesis that
trust in criminal justice comes from egalitarian procedures can be seen in
actions that have been shown to reduce complaints against police. 

In the 42nd and 44th precincts in the Bronx, complaints reached a 10-year
high in 1996. But after the precinct commanders instituted a program to
promote respectful policing and improve police relations with community
residents, complaints dropped dramatically. Among the elements of the
new program was vigorous training for officers on how to treat citizens
respectfully, zealous monitoring of complaints, and followthrough with
consequences for officers who received complaints. 

In addition, the simple elimination of the precinct's high desk and bar in
front of the desk in the reception area helped the precinct present a less
hierarchical face to the community. Research on the effects of the strategy,
conducted by the Vera Institute of Justice, found that citizens began to
perceive the police as responsive to community concerns.[21]

The second test of the procedural equality theory comes from a
community with a population of almost one million; 55 percent of the
population is African American. 

Complaints dropped in this department of 1,400 officers when a new
procedure for traffic stops was initiated in 1997-99. The procedure, called
"Take Away Guns" (TAG), was one part of a larger strategy to reduce gun
violence. One of the first steps the department took was to increase traffic
enforcement--a 400-some percent increase--so that police had an
opportunity to explain the program at each traffic stop and distribute a
letter from the district police captain explaining the program. The letter
contained the captain's phone number and invited citizens to call the
captain with complaints or questions. Officers were trained to be very
polite in explaining the program to drivers and then asking permission to
search the car for guns. 

The program not only received a high rate of compliance with the
requests, but also received praise from the drivers stopped who approved
of the efforts to guns off the street. Over the first 2 years of the program,
both gun violence and citizen complaints of excessive force by police
dropped substantially.

In sum, a growing body of theory and evidence suggests that it is not the
fairness or effectiveness of decisions criminal justice officials make that
determines the public's level of trust. Changes in modern culture have
made the procedures and manners of criminal justice officials far more
important to public trust and left officials out of step with modern culture. 

This explanation gains further support from scholarship on the effect of
television and other communications media on the nature of authority and
trust in government. For despite Tyler's focus on personal contacts with
criminal justice, most citizens have little if any personal contact with legal
officials. For this majority of Americans, the level of trust in criminal
justice may depend on what they hear about criminal justice encounters
with other citizens, a little-studied area. But it also may depend on how
legal agencies are portrayed in entertainment and news media.

Authority and Media Celebrity

The future authority of the criminal justice system may well depend on
how the system appears not just to those directly involved in the system,
but to all citizens. That, in turn, may depend heavily on how criminal
justice manages its image in the electronic media. Legal historian
Lawrence Friedman notes that modern culture has changed the very nature
of authority from vertical (where people look up to leaders in high
position) to horizontal (where people look in to the center of society to
find leaders who are celebrities, defined by the number of people who
recognize their names and faces). "Leaders are no longer distant,
awesome, and unknown; they are familiar figures on TV... The horizontal
society is [one in which] the men and women who get and hold power
become celebrities" and the public come to know them, or think they
know them, through the media. "By contrast," Friedman writes,
"traditional authority was vertical, and the higher up the authority, the
more stern, distant, and remote it was."[22]

A celebrity culture creates still another paradox: Americans now feel
more personal connections with celebrities living far away than they do
with legal officials in their own hometown. Just as many people felt more
emotional loss at the death of Princess Diana than at the death of a
neighbor, the celebrity culture makes us feel personal connections to
people we do not know.

Thus, for all the programs designed to foster community policing or
community prosecution with legal officials in the neighborhood,
Americans still are more likely to form their impressions of criminal
justice from vicarious contact through friends or through television shows
than from personal experience with their own legal system. The evidence
is clear: On a Wednesday night when police convene a neighborhood
meeting in a church basement, more local residents are home watching
television than attending the meeting.

We may well ask if there are any celebrities of American criminal justice,
and if so, who they are--The Chief Justice of the Supreme Court? The
director of the FBI? Probably not. These positions appear to fit Friedman's
characteristics of traditional authority: stern, distant, and remote.
Television's Judge Judy, on the other hand, is an internationally
recognized celebrity, with far greater name-face recognition than the
traditional authority figures.

Unfortunately, the entertainment values of the television business conflict
with the core values of legal institutions. What sells TV audiences is
conflict and putdowns, tools Judge Judy uses to portray a rude,
in-your-face (but perhaps egalitarian), power-control image of the bench.
Audiences find this fun to watch, although Judge Judy may confirm their
worst fears, leaving them reluctant to have anything to do with the legal
system.

The difficulty in using celebrity power to send messages about the
trustworthiness of criminal justice is the clash of cultures between law and
entertainment. The reticence of the legal culture conflicts with the
chattiness of celebrity culture. 

One can imagine a legal official appearing weekly on a talk show with a
huge audience, saying things that could help shore up public faith in
criminal justice as an egalitarian and fair system. One can equally imagine
such a strategy being condemned by leaders of the American Bar
Association, conservative journalists, and other defenders of traditional
remoteness of authority. 

The kind of public education programs that legal culture would approve
of--such as tasteful PBS specials or public service announcements on radio
and television--would seem unlikely to reach much of the public, let alone
those citizens most distrustful of the system.

Portraying Values in the Media

The media often portray criminal justice through a morality play that
explores themes of what Elijah Anderson, Charles and William L. Day
Professor, Sociology Department, University of Pennsylvania, calls
"street" and "decent" values. Based on years of field research in
high-crime areas of Philadelphia, Anderson has observed people who
exhibit "decent" values as patient, hopeful, respectful of authority, and
with a belief in the predictability of punishment. Those who exhibit
"street" values take on a bitter, impatient, antisystem outlook that is
disrespectful of authority and demanding of deference.[23]

Television dramas that portray a hero's impatience with red tape may
glorify the "street" enforcement of vengeance and personal respect. TV
interviewers who ask officials provocative and insulting questions may
reflect an effort to produce a "street" response. 

The paradox of such media portrayals is that the more frequently legal
officials are portrayed breaking the official rules out of distrust for
"decent" government, the less reason the public has to believe the criminal
justice system will treat citizens decently. By showing criminal justice
agents pursuing street values, the media may create a self-fulfilling
prophecy, defining conduct for legal officials and the public alike.

The research on respect for authority suggests that street sanctioning styles
interact with different kinds of citizen personalities in ways that produce
the following differences in repeat offending:

o Decent sanctioning of "decent" people produces the lowest repeat
offending.

o Street sanctioning of "decent" people produces higher repeat offending.

o Decent sanctioning of "street" people may produce even higher repeat
offending.

o Street sanctioning of "street" people produces the highest levels of
repeat offending.[24]

The research on respect for authority consistently suggests that when
people in positions of authority impose "street" attitudes or sanctions, the
reaction is almost always negative. It is more productive for criminal
justice officials to show more respect to, and take more time to listen to,
citizens. To the extent that this message is portrayed in entertainment
media and identified with celebrity authority, the criminal justice system
might be able to increase its public trust and confidence. Yet to the extent
that "decent" values are themselves communicated in an illegitimate way,
it will be difficult to foster a more "decent" legal culture.

Half a century ago and half a world away, a French journalist observed
during a 2-month tour of China in the early 1950's that police had become
far more polite under Mao's early communism:

In the olden days the Peking police were renowned for their brutality,
and pedestrians frequently suffered at their hands, smacks in the face being
the least form of violence offered them. Today they are formally forbidden
to use any kind of force. Their instructions are to explain, to make people
understand, to convince them.[25]

It may be easier to change official conduct in a dictatorship than in a
democracy, but the power of electronic media may make the dynamics
totally different today. Electronic communications comprise a highly
democratized, free-market institution that cannot be manipulated easily for
official purposes. But the media can be a venue in which celebrity power
is built and put to use in fostering support for "decent" styles of criminal
justice, both in the image and the reality of how criminal justice works. 

The Domains of Public Trust

Three major domains appear to affect public trust and confidence in
criminal justice:

o The conduct and practices of the criminal justice system.

o The changing values and expectations of the culture the system serves.

o The images of the system presented in electronic media.

Changes in each domain affect the others. Trust, as the product of all three
combined, is likely to increase only when changes in all three domains can
be aligned to create practices and values that are perceived to be fair,
inclusive, and trustworthy. 

Discovering how that can be made to happen is a daunting task. But the
data suggest that fairness builds trust in criminal justice, and trust builds
compliance with law. Thus what is fairer is more effective, and to be
effective it is necessary to be fair. 

NCJ 189088

Notes

1. Retrieved from the World Wide Web site http://www.gallup.com,
October 10, 2000.

2. Maguire, K., and A. Pastore, eds., Sourcebook of Criminal Justice
Statistics, 1997, Washington, DC: U.S. Department of Justice, Bureau of
Justice Statistics, 1998 (NCJ 171147).

3. Maguire and Pastore, Source-book, 182, see note 2.

4. Reiss, A.J., Jr., and J. Roth, Understanding and Preventing Violence,
Washington, DC: National Academy of Sciences, 1993: 64 (NCJ 140290).

5. Hacker, A., Two Nations: Black and White, Separate, Hostile, and
Unequal, New York: Free Press, 1992: 181.

6. Maguire and Pastore, Sourcebook, 494, see note 2.

7. Sampson, R., and D. Bartusch, "Legal Cynicism and Subcultural
Tolerance of Deviance: The Neighborhood Context of Racial
Differences," Law & Society Review, 32(4)(1999):777-804.

8. Boyle, J.M., Crime Issues in the Northeast: Statewide Surveys of the
Public and Crime Victims in Connecticut, Delaware, Maine,
Massachusetts, Vermont, New Hampshire, New Jersey, New York, and
Rhode Island, Silver Spring, MD: Schulman, Ronca, and Bucuvalas, Inc.,
1999.

9. Fukuyama, F., The End of History and the Last Man, New York: Free
Press, 1992.

10. Orren, G., "Fall From Grace: The Public's Loss of Faith in the
Government," in Why People Don't Trust Government, eds. J.S. Nye, Jr.,
P.D. Zelikow, and D.C. King, Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press,
1997: 83.

11. Fukuyama, The End of History, see note 9; Heclo, H., "The Sixties'
False Dawn: Awakenings, Movements, and Postmodern Policymaking,"
Journal of Policy History, 8(1996): 50-58; Balogh, B., "Introduction,"
Journal of Policy History, 8(1996): 25.

12. Inglehart, R., "Postmaterialist Values and the Erosion of Institutional
Authority," in Why People Don't Trust Government, eds. J.S. Nye, Jr.,
P.D. Zelikow, and D.C. King, Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press,
1997.

13. Baltzell, E.D., Puritan Boston and Quaker Philadelphia: Two
Protestant Ethics and the Spirit of Class Authority and Leadership, New
York: Free Press, 1979.

14. Sampson and Bartusch, "Legal Cynicism and Subcultural Tolerance
of Deviance," see note 7.

15. Tyler, T., Why People Obey the Law, New Haven, CT: Yale
University Press, 1990; Tyler, T., "Trust and Democratic Governance," in
Trust and Governance, eds. V. Braithwaite and M. Levi, New York:
Russell Sage Foundation, 1998.

16. Tyler, "Trust and Democratic Governance," see note 15.

17. Baltzell, Puritan Boston, 369, see note 13.

18. See details of the Reintegrative Shaming Experiments project at
http://www.aic.gov.au/rjustice/rise.

19. Reiss and Roth, Understanding and Preventing Violence, 2, 3, 59-65,
see note 4.

20. Paternoster, R., R. Brame, R. Bachman, and L.W. Sherman, "Do Fair
Procedures Matter? The Effect of Procedural Justice on Spouse Assault,"
Law & Society Review, 31(1997): 185.

21. A more complete description of the Vera Institute of Justice study can
be found in NIJ Journal, July 2000, p. 24, http://www.ncjrs.org/pdffiles1/
jr000244f.pdf. The authors' presentation of findings also is available on
videotape from NCJRS (NCJ 181106).

22. Friedman, L., The Horizontal Society, New Haven, CT: Yale
University Press, 1999: 14-15.

23. Anderson, E., Crime and Justice, Chicago: Chicago University Press,
1999.

24. Just how much harmful impact "street" conduct by agents of criminal
justice can have has been revealed by experimental and quasi-experimental
research on diverse situations using different levels of analysis. See, for
example, Nisbett, R.E., and D. Cohen, Culture of Honor: The Psychology
of Violence in the South, Boulder, CO: Westview Press, 1996: 46-48;
Raine, A., P. Brennan, and S.A. Mednick, "Birth Complications Combined
With Early Maternal Rejection at Age 1 Year Predispose to Violent Crime
at Age 18 Years," Archives of General Psychiatry, 51(1994): 986;
Greenberg, J., "Employee Theft as a Reaction to Underpayment Inequity: 
The Hidden Costs of Pay Cuts," Journal of Applied Psychology, 75(1990):
561-568; Makkai, T., and J. Braithwaite, "Reintegrative Shaming and
Compliance With Regulatory Standards," Criminology, 32(1994):
361-385.

25. de Segonzac, A., Visa for Peking, London: Heinemann, 1956.

---------------------------------

about the author

Lawrence W. Sherman is the Albert M. Greenfield Professor of Human
Relations and Director of the Jerry Lee Center of Criminology at the
University of Pennsylvania. Contact him at 3814 Walnut Street,
Philadelphia, PA 19104, 215-898-9216, lws@pobox.upenn.edu.

-------------------------------

Alternative Community Justice Conferences

In the Canberra experiments, the police invite victims, offenders, and their
respective supporters to a meeting in which the offenders must not--for
these purposes--dispute their guilt. At the meetings, everyone sits in a
circle to discuss the harm the crime has caused, acknowledge the pain and
emotional impact of that harm, and deliberate democratically as to how the
offenders should repair that harm. 

The egalitarian proceedings begin with the police officer moderating the
proceedings, offering only questions, not answers. For example, what did
the offender do?  How did it hurt the victim? How does the victim feel
about that hurt? How do the victim's friends and family feel? How do the
offender's family and friends feel about what has been said? What would
be the right way for the offender to repay the debt to the victim and to
society? Does everyone agree? Is there anything the offender wants to say
to the victim (sometimes the offender says "I'm sorry")? Is there anything
the victim wants to say to the offender (possibly "I forgive you")? 

One of the most important parts of the proceedings is that everyone is
allowed to talk, just as in a Quaker meeting, but no one person dominates
speech, as might happen in a Calvinist church or in an Anglo-American
courtroom. Emotions can be intense at the conferences--unlike the restraint
valued by Puritan cultures and Western courts. 

No Lawyers. Lawyers are not allowed to attend the conferences as legal
advocates for either an offender or the State, although they may attend as
personal supporters. They are always on call, ready to act to protect
anyone whose rights may seem abused. But as long as the victim-offender
consensus is under discussion, everyone in the circle has equal authority,
regardless of age or education. 

Extra Time Required. A community justice conference takes, on average,
about 70 minutes to resolve. A similar case in traditional court may take
10 minutes spread across several different appearances, which have no
emotional significance for victim or offender, and thus leave citizens
feeling like cogs in a wheel. A community justice conference is about the
people present rather than the legal formalities. People come only once,
prepared to stay until the case is resolved. 

Trust in Justice. Research shows that sentences imposed in the community
justice conferences and the traditional court process were fairly similar
despite the major differences in the decisionmaking procedures
employed.[1] But the conferences produced far better results in terms of
citizen respect for legal institutions. 

1. Sherman, L.W., H. Strang, and G.C. Barnes, "Stratification of Justice:
Legitimacy of Hierarchical and Egalitarian Sentencing Procedures,"
unpublished manuscript, Fels Center of Government, University of
Pennsylvania, 1999.

--------------------------------

At-A-Glance:
Recent Research Findings

New Method for Monitoring Crack Use

K. Jack Riley, Natalie T. Lu, et al., "Monitoring the Crack Epidemic
Through Urine Testing: Establishment of Routine Detection Methods,"
Addiction Biology, (2001): 83-95.

Today, a lab technician testing an arrestee's urine sample for cocaine use
would not be distinguishing between use of crack or powder cocaine. That
may soon change. Staff of the National Institute of Justice and
Pharm-Chem Laboratories (PCL) have recently reported new findings
from a project to detect crack use through urinalysis. The study also
involves comparing urine tests with users' self-reports. 

Crack is considered by some to be a more dangerous drug than powder
cocaine. In addition to being highly addictive, crack is associated with a
multitude of social, economic, and health problems. Crack addicts have
high rates of tuberculosis, HIV, and other diseases. Seeing the potential for
greater social harm, Federal legislators have set more severe punishment
for crack use and trafficking than for powder cocaine use and trafficking.

The researchers of the NIJ/PCL study worked in conjunction with NIJ's
Arrestee Drug Abuse Monitoring (ADAM) program data collection effort,
which regularly interviews and tests drug use among arrestees in cities
across the United States. The study team obtained anonymous urine
samples from arrestees at six sites in the first quarter of 1999. At each site,
researchers interviewed participants and matched the interviews to the
urine specimens using bar codes. Of the total 2,327 samples collected,
1,666 were from men and 661 from women. 

The urine samples that were found to be positive for cocaine were tested
further for two chemicals, anhydro-ecgonine methyl ester (AEME) and
ecgonidine (ECD), which are byproducts of smoking cocaine (i.e., crack,
the smokable form of cocaine). When crack is smoked, the two chemicals
are produced and inhaled and can subsequently be detected in the user's
urine. The presence of either AEME or ECD in urine is an accurate
indicator of recent crack use.

Following the initial round of screening, researchers first confirmed the
cocaine positives using GC/MS (gas chromatography/mass spectometry)
and then further tested the cocaine-positive urine specimens for the two
chemicals. AEME was found in 63 percent of the cocaine-positive
samples; ECD was found in 74 percent of the samples. The results of the
tests on the cocaine-positive samples indicate that 28 percent of the 2,327
study participants had used crack. Prevalence of crack was greater among
women (31 percent) than among men (27 percent). The crack use rate
found through urine testing was substantially higher than the average rate
of 15 percent (13 percent for men and 22 percent for women) obtained
through self-reports.

The findings reinforce earlier research showing that crack use is common
among arrestees and constitutes a significant proportion of their cocaine
use. The data also support the hypothesis that arrestees do not consistently
provide accurate self-reports.

Although the methodology needs further refining before large-scale testing
can be implemented, the results are encouraging. The ability to distinguish
between use of crack and powder cocaine will enable researchers to verify
the accuracy of self-reports in specific populations (e.g., juveniles) and to
better analyze drug use trends in the effort to better understand why
treatment fails and arrestees recidivate. In addition, improved data could
help programs such as ADAM track the spread of crack in areas where the
drug is not well established. 

For more information, contact Natalie T. Lu, NIJ, 810 Seventh Street
N.W., Washington, DC 20531, 202-616-5209, lun@ojp.usdoj.gov.

Responding to Emergencies Involving People with Mental Illness

Henry J. Steadman et al., "Police Response to Emotionally Disturbed
Persons: Analyzing New Models of Police Interactions With the Mental
Health System," Final report submitted to NIJ, grant number
96-IJ-CX-0082.

Police have had mixed success responding to situations involving people
with mental illness. Poor police response has been blamed for
inappropriate incarceration of people with mental illness as well 
as for use of excessive force in these situations. Some jurisdictions are
trying to improve how they handle mentally ill people by developing
innovative "prebooking" diversion programs that give police alternatives
to arrest and enable police to directly refer mentally ill people to
community-based treatment programs. Prebooking diversion programs
often involve novel police training practices and collaboration with local
consumer and family groups. 

Henry Steadman and colleagues examined the effectiveness of two
prebooking diversion programs: the Community Service Officer program
in Birmingham, Alabama, which uses inhouse mental health specialists
employed by the police department to handle incidents, and the Crisis
Intervention Team (CIT) in Memphis, Tennessee, which relies on sworn
officers with specialized training in mental health issues. In addition, the
researchers looked at a traditional mobile mental health crisis response
team in Knoxville, Tennessee, where the police department coordinates
with crisis teams from community mental health organizations to handle
incidents. 

Findings

The findings suggest that specialized programs can help keep people with
mental illness out of jail as well as facilitate access to treatment. In more
than half of the encounters across the three sites, mentally ill subjects were
either transported or directly referred to treatment resources. In about a
third of the encounters, officers were able to resolve the incident at the
scene in a way that helped resolve the crisis and let subjects remain in the
community. Just over 6 percent of the encounters resulted in arrest. The
study found that quick response time is important: Long waits for
specialized personnel discouraged other officers from using the programs. 

Among the three sites, the Memphis CIT program received the most
positive ratings from nonspecialized officers on the force. The researchers
attribute the high ratings to several factors; for example, the program is
police-based, and the city has a "police-friendly" mental health system that
provides a dropoff site with a no refusal policy. In addition, fellow officers
know that they can rely on the CIT officers to handle crises, thereby
relieving them of the need to spend significant amounts of downtime with
subjects.

What Works

The researchers conclude that the specialized programs contribute to better
outcomes for people with mental illness. They link program success to two
main program elements: 

A psychiatric triage or dropoff center. Having a center where police can
take people who are experiencing a mental crisis reduces officer downtime
and places the subject in the mental health system rather than the criminal
justice system.

Community partnerships. The departments view their prebooking
diversion programs as part of their community policing initiatives. 
The data convincingly point to collaborations among criminal justice,
mental health, and advocacy communities as a way of significantly
reducing the use of jails to house people with mental illness.

The authors also say that further in-depth examination of the Memphis and
Birmingham programs is needed. They state that it would be informative
to study the differences between these two models as they relate to other
communities, jurisdictions, and State laws. Lastly, they argue that
diversion from incarceration is not the same as being linked effectively to
integrated mental health services. They use these points to establish their
overall conclusion that further work is needed to build on these innovative
models.

For more information, contact Henry J. Steadman, Ph.D., Policy Research
Associates, Inc., 262 Delaware Avenue, Delmar, NY 12054,
518-439-7415, hsteadman@prainc.com. Watch NIJ's Web page for a
forthcoming Research in Brief report on this study.

Enter the Dragon: Inside Chinese Smuggling Organizations 

NIJ Research in Progress Seminar, "Enter the Dragon: Inside Chinese
Smuggling Organizations," Sheldon Zhang and Ko-lin Chin, grant number
99-IJ-CX-0028, available on videotape from NCJRS (NCJ 187077).

Illegal Chinese immigration has occurred for decades, but until recently it
rarely received public attention except when the attempts ended in
disaster. Today's trend toward organized Chinese alien smuggling,
however, is raising considerable concern and is gaining a great deal of
public attention.

Limited immigration into the United States and the increasing number of
Chinese nationals who want to emigrate to the United States have created
fertile ground for an organized underground market in human trafficking.
The emerging market is growing swiftly due to a number of factors,
including rapid economic growth in the Pacific Rim; greater commercial
exchanges between countries; the proliferation of telecommunication
devices; and easier travel between countries via air, land, and sea.

Sheldon Zhang of California State University at San Marcos presented
preliminary observations from his research with Ko-lin Chin of Rutgers
University on the Chinese alien smuggling trade at a recent Research in
Progress seminar at NIJ. 

Their research involves collecting data in a systematic way for the first
time from individuals directly involved in organizing and transporting
Chinese nationals into the United States. Zhang and Chin gathered data
from three sites: New York, Los Angeles, and Fuzhou, China. 

Zhang and Chin named two challenges for law enforcement: 
(1) constructing effective strategies to combat smuggling entrepreneurs,
and (2) preventing new crime groups from forming partnerships with the
traditional crime societies.

The Nature of the Trade

The researchers found that Chinese human smuggling is vastly different
from other racketeering activities in the Chinese community, such as
extortion, gambling, or prostitution. Chinese alien smugglers, or
snakeheads, are otherwise ordinary citizens--government officials, police
officers, small business owners, housewives, handymen, masons, taxi
drivers, massage parlor owners, fast food restaurant owners, and fruit
stand owners. They have family networks and strong social contacts that
give them the opportunity to take part in human smuggling.

Zhang and Chin learned through interviews that no qualifications or
training are needed to participate in the smuggling business; all a potential
smuggler needs is a combination of proper connections, opportunities, and
an entrepreneurial spirit. As a result, Chinese alien smuggling is
dominated by small groups of loosely connected entrepreneurs in
temporary alliances. Zhang and Chin use the term "task force" instead of
"organized crime" to refer to these groups.

The unfixed and changing nature of Chinese alien smuggling
organizations allows members to easily hide their operations from law
enforcement. Yet, because smuggling rings usually involve a dyadic
(one-on-one) business transaction, membership in rings is vulnerable to
change, and the loss of even one member can lead to the collapse of an
entire ring.

Recent Trends

Today's Chinese smuggling rings use fewer fishing trawlers, and landings
are likely to occur at peripheral locations, such as the Virgin Islands,
Mariana Islands, and islands off the Canadian or Mexican coasts.
Increasingly, smugglers transport their human cargo in container ships that
can elude the U.S. Coast Guard and make interception on the high seas
nearly impossible. 

The use of air routes is also increasing as many smugglers are able to
arrange legitimate business trips, tourist visas, or marriages with U.S.
citizens for incoming immigrants. Other immigrants fly into Canada or
Mexico and enter the United States from there, or simply stay in the
United States by not making their international connections at the airport.

Zhang and Chin's data show that among the subjects in the United States
who actively participate in Chinese smuggling activities, 81 percent
describe themselves as U.S. citizens or permanent residents. About 10
percent claim to be members of an organized crime group. The researchers
estimate that the number of Chinese smuggled into the United States
varies from 20,000 to 30,000 annually.

For more information, contact Sheldon Zhang at Department of Sociology,
California State University at San Marcos, San Marcos, CA 92069-0001,
760-750-4162, xzhang@csusm.edu. 

Breaking the Cycle of Drug Use and Crime

NIJ Research in Progress Seminar, "Reducing Drug Use and Crime
Among Felony Defendants: Findings From the Evaluation of Breaking the
Cycle," Adele Harrell, grant number 97-IJ-CX-0013, available on
videotape from NCJRS (NCJ 187076).

Drug-involved offenders have high crime rates, and decreasing their drug
use so as to reduce their offending is a high priority. How can the criminal
justice system decrease drug use among offenders? The Breaking the
Cycle (BTC) intervention strategy has demonstrated success. BTC reduces
offender drug use and crime by combining case management, drug testing,
sanctions, and treatment. 

Adele Harrell of the Urban Institute presented preliminary findings from
an evaluation of the BTC program in Birmingham, Alabama, at a recent
NIJ Research in Progress seminar. The evaluation compared drug use and
crime among felony defendants enrolled in BTC to defendants not offered
these services based on surveys and arrest records in the year following
entry into the courts. The BTC program in Birmingham was funded by the
Office of National Drug Control Policy.

How BTC Works

In Birmingham, defendants are admitted to the BTC program if they
self-report or test positive for drug use or have been arrested on a drug
felony charge. Assessment revealed that about 60 percent of these drug
users met the diagnostic criteria for drug abuse or dependency. BTC
responded with proven treatment practices. The most frequently
recommended intervention was urine monitoring only. Outpatient
treatment, residential treatment, and group treatment were recommended
when needed. Offenders involved in the evaluation spent an average of
150 days in the program.

Results of Breaking the Cycle

No matter the offense, BTC clients were less likely than the comparison
group to be arrested in the year after sample entry, which is when the
offender became a part of the evaluation or the study, with white clients
arrested for fewer new crimes than black clients. 

The evaluation found that BTC clients were less likely than those in a
comparison sample to self-report that they had committed a drug crime in
the 6 months before their followup interview. Results of statistical models
suggest that with 16 percent of non-BTC offenders reported committing a
drug offense, only 7 percent of comparable BTC participants would report
such an offense.

For offenses other than drug selling, a large effect of BTC was found for
whites but not for blacks. For whites, with 29 percent of non-BTC
defendants reporting offenses other than drug selling, only eight percent of
comparable white BTC participants would report such offenses. For black
offenders, compared to 17 percent of non-BTC defendants reporting such
offenses, 16 percent of BTC clients would also report such offenses.

While these initial findings are promising, Harrell pointed out that they are
preliminary, limited to one site, and may have been affected by differences
in the characteristics of defendants in the two samples. Additional research
on the BTC model is being conducted in Eugene, Oregon; Jacksonville,
Florida; and Tacoma, Washington.

For more information, contact Adele Harrell, The Urban Institute, State
Policy Center, 2100 M Street N.W., Washington, DC 20037, 
202-261-5738, aharrell@ui.urban.org.

Compstat and Organizational Change

NIJ Research in Progress Seminar, "Compstat and Organizational Change:
Preliminary Findings From a National Study," David Weisburd, grant
number 98-IJ-CX-0070, available on videotape from NCJRS (NCJ
186731).

Former New York Police Commissioner Bill Bratton introduced a new
way of looking at crime problems in 1994. The process, called Compstat,
used weekly meetings that featured statistics and automated mapping at
which Bratton asked his deputies to identify emerging problems and to
explain what they were doing to reduce crime. 

Today Compstat has spread across the country. It combines mapping and
analysis of data with other essential police performance measures to hold
police managers accountable for their performance. 

How far has Compstat spread, and has it changed the landscape of
American policing? David Weisburd of the University of Maryland and
Hebrew University Law School and his colleagues Stephen Mastrofski of
George Mason University and Rosann Greenspan of the Police Foundation
used surveys and site visits to establish a national profile of Compstat use,
identify emerging patterns and variations in Compstat programs, and
evaluate certain model programs in distinguishing how Compstat works at
all levels in police organizations.

Weisburd discussed the findings and other preliminary observations at a
Research in Progress seminar held at NIJ. 

Research indicates that the larger a police department is, the more likely it
is to have implemented a program like Compstat. Nearly 60 percent of
departments with 500 or more sworn officers have a program, 33 percent
of police departments with 100 or more sworn officers have an existing or
planned Compstat program, and 11 percent of smaller departments have a
program.

Why Compstat Has Spread

Large police departments began to adopt Compstat programs in 1996. The
numbers continued to rise through 1998, though there is some evidence
that the trend has begun to level off. The south has the highest occurrence
of departments with Compstat-like processes, followed by departments in
the west, northeast, and north-central regions.

Weisburd stated that unlike other recent innovations in American policing,
Compstat does not challenge the traditional quasi-military model of police
organization. In addition, Compstat allows police departments to adopt
technological innovations in policing while reinforcing the traditional
hierarchal structure of police agencies.

Implementing Core Elements of Compstat

In his presentation of the research, Weisburd identified seven central
elements of police management and discussed how Compstat affected
each element. The elements are: (1) clarify the mission, (2) hold managers
accountable, (3) use data to identify and assess problems, (4) use effective
problem-solving tactics, (5) provide commanders with control over
resources needed to get the job done, (6) ensure flexibility within the
organization, and (7) make the department accountable externally.

Large departments implement the seven elements with varying degrees of
effectiveness. Departments are more likely to use data-driven problem
identification and assessment and to stress clarifying the mission, holding
managers accountable, and ensuring flexibility within the organization.
Compstat departments find it much more difficult to implement effective
problem-solving tactics and to develop systems of external accountability.

Compstat and non-Compstat departments differ significantly on the seven
core elements. Compstat departments are more likely to claim
implementation of each of these than are non-Compstat departments.
Weisburd suggested that police departments, on the whole, have been
more successful in implementing those aspects of Compstat that reinforce
the established organizational structure of policing and--not
surprisingly--less successful in adopting innovations that demand
significant change in the philosophy and practices of policing.

For more information, contact 
David Weisburd at 2220 LeFrak Hall, University of Maryland, College
Park, MD 20742, 301-405-4705, dweisburd@crim.umd.edu.

--------------------------------

How to Get At-A-Glance Materials

Materials are available at:

o NIJ's Web site at http://www.ojp.usdoj.gov/nij, or

o NCJRS, puborder@ncjrs.org, 1-800-851-3420, P. O. Box 6000,
Rockville, MD 20849-6000.

The summaries in this section are based on the following:

Research in Progress Seminars. At these seminars, scholars discuss their
ongoing research and preliminary findings with an audience of researchers
and criminal justice professionals. Sixty-minute VHS videotapes of the
Research in Progress seminars are available from the National Criminal
Justice Reference Service (NCJRS) at 1-800-851-3420. Videotaped
seminars are $19 ($24 in Canada and other countries). 

NIJ Final Reports. These final submissions from NIJ grantees typically are
available from NCJRS through interlibrary loan. In some cases,
photocopies may be obtained for a fee. For information about these reports
and possible fees, contact NCJRS.

NIJ Publications. Some of the information here is summarized from recent
NIJ publications, which are available from the NIJ Web site or by
contacting NCJRS. Refer to the documents' accession (ACN) or NCJ
numbers.

--------------------------------

Less Lethal Options

In April 2000, a Seattle man with a mental illness was shot and killed by a
police officer. The man was brandishing a knife following a shoplifting
incident. The resulting citizen outcry sparked both a community working
group and a police task force to examine the use of less lethal weapons.

The Less Lethal Options Community Workgroup, which was composed of
representatives of neighborhood and minority advisory councils,
recommended that the Seattle Police Department take the following steps:

o Provide all patrol officers with 8-hour Crisis Intervention Team (CIT)
training, with refresher courses every 2 years. CIT officers have special
training for dealing with people with mental illness who are involved in
police incidents. The program is based on the successful model used in
Memphis, Tennessee.

o Provide all sergeants and lieutenants with 40 hours of CIT training. 

o Train officers in use of less lethal weapons (tasers and bean bags) either
prior to or at the time of issuance of the weapons, with annual
requalification.

The group noted that although implementing its proposals would help
police deal more appropriately with the mentally ill, long-term policy
solutions ultimately are needed.

The police task force made similar recommendations for additional CIT's
and less lethal weapons training. Full adoption of its recommendations
(budgeted at $350,000 for the 2001-02 budget) would ensure that about 
50 percent of the police force had some form of less lethal weapon or
intervention option within a year of implementation.

--------------------------------

New & Noteworthy

NIJ's New Director

Sarah V. Hart became NIJ's new Director on August 2, 2001. After being
nominated by President George W. Bush, the U.S. Senate confirmed her
nomination in a vote of 98-0.

Before joining NIJ, Ms. Hart served as the Chief Counsel for the
Pennsylvania Department of Corrections, where she assisted Congress in
drafting the Federal Prison Litigation Reform Act (PLRA) and 1997
amendments to the PLRA. 

Previously, she served for 16 years as a prosecutor in the Philadelphia
District Attorney's Office, where she acted as lead counsel for 9 years in
Federal litigation involving the Philadelphia prison system. She also
assisted in drafting Pennsylvania's drug nuisance law, nuisance bar
legislation, and sentencing and parole reform bills.

Ms. Hart served on the Pennsylvania Supreme Court's Appellate
Procedural Rules Committee and as Vice Chair of the Legal Affairs
Committee of the American Correctional Association. She has provided
training on corrections legal issues to the American Correctional
Association, the Association of State Corrections Administrators, the
National Association of Attorneys General, and the National Institute of
Corrections. She has written several articles concerning courts,
corrections, and criminal law. 

Ms. Hart received her undergraduate degree in criminal justice from the
University of Delaware and her law degree from Rutgers Camden School
of Law, where she was associate editor of the law review.

Series Looks at International Crime

An increase in crimes originating outside the United States is the focus of
a new monograph series, "Issues in International Crime." The series,
developed by NIJ's International Center, highlights research in
transnational crime and is intended to stimulate further discussion and
study of international crime and justice issues.

To date, NIJ has released three titles:

o Crime, Criminal Justice, and Criminology in Post-Soviet Ukraine, by
Todd S. Fogelsong and Peter H. Solomon, Jr. (NCJ 186166). Available at
http://www.ojp.usdoj.gov/nij/pubs-sum/186166.htm.

o The Threat of Organized Crime, by James O. Finckenauer and Yuri A.
Voronin (NCJ 187085). Available at
http://www.ojp.usdoj.gov/nij/pubs-sum/187085.htm. 

o Democratizing the Police Abroad: What to Do and How to Do It, by
David H. Bayley (NCJ 188742). Available at
http://www.ojp.usdoj.gov/nij/pubs-sum/188742.htm.

Obtain copies from the NIJ Web page at the addresses above or call
NCJRS at 1-800-851-3420. Visit NIJ's International Center at
http://www.ojp.usdoj.gov/nij/international for more information.

Biometrics Catalog Available Online

A searchable catalog of commercially available biometric products,
research and development efforts, and testing programs is now available to
Web users. 

Biometrics are automated methods of recognizing a person based on
physiological or behavioral characteristics unique to each individual, such
as fingerprints, speech patterns, face recognition, dynamic signatures, and
iris patterns.

Visitors to the catalog can search by biometric type, category, date range,
and keyword. Once a visitoridentifies a product or program, the catalog
displays a description and downloadable papers or associated Web sites.
Visitors can also request more information about specific items.

NIJ and the Department of Defense's Counterdrug Technology
Development Program Office jointly developed the catalog, which
currently contains more than 117 entries. Although the catalog's postings
are added and modified by the vendor or other responsible parties, the
sponsors read and approve all postings before they are available through
the catalog.

Visit the online Biometrics Catalog at http://www.biometricscatalog.org. 
For more information on biometrics, visit http://www.biometrics.org or
http://homepage.ntlworld.com/avanti/whitepaper.htm.

New Technology Guide Published

State and local administrators who must make decisions about acquiring
new technologies should get a copy of the newly published Resource
Guide to Law Enforcement, Corrections, and Forensic Technologies (NCJ
186822). This reference book lists research and grant programs from the
Office of Community Oriented Policing Services (COPS) and Office of
Justice Programs. 

The book is organized into four main technology types: 

o Officer protection and crime prevention.

o Public safety in critical incidents.

o Communications and information technology. 

o Investigative and forensic sciences. 

Each listing includes Department of Justice (DOJ) funding opportunities,
information on DOJ standards and testing, the status of DOJ-supported
research and development efforts, and citations to DOJ-related
publications.

Copies of the guide can be downloaded from the NIJ Web site at
http://www.ojp.usdoj.gov/nij/pubs-sum/186822.htm or ordered from
NCJRS by calling 1-800-851-3420.

--------------------------------

New Guides Explore First Responder Equipment

NIJ is creating a series of guides about first responder equipment that will
provide public safety agencies with information on the types and
capabilities of available equipment.

While only the first in the series has been printed, NIJ is making working
drafts of the remaining guides available on the Web in a working draft
format. 

Titles in the series include:

o Guide for the Selection of Chemical Agent and Toxic Industrial
Material Detection Equipment for Emergency First Responders, NIJ Guide
100-00.

o An Introduction to Biological Agent Detection Equipment for
Emergency First Responders, NIJ Guide 101-11.

o Guide for the Selection of Chemical and Biological Decontamination
Equipment for Emergency First Responders, NIJ Guide 103-00. 

o Guide for the Selection of Communication Equipment for Emergency
First Responders, NIJ Guide 104-00. 

o Guide for the Selection of Personal Protective Equipment for
Emergency First Responders, NIJ Guide 102-00.

Go to http://www.ojp.usdoj.gov/nij/new.htm for more information.

--------------------------------

Events

Fifth Annual ADAM Conference

ADAM
Arrestee Drug Abuse Monitoring Program

The technical and operational principles involved in maintaining an
Arrestee Drug Abuse Monitoring (ADAM) site were the focus of the fifth
annual ADAM conference, which was held June 5-7 in Miami.

The 150 researchers, criminal justice professionals, and site personnel
involved in operation of the 35 ADAM sites and 3 affiliated ADAM sites
attended the meeting to discuss the challenges of introducing new arrestee
sampling methods and a redesigned interview instrument.

Featured topics included: 

o Measuring drug and alcohol dependence among male arrestees across
ADAM sites.

o Drug market participation among adult male arrestees.

o Pathological gambling, substance abuse, and crime.

o The drugs-crime relationship--history, complexity, amelioration,
research, and the role of ADAM.

For more information about the conference, contact Karen Cyrus, NIJ
Program and Policy Specialist, at 202-616-3838 or visit the ADAM Web
site at http://www.adam-nij.net.

Mock Prison Riot 

A riot took place at the former West Virginia State Penitentiary in
Moundsville, West Virginia, for the fifth straight year. It was a mock riot
that was attended by 1,347 corrections, law enforcement, and other public
safety officers April 29 to May 3. 

The riot gives NIJ's Office of Law Enforcement Technology
Commercialization (OLETC) a chance to showcase emerging technologies
and officers a chance to use and evaluate the technologies in simulated
scenarios.

Hosted by OLETC, the West Virginia Division of Corrections, and the
Moundsville Economic Development Council, the mock riot exhibited 77
new technologies, including biometric fingerprint solutions, chemical
agent dispensers, concealed weapons detection devices, facial
identification programs, firearms simulations, open holographic sights,
robotics, thermal vision gear, and less-than-lethal technologies such as
pepper balls and a ring air projectile.

These innovative technologies were tested through 36 hands-on training
scenarios, including:

o A food fight broke out in the dining hall, where two service staff were
assaulted and an officer was taken hostage.

o An officer was held hostage in the yard while inmates negotiated for a
van to attempt their escape and officers rappelled over the prison wall.

o An inmate holding an employee hostage barricaded himself and his
hostage in a cell with weapons.

o A missing inmate was discovered in the prison's basement.

For more information about the 2001 Mock Prison Riot, visit the OLETC
Web site at http://www.oletc.org/riot/riotmainpage.asp or call
1-888-306-5382. Videos and photographs of the last five riots are
available on the Web site.

Forum Focuses on Drugs and Crime

The future direction of research on drugs and crime was at the core of
discussions at a major research forum held April 19-20. Approximately 40
prominent researchers attended.

The discussion centered on ways research can better pinpoint problems
created by drugs and crime and develop strategies for solving those
problems. The goal was to design a research agenda for the future that will
inform policy and improve practice.

The discussion was based on three papers, two commissioned by NIJ and
one commissioned by the National Institute on Drug Abuse. 

The papers were:

o "At the Intersection of Public Health and Criminal Justice Research on
Drugs and Crime," by James C. Anthony with Valerie Forman.

o "Research on Drug-Crime Linkages: The Next Generation," by Robert
MacCoun, Beau Kilmer, and Peter Reuter.

o "The Drugs-Crime Relationship: What We May Know, What We Do
Not Know, and Significant Research Questions," by Duane McBride,
Curtis Vander-Waal, and Yvonne Terry-McElrath.

These papers, along with an executive summary highlighting the research
agenda and a summary of the forum discussion, will be published soon. To
receive a copy of the forthcoming Drugs and Crime Research papers and
agenda, send your name, street address, and email address to Karen Cyrus,
NIJ Division of Drugs and Crime Research, at cyrusk@ojp.usdoj.gov. 

Science and the Law National Conference

The reliability of evidence and the credibility of witnesses were the focus
of the 2001 Science and Law Conference, which was titled "Emerging
Trends: Scientific Evidence in the Court." 

The conference, which was held in October, brought together
approximately 250 members of the criminal justice and academic fields to
improve understanding among scientists, attorneys, and judges and to
foster and develop questions for future research on the role of science and
scientists in the criminal justice system.

Panels at the NIJ-sponsored event discussed scientific and legal tutorials,
court-appointed experts and advisors, law enforcement personnel who
testify as experts, the use of eyewitness evidence, and case studies on the
admissibility of novel scientific evidence.

Proceedings from the 1999 annual meeting are available at
http://www.ojp.usdoj.gov/nij/pubs-sum/179630.htm. Proceedings from the
2000 and 2001 meetings are forthcoming. 

Perspectives Series Lectures

The Perspectives on Crime and Justice lecture series, sponsored by NIJ
and held each year in Washington, DC, gives well-known scholars an
opportunity to present provocative points of view to policymakers and
practitioners.

Plans are underway for speakers for the 2002 series. Watch the NIJ Web
page for the names and dates of upcoming lectures. 

In 2001, the series featured: 

o "Why Violence Appears to Be Declining," by Alfred Blumstein,
Professor at Carnegie Mellon University and Director of the National
Consortium on Violence Research.

o "Juvenile Offenders, Adolescence, and Psychopathology," by Laurence
Steinberg, Professor at Temple University and Director of the John D. and
Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation Research Network on Adolescent
Development and Juvenile Justice. 

o "Key Behavioral and Environmental Factors in Violence Prevention,"
by Carl Bell of the Community Mental Health Council and Foundation.

o "The Impact DNA Testing Has Had on Forensics," by Margaret Berger
of the Brooklyn Law School. 

The papers and question-and-answer sessions that follow each lecture are
published annually by NIJ. Previous lectures featured Sissela Bok on
violence, free speech, and the media; Felton Earls on men, fathers, and
community; and Randall Kennedy on race and crime. Copies of previous
volumes are available on NIJ's Web site at http://www.ojp.usdoj.gov/nij
or from NCJRS at 1-800-851-3420.

For more information about the lectures, visit NIJ's Professional
Conference Series home page at http://www.nijpcs.org and click on "Past
Conference Materials."

--------------------------------

ADAM 2000 Preliminary Annual Report Now Available

ADAM's first report on the new probability-based sampling,
post-stratification weighting strategy, and redesigned survey instrument is
now available. The redesigned methodology will give researchers and
policymakers greater confidence in ADAM data. Highlights of the
redesign include new questions about heavy alcohol use, mental health and
drug treatment, the need for treatment of drug dependency, and drug
market characteristics. The questions are based on items from other
national surveys and allow researchers to "cross-walk" between ADAM
and other ongoing large-scale research studies. 

The redesigned survey also introduces a calendar methodology that allows
ADAM respondents to answer questions about their drug-using behavior
over the past year in the context of other life events.

The report presents original data from the sites in the ADAM network,
describes drug and alcohol use based on urinalysis and self-reports,
presents analysis related to treatment needs, and describes a number of
features about drug markets. 

ADAM Preliminary 2000 Findings on Drug Use and Drug Markets--Adult
Male Arrestees (NCJ 189101) is available electronically from the NIJ Web
page at http://www.ojp.usdoj.gov/nij/pubs-sum/189101.htm or by calling
NCJRS at 1-800-851-3420. Visit the ADAM Web site at
http://www.adam-nij.net.

--------------------------------

Counterterrorism and Critical Incident Responses

NIJ and the other bureaus and offices of the Office of Justice Programs
support a number of efforts concerning terrorism. Below is a list to lead
you to more information.

o NIJ's Critical Incident Response/Counterterrorism Program 
These sites describe NIJ's portfolio of research and development:
http://www.ojp.usdoj.gov/nij/sciencetech/counter.htm
http://www.nlectc.org/virlib/InfoList.asp?strType=Technology

o OJP Office for Domestic Preparedness 
http://www.ojp.usdoj.gov/odp

o Technology for Public Safety Response to Critical Incidents at OJP
Research and Statistics:
http://www.ojp.usdoj.gov/technology/research_statistics/public_safety_res
ponse.htm

Fielded Programs: 
http://www.ojp.usdoj.gov/technology/fielded_programs/public_safety_res
ponse.htm

Technical Assistance and Training:
http://www.ojp.usdoj.gov/technology/ta_training/counterterrorism.htm

o Terrorism and Domestic Preparedness Information at OJP
http://www.ojp.usdoj.gov/terrorism/whats_new.htm
http://www.ojp.usdoj.gov/terrorism/links.htm
http://www.ojp.usdoj.gov/terrorism/technical_assistance.htm
http://www.ojp.usdoj.gov/terrorism/field_tested_programs.htm

o Publications on Terrorism and Domestic Preparedness
National Criminal Justice Reference Service Virtual Library
http://virlib.ncjrs.org/more.asp?category=51&subcategory=151

o Center for Civil Force Protection Sandia National Laboratories:
http://www.justnet.org/ccfp

o Institute for Security Technology Studies (Dartmouth College)
http://www.ists.dartmouth.edu

o Oklahoma City National Memorial Institute for the Prevention of
Terrorism
http://www.mipt.org

--------------------------------

Solicitations

Apply for Funding

NIJ regularly issues requests for proposals, called solicitations, for
research in a wide range of topics related to crime and justice. All funding
opportunities are described in detail on NIJ's home page
(http://www.ojp.usdoj.gov/nij/funding.htm).

The following solicitations were recently posted on the Web:

o Doctoral students can receive funding through the Graduate Research
Fellowship Program for independent research on issues in crime and
justice. There are two application deadlines remaining in 2002: May 15
and September 16, 2002.

o Researchers can receive funds to conduct original research using data
from the National Archive of Criminal Justice Data. There are two
application deadlines remaining in 2002: June 25 and October 25, 2002.

NIJ's Web page provides specific details and deadlines about these and
other upcoming solicitations.

--------------------------------

July 21-24, 2002
JW Marriott Hotel, Washington, DC

Plan Now to Attend the 2002 Annual Conference on Criminal Justice
Research and Evaluation

For more details, contact:
Institute for Law and Justice
1018 Duke Street
Alexandria, VA 22314
703-684-5300
fax: 703-739-5533

Sponsored by 
National Institute of Justice and other Office of Justice Programs offices
and bureaus.

--------------------------------

U.S. Department of Justice
Office of Justice Programs
810 Seventh Street, N.W.
Washington, DC 20531

John Ashcroft
Attorney General

Deborah J. Daniels
Assistant Attorney General

Sarah V. Hart
Director, National Institute of Justice

Office of Justice Programs
World Wide Web Site
http://www.ojp.usdoj.gov

National Institute of Justice 
World Wide Web Site
http://www.ojp.usdoj.gov/nij

The National Criminal Justice Reference Service (NCJRS), a centralized
national clearinghouse of criminal justice information, is sponsored by the
Office of Justice Programs agencies and the Office of National Drug
Control Policy. Registered users of NCJRS receive the NIJ Journal and
NCJRS Catalog free. To become a registered user, write NCJRS User
Services, P.O. Box 6000, Rockville, MD 208496000, call 8008513420,
or email askncjrs@ncjrs.org. Visit the NCJRS World Wide Web site at
http://www.ncjrs.org.

The National Institute of Justice is a component of the Office of Justice
Programs, which also includes the Bureau of Justice Assistance, the
Bureau of Justice Statistics, the Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency
Prevention, and the Office for Victims of Crime. 

JR 000248