25 Years of Criminal Justice Research.


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25 Years of Criminal Justice Research
The National Institute of Justice
December 1994

Directors of the National Institute of Justice

Ralph Siu, 1968-1969
Henry Ruth, 1969-1970
Irving Slott, 1970-1971
Martin Danziger, 1971-1973
Gerald Caplan, 1973-1977
Blair Ewing, 1977-1979
Harry Bratt, 1979-1981
James Underwood, 1981-1982
W. Robert Burkhart, 1982
James K. Stewart, 1982-1990
Charles B. DeWitt, 1990-1993
Michael J. Russell, 1993-1994
Carol V. Petrie, 1994
Jeremy Travis, 1994 to present

Contents

Preface
Acknowledgments
NIJ and Its Research Program
  by Alfred Blumstein and Joan Petersilia
Criminal Justice Science and Technology Program
Turning Research Into Action

Preface

In the history of any organization, the milestone
of a twenty-fifth anniversary is a time of
opportunity. It may, of course, present the
occasion for celebrating a proud record of
achievement. It is also a time for taking stock-
for tallying up what has been accomplished,
weighing those accomplish-ments against
expectations, and then reflecting on what might
have been done differently. It presents an
opportunity to recognize victories and to
acknowledge defeats and even shortcomings. In
commemorating its silver anniversary this year,
the National Institute of Justice is doing all
this. But more important than marking the date of
the Institute's founding and taking stock is
pursuing the singular opportunity, offered only by
a milestone of this magnitude, to achieve
perspective. To be sure, twenty-five is an
arbitrary number, but enough years have transpired
to permit a long-term outlook. Viewing events and
developments over the long term is not an end in
itself, however. Rather, the vantage point arrived
at by documenting NIJ's past is valuable chiefly
in laying the groundwork for and guiding its
future. 

The Three Essays

The essays presented here document, in turn, NIJ's
work in research, in science and technology, and
in applied research and information dissemination.
NIJ is most grateful to Alfred Blumstein and Joan
Petersilia, distinguished scholars in their
respective fields, for the interest they have
shown in NIJ by preparing the essay on research.
They contribute the indepth perspective that can
come only with the expertise they bring to the
task.

The essay on science and technology documents many
developments at NIJ that are particularly
exciting, perhaps because they affect all areas of
criminal justice, and perhaps because they often
very directly and immediately affect law
enforcement and investigatory practices. Two areas
in which NIJ's role has been prominent are in the
development of lightweight body armor, which has
saved the lives of countless police officers over
the years; and in DNA "fingerprinting" to improve
evidence used in investigating crime. 

The third essay details the ways NIJ has been
turning the findings of research and evaluation
into action. Here the crucial connection is made
with the practitioner and policymaking
communities. NIJ does this in a wide variety of
ways. One of the first steps is identifying the
research and evaluation needs of the Institute's
constituents. The Institute offers training
programs, conferences, and technical support, and
operates an information clearinghouse that is the
largest of its kind in the world. The Institute
also brings new and innovative practices to the
attention of the field and sets up model programs.

Perspective for the Future

It is our hope that these essays can help direct
NIJ's future. In that respect, there is a
fortuitous convergence of events. The 25-year
milestone for NIJ occurred at the same time as
enactment of the Violent Crime Control and Law
Enforcement Act of 1994, the largest crime bill in
the country's history. Taken together, this
renewed awareness of the history of NIJ, plus the
substantial resources for research and evaluation
made available in the Crime Act, are serving to
reenergize the Institute. 

Twenty-five years ago, when the Institute first
opened its doors, crime was a major concern,
providing the impetus for enactment of major crime
control legislation (that mandated, among other
things, creation of NIJ). Today's world is very
different. Crime has a far greater urgency-
statistics on violent crime are witness to this,
and in countless polls crime tops the list of
Americans' worries. For the first time in our
Nation's history, the number of people
incarcerated has passed the one-million mark,
homicide is the leading cause of death among young
African-American men, and among juveniles the
number of homicides committed has doubled in just
the past few years. 

Today, our Nation is witnessing innovative
approaches that confront the new realities of
crime. Police departments throughout the country
are forging new, stronger links with the
communities they serve. Communities are
experimenting with interdisciplinary approaches in
recognition of the need to ensure a balance of
enforcement with social and allied services.
Researchers are making new efforts to identify the
roots of crime to assist in the development of
long-term solutions. And today, family violence
and victims of crime are being given the
recognition and attention that has been long
overdue.

NIJ in the Years Ahead 

NIJ is embarking on its next 25 years by
proceeding in a number of promising new
directions. With the new perspective on prevention
and the recognition that violent crime cannot be
handled by criminal justice alone, comes the need
to collaborate with other disciplines and other
agencies, public and private. One manifestation is
the coordination of research in the critical area
of violence, both among Federal agencies and
within the Department of Justice. 

Some of the most dramatic developments will be
occurring as a byproduct of events unrelated to
criminal justice. The end of the Cold War has
generated interest on the part of the Department
of Defense in transferring technologies to
operations other than war, and this presents an
opportunity to explore adoption of these
technologies to law enforcement. Computer
technology will also be exploited more
intensively. NIJ initiated an interagency system
that allows electronic access to information about
programs nationwide that are working to prevent
and control youth violence. This information is
available literally worldwide via the Internet.
NIJ recently adopted a policy of electronically
publishing all its documents via the Internet and
is exploring other channels of electronic
communication. 

Another development occurring outside criminal
justice will have perhaps the most profound effect
on NIJ and the entire criminal justice system.
That development is in demographics. The people
who are now entering their most crime-prone years-
young people-will in the next few years become a
much larger proportion of the country's population
than they are today. This is clearly the most
disturbing development but one that offers the
greatest challenge to NIJ. Because the future of
our Nation is its young people, NIJ is committed
to rededicating itself and redoubling its work for
the coming 25 years and beyond. 

Jeremy Travis
Director, National Institute of Justice

Acknowledgments

The National Institute of Justice wishes to
acknowledge the following individuals who
contributed to this publication:

Bruce D. Beaudin, Judge (ret.), Superior Court of
the District of Columbia

Alfred Blumstein, J. Erik Jonsson University Professor of
Urban Systems and Operations Research, H. John Heinz III 
School of Public Policy and Management, Carnegie Mellon
University

Michael D. Bradbury, District Attorney, County of
Ventura, California

William J. Bratton, Police Commissioner, New York,
New York

Allen Breed, Chair Emeritus, National Council on
Crime and Delinquency

John L. Buchanan, Police Captain, Maryvale
Precinct Commander, Phoenix, Arizona

Timothy D. Crowe, Criminologist, Louisville,
Kentucky

Julius Debro, Associate Dean, University of
Washington

Robert L. DuPont, President, Institute for
Behavior and Health, Rockville, Maryland

David P. Farrington, Professor of Psychological
Criminology, University of Cambridge, Cambridge,
England

Patrick S. Fitzsimons, Chief of Police, Seattle,
Washington

Edith E. Flynn, Professor of Criminal Justice,
Northeastern University, Boston, Massachusetts

Lucy N. Friedman, Executive Director, Victim
Services, New York, New York

Dennis A. Garrett, Police Chief, Phoenix, Arizona

Daniel Glaser, Senior Research Associate and
Professor Emeritus, University of Southern
California, Past-president American Society of
Criminology

James A. Gondles, Jr., Executive Director,
American Correctional Association

Heike Gramckow, CSR, Inc., Washington, D.C.

Bernard A. Gropper, Criminologist, De Bary,
Florida

Thomas E. Hanlon, Associate Professor, Department
of Psychiatry, University of Maryland

Kathleen M. Hawk, Director, Federal Bureau of
Prisons, U.S. Department of Justice

Gwen A. Holden, Executive Vice President, National
Criminal Justice Association

Nolan E. Jones, Director, Justice and Public
Safety, National Governors' Association

R. Gil Kerlikowske, Commissioner of Police,
Buffalo, New York

Timothy W. Kinlock, Research Associate, Department
of Psychiatry, University of Maryland

Robert B. Kliesmet, International President,
International Union of Police Associations AFL-CIO

Joseph Kochanski, NIJ Director of Advanced
Technology Division, 1972-1978

Harlin McEwen, Chief of Police, Ithaca, New York

David N. Nurco, Research Professor, Department of
Psychiatry, University of Maryland

Ruben B. Ortega, Police Chief, Salt Lake City,
Utah

Joan Petersillia, Professor, School of Social
Ecology, University of California at Irvine

John W. Roberts, Chief, Office of Archives,
Federal Bureau of Prisons, U.S. Department of
Justice

Daniel N. Rosenblatt, Executive Director,
International Association of Chiefs of Police

Michael D. Schrunk, District Attorney, Multnomah
County, Oregon

James F. Short, Jr., Professor, Social and
Economic Sciences Research Center, Washington
State University 

Lester Shubin, NIJ Technology Program Manager,
1971-1991

Irving Slott, NIJ Deputy and Acting Director,
1969-1971

Wesley Skogan, Center for Urban Affairs and Policy
Research, Northwestern University

Darrel W. Stephens, Chief of Police, St.
Petersburg, Florida

James K. "Chips" Stewart, Director, National
Institute of Justice, 1982-1990

Austin Turk, Professor and Chair, Department of
Sociology, University of California, Riverside,
California

Eduardo Vetere, Chief, Crime Prevention and
Criminal Justice Branch, United Nations Office at
Vienna, Austria

Richard H. Ward, Associate Chancellor, Professor
of Criminal Justice, University of Illinois at
Chicago

Elizabeth M. Watson, Chief of Police, Austin,
Texas

David Weisburd, Professor and Director, Center for
Crime Prevention Studies, Rutgers University

Ann Dryden Witte, Professor of Economics,
Wellesley College

Mary Ann Wycoff, Police Foundation

This document also reflects contributions from the
current staff of the National Institute of Justice
and editorial and design production assistance
from the National Criminal Justice Reference
Service.

Section 1.

NIJ and Its Research Program

by Alfred Blumstein and Joan Petersilia

When the National Institute of Justice (NIJ)1 was
created in 1969, it faced a criminal justice
environment that was extremely short of
empirically grounded knowledge to guide
development of intelligent, informed, and
effective criminal justice policy. In part-icular,
there were no adequate estimates of the effects of
any criminal justice sanction policy on crime
rates, even in simplest terms. Today the state of
knowledge in the field is still very limited
compared to the critical need and to the potential
contributions, largely because the level of
resources committed to the effort has been so
small. Nevertheless, impressive progress over the
past 25 years is evident. 

The purpose of this paper is to review that
history and progress, possibly for reflection of
where we have come from, but, more important in
any such stock-taking, to assess where criminal
justice research should go and to learn how to get
there more effectively. 

In this review, the focus is on some of the more
important substantive developments in the research
program. In that way, important opportunities for
the future will be highlighted. Some of the most
important substantive knowledge gaps amenable to
new research thrusts will be identified to raise
the critical questions that still need to be
asked.

The authors also try to provide some guidance on
processes, particularly by highlighting approaches
that have worked well, or pointing out ways in
which existing approaches might be pursued more
effectively. All this effort is intended
ultimately to bring valid new information,
insights, and tools to the policymakers and
practitioners who should be expected to exploit
new research findings to generate improved
policies and practices.

About the Authors and NIJ

It should be clear that this paper represents the
authors' personal views and is not intended to-and
certainly cannot-represent any official position
of the National Institute of Justice. Indeed, in
many respects, the comments offered represent a
challenge to NIJ policy and perspective. 

The comments offered reflect the authors'
individual experiences, many of which have been
with NIJ. Both authors have been closely involved
with other related research programs supported by
government and by foundations and have been
closely connected with the criminal justice
research community, as reflected by their both
serving terms in the last several years as
president of the American Society of Criminology.

Joan Petersilia has been a long-time participant
in the major criminal justice research effort at
The Rand Corporation that has extended for more
than 20 years. In that time, she has been a
participant and principal investigator on numerous
NIJ grants, as well as grants from a variety of
other funding agencies. Her research has spanned
the various priority areas of NIJ, including
policing, career criminals, racial discrimination,
criminal sentencing, and intermediate sanctions.
In the mid-1980's, James Stewart, then director of
NIJ, asked her to review NIJ's research
accomplishments to date, identifying research
projects that had influenced criminal justice
policy and practice. That report, entitled The
Influence of Criminal Justice Research (1987),
highlighted the importance of NIJ-funded studies
for policymakers and researchers alike. The report
also noted the critical importance of close
collaborations between researchers and
practitioners, a theme she has pursued in several
subsequent writings.

Alfred Blumstein was a participant in the founding
of NIJ in the sense that its creation was an
outgrowth of the work of the President's
Commission on Law Enforcement and Administration
of Justice, and particularly its Task Force on
Science and Technology, which he chaired.2 That
task force was given the mission of identifying
what science and technology might do for dealing
with the crime problem. One of its basic
conclusions was that, while science and technology
as a producer of "gadgets" had much to offer,
realizing that potential required little in the
way of significant advances. The only striking
exception was the technology of automatic
fingerprint recognition, which has now been
attained. The real challenge, however, was the
problem of choosing what technology should be
applied and when and how to do so. Further, the
primary contribution from science and technology
would be through the use of the methods of
science, of seeking knowledge to inform a criminal
justice system whose greatest need the commission
highlighted was "the need to know."

Stimulated by that urging by both the task force
and by the larger commission, Congress, when it
created the Law Enforcement Assistance
Administration (LEAA) in 1968, established NIJ as
a unit within LEAA to pursue the research mission.
Blumstein was one of the early NIJ grantees (to
pursue work related to the development of a flow
model identified as Justice Simulator Model
(JUSSIM) to be used in the planning function
mandated by the Act). He has subsequently been
involved in research funded by NIJ in the areas of
imprisonment, deterrence, incapacitation,
sentencing, and criminal careers.

Reviewing NIJ's Major Research Accomplishments

NIJ has been in the forefront of nearly every
innovation in criminal justice research and policy
over the past 25 years. Understanding of the
nature of criminal careers, the effects of
sanctions, and the operations of the police,
courts, and corrections have all been deeply
influenced by NIJ research findings. 

It is clearly beyond this essay's scope to review
all of NIJ's accomplishments. Rather, the purpose
is to highlight some of the more important
research contributions and give an appreciation of
the broad range of subjects NIJ research has
addressed. The selection of projects for this
document is subjective and derived from the
authors' judgments and opinions.

The research review is organized in the following
sections:

o Evaluating the Performance of Police,
Prosecution, Sentencing, and Corrections

o Understanding the Nature of Crime, Crime Rates,
and Criminal Careers 

o Special Topics: Drugs and Crime, Crime
Prevention, White Collar Crime, and Victims 

o Developing Advanced Technologies for Justice
System Agencies

Evaluating the Performance of Police, Prosecution,
Sentencing, and Corrections 

In the public's mind, the primary function of the
justice system is to arrest, convict, and punish
those who are guilty of serious crime. Most agree
that the police, courts, and corrections systems
do not operate as efficiently and effectively as
they should. NIJ has spent a majority of its funds
documenting the performance of justice agencies,
assessing the effects they have on crime and
justice-related outcomes, and evaluating
alternative programs and policies. 

Policing

Police administrators, perhaps more so than the
leaders in other criminal justice agencies, appear
to have changed practice dramatically as a result
of research findings. Throughout the 1980's,
according to George Kelling of Harvard, "a quiet
revolution" began to reshape American policing.
Many attribute those changes to the influence of a
series of NIJ-funded studies that challenged
traditional assumptions and methods, tested
research recommendations, and widely disseminated
novel police practices.3

Patrols and response time. The first and
best-known of these studies was the Kansas City
(Missouri) Preventive Patrol Experiment, conducted
by researchers at the Police Foundation. Police
administrators had always assumed that by driving
more or less randomly in a given area, patrol cars
prevented crime, made citizens feel more secure,
and could respond more quickly to calls after a
crime had been committed, thus increasing the
chances of arresting the suspect. Preventive
patrol and the pressure for quick-response time
increased requirements for sworn personnel, cars,
sophisticated communications systems, and other
technological innovations. As the strain on police
budgets grew, police administrators needed to know
whether their assumptions about these practices
were valid and justified the expense. 

To test the effects of preventive patrol,
researchers randomly assigned neighborhoods to
three different patrolling techniques: (1) no
preventive patrol activities (police cars entered
the area only to answer specific calls), (2)
customary service, or (3) increased preventive
patrol (cars cruised the streets two to three
times more frequently than normal). These
experimental conditions remained in effect for 1
year. The results showed that neither crime rates
nor citizens' perception of their safety were
significantly affected by changes in these levels
of random preventive patrol. The study concluded
that preventive patrol did not necessarily prevent
crime or reassure the citizens.4 Similar
experiments with similar results were subsequently
conducted in St. Louis, Missouri, and Minneapolis,
Minnesota.5

The findings made national news and produced
intense debate and some shock waves in the
policing community. Police chiefs criticized the
research design and questioned its conclusions.
Some argued that the "no patrol" condition was not
maintained, since police cars were going to and
from other areas through that police beat. But
most police chiefs stated that regardless of the
methodology, the findings were consistent with
their own experience. Like the other policing
studies, the Kansas City Preventive Patrol
Experiment was important because it challenged a
traditional police practice and gave police
managers latitude to experiment with alternative
strategies. Following the study, many police
departments assigned patrol units to proactive
patrol, that is, they gave patrol officers
specific proactive assignments rather than having
them randomly cruise the streets.

Another major study, conducted again by Police
Foundation researchers working with the Kansas
City, Missouri, Police Department, studied the
effects of police response time. Their results
indicated that police response time was unrelated
to the probability of making an arrest or locating
a witness,6 and that neither dispatch nor travel
time were strongly associated with citizen
satisfaction. The researchers discovered that the
time it takes a citizen to report a crime-not the
speed with which police respond-was the major
determinant of whether an on-scene arrest took
place and whether witnesses could be located.
Furthermore, citizen reporting delays constitute a
significant proportion of the total recorded
police response time. According to the study, if
the victim or witness waited an hour before
calling the police, the speed with which the
police subsequently responded was likely to be
unimportant-the perpetrator of the crime had ample
time to flee the scene. The researchers concluded
that "because of the time citizens take to report
crimes, the application of technological
innovations and human resources to reduce police
response time will have negligible impact on crime
outcomes." 

NIJ-supported replications of the Kansas City
Response Time Study in Jacksonville, Florida; San
Diego, California; Peoria, Illinois; and
Rochester, New York, basically confirmed the
Kansas City findings.7

These findings led researchers at the Police
Executive Research Forum (PERF) to develop a model
response system, called the Differential Police
Response Model. In this model, civilian
complaint-takers answer all citizen calls,
classify them as critical or noncritical, and
transfer the critical calls to a dispatcher for
immediate response. Noncritical calls are
systematically stacked, and citizens are asked to
file reports at a later time. These systems were
tested and evaluated by NIJ, and the positive
results held that the systems saved police
resources and allowed departments to handle an
increased volume of calls without a corresponding
increase in patrol officers. Differential Police
Response Models have now been adopted by most
major police departments across the Nation. Other
departments have focused on educating the public
to notify the police more quickly when a crime has
occurred. Such policies are estimated to save
millions annually in the police departments in
which they have been implemented.8

Criminal investigation. At the same time that
preventive patrol and fast response time policies
were being questioned, so too was the criminal
investigation function. Like patrol, criminal
investigation consumes a large proportion of
police resources. NIJ funded a Rand study of the
criminal investigation process, with the aim of
making it more effective.9 The study found that
"detective work" alone rarely leads to an arrest,
and that the probability of an arrest is largely
determined by the information that patrol officers
obtain in their preliminary investigation at the
crime scene. The study established that if
specific types of information are not collected
during the preliminary investigation, chances of
solving a case are low, no matter how intense the
followup investigation. 

The Rand Criminal Investigation study recommended
that patrol officers be given a larger role in
conducting preliminary investigations, both to
provide an adequate basis for case screening and
to eliminate the need for redundant efforts by
investigators. Detectives could then more
appropriately concentrate their efforts on the
most serious crimes, on the cases most likely to
be solved, and on getting sufficient evidence to
support the prosecution. 

This body of criminal investigation research led
to one of the more important developments in
modern policing, the identification of
"solvability factors." In many police departments
today, for less serious crimes, information
collected at the crime scene is assessed using
solvability-factor score sheets. The assessment-
conducted by the patrol officer during the
preliminary investigation, or by a case-screening
officer or felony-review unit-determines which
cases are likely to be solved, given the initial
information obtained. Those promising cases are
given to the detective division for followup
investigation; the rest are often closed on the
basis of the preliminary investigation and
reopened only if additional information is
uncovered. 

NIJ subsequently funded several efforts aimed at
applying computer technology to further ease and
simplify police investigations. The PISTOL project
in St. Petersburg, Florida, which seeks a
paperless police information system using lap and
personal computer technology, is one example.10
"Solvability factors" have also been computerized,
such as the system developed for burglary by the
Baltimore County Police department.11

Community policing. These early studies paved the
way for modern policing strategies, with a strong
emphasis on community-based policing. In
particular, they caused police to recognize the
critical role of the community in crime prevention
and control. Police began to look beyond
incident-oriented policing and experiment with
innovative responses to crime that took a broader
view of law enforcement. Some researchers found
that police departments also went "behind the
offenses to the precipitating causes of crimes,
building closer relations with the community."12 

Initially police sought to enhance the
self-defense capacities of the communities
themselves by implementing neighborhood watch and
target-hardening programs. NIJ evaluated a number
of these crime prevention programs, showing them
to be an important part of crime control.13 

NIJ also funded a number of field experiments to
test whether various forms of foot patrol,
door-to-door contact, and other positive contacts
between police and citizens could reduce the fear
of crime and improve neighborhood life. Fear of
crime studies in Newark, New Jersey, and Houston,
Texas, and problem-oriented policing (POP)
research, such as that in Newport News and
Norfolk, Virginia, revealed new ways to save
police resources and use them more effectively.14
This approach calls on police to exercise both
initiative in identifying the source of the
problem and in enlisting community help in
developing solutions. 

NIJ has continued its strong commitment to
improving policing and has provided technical
assistance and evaluation expertise to
community-policing projects in Seattle,
Washington; Madison, Wisconsin; Houston, Texas;
Baltimore, Maryland; and Los Angeles, California.
The early results are identifying the
characteristics of neighborhoods and police
departments that are associated with successful
outcomes.

This "co-production" of community safety is now an
integral part of modern policing strategy-quite a
far cry from traditional policing practice of the
1970's, which consisted largely of reactive
responses to all calls for policing services. To
assist in this rapid change process, NIJ also
supported a series of Executive Sessions on
Policing at Harvard University during the late
1980's and 1990's, which brought researchers and
police together to examine the nature and
implications of these reforms.

Police focus on spousal assault. Police research
has not only studied how best to manage personnel
and resources, but also how to deal most
effectively with the threat posed by different
types of criminal offenders, for example, the
spouse assaulter. 

Police have traditionally found spousal assault
calls among the most problematic to handle.
Physical violence within the home was thought to
be exempt from the same laws that keep
acquaintances or strangers from assaulting one
another on the street. In the mid-1970's,
feminists began focusing attention on spouse abuse
and began insisting that spouse abusers be treated
like other violent criminals.

Subsequently, police departments began to view
spousal assault situations differently and to
reconsider how the offenders should be treated.
Their thinking on this matter was significantly
altered as a result of NIJ research findings.

In 1980, NIJ provided funds to Lawrence Sherman of
the Police Foundation and the Minneapolis Police
Department for an experiment to explore options
for police responses to domestic violence calls.
In the experiment, police systematically varied
the use of three approaches when responding to
misdemeanor spousal assault calls: (1) ordering
the suspect to leave the home for 8 hours, (2)
advising the couple to calm down, and (3)
arresting the suspect. Both official records and
interviews of victims showed that "arrest worked
best."15 The researchers found that arrest and a
night in jail for the suspect appeared to cut in
half the risk of repeat violence against the same
victim over a 6-month followup period, from 20
percent to 10 percent. Based on these results, the
report recommended that police in all 50 States be
allowed to make warrantless arrests in misdemeanor
domestic violence cases. 

The widely publicized research study had immediate
effects on police practice. Many departments
changed their policies to require an arrest in
domestic violence situations. A survey found that
in larger cities the use of arrest rather than
mediation in dealing with minor domestic assault
cases increased from 10 percent in 1984 to 31
percent in 1985 (the year after the study was
released). Many departments attributed the change
directly to the research findings.16 By 1988, 90
percent of police agencies either "encouraged" or
"required" arrest in such cases.17 Furthermore, in
the 5 years following the study, 10 States enacted
laws making spouse assault a separate criminal
offense, and over half the States dismantled
legislation that prevented police from making an
arrest if they did not witness the crime.18 

The research community urged replications of the
Minneapolis experiment to test the validity of the
results and to explore whether the arrest policy
might have different effects in communities with
different economic and demographic conditions. NIJ
responded in 1986 by funding replications of the
experiment in Omaha, Nebraska; Charlotte, North
Carolina; Milwaukee, Wisconsin; Metro-Dade, Miami,
Florida; and Colorado Springs, Colorado. The
replications produced mixed results. In the
Metro-Dade, Florida, Police Department
replication, Police Foundation researchers again
found that arrest made a significant, positive
difference in the recidivism rate (i.e., those
arrested had lower recidivism rates). The
replications in Milwaukee, Charlotte, and Omaha
produced evidence that arrest increased the
frequency of future domestic violence by the
suspects. On the other hand, the replications in
Colorado Springs and Metro-Dade produced
victim-reported evidence that arrest reduced the
risk of future violence.19 

The replications also showed that arrest had
different effects on different kinds of people
within the same cities. In Milwaukee, Omaha, and
Colorado Springs, analyses of the official record
data suggested that unemployed suspects became
more violent if arrested, but that employed
suspects did not. In Milwaukee, arresting
unmarried suspects appeared to make them more
violent; among married suspects it did not.
Milwaukee arrests had the greatest criminogenic
effect among suspects who were both unemployed and
unmarried. Sherman concluded that "this consistent
pattern supports a hypothesis that the effects of
criminal punishment depend upon the suspect's
stakes in conformity, or how much he has to lose
from the social consequences of arrest. The
unemployment result is the single most consistent
finding from the domestic violence experiments and
has not been contradicted in any of the analyses
reported to date."20

The results of the Minneapolis experiment show the
benefits of research replications, and they also
point to the complexity of criminal justice
interventions. 

In 1986, Lawrence Sherman summarized the domestic
violence experiments and how their results could
inform research, policy, and practice. His
well-received book won the 1993-1994 American
Sociological Association Award for Distinguished
Scholarship in Crime, Law, and Deviance. Sherman
concludes: "The taxpayer's investment in seven NIJ
experiments has produced a series of important
scientific conclusions, including:

o Arrest increases domestic violence among people
who have nothing to lose, especially the
unemployed.

o Arrest deters domestic violence in the short
run, but escalates violence later on in cities
with higher proportions of unemployed black
suspects.

o A small but chronic portion of all violent
couples produce the majority of domestic violence
incidents.

o Offenders who flee before police arrive are
substantially deterred by warrants for their
arrest, at least in Omaha." 21

Sherman suggests that these findings call for a
number of policing changes, including allowing the
police to make warrantless arrests on probable
cause for misdemeanor domestic assaults the
officer did not witness, and encouraging the
police and prosecutors to cooperate in developing
the procedures for obtaining warrants for absent
offenders, which was demonstrated to be an
effective deterrent in Omaha. 

Police focus on career criminals. Like spouse
assaulters, career criminals cause the police
special problems. These offenders, who threaten
public safety most, are often able to avoid arrest
and conviction by intimidating witnesses, using
aliases frequently, and delaying court
proceedings. Overburdened police agencies are
rarely able to give them the priority attention
they deserve. 

In the early 1970's, researchers began to study
the characteristics of these career criminals. In
a highly-publicized research study, Marvin
Wolfgang, at the University of Pennsylvania
confirmed what police had long suspected-that a
small proportion of criminals committed a
disproportionate number of serious crimes.22 By
studying a cohort of males born in Philadelphia in
1945 and who lived there between the ages of 10
and 18, Wolfgang discovered that 6 percent of the
entire cohort (termed "chronic offenders") were
responsible for the majority (52 percent) of
crimes committed by the cohort (34 percent of whom
committed any crime). This finding posed a major
challenge for justice agencies-how to identify
these chronic offenders prospectively or at the
points in their careers when they were most
criminally active?

With Federal funding, police began to develop
special "career criminal" or repeat-offender
programs (ROP's). ROP's take a proactive approach
by having the police target offenders or certain
types of crime and try to catch them "red-handed"
rather than wait for a citizen's call. 

One of the most highly developed programs of this
type was the ROP begun in 1982 at the Metropolitan
Police Department of Washington, D.C. The special
ROP unit, which consisted of about 60 officers,
used a variety of investigative undercover tactics
to identify career criminals. To arrest persons
for whom warrants had not been issued, they
developed evidence about specific crimes in which
their targets had participated. This involved
several activities, including cultivating
informants, investigating tips from citizens,
placing targets under surveillance, tracing stolen
property found in a target's possession to the
original owner, and using "buy-and-bust"
techniques. 

Results of the ROP were closely monitored for 2
years by NIJ-supported researchers Susan Martin
and Lawrence Sherman, of the Police Foundation.
They found that:

o The work of the Repeat Offender Project
substantially increased the likelihood of arrest
of the persons it targeted. 

o Those arrested by ROP officers had longer and
more serious arrest histories than a comparison
sample. 

o Persons arrested by the ROP unit were more
likely to be prosecuted and convicted on felony
charges and more likely to be incarcerated than
comparison arrestees.23 

The researchers made frequent presentations of
preliminary results and wrote a number of
descriptive articles for professional
publications, and the ROP results were featured on
the television news program, 60 Minutes. The
publicity and the encouraging results attracted
the attention of police officials nationwide, and
many replications occurred. 

NIJ has continued to fund evaluations in this
area. Most recently, the Major Violators Unit
(MVU) of the Phoenix Police Department was
evaluated by Rand. In this experiment, police and
prosecutors cooperated in a project that
identified career criminals who were still on the
street to strengthen the cases against them
following arrest. The study revealed that this
type of approach can pay off in longer prison
terms-offenders targeted by the MVU received
sentences averaging 10.4 months longer than those
in the control group, and the rate of imprisonment
of those convicted was also higher.24 Close
cooperation with prosecutors in case preparation
was cited as an essential factor in the program. 

ROP projects have continued to be replicated
throughout the Nation, demonstrating that it is
possible for police to identify the most serious
offenders in their communities and, given adequate
resources, to strengthen the cases prepared for
court consideration. 

Prosecution

The judicial process is sometimes compared to a
funnel-at the top, a great number of people are
arrested, but at the bottom, very few of them are
convicted and sent to prison. For some,
prosecutors choose not to file charges because
they conclude the evidence is too weak; for
others, charges are ultimately dropped or the
prosecution fails to produce convincing evidence
of guilt. Nationally, about 50 percent of all
felony arrests fail to result in a conviction.25
Jurisdictions across the Nation face this "case
attrition" problem, and policymakers suggest it
contributes significantly to serious crime in the
community. Many offenders who slip through the
system quickly return to crime and are rearrested,
only to slip through again. 

Although jurisdictions are strongly motivated to
improve the prosecution process, until the mid
1970's, they had little systematic information
about the process between arrest and
incarceration. Since its inception, NIJ has
supported research to fill this void. The most
important studies in this regard include those
establishing the magnitude and sources of case
attrition, research supporting special prosecution
efforts to identify and convict career criminals,
and evaluations of new policies and laws designed
to reduce case attrition.

Case attrition causes. One of the earliest studies
of case attrition was conducted by Brian Forst and
colleagues at the Institute for Law and Social
Research (INSLAW) using data from the PROMIS
(Prosecutor's Management Information System)
computer system to examine case attrition in
Washington, D.C.26 At the same time, the Vera
Institute of Justice was conducting a thorough
study of the phenomenon in New York City.27 These
NIJ-funded studies are some of the most
comprehensive research to date on overall case
attrition patterns. They described not only the
deterioration of cases between arrest and final
disposition, but also explored some underlying
patterns that help explain why that deterioration
takes place. 

The INSLAW study found that what the police
officer does has a great deal to do with whether
an arrest results in a conviction. When the
arresting officer is able to recover tangible
evidence, a conviction is more likely. In
addition, if the police locate two or more
cooperative witnesses, the probability of
conviction is significantly enhanced. If the
arrest is made soon after the offense-especially
in cases of robbery, larceny, or burglary-tangible
evidence is more often recovered and conviction
is, again, more probable. The researchers
recommended police training that emphasized not
just "preserving the scene," but crime scene
management that would include initiating an
immediate canvass for witnesses and for evidence.
They also strongly recommended a system that would
provide regular feedback to officers about final
case outcomes. These recommendations coincided
with those being made by policing researchers, as
discussed above, and provided additional impetus
for policy changes.

A followup NIJ study by Floyd Feeney and
colleagues of the University of California-Davis,
identified factors related to case attrition and
recommended strategies that might decrease
attrition.28 Consistent with the earlier findings,
they too recommended greater feedback to police
officers, including statistics on case attrition
and specialized training in collecting evidence in
specific types of crimes. They also recommended
assigning police to short periods of observation
in the prosecutor's office and shifting some
police investigator resources from low-priority
work on unsolved crimes to building cases against
suspects already arrested. All three studies
discovered that much felony case attrition results
from lack of victim cooperation or insufficient
evidence to make a felony charge hold. 

Witness and victim cooperation. All of these
studies highlighted the importance of witness and
victim cooperation. These results encouraged the
LEAA to provide special funding for victim-witness
programs in selected district attorneys' offices
and courts across the Nation. Several
NIJ-sponsored evaluations of these programs
concluded that they do improve communications
between witnesses and the criminal justice system,
lead to fewer cases being dropped as a result of
victim and witness problems, and result in greater
victim satisfaction with the court system.29

In the mid-1980's, NIJ funded a number of
jurisdictions to implement new practices designed
to improve police-prosecutor relations. Six
counties participated and tested various means of
improving communication, including the use of
"prosecutor checklists" that name the items the
prosecutor desires prior to the formal filing of
charges (e.g., type of weapon used, injuries
sustained). Police investigators use these
checklists to ensure that they have submitted to
prosecutors only those cases for which they have
sufficient evidence to support formal charges.
Other jurisdictions institutionalized cooperative
agreements between police and prosecutors, for
example, by assigning police to the prosecutor's
office on a rotating basis and vice versa. Many
jurisdictions have also instituted methods to make
police aware of the evidentiary requirements for
effective prosecutions: for example, training
sessions and meetings, videotapes, on-call
prosecutors, and legal advisers in police
departments.30 

Finally, many prosecutors' offices are ensuring
that patrol and detective officers know the final
disposition of cases. An NIJ-funded experiment in
Snohomish County, Washington; Baltimore County,
Maryland; and New York State had prosecutors
filling out final "case disposition" forms that
indicated the exact reasons for cases not
resulting in convictions. The forms were
subsequently sent back to the detectives and
patrol officers who worked on the case. This
helped officers understand why some of their cases
led to convictions and others did not. Notifying
police officers of the final disposition of their
cases is now regarded as good practice, and many
prosecutors now incorporate such procedures. A
recent survey of prosecutors revealed that the
rate at which prosecutors notify police and
victims of the outcomes of their cases more than
doubled from 1974 to 1990.31

Case attrition studies also established the fact
that repeat offenders often managed to "beat the
system," getting relatively lenient treatment from
district attorneys in exchange for guilty pleas or
from judges who were optimistic about
rehabilitation. For example, sentencing patterns
in Los Angeles County showed that only 50 percent
of defendants who had served a prior prison term
received prison sentences for a subsequent robbery
conviction, and only 15 percent received them for
a subsequent burglary conviction.32 Research was
funded by NIJ to explore the reasons for such high
dropout rates for career criminals. Two particular
factors were discovered. First, many career
criminals have juvenile records that are not
transferred and used by the adult courts, and
hence serious offenders may appear to be
first-time offenders to the adult justice
system.33 Second, the common procedures of
handling cases (horizontal prosecution, where
different attorneys are responsible for overseeing
different proceedings in a single case) mean that
career criminals are often not handled in a manner
consistent with their public safety risk.

Career Criminal Prosecution Program. Publication
of these data prompted prosecutors around the
Nation to consider special efforts to eliminate
the "revolving door" for career criminals. These
efforts were similar to those undertaken by
policing agencies. They constituted a sort of
grassroots experimental movement that ultimately
led to a major Federal initiative for Career
Criminal Prosecution (CCP) programs. CCP included
vertical prosecution-where a single prosecutor
handles the case from filing to disposition-
limited plea bargaining, and close coordination
with law-enforcement agencies. Researchers were
helpful in evaluating the CCP programs and in
providing empirical guidelines that prosecutors
used to identify the most active career criminals.

NIJ funded Eleanor Chelimsky of the Mitre
Corporation to conduct a national evaluation of
Career Criminal Prosecution Programs in four
jurisdictions: Orleans Parish, Louisiana; San
Diego, California; Franklin County, Ohio; and
Kalamazoo County, Michigan.34 This evaluation
described the development of the program concept
and also focused on changes in case outcomes,
including: conviction rates, incarceration rates,
average sentence lengths, and average time to
disposition. The evaluation showed that the length
of prison term received by career criminals
increased, but the probability of incarceration
(following conviction) did not change in any of
the four sites, partly because in three out of the
four sites, career criminals had a high (90
percent) rate of incarceration prior to the
establishment of the special CCP unit. The
programs continued to be implemented throughout
the Nation, and many States (including California)
implemented statewide programs. Although the Mitre
evaluation did not find that CCP programs made a
difference in incarceration rates, the later
evaluation in California indicated that they held
promise. The researchers found small but
significant increases in conviction rates, a large
increase in the fraction of defendants convicted
of the most serious charges, increases in
incarceration and imprisonment rates, and an
increase in average sentence length.35 

These early CCP programs provided the foundation
and experience in prosecutors' offices to
experiment with vertical and specialized priority
prosecutions and laid the groundwork not only for
the many career criminal units that exist today,
but also the specialized units that now exist in
the areas of gangs, child abuse, and domestic
violence. 

Pretrial Release Decisionmaking 

The court is the pivotal institution of the
criminal justice system. Improving the
adjudication process-while safeguarding the public
from offenders on pretrial release-has been a
major research priority of NIJ. Whether to release
defendants awaiting trial-and under what
condition-is a critical issue affecting the
courts. 

Early research conducted by the Vera Institute of
Justice in New York City attempted to determine
what proportion of the jail population was being
detained simply because of inability to post the
required bail, and whether or not there was a
relationship between the amount of bail, the
ability to post it, and appearance at trial. This
research documented that much jail space was being
occupied by persons who were not necessarily
dangerous, but simply indigent. Although the court
had statutory power to release defendants on their
own recognizance (i.e., a promise to appear), that
option was being used in less than 1 percent of
cases in the 1960's. Vera researchers further
noted that a prerelease policy based solely on an
ability to pay was overtly discriminating against
the poor. It also made clear, however, that
unselective prerelease policies could put the
community at risk if a significant proportion of
persons released prior to trial continued to
commit crimes in the community.36 

These early findings led Vera researchers to
undertake a 3-year study of prerelease policies
and the characteristics associated with remaining
crime-free and showing up to face charges. This
experiment came to be known as the Manhattan Bail
Project. The researchers found that a defendant
with roots in the community was not likely to
flee, irrespective of his ability to pay a
bondsman.37 

The researchers devised a point system in which
weights were assigned to information concerning
the defendant's residential stability, employment,
family contacts, and prior criminal record. The
number of points a defendant achieved placed him
in a particular "flight-risk" category, which was
then used as a basis for recommending release on
his or her own recognizance (ROR). Vera
subsequently discovered that when an objective
scoring system was used to decide ROR candidates,
the rate of appearance was frequently higher than
that for defendants released by posting bail. The
ROR defendants' "skip rate" was 1.6 percent, less
than half the rate for defendants who posted bail.
The results indicate that a bail bond is often a
less effective guarantee for the court than
verified information about prior record and
community ties. 

The Vera research and many projects that have
since replicated its findings, suggested that an
objective method exists by which it is possible to
identify defendants who have a high probability of
appearing for trial. This finding, along with the
subsequent testing and refinement of the method,
has widespread implications for jail costs, since
space can be used for those who are most likely to
flee or to recidivate. It also leads to a fairer
and more equitable punishment response, since
defendants are not penalized primarily on their
ability to pay. 

Since that time, literally hundreds of courts
across the United States have instituted formal
prerelease guidelines modeled after the original
Vera research. As a result, more than 85 percent
of defendants today are released prior to trial,
and approximately 70 percent of those released are
freed without paying bail.38 

As Gottfredson and Gottfredson noted: 

In few areas of criminal justice has a reform
effort had such widespread and rapid impact as did
the Vera program of increasing pretrial release by
providing verified information about a defendant's
"community ties." It has been estimated that
"release criteria" identified by the Vera project
have now reached over 200 cities.39 

NIJ funded several evaluations of formal bail
decisionmaking guidelines, for example in
Philadelphia. These evaluations showed that with
these guidelines, one could do a better job of
predicting who would and would not recidivate.

Sentencing

Researchers have played a critical role in U.S.
sentencing policy, particularly in assessing the
extent to which sentencing practice achieves the
goals of rehabilitation, deterrence, and
incapacitation. 

Reviews in the 1970's of the outcomes of
rehabilitation programs have shown that
rehabilitation is often not a viable goal of
sentencing and that participating in
rehabilitation programs does not, in general,
significantly reduce the probability of
recidivism.40 This research prepared the ground
for the shift from indeterminate to determinate
sentencing, for removing treatment participation
as a primary consideration in parole decisions,
and for developing sentencing guidelines. 

NIJ funded some of the research that motivated the
sentencing changes, but more often has funded
evaluations of the impacts of those changes. Some
of the more noteworthy have been evaluations of
determinate sentencing, mandatory-minimum laws,
sentencing guidelines, the abolition of parole
boards, and promulgation of new administrative
policies by parole authorities. 

In addition to broader sentencing reforms, courts
have implemented programs to deal with special
types of offenders more appropriately,
particularly drug offenders. Several counties have
now implemented "drug courts," where offenders
arrested on drug charges are channeled into an
innovative court-operated rehabilitation program
as an alternative to prosecution. Defendants who
succeed in the program have their criminal cases
dismissed. 

Drug courts now exist in several locations, and
NIJ and the State Justice Institute (SJI) provided
funding to evaluate one of the largest, the one in
Dade County (Miami), Florida. The evaluation,
completed by John Goldkamp of Temple University,
showed that drug court offenders received
treatment and case management services that
included counseling, acupuncture treatment (to
relieve withdrawal symptoms), education courses,
and vocational services along with strict
monitoring through periodic urine testing and
court appearances.41 After an 18-month followup,
researchers found that defendants who participated
in the drug court were rearrested less frequently.
Drug-court defendants who were rearrested during
the followup period managed to stay arrest-free
roughly three times longer than other similar
felony drug defendants handled outside the drug
court. 

These results have led to continuing national
interest in establishing drug courts based in
large part on the experiences of the Dade County
program. Not only do many now exist but many more
will be created in response to the mandate of the
Violent Crime Control and Law Enforcement Act of
1994 (P.L. 102-352).

Corrections

The number of convicted felons now imprisoned is
greater by far than ever before in our Nation's
history, and figuring out how to cope with the
influx of offenders has become the major challenge
for corrections. Imprisonment guarantees
punishment and accountability, but it is costly
and may not rehabilitate offenders or prepare them
to return to the community. On the other hand, an
NIJ study of probation in California showed that
routine probation does not provide sufficient
punishment nor protect the community.42
Policymakers have thus been interested in
exploring the costs and effects of intermediate
sanctions-alternative sentencing options that lie
between prison and probation. 

Since the late 1980's, jurisdictions around the
Nation have been experimenting with many types of
intermediate sanctions, the most popular being
boot camps, intensive supervision probation or
parole, and electronic monitoring.
Revenue-strapped States have not had the funding
necessary to evaluate these programs' impacts, and
nearly all of the existing evidence on the
performance of intermediate sanctions has resulted
from NIJ-funded research. 

Boot camps (or shock incarceration) programs are
aimed at young offenders convicted of nonviolent
crimes who are serving their first prison term.
The program requires offenders to serve a short
term (90 to 180 days) in prison or jail in a
quasi-military program similar to military basic
training. One objective is to convince them that
they don't want to return to prison, and thereby
reduce their subsequent recidivism. Boot camps
were first established in the early 1980's, and by
1993 more than 30 States and the Federal Bureau of
Prisons had implemented such programs.43 

NIJ supported the first evaluation in 1989 of a
State boot camp program, initiated by the
Louisiana Department of Corrections. This
preliminary evaluation showed that the program
could be implemented successfully, inmates liked
it, the State reported saving money, and the
recidivism rates were similar to those of other
comparable inmates. Doris MacKenzie, of The
University of Maryland, recommended a greater
focus on education and employment training, as
well as providing community-based aftercare
provided to inmates upon release. Many States
heeded that advice and later programs often
incorporated such elements.44 

As boot camps expanded, NIJ felt the need to
conduct a more comprehensive, multisite
evaluation. In 1991, they funded a national
evaluation of boot camps, focusing on programs in
Florida, Georgia, Illinois, Louisiana, New York,
Oklahoma, South Carolina, and Texas. The study
results show that the newer programs incorporate
rehabilitation. Indeed, the goal most frequently
selected as "very important" in the study was
rehabilitation.45 Boot camps appear to reduce
prision crowding, primarily because inmates serve
less time in camps than they would if they had
served their sentences in traditional facilities,
but boot camps still do not appear to reduce
recidivism rates. Some suggest that aftercare-a
critical component-is not incorporated in boot
camp programs, while others attribute a lack of
recidivism differences to poor matching in
comparison samples.46 In reviewing all of the
evidence, the U.S. General Accounting Office (GAO)
and others have agreed that boot camps appear to
reduce short-term prison costs, but their
long-term impact on recidivism is uncertain.47
This information was relied upon in developing the
Violent Crime Control and Law Enforcement Act of
1994 (P.L. 102-352), which includes funding to
expand boot camps. 

House arrest is another popular intermediate
sanction that has expanded rapidly in the United
States. House arrest is a sentence imposed by the
court in which offenders, usually nonviolent,
first-time offenders, are ordered to remain
confined in their own residences. They are usually
allowed to leave their residences only for medical
reasons and employment. They may also be required
to perform community service or to pay victim
restitution and probation supervision fees. 

Florida operates the largest house arrest program
in the Nation. More than 40,000 offenders have
been placed in the program since it was
implemented by the Florida Department of
Corrections in late 1983. The program received a
great deal of national attention because it was
specifically designed to reduce prison and jail
crowding while ensuring public safety with a
punishment-oriented, community-based alternative.
Given the potential widespread implications of the
program, NIJ funded a comprehensive program
evaluation by the National Council on Crime and
Delinquency (NCCD). The evaluators concluded that
the program produced positive impacts: it diverted
a sizable number of offenders from prison, the
recidivism rate for house arrest offenders was
lower than for similar offenders sentenced to
prison, and the program helped alleviate prison
crowding.48 These results have proven instructive
for other jurisdictions considering similar
programs.

Electronic monitors, which are telemetry devices
designed as an augmentation to house arrest, have
also grown rapidly. In 1986, just 95 offenders
were being monitored "electronically," but by
1992, the number had grown to 45,000.49
Jurisdictions have looked to NIJ for assistance in
learning whether these programs work, how much
they cost, and for what types of offenders they
are most appropriate. NIJ has provided technical
assistance by assembling and disseminating
descriptive information on service providers and
agencies involved in testing the equipment.
Coordinating this information proved extremely
valuable during the early years when local
jurisdictions were trying to quickly locate who
was doing what, where, and with what success. As
the programs were implemented, NIJ funded a number
of evaluations to assess how well the programs
accomplished their purposes. The results were
mostly consistent: jurisdictions could
successfully implement the programs, but there
were unforeseen technical difficulties found with
the equipment. Further, electronic monitors
uncovered many violations which, if responded to,
would increase jail and prison costs. On the other
hand, low-risk offenders (e.g., white-collar
offenders) were ideal program candidates. NIJ
evaluations have had a major influence on the
expansion of these programs, creating a more
realistic assessment of what these programs can be
expected to accomplish and at what cost. 

Intensive Supervision Probation and Parole (ISP)
is the most popular intermediate sanction program
currently being implemented. ISP is a form of
release into the community that emphasizes close
monitoring of convicted offenders and imposes more
rigorous conditions than routine probation or
parole supervision. Most ISP's call for frequent
contact with the supervising officer, random and
unannounced drug testing, and stringent
enforcement of court-ordered conditions. 

Results of an ISP evaluation conducted in the
early 1980's by the Georgia Department of
Corrections suggested that ISP programs could
produce both lower recidivism rates and reduce
prison admissions.50 These results generated a
great deal of media and professional interest. An
August 16, 1985, The Washington Post article
called Georgia's ISP "the future of American
corrections." Other States moved quickly to adopt
the "Georgia model," and by 1990 jurisdictions in
every State had instituted ISP programs for adult
offenders.51 

Two of the early ISP programs, implemented in
Massachusetts and New Jersey, were evaluated with
NIJ funding. The results of these evaluations were
more ambiguous than those reported by Georgia. The
New Jersey evaluation reported costs savings,
while the one in Massachusetts did not. Moreover,
neither ISP evaluation found significant
reductions in the recidivism rates of ISP
participants.52 But because these evaluations did
not include a randomized research design, it was
unclear whether the findings could be attributed
to the ISP program or to selection effects of
those who participated. Researchers urged that
experiments be conducted in which eligible
offenders were randomly assigned to ISP or to the
relevant alternative sanction (prison or routine
probation or parole).

In 1986, the Bureau of Justice Assistance (BJA)
and NIJ jointly sponsored a national ISP
demonstration and evaluation. Fourteen
jurisdictions from nine States participated in the
5-year project.53 During that time, more than
2,000 offenders were randomly assigned to
participate in an ISP or routine supervision
program. The researchers' findings showed that ISP
was not a panacea that could simultaneously ease
prison crowding, reduce offender recidivism, and
cut costs. In 11 of the 14 sites, arrest rates
during a 1-year followup period were not
significantly different but somewhat higher for
ISP participants than for the control group. The
researchers concluded that, with an ISP program,
surveillance may be so stringent as to increase
the probability that crimes will be detected and
an arrest made. In this way, ISP may increase
officially recorded recidivism. For similar
reasons, 65 percent of the ISP offenders compared
to 38 percent of the control group were found to
have committed technical violations of their
conditions of probation or parole. While the
programs reduced neither costs nor recidivism
rates, they clearly achieved their goal of
providing an intermediate sentencing option, where
the more serious probationers and parolees were
watched more closely and revoked more quickly when
new crimes were discovered. 

The ISP programs studied were also oriented more
toward surveillance than treatment of offenders,
and the researchers suggested that recidivism
outcomes might have been more positive if
treatment resources had been available. Across all
of the sites, about half the offenders were judged
drug-dependent by their probation and parole
officers. Yet ISP staff often reported difficulty
obtaining drug treatment, and at some of the
sites, a large percentage of all offenders in need
of drug treatment went untreated. In the one site
(Ventura, California) that was able to combine
surveillance with treatment, recidivism rates were
lower by 10 to 20 percent.54 

The researchers cautioned planners to define their
ISP program objectives clearly. If they wish to
create an intermediate punishment between routine
probation and prison, then ISP can do that, but
they should realize that cost savings are unlikely
since stepped-up surveillance and frequent drug
tests are likely to increase incarceration rates
and drive up program and court costs compared with
routine supervision. 

The ISP study results had immediate policy
implications. For example, Minnesota developed an
ISP program in 1990 with strengthened treatment
components in the hopes of lowering recidivism.
NIJ is currently funding an evaluation of this ISP
program to assess whether it accomplishes this
purpose. Other ISP programs (e.g., Los Angeles,
Contra Costa) were discontinued because the county
judged the additional costs unacceptable.

Taken together, the intermediate sanction
evaluations have had profound impacts on policy
and practice. In some instances, they have shown
that practitioner expectations have not been borne
out and that implementing programs of this type is
difficult. On the other hand, these studies have
shown which program components are associated with
which outcomes and costs. This information is
being widely disseminated within corrections and
helping jurisdictions decide whether they wish to
implement programs of this sort, and if they do,
how best to design them to meet local
expectations. 

Understanding the Nature of Crime, Crime Rates,
and Criminal Careers

In 1975, NIJ identified career criminals as a
topic deserving sustained research attention. The
Rand Habitual Offender Program was designed to
provide new insights into career criminals'
characteristics, to discover how the system treats
them, and to assess the potential effects of
alternative sentencing on their subsequent
behavior. One of the Rand goals was to estimate
the number of crimes a person commits relative to
the number of times he or she is arrested. To make
that estimate, the researchers had to ask
offenders directly about their criminal behavior. 

In the 5 years of this research, Rand conducted
three self-report studies. In the first Rand
study, 49 male armed robbers from a California
prison, all of whom had served at least one prior
prison term, were interviewed.55 Rand used this
data to design the first self-administered Rand
inmate survey. The survey used a written
questionnaire to collect self-report data from a
sample of 624 inmates chosen to represent the male
population of California prisons.56 The
researchers constructed scales to consider the
number and the frequency of crimes committed, as
well as the length of the criminal career. In
terms of specialization, the study uncovered only
52 specialists-those who committed one type of
crime at a higher rate. As a whole, these
offenders were unconcerned about the probability
of punishment. They admitted committing crimes for
"high times." They believed that skill and
practice would enable them to evade capture and
enjoy the fruits of their crimes. Drugs and
alcohol played a significant role in their
criminal behavior. During the 3-year period before
their present incarceration, 42 percent of the
sample admitted to using heavy drugs (e.g., heroin
and cocaine). Drug abusers committed more,
different, and higher rates of crime than nondrug
users. 

Profile of criminally active offenders. The second
Rand inmate survey targeted more than 2,200
prisoners from three States (California, Michigan,
and Texas). This analysis profiled the most
criminally active offender-for example, the
violent predator. Violent predators were prolific
offenders, committing an average of more than 135
robberies per year.57 They tended to be young
(less than 23-years-old when they entered prison)
and typically began committing violent crimes
before age 16. They were more socially unstable-
unmarried and unemployed-and their unemployment
tended to encourage more crime. They used and sold
hard drugs and commonly abused more than one drug
(multiple drug abuse was highly correlated with
violent crime).

NIJ continued to fund studies of repeat, career
criminals in different locations. Julie Horney and
Ineke Marshall interviewed 403 Nebraska inmates
and used calendars to record when crimes had been
committed versus when an individual was
incarcerated. On the basis of this study, the
researchers concluded that the Rand studies may
have overestimated the rate of crimes committed by
career criminals. But in other ways, they
confirmed the earlier Rand results. For example,
they also discovered a very low probability of
arrest for drug crimes, a peaking of criminality
in the early 20's, and a disregard for criminal
penalties.58 

Rand also identified characteristics that were
typical of high-rate offenders. Peter Greenwood
used this information to create a model for
calculating the potential effects on both crime
rates and prison populations of "selective
incapacitation"-that is, identifying high-rate
offenders and giving them longer sentences than
low-rate offenders. A simple scale was also
developed for categorizing potentially high-rate
offenders. This "selective incapacitation" scale
identified the following variables as being
positively correlated with high-rate offenders:

o Incarceration for more than half of the 2-year
period preceding the most recent arrest.

o A prior conviction for the crime being
predicted.

o Juvenile conviction prior to age 16.

o Commitment to a State or Federal juvenile
facility.

o Heroin or barbiturate use as a juvenile.

o Employment for less than half of the 2-year
period preceding the current arrest.59

Assigning a value of 1 to each variable, Greenwood
classified offenders with scores of 1 as low-rate
offenders, those with scores of 2 to 3 as
medium-rate, and those with scores of 4 or more as
high-rate. 

Prediction of recidivism. NIJ funded Rand to
follow up with the approximately 600 inmates who
had participated in the Rand inmate survey and who
had been released to the community to see how well
the selective incapacitation scale proposed by
Greenwood, as well as other scales in existence at
the time, worked to predict recidivism. The
authors concluded that any given scale's
predictions of whether an inmate would be
arrested, convicted, or incarcerated after release
were no more than 5 to 10 percent more accurate
than what would be obtained by chance.60 

These findings were quite consistent with the
report of the National Research Council (NRC)
Panel on Research on Criminal Careers, which
reanalyzed the data used to construct the various
prediction devices.61 The panel found that while
risk prediction devices can improve
decisionmaking, they are not totally accurate. The
panel was concerned that the protection of
juvenile records often shields serious young adult
offenders from more appropriate sentences, and so
the panel recommended that the adult criminal
justice system should have access to juvenile
records of at least those offenders who are
arrested as adults on a felony charge.

These studies supported the claim that a small
proportion of offenders account for a
disproportionate amount of crime and highlighted
the difficulty in identifying at sentencing those
offenders with the highest probability of
recidivism so they could be selectively imprisoned
on the basis of recidivism risk. The NRC panel
called for a major long term research program on
criminal careers. It urged that estimates of
offending frequencies and estimates of the length
of criminal careers be developed. The panel
believed this sort of research was needed to
estimate the amount of crime prevented by
incarceration and to obtain a better grasp of how
incarceration and/or other sanctions retard or
accelerate the development of offenders'
subsequent criminal behavior. As a direct result
of this NRC recommendation, NIJ supported a series
of influential studies on criminal career
development.

Career criminal development. Much of this research
was conducted by Jacqueline Cohen and Alfred
Blumstein of Carnegie-Mellon University. Analyzing
data from offender arrest records, they discovered
large differences in crime incidence rates for
different demographic groups-highest rates were
observed for males aged late teens to early 20's.
Using a variety of data sources, researchers were
also able to document key aspects of the "criminal
career" paradigm, including the frequency at which
individual offenders commit crimes, termination
rates of ending active criminal careers, and
patterns in seriousness of offenses during
careers. Specifically, their research showed that:

o For all adult offenders who were active in
criminal careers by age 20, careers in serious
offense types averaged about 5 years in length.

o By age 40, a "wear-out" process began as
termination rates rose with increasing age.

o There was a general absence of escalation in
terms of crime seriousness.62

Their research was summarized by the NAS Panel on
Research on Criminal Careers, in the report
Criminal Careers and "Career Criminals."63 

These research data have proven extremely valuable
as it has helped researchers and policymakers
consider whether there are stages during a
criminal career when particular formal and
informal sanctions may be more or less effective.
This research also revealed that an
extraordinarily large increase in prison
populations would be required to achieve even
modest reduction from the prevailing levels of
crime. It was estimated that the maximum potential
reduction in crime from incapacitation was between
25 and 35 percent in several different
jurisdictions.64 This research has caused many
policymakers to reassess their once optimistic
assessments that large decreases in crime would
result from increases in the prison population.

Building on the recommendations of the NRC panel
on criminal careers, NIJ, in collaboration with
the MacArthur Foundation, initiated a major
longitudinal study of the development of criminal
careers from birth through age 32. That study,
designated as Human Development in Chicago
Neighborhoods, will interview 11,000 participants
and their families in 80 neighborhoods in the
Chicago metropolitan area. The project will select
9 cohorts (including a cohort of 2,000 infants)
equally spaced from birth to age 24 and follow
each of these cohorts for 8 years to examine their
social development, including the development of
criminal behavior. This will be the most ambitious
such effort ever undertaken and promises to yield
important insights into which developmental
circumstances lead to prosocial and anti-social
careers.

Special Topics: Drugs and Crime, Crime Prevention,
White-Collar and Organized Crime, and Victims

Drugs and Crime

Drug-related crime and the pervasive problems of
drug abuse and drug trafficking tend to dominate
current discussions of crime policy. These debates
would take place in an empirical vacuum, however,
were it not for the information produced by NIJ.
NIJ has studied the nature and extent of
drug-related crime and the factors that affect it
and conducted numerous evaluations of the costs
and effects of alternative laws and interventions
for reducing drug abuse and drug-related crime.

Early research documented the changes in crime
with changes in drug abuse. Findings reported by
researchers in Baltimore and at the University of
California at Los Angeles (UCLA) clearly confirmed
one of the major assumptions of drug treatment-
that reducing the level of drug usage can reduce
the level of criminality, even among relatively
hard-core drug users.

The Baltimore team analyzed background factors and
long-term patterns of crime for male heroin
addicts. Their results showed how the intensity of
criminal behavior-especially property crime-tended
to be directly related to drug use. During a
9-year period at risk, offenders' crime rates
dropped to relatively low levels during periods
when they had little or no narcotic use. While
they were actively addicted, however, their
criminality was typically about 4 to 6 times
higher. For those who had several cycles of
addiction and reduction or cessation of narcotics
use, the levels of criminality clearly tended to
rise and fall with drug usage.65

The UCLA team's analyses yielded parallel
patterns. Their Southern California sample
consisted of heroin addicts admitted to methadone
maintenance programs from 1971 to 1978.
Contrasting these addicts' criminal involvement in
the year prior to first addiction with their
criminality in the year after addiction revealed
notable increases. Arrest rates increased from 40
to 100 percent overall, with the largest increases
occurring for burglary and theft. There were 21 to
30 percent increases in the numbers of individuals
engaging in crime from the pre- to post-addiction
years, and three- to fivefold increases in the
number of days on which they committed crimes.66 

Identification of drug users. The strong findings
of a crime-drug connection led to interest in
developing better methods of identifying active
drug users. At about the same time, urinalysis
testing emerged as a relatively inexpensive means
of identifying drug users. One of the earliest
applications of drug testing in the justice system
was for pretrial releasees. In two NIJ-funded
demonstrations, high drug usage of pretrial
detainees was demonstrated, as was their increased
risk of recidivism. This research revealed that 56
percent of the District of Columbia arrestees and
81 percent of a New York sample had taken one or
more drugs other than alcohol or marijuana prior
to their arrest. Pretrial rearrest rates were 50
percent higher for drug-positive offenders, with
multiple drug users presenting the greatest risks
to the community.67

The Washington, D.C., project established the
operational feasibility of a comprehensive
pretrial drug testing program, and it soon became
a national model. Numerous courts throughout the
Nation received Federal funding to implement
similar projects, and NIJ funded program
evaluations. The followup research questioned the
utility of using drug testing data to predict
pretrial conduct but did confirm the widespread
use of drugs and alcohol in arrestee
populations.68 

These studies of high levels of drug use among
arrestees encouraged NIJ to initiate the Drug Use
Forecasting System (DUF) in 1987 with the
assistance of Eric Wish, an NIJ Visiting Fellow,
who had conducted the earlier research in New
York. DUF is a drug use monitoring system designed
to provide estimates of recent drug use among
booked arrestees. To obtain the data, voluntary
and anonymous interviews and urine specimens are
obtained on a quarterly basis from samples of male
arrestees processed through booking facilities at
each of DUF's 23 sites. The urinalysis results are
then merged with official record information on
crime and self-report data from the interviews.
DUF is now recognized as one of the leading
indicators of illegal drug use. 

In addition to monitoring national drug use
trends, the DUF results have been used in a number
of ways. For example, they led to the
establishment of pretrial drug testing programs in
New Orleans and Chicago. DUF findings in Chicago,
Illinois and Portland, Oregon stimulated
State-funded DUF replications in suburban and
rural counties. DUF data are also widely used at
the Federal level to obtain a more complete
picture of drug consumption patterns in American
cities. DUF findings were a major information
source for the Office of National Drug Control
Policy's (ONDCP) commissioned paper on heavy
cocaine use and for the ONDCP Technical Report,
What America's Users Spend on Illegal Drugs. 

As an extension of the DUF project, in 1986, NIJ
pioneered hair analysis as a less intrusive, more
accurate means than urinalysis for detecting
illegal drug use. Urinalysis, the most commonly
used drug test, can only detect recent consumption
of drugs, while a strand of hair 2 inches long
cannot detect recent use but can reveal use over a
4-month period. NIJ is working with the National
Institute on Drug Abuse, U.S. Department of Health
and Human Services (HHS), to develop accurate
procedures for hair analysis as a complement to
urine testing. Already in use in three States in
correctional settings, NIJ is currently funding a
demonstration project to more fully integrate the
use of hair testing as well as DUF data to inform
local criminal enforcement and treatment policy.69

Evaluations of drug laws. NIJ funding has
supported evaluations of newly enacted drug laws
as well. The earliest NIJ study, which has since
become a landmark in the field, was the evaluation
of New York State's 1973 "Rockefeller" drug law.
The quantitative and qualitative analyses by the
American Bar Association provided inputs to state
legislatures, both on the specific topic of drug
laws and on the broader issues of penal law
revision.70 These laws severely increased the
prescribed penalties for drug offenses, restricted
prosecutorial discretion in plea bargaining, and
limited judges' discretion in imposing nonprison
sentences. The evaluation concluded that, during
the first 3 years the law was in effect, the
objectives-to control illegal drug use and related
crime-were not achieved. Heroin use, for example,
was as widespread in New York City in mid-1976 as
in 1973, and there were no significant deterrent
effects on repeat offenders or changes in patterns
of drug-related crimes. Considerable increase in
court case backlog occurred and the plea
bargaining provisions of the laws were changed.

Crime Prevention

As more is known about the nature of crime and the
limited ability of justice agencies to control it,
the importance of crime prevention has become
clear. Most researchers now agree that crime
prevention must be an integral part of any overall
crime control strategy, and NIJ has funded some of
the seminal research studies identifying the
personal, household, and neighborhood activities
that can reduce the incidence and fear of crime in
communities. 

Early NIJ research on neighborhood crime
prevention in Hartford, Connecticut in the 1970's
provided a framework for dealing with crime, fear,
and social disorder that included a comprehensive
focus on environmental features as well as the
actions of citizens and the police. The Hartford
study (and the subsequent replications) showed
that there were a number of actions citizens could
take, both individually and collectively, to
protect themselves, their homes, and their
neighborhoods. As citizens became more active in
crime control activities, their fear of crime was
reduced.71 This research-and the importance of
sharing responsibility between the police and the
neighborhood residents for community safety-has
influenced the design of many community-policing
programs today.

Over the past 25 years, however, citizens have
initiated their own crime prevention programs,
such as Neighborhood Watch and Crime Stoppers, and
NIJ has funded evaluations of these programs. 

Neighborhood Watch. The primary activity of
Neighborhood Watch is citizen patrol. Other
aspects of the program include property marking,
promoting behavior that increases safety (such as
not walking alone after dark), and disseminating
local crime-related information to members. NIJ
funded a review in the late 1980's of these
programs and discovered that they were difficult
to implement and maintain, particularly in the
high-crime neighborhoods that needed them most.72
When these programs were implemented well, there
was some evidence suggesting that they modestly
affect rates of residential burglary and robbery.
They certainly increased community cohesion, which
may in turn affect the reporting of crime and the
identification of suspects. 

Crime prevention. The Federal Government developed
a national public service campaign on community
crime prevention, known as the McGruff campaign or
"Take a Bite Out of Crime." The program includes a
series of public service announcements in the
media intended to provide helpful assistance to
the public through crime prevention tips. The
McGruff figure is now well-known to kids and
adults and can be seen on television, posters, and
brochures. One study found that those who were
familiar with the McGruff campaign were more
knowledgeable about crime prevention and were more
confident in their abilities to prevent crime.73 

Security by design. NIJ has also had a
long-standing interest in understanding how the
physical environment affects crime rates and crime
prevention efforts. Architect Oscar Newman first
advanced the notion that the physical environment,
particularly the placement of buildings and
lighting, affects a neighborhood's susceptibility
to crime.74 For example, by controlling offender
access and enhancing surveillance of offender
behavior, the opportunity for crime to occur is
reduced. In addition, studies have found that
particular features of the physical environment
can be used to make it more or less "defensible"
against crime by providing opportunities to
exercise greater control of activities in various
settings. 

With Federal funding, Oscar Newman developed
detailed architectural plans for safe
neighborhoods, and they were tested in various
locales across the Nation. In several of the
neighborhoods, crime did decrease. While it was
not empirically demonstrated that the
architectural changes were directly responsible
for the crime decrease, planners have continued to
incorporate many of Newman's major features in
building projects both here and abroad. NIJ helped
disseminate the findings in an operational
handbook on "Crime Prevention Through
Environmental Design," which focused on the
development and implementation of this approach.75
Planning guidelines were also developed on
environmental security planning for urban design
practitioners.76 Further, many commercial
establishments (for example, the Southland
Corporation that operates the 7 Eleven convenience
stores), have incorporated these guidelines in the
design of their stores since the 1980's. 

White-Collar and Organized Crime 

White-collar crime may not generate the paralyzing
fear stimulated by such violent crimes as rape and
robbery, but these complex and predatory offenses
have far-reaching consequences that threaten
economic security and undermine trust in public
and private institutions. Such crimes have been
rapidly increasing, due in part to the
computerization of financial and investment
transactions (enabling electronic fund transfers)
and the growing profitability of drug trafficking
(providing incentives for the emergence of new
organized crime groups and enterprises). These
crimes pose special problems for law enforcement
and prosecutors since their intricate and covert
nature makes them particularly difficult to
identify and successfully prosecute. 

Recognizing the emerging importance of
white-collar crime, NIJ designated it a priority
research area in 1988. Since that time, major
studies have been funded on savings and loan
fraud, insurance and securities fraud, money
laundering, computer crime, telemarketing fraud,
and public corruption. While some of the research
is still ongoing, it has already provided valuable
insights into the nature of this type of crime and
criminal and promising prevention and enforcement
strategies. 

Fraud in the savings and loan industry in the
1980's constituted what may be the biggest
white-collar swindle in the history of the
Nation.77 NIJ was interested in understanding the
factors that contributed to such widespread fraud,
the role that white-collar crime played in the
debacle, and the government response to the
crisis. NIJ funded Kitty Calavita and Henry
Pontell, of the University of California at
Irvine, to study those issues. Using data from
California, Florida, Texas, and Washington, D.C.,
they were able to examine the origins of the
thrift crisis, focusing particularly on the impact
of deregulation and the Federal deposit insurance
system, which together they believed provided
significant incentives to profit from fraud. In
addition, they identified the particular
organizational environments and regulatory
structures that were most vulnerable to particular
fraud activities.78 This information was used to
provide testimony on the issue before the U.S.
Senate Committee on Banking, Housing, and Public
Affairs in 1992 and has been incorporated into the
training materials for Secret Service and
regulatory agents.

Researchers at the Institute for Law and Justice
(INSLAW) and the Police Executive Research Forum
(PERF) conducted separate international and
national assessments of money laundering,
attempting to evaluate the methods employed in
such crime in the United States and elsewhere.79
These assessments identified the most common types
of money laundering and described the most
effective enforcement strategies of experienced
Federal investigators and prosecutors. The
information was then distributed at a training
conference cosponsored by the Federal Bureau of
Investigation and NIJ on emerging economic crimes.
Subsequent to the conference, the information was
used to develop guidelines for State and local
officials enabling them to select effective
strategies for control of money laundering.

Much of this research is just being published, but
given its importance, NIJ funded a separate volume
of the prestigious Crime and Justice series
devoted to white collar and organizational crime.
The volume highlighted research on organizational
offenses in such industries as securities,
commodities, savings and loan, health care,
government procurement, and construction. 

Victims

While most NIJ funding has been devoted to
understanding justice agencies and criminal
behavior, victims have also been the subject of
Institute studies. Early NIJ research focused
primarily on the victimization process in terms of
victim-offender relationships and the criminal
incident itself, while more recent research has
shifted to more practical concerns about the
consequences of victimization, and ways to
facilitate victim participation in the justice
system.

Effects of victimization. Early NIJ research
showed that victims of crime often experience
crisis reactions similar to those experienced by
victims of war, natural disasters, and
catastrophic illness. Psychological reactions of
victims were examined indepth under a 1984 NIJ
study funded at the Medical University of South
Carolina.80 Researchers interviewed female victims
of sexual assault, robbery, aggravated assault,
and home burglary. Psychological adjustment of
victims was measured against that of a sample of
nonvictims. This research provided the first
reliable information about the proportion of
victims in various crime categories who experience
serious adjustment problems. Results indicated
that victims of sexual assault suffer more adverse
psychological reactions and adjustment problems
than victims of robbery or burglary.81

In addition, research found that victim
involvement in the criminal justice process often
compounds the harm they have suffered.82 This is
particularly true with victims of sexual assault.
Other research has documented that female victims
of rape and non-sexual assault have increased
utilization of medical services 5 years after
victimization.83 

Research detailing crime's impact on victims has
helped build support for the creation of victim
service programs, such as crisis intervention
centers and rape counseling programs.
Institute-supported projects have provided
legislators, criminal justice planners, and
practitioners with new information on the effects
of crime on victims, on the success of programs to
help victims recover psychologically and
financially, and on ways of helping victims
through the criminal justice process.84

Victim participation in the criminal justice
process. Because victim participation is critical
to the criminal justice proceedings, many courts
have encouraged victims to participate in the
felony sentencing proceedings; however, estimates
show that less than 5 percent of eligible victims
actually appeared. NIJ-funded research discovered
that few victims were aware that they had the
right to appear and speak at sentencing. Most
victims interviewed indicated that they would need
more information, more support, and some legal
assistance to be able to exercise this right
effectively. This research also showed that
victims wanted information about the status of
their case as much as they desired the legal right
to participate in the case. This research has
supported victim advocates' efforts to notify
victims of decisions related to their case.85 

Effects of child abuse and neglect. One of the
most important studies in the victim research area
has been one documenting the detrimental effects
of child abuse and neglect. NIJ-supported research
by Cathy Spatz Widom uncovered strong evidence of
the existence of a "cycle of violence," that is, a
childhood history of physical abuse that
predisposes a victim to violent behavior later in
life. By analyzing the arrest records of more than
1,500 individuals, it was found that abuse and
neglect during childhood increased the odds of
future delinquency and adult criminality by 40
percent.86 NIJ funded Widom to continue research
in this area, by supplementing the arrest record
data with that obtained from personal interviews
with victims. This later research (still in
progress) suggests that child abuse contributes to
other negative outcomes, such as poor education
performance, substance abuse, and mental health
problems. Such data are helping to build a base of
knowledge with which prevention and treatment
programs can be designed. 

Circumstances of victimization. A continuing area
of investigation at NIJ has been the etiology of
victimization, both at the individual and
neighborhood level. At the individual level, NIJ
has focused on how individual attributes and daily
life routines interact with environmental concerns
to lead to victimization. Studies of victimization
patterns show that certain demographic groups face
higher rates of victimization (e.g., males,
minority). Further studies of particular
populations have emphasized the fact that various
aspects of American lifestyle significantly
influence rates of victimization. These include
increased patterns of mobility, increased
availability of portable valuable goods, and
limited guardianship of residences.87 These
elements are under the individual's control, and
as publicized, may ultimately lead to more
effective individual crime prevention measures.

Developing Advanced Technologies for Justice
System Agencies 

Science and technology programs at NIJ cut across
the whole range of criminal justice issues and are
aimed at providing the foundation for the
development of tools that aid the criminal justice
community by improving the effectiveness of law
enforcement. For example, NIJ took a prominent
role in the development and testing of the Kevlar
bullet resistant vest. This lightweight, garment
is now used by thousands of police officers and
corrections officers across the Nation and
prevents dozens of officer deaths each year. 

NIJ has contributed extensively to the knowledge
of DNA testing and utilization. Because every cell
in the human body contains DNA, it may be present
at crime scenes in innumerable forms-blood or
semen stains, hair follicles, or skin cells shed
in clothing. Because DNA is unique to every person
except identical twins, it offers the possibility
of much greater accuracy in determining the
identity of a suspect.

Since 1991, NIJ has supported development of
standards for DNA procedures using two standard
testing methods-restricted fragment length
polymorphism (RFLP) and polymerase chain reaction
(PCR)-and has continued to develop improvements in
PCR (which yields results in a fraction of the
time required by RFLP and eliminates the need for
hazardous radioactive materials). These standard
development projects have been recognized by R&D
Magazine as one of the 100 best research and
development projects for 1993. NIJ has also been
conducting research on environmental factors that
adversely affect DNA samples and has been looking
for ways to further increase the accuracy of DNA
identification methods.88 In addition, NIJ
sponsored a National Academy of Sciences (NAS)
review of DNA research, which subsequently
concluded that DNA was a reliable test for
identifying suspects.

Fingerprint identification. NIJ is now supporting
several major efforts to improve the taking of
latent fingerprints. An NIJ initiative developed a
portable one-step cyanoacrylate fingerprint
detection technology, which can increase the
efficiency of lifting fingerprints at a crime
scene. A new device that is about the size of an
ordinary fountain pen was developed under an NIJ
grant: it develops the prints in a matter of
seconds onsite in a single step. This device is
expected to cost less than $50 and requires
virtually no training in its use. 

Less-than-lethal weapons. Most recently, NIJ has
been heavily involved in a program to develop
less-than-lethal weapons (LTL). The objective of
this program is to develop alternative devices
that, without causing significant harm, quickly
incapacitate those who would harm others. In 1992
and 1993, a series of grants and cooperative
agreements were initiated by NIJ to form an
integrated and broad based LTL program focused on
the practical needs of users. U.S. Attorney
General Janet Reno formally requested assistance
from the Secretary of Defense and the Director of
Central Intelligence in identifying military and
intelligence community technologies with dual-use
promise for law enforcement. Liaison offices have
been established in both the Departments of
Defense and Justice to assist in NIJ efforts to
transfer mature technologies to law enforcement.
NIJ has also tapped the technical expertise within
the Department of Energy national laboratories,
particularly in the Special Technologies Programs
charged with development of technology for
intelligence gathering and the safeguarding of
nuclear materials. 

As a result of these efforts, NIJ has developed
several prototype technologies, including: a rear
seat airbag to safely subdue violent arrestees in
the back seats of patrol cars; a prototype device
to safely deflate the tires of a fleeing vehicle;
a preliminary version of a velocity adjusting
weapon that will allow plastic bullets to be fired
safely and effectively at any range; and a device
to project a thin stream of non-toxic sticky foam
(developed as part of the U.S. Nuclear Security
program) at a distance of 30 to 50 feet, gluing an
uncooperative suspect's legs and feet to the
ground. Under development are "dazzling" and
disorienting light systems and a device that will
allow a fleeing vehicle to be marked so that it
can be tracked without a high-speed pursuit. NIJ
is also developing a "safe" gun that can be fired
only by an authorized user. The safe gun
technology will address the problem of officers
being killed with their own weapon when it is
captured by others, and also it may reduce the
incidents of children killed in firearms
accidents.89

Panels at the National Academy of Sciences

Even though it represents a small part of NIJ's
total program, the Institute has benefited
considerably from a number of studies it has
assigned since the late 1970's to the Committee on
Research on Law Enforcement and Administration of
Justice of the National Research Council of the
National Academy of Sciences. Such studies have
typically been used for assessing some potentially
important research findings and for formulating
research agendas in an emerging problem area. 

The first effort for which NIJ sought out the
Academy was an evaluation of the overall NIJ
research program. The resulting report90 critiqued
programs and processes at NIJ and made a number of
recommendations for changes in process and in
authorizing legislation. Many were adopted and
strengthened NIJ. 

Since that initial effort, there have been panels
in the following areas: 

o Deterrence and incapacitation.

o Rehabilitation.

o Legislative impact on the courts.

o Sentencing research.

o Criminal careers.

o Violence.

These panels have typically been convened to
assess some potentially important new findings
with significant technical content that requires a
mixture of disciplinary perspectives. A result of
the assessment involves a set of qualifications on
the research findings and identification of a
research agenda that will repair problems
identified in initial findings. The agenda also
provides for more effective interpretation and use
of the research results, thus aiding the policy
process. The panels bring together a number of
distinguished academics in the relevant
disciplines, along with practitioners who can
interact effectively with the academics. 

The panels also bring the virtue of a
multidisciplinary perspective and ideological
balance, a characteristic that is particularly
needed in a field that is so often beset by
research findings made suspect by an ideological
orientation. By bringing a diversity of
perspectives onto a panel, any ideological
proclivities tend to be held in check and so the
panels converge on those conclusions the empirical
evidence can validly support. 

As a result, conclusions and recommendations that
come from such panels tend to have a greater
credibility than that of any individual
investigator. Thus, the panels can serve as
effective vehicles for sorting out conflicting,
complex technical findings (e.g., as in the widely
varying estimates of deterrent effects). With that
base of involvement, a panel can then formulate a
research agenda that will provide greater
illumination for a particular important question
(e.g., stimulating research on criminal careers,
at least in part to be able to make better
estimates of incapacitation effects).

Impact of Federal Investment in Criminal Justice
Research

The 25 years of Federal investment in criminal
justice research through NIJ has had a major
impact on the operation of the criminal justice
system, and it has produced results and insights
about criminals and about the effects of the
criminal justice system on crime rates that have
significantly illuminated issues that are central
to the development of crime-control policy. 

It cannot yet be claimed, however, that those
results and insights have been major influences on
the formulation of crime control policy. In
today's times, with the strong political influence
in the formulation of crime policy, research has
contributed less to the substantive formulation of
policy than the base of knowledge warrants. But
research is supposed to be ahead of the policy in
any event, and it clearly has generated
information that will be available at the next
opportunity for rational policymaking.

Prospects for the Future

This essay on NIJ research has highlighted how
much has been accomplished in the past quarter
century. NIJ has been an important source of
influence on the world of practice in criminal
justice. It has brought some new methods and
technologies to bear, it has avoided some
inappropriate ones, it has cast light on some
serious problems, and it has contributed to some
significant maturity in the way people think about
crime and punishment. 

When compared to the public debate about these
issues, which is still often focused on
ideological issues and simplistic solutions to
complex problems, it is clear that the thinking
resulting from research, backed up by strong
evidence, is very sophisticated, but it still has
a long way to go to become an important part of
the public debate. Researchers must also remember
that the revolution in thinking brought about by
Galileo and Copernicus took far longer than 25
years to become widely diffused to European
thinking.

Criminal justice policy imposed primarily through
the legislative process over the past decade or
more has been dominated by the theme of
incarceration. Legislators responding to the
public's concerns over crime have reacted by
calling for the increased used of imprisonment.
This is in marked contrast to research
recommendations highlighting the limitations of
imprisonment as a major strategy to reduce crime.

Strategies have to be considered more thoughtfully
with particular awareness of the limitations of
the criminal justice system. There is so little
that it can do beyond the simple incarceration of
particular individuals, as appropriate, for as
long as they are seen to be major threats to
society that creative efforts are clearly needed
to develop and evaluate alternative methods.

Much greater effort still has to be applied to the
theme of crime prevention. That is clearly not the
primary mission of the Justice Department, but
there are many opportunities for the Justice
Department to work with other government
departments, particularly HHS, to pursue those
themes. The longitudinal research projects
initiated in Office of Juvenile Justice and
Delinquency Prevention and being extended in some
exciting ways by the NIJ-MacArthur Foundation
project in Chicago clearly offer promise in those
directions.

There is now a growing awareness in many circles
that despite the political rhetoric proposed for
addressing the crime problem, one must weigh the
benefits to be attained by the intervention
efforts against the costs associated with pursuing
them. Research is needed to get measures of these
positive and negative consequences of various
kinds of intervention, and particularly of
criminal justice interventions. 

It is thus an appropriate time to initiate action
programs intended to address those issues. It
should be clear, however, that any such action
programs will largely result from the imagination
of their creators because there is a lack of
well-established theories on which to build such
programs. This lack of knowledge should not
inhibit efforts to use the best judgment and
creativity available to formulate such programs.
The task is too important to be delayed until the
knowledge arrives. 

It would be equally irresponsible to fail to
pursue parallel efforts to build the knowledge
base, to study factors that contribute to
delinquency and criminality, and to conduct
careful evaluations of innovative projects. This
is all necessary so that the cut-and-try
approaches which will be pursued in the near
future do not become the standard forever. A
research program in parallel with operational
activities is the necessary combination for being
able to perform better in the future. Industry
takes it for granted that it must spend about 3
percent of its operating costs on research and
development. Research in the area of crime and
criminal justice is well below that level of 3
percent. 

With an appropriate infusion of support, there is
a strong prospect for developments over the next
25 years having much greater impact on policy, and
contributing to reduced crime and improved
criminal justice in the United States.

Notes

1. The initial name of the Institute was the
National Institute of Law Enforcement and Criminal
Justice (NILECJ), but it was basically the same
agency as currently, but with a somewhat different
organization structure in the Department of
Justice. The name was changed to the National
Institute of Justice in 1978. We refer here to the
Institute as "NIJ" for the entire 25-year period.

2. President's Commission on Law Enforcement and
Administration of Justice, Challenge of Crime in a
Free Society, Washington, D.C.: President's
Commission on Law Enforcement and Administration
of Justice, 1967; Task Force on Science and
Technology, Task Force Report on Science and
Technology, Washington, D.C.: Government Printing
Office, 1967.

3. Kelling, George L., Police and Communities: The
Quiet Revolution, Perspectives on Policing,
Washington, D.C.: U.S. Department of Justice,
National Institute of Justice, 1988.

4. Kelling, George L., Tony Pate, D. Dieckman,
C.E. Brown, Kansas City Preventive Patrol
Experiment-A Summary Report, Washington, D.C.:
Police Foundation, 1974.

5. Sherman, Lawrence W., J.D. Schmidt, D.P. Rogan,
Policing Domestic Violence: Experiences and
Dilemmas, New York: Free Press, 1992.

6. Van Kirk, Marvin, Response Time Analysis-
Executive Summary, Washington, D.C.: U.S.
Department of Justice, Law Enforcement Assistance
Administration, National Institute of Law
Enforcement and Criminal Justice, September 1978.

7. Pate, Tony, Amy Ferrara, Robert A. Bowers, J.
Lawrence, Police Response Time-Its Determinants
and Effects, Washington, D.C.: Police Foundation,
1976; Spelman, William, and Dale K. Brown, Calling
the Police, Washington, D.C.: Police Executive
Research Forum, 1982.

8. Petersilia, Joan, Influence of Criminal Justice
Research, Washington, D.C.: U.S. Department of
Justice, National Institute of Justice, 1987.

9. Greenwood, Peter, Joan Petersilia, and Jan
Chaiken, Criminal Investigation Process,
Lexington, Massachusetts: D Heath and Company,
1977.

10. Soskis, Joque H., "P.I.S.T.O.L. (Paperless
Information System Totally On-Line) Project,"
National Institute of Justice, Unpublished Report,
86-IJ-CX-0006.

11. Kiblin, J.E., L.J. Hamel, R.L. Sheets,
Neighborhood Action Team-Final Report, Washington,
D.C.: U.S. Department of Justice, National
Institute of Justice, 1982.

12. Moore, M.H., R Trojanowicz, G.L. Kelling,
Crime and Policing, Perspectives on Policing,
Washington, D.C.: U.S. Department of Justice,
National Institute of Justice, 1988.

13. Cirel, P., P. Evans, D. McGillis, D. Whitcomb,
Community Crime Prevention Program -Seattle,
Washington - Exemplary Project, Washington, D.C.:
U.S. Department of Justice, LEAA National
Institute of Law Enforcement and Criminal Justice,
1977; Lavrakas, P.J., J. Normoyle, W.G. Skogan,
E.J. Herz, G. Salem, D.A. Lewis, Factors related
to Anti-Crime Involvement in Personal, Household,
and Neighborhood Anti-Crime Measures - An
Executive Summary, Washington, D.C.: U.S.
Department of Justice, National Institute of
Justice, 1981.

14. Pate, Tony et al., Newark Foot Patrol
Experiment, Washington, D.C.: Police Foundation,
1981; Spelman, William, J.E. Eck, Problem Oriented
Policing, Research in Brief, Washington, D.C.:
U.S. Department of Justice, National Institute of
Justice, January 1987.

15. Sherman, Lawrence W., Richard A. Berk,
Minneapolis Domestic Violence Experiment,
Washington, D.C.: Police Foundation, 1984;
Sherman, L.W., R.A. Berk, "Specific Deterrent
Effects of Arrest for Domestic Assault," American
Sociological Review, 49(2)(April 1984):261-272.

16. Sherman, Lawrence W., Ellen G. Cohn, "Impact
of Research on Legal Policy: The Minneapolis
Domestic Violence Experiment," Law and Society
Review, 23(1)(1989):117-144.

17. Sherman, Schmidt, and Rogan, Policing Domestic
Violence: Experiences and Dilemmas.

18. Ibid.

19. Dunford, Franklyn W., David Huizanga, Delbert
S. Elliott, "Role of Arrest in Domestic Assault:
The Omaha Police Experiment," Criminology,
28(2)(May 1990):183-206; Sherman, Lawrence W.,
J.D. Schmidt, D. Rogan, C. DeRiso, "Predicting
Domestic Homicide: Prior Police Contact and Gun
Threats," and Hirschel, J. David, and Ira
Hutchinson, "Police-Preferred Arrest Policies," in
Woman Battering: Policy Responses, ed. Michael
Steinman, Cincinnati, OH: Anderson Publishing
Company, 1991:73-93; et al., 1991; Berk, Richard
A., Alec Campbell, Ruth Klap, Bruce Western,
"Bayesian Analysis of the Colorado Springs Spouse
Abuse Experiment," Journal of Criminal Law and
Criminology, 83(1)(Spring 1992):170-200; Pate, A.,
E.E. Hamilton, S. Annan, "Metro-Dade Spouse Abuse
Replication Project: Draft Final Report,"
Washington, D.C.: Police Foundation, 1991;
Hirschel J. David, Ira W. Hutchinson, Charles
Dean, Joseph J. Kelley, and Carolyn E. Pesackis,
Charlotte, Spouse Assault Replication Project:
Final Report, Washington, D.C.: U.S. Department of
Justice, National Institute of Justice, 1990. 

20. Sherman, Schmidt, and Rogan, Policing Domestic
Violence: Experiences and Dilemmas.

21. Ibid.

22. Wolfgang, Marvin E., Delinquency in A Birth
Cohort, Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press,
1972.

23. Martin, Susan E., Lawrence W. Sherman,
Catching Career Criminals - The Washington, D.C.,
Repeat Offender Project, Washington, D.C.: Police
Foundation, 1986.

24. Abrahamse, Allan F., Pat A. Ebener, Peter W.
Greenwood, Nora Fitzgerald, T.E. Kosin, "An
Experimental Evaluation of the Phoenix Repeat
Offender Program," Justice Quarterly, 8(2)(June
1991):141-168.

25. Boland, Barbara P. Mahanna, R. Sones,
Prosecution and Felony Arrests, Washington, D.C.:
U.S. Department of Justice, Bureau of Justice
Statistics, 1991.

26. Forst, Brian, Judith Lucianovic, Sara J. Cox,
What Happens After Arrest? - A Court Perspective
of Police Operations in the District of Columbia -
Prosecutor's Management Information System
Research Project, Washington, D.C.: U.S.
Department of Justice, LEAA, National Institute of
Law Enforcement and Criminal Justice, 1977.

27. Vera Institute of Justice, Felony Arrests:
Their Prosecution and Disposition in New York
City's Courts, New York: Vera Institute of
Justice, 1977.

28. Feeney, Floyd, Forrest Dill, Adrianne Weir,
Arrests Without Conviction - How Often They Occur
and Why, Washington, D.C.: U.S. Department of
Justice, National Institute of Justice, 1983.

29. Cannavale, Frank J., and William D. Falcon,
Improving Witness Cooperation, Washington, D.C.:
U.S. Department of Justice, National Institute of
Justice, 1977.

30. McDonald, William, F., Henry H. Rossman, James
A. Cramer, Police Prosecutor Relations in the
United States - Final Report, Washington, D.C.:
U.S. Department of Justice, National Institute of
Justice, 1981.

31. Dawson, J.M., Prosecutors in State Courts,
Washington, D.C.: U.S. Department of Justice,
Bureau of Justice Statistics, 1992.

32. Greenwood, Peter W., S. Wildhorn, E Poggio,
M.J. Strumwasser, P. Deleon, Prosecution of Adult
Felony Defendants - A Policy Perspective,
Lexington, MA: D Heath and Company, 1976.

33. Greenwood, Peter W., Joan Petersilia, Frank E.
Zimring, Age, Crime, and Sanctions - The
Transition From Juvenile to Adult Court,
Washington, D.C.: U.S. Department of Justice,
LEAA, National Institute of Law Enforcement and
Criminal Justice, 1980.

34. Chelimsky, Eleanor, Judith Dahmann, Career
Criminal Program - National Evaluation - Final
Report, Washington, D.C.: U.S. Department of
Justice, National Institute of Justice, 1981.

35. Springer, J.F., J.L. Phillips, L.P. Cannady,
The Effectiveness of Selective Prosecution by
Career Criminal Programs, Washington, D.C.: U.S.
Department of Justice, National Institute of
Justice, 1985.

36. Ares, Charles E., Anne Rankin, Herbert Sturz,
"The Manhattan Bail Project: An Interim Report on
the Use of Pre-Trial Parole," New York University
Law Review, 38:67-95, 1963.

37. Freed, Daniel J., P.M. Wald, "Bail in the
United States - 1964" (working paper for the
National Conference on Bail and Criminal Justice,
May 27-29, 1964), New York: Vera Institute of
Justice, 1964.

38. Sorin, Martin D., Danger of New Offenses
Following Pretrial Release - How Courts in Four
Jurisdictions Respond to Pretrial Re-Arrests-
Final Report of Judicial Responses to Multiple
Pretrial Re-Arrests, Washington, D.C.: U.S.
Department of Justice, National Institute of
Justice, 1983.

39. Gottfredson, Michael R., and Don M.
Gottfredson, Decisionmaking in Criminal Justice,
Cambridge, Massachusetts: Ballinger, 1980.

40. Martinson, Robert, "What Works? Questions and
Answers About Prison Reform," in Crime and
Criminal Justice, eds. J.A. Gardiner and M.A.
Mulkey, Lexington, MA: D Heath and Company, 1975.

41. Goldkamp, John S., Doris Weiland, Assessing
the Impact of Dade County's Felony Drug Court:
Executive Summary, Washington, D.C.: U.S.
Department of Justice, National Institute of
Justice, 1993; Goldkamp, John S., Doris Weiland,
Assessing the Impact of Dade County's Felony Drug
Court, Research in Brief, Washington, D.C.: U.S.
Department of Justice, National Institute of
Justice, December 1993.

42. Petersilia, Joan, Susan Turner, J. Kahan, J.
Peterson, Granting Felons Probation - Public Risks
and Alternatives, Washington, D.C.: U.S.
Department of Justice, National Institute of
Justice, 1985.

43. MacKenzie, Doris Layton, James W. Shaw,
Voncile B. Gowdy, Evaluation of Shock
Incarceration in Louisiana, Research in Brief,
Washington, D.C.: U.S. Department of Justice,
National Institute of Justice, June 1993.

44. MacKenzie, Doris Layton, "Boot Camp Prisons in
1993," National Institute of Justice Journal,
Washington, D.C.: U.S. Department of Justice,
National Institute of Justice, November 1993.

45. MacKenzie, Doris Layton, "Shock Incarceration
as an Alternative for Drug Offenders," in Drugs
and Crime: Evaluating Public Policy Initiatives,
eds. Doris Layton MacKenzie and Craig D. Uchida,
Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage Publications, 1994.

46. Parent, Dale G., Shock Incarceration: An
Overview of Existing Programs, Issues and
Practices, Washington, D.C.: U.S. Department of
Justice, National Institute of Justice, 1989.

47. U.S. General Accounting Office, Prison Boot
Camps: Short-Term Prison Costs Reduced, but
Long-Term Impact Uncertain, Gaithersburg, MD: U.S.
General Accounting Office, 1993.

48. Baird, Chris, Dennis Wagner, Evaluation of the
Florida Community Control Program, Research in
Brief, Washington, D.C.: U.S. Department of
Justice, National Institute of Justice, January
1993.

49. National Institute of Justice, National
Institute of Justice 1993 Program Plan,
Washington, D.C.: U.S. Department of Justice,
National Institute of Justice, March 1993.

50. Erwin, Billie S., "Turning Up the Heat on
Probationers in Georgia," Federal Probation,
50(2)(June 1986):17-24.

51. Petersilia, Joan, Susan Turner, Evaluating
Intensive Supervision Probation/Parole: Results of
a Nationwide Experiment, Research in Brief,
Washington, D.C.: U.S. Department of Justice,
National Institute of Justice, May 1993.

52. Pearson, Frank S., "Evaluation of New Jersey's
Intensive Supervision Program," Crime and
Delinquency, 34(4)(October 1988):437-448; Byrne,
James F., Linda Kelly, An Evaluation of the
Implementation and Impact of the Massachusetts
Intensive Probation Supervision Program, Final
Report, Washington, D.C.: U.S. Department of
Justice, National Institute of Justice, 1989.

53. Petersilia, Joan, Susan Turner, "Intensive
Probation and Parole," in Crime and Justice: A
Review of Research, ed. Michael Tonry, Chicago,
IL: University of Chicago Press, 1993:281-335.

54. Petersilia, Joan, Susan Turner, Intensive
Supervision for High-Risk Probationers: Findings
From Three California Experiments, Santa Monica,
CA: Rand Corporation, R-3936 NIJ/BJA, 1990.

55. Petersilia, Joan, Peter Greenwood, Marvin
Lavin, Criminal Careers of Habitual Felons, Santa
Monica, CA: The Rand Corporation, R-2144-DOJ,
1978.

56. Peterson, Mark A., Harriet Braiker, Suzanne
Polich, Who Commits Crimes: A Survey of Prison
Inmates, Cambridge, MA: Oelgeschlaer, Gunn, &
Hain, Inc., 1981.

57. Chaiken, Jan, Marcia Chaiken, Varieties of
Criminal Behavior, Santa Monica, CA: The Rand
Corporation, R-2814-NIJ, August 1982.

58. Horney, Julie, Ineke Marshall, "Measuring
Lambda Through Self-Reports," Criminology,
29(3)(1991):471-495.

59. Greenwood, Peter W., Susan Turner, Selective
Incapacitation Revisited: Why the High-Rate
Offenders are Hard to Predict, Santa Monica,
California: Rand Corporation, 1987.

60. Ibid.; Klein, Stephen P., Michael N. Caggiano,
The Prevalence, Predictability, and Policy
Implications of Recidivism, Santa Monica, CA: The
Rand Corporation, R-3413-BJS, 1986.

61. Blumstein, Alfred, Jacqueline Cohen, Jeffrey
Roth, Christy Visher, Criminal Careers and "Career
Criminals." Volume II, Washington, D.C.: National
Academy Press, 1986.

62. Cohen, Jacqueline, "Incapacitation as a
Strategy for Crime Control - Posibilities and
Pitfalls," in Crime and Justice - An Annual Review
of Research, eds. Michael Tonry and Norval Morris,
5(1983):1-84; Blumstein, Alfred, Jacqueline Cohen,
P. Hsieh, The Duration of Adult Criminal Careers -
Final Report, Pittsburgh, PA: Carnegie-Mellon
University School of Urban and Public Affairs,
1982.

63. Blumstei, Cohen, Roth, Visher, Criminal
Careers and "Career Criminals." Washington, D.C.:
National Academy Press, 1986.

64. Blumstein, Cohen, Jacqueline Cohen, and Daniel
Nagin, ed., Deterrence and Incapacitation:
Estimating the Effects of Criminal Sanctions on
Crime Rates, Washington, D.C.: National Academy of
Sciences, 1978.

65. Nurco, D.N., I.H. Cisin, M.B. Balter, "Addict
Careers II, The First Ten Years," The
International Journal of the Addictions,
16(8):1327-1356, 1981.

66. Anglin, M.D., Yh-Ing Hser, "Treatment of Drug
Abuse," in Drugs and Crime, eds. Michael Tonry and
James Q. Wilson, Chicago, IL: University of
Chicago Press, 1990:393-460.

67. Toborg, M.A., J.P. Bellassal, A.M. Yezer, R.P.
Trost, Assessment of Pretrial Urine Testing in the
District of Columbia, Issues and Practices,
Washington, D.C.: U.S. Department of Justice,
National Institute of Justice, 1989.

68. Britt, Chester L., III, Michael R.
Gottfredson, John Goldkamp, "Drug Testing and
Pretrial Misconduct: An Experiment on the Specific
Deterrent Effects of Drug Monitoring Defendants on
Pretrial Release," Journal of Research in Crime
and Delinquency, 29(1)(February 1992):62-78.

69. Gropper, Bernard A., Judy A. Reardon,
Developing Drug Testing by Hair Analysis, Research
in Brief, Washington, D.C.: U.S. Department of
Justice, National Institute of Justice, 1993;
Baer, J.D., W.A. Baumgartner, V.A. Hill, W.H.
Blahd, "Hair Analysis for the Detection of Drug
Use in Pretrial, Probation, and Parole
Populations," Federal Probation, 55(1)(March
1991):3-10; Gropper, Bernard A., "Drug Detection
Through Hair Analysis," Law Enforcement
Technology, (February 1989):18.

70. Caplan, G., Drug Crisis in America: A Handbook
for Bar Leadership, Washington, D.C.: American Bar
Association, 1991.

71. Fowler, F.J., T.W. Mangione, Neighborhood
Crime, Fear, and Social Control - A Second Look at
the Hartford Program - Executive Summary,
Washington, D.C.: U.S. Department of Justice,
LEAA, National Institute of Law Enforcement and
Criminal Justice, 1982.

72. Garofalo, P.J., "Polygraph Test Results in
Arbitration: A Question of Privacy and Scientific
Validity," Law and Psychology Review, 13(Spring
1989):59-76; Garofalo, P.J., M. McLeod, Structure
and Operations of Neighborhood Watch Programs in
the United States," Crime and Delinquency,
35(3)(special issue)(July 1989):326-344.

73. Gordon, L., P. O'Keefe, "Normality of Incest -
Father-Daughter Incest as a Form of Family
Violence - Evidence from Historical Case Records,"
in Rape and Sexual Assault, ed. Ann W. Burgess,
New York: Garland Publishing, Inc., 1985:70-82.

74. Newman, Oscar, Design Guidelines for Creating
Defensible Space, Washington, D.C.: U.S.
Department of Justice, LEAA, National Institute of
Law Enforcement and Criminal Justice, 1976.

75. Wallis, A., D. Ford, Crime Prevention Through
Environmental Design: The Commercial Demonstration
in Portland, Oregon - Executive Summary,
Washington, D.C.: U.S. Department of Justice,
National Institute of Justice, 1980.

76. Gardiner, R.A., Design for Safe Neighborhoods
- The Environmental Security Planning and Design
Process, Washington, D.C.: U.S. Department of
Justice, LEAA National Institute of Law
Enforcement and Criminal Justice, 1978.

77. Hagan, F.E., P.J. Benekos, "Great Savings and
Loan Scandal: An Analysis of the Biggest Financial
Fraud in American History," Journal of Security
Administration, 14(1)(June 1991):41-64. 

78. Pontell, H.N., K. Calavita, "Savings and Loan
Industry," in Beyond the Law: Crime in Complex
Organizations, Volume 18, eds. Michael Tonry and
Albert J. Reiss, Jr., Chicago, IL: University of
Chicago Press, 1993:203-246.

79. Karchmer, Clifford, and Douglas Ruch, State
and Local Money Laundering Control Strategies,
Research in Brief, Washington, D.C.: U.S.
Department of Justice, National Institute of
Justice, October 1992; McCampbell, Michael, and
Barbara Webster, International Money Laundering:
Research and Investigation Join Forces, U.S.
Department of Justice, National Institute of
Justice, September 1992.

80. Saunders, B.E., K.A. Mandoki, D.G. Kilpatrick,
"Development of a Crime-Related Post-Traumatic
Stress Disorder Scale for Women Within the Symptom
Checklist-90-Revised," National Institute of
Justice, Unpublished Report, 84-IJ-CX-0039, 1990.

81. Davis, Robert C., Crime Victims: Learning How
to Help Them, Research in Action, Washington,
D.C.: U. S. Department of Justice, National
Institute of Justice, May/June 1987.

82. Finn, Peter, and Beverly Lee, Serving Crime
Victims and Witnesses, Washington, D.C.: U.S.
Department of Justice, National Institute of
Justice, 1987.

83. Koss, M.P., P.G. Koss, J.Woodruff,
"Deleterious Effects of Criminal Victimization on
Women's Health and Medical Utilization," Archives
of Internal Medicine, V151 (February 1991):342-
347.

84. Davis, Crime Victims: Learning How to Help
Them; Cook, R.F., B.E. Smith, A.V. Harrell,
Helping Crime Victims-Levels of Trauma and
Effectiveness of Services-Executive Summary,
Program Evaluation, Washington, D.C.: U.S.
Department of Justice, National Institue of
Justice, 1986.

85. Villmoare, E., and V.V. Neto, Victim
Appearances at Sentencing Hearings Under
California's Victims' Bill of Rights, Executive
Summary, Washington, D.C.: U.S. Department of
Justice, National Institute of Justice, 1987.

86. Widom, Cathy S., The Cycle of Violence,
Research in Brief, Washington, D.C.: U.S.
Department of Justice, National Institute of
Justice, October 1992.

87. Felson, Marcus, "Routine Activities and Crime
Prevention in the Developing Metropolis",
Criminology, 25 (November 1987):911-931.

88. Boyd, David G., "Findings and Applying New
Technologies to Law Enforcement," National
Institute of Justice, Speech delivered at the
Symposium on Coupling Technology to National Needs
sponsored by the International Society for Optical
Engineering, Albuquerque, New Mexico, 1993.

89. Boyd, "Finding and Applying New Technologies
to Law Enforcement."

90. White, Susan O., and Samuel Krislov, eds.,
Understanding Crime: An Evaluation of the National
Institute of Law Enforcement and Criminal Justice,
Washington, D.C.: National Academy on Research on
Law Enforcement and Criminal Justice, 1977. 

Section 2.

Criminal Justice Science and Technology Program

The idea of using science and technology to combat
crime has long sparked the imagination of criminal
justice professionals and the general public.
Arthur Conan Doyle, in his Sherlock Holmes
stories, begun in the 1890's, fascinated readers
with techniques such as cataloging tobacco ashes
to identify suspects' brands of choice. Real life
soon found it was able to imitate fiction. The
idea of tracing and identifying an individual
typewriter by peculiarities of type first appeared
in Holmes' tale "A Case of Identity" in 1891.
Three years later, such a process was invented to
help authenticate documents. Doyle himself was
later called upon to aid in the investigation of
London's "Jack the Ripper" case.1

Several decades later, in 1919, Edward Oscar
Heinrich, known as "the American Sherlock Holmes,"
opened the first modern laboratory devoted to
crime detection in San Francisco, California.
Heinrich, a chemist from Wisconsin, went on to
solve cases that included the Roscoe "Fatty"
Arbuckle affair.2 

Despite such interest, development and adoption of
criminal justice technology has been a slow
process. There were scattered early attempts to
update police technology. Some achieved notable
success. For example, the first modern polygraph
was constructed in 1921 by a medical student and a
police officer.3 

With the explosion of technology during and after
World War II, law enforcement agencies were able
to learn from developments in other organizations,
particularly the military. Radio equipment and
surveillance aircraft found their way into some
large police departments. Few devices were,
however, conceived and developed specifically for
law enforcement applications. It was with this in
mind that the U.S. Government began in the 1960's
to assemble the resources to provide specific
technical assistance to the Nation's State and
local law enforcement agencies.

The President's Commission

In 1966 President Lyndon Johnson chartered a
President's Commission on Law Enforcement and
Administration of Justice to respond to the rising
frequency and sophistication of crime in the
Nation. The Task Force Report on Science and
Technology, one of nine areas studied by the
Commission, contained findings similar to those
reported 55 years earlier.4 The report stated that
although the natural sciences and technology have
long been used to help police solve specific
crimes, the professionals in those fields-the
scientists and engineers-have had little impact on
the operations of the criminal justice system. 

The report noted that many technological devices
already existed, some as prototypes and some as
readily available commercial products. Others
needing development were shown to be technically
feasible and worthy of further exploration. But,
for many reasons, even available devices had only
slowly been incorporated into criminal justice
operations. Procurement funds had been scarce,
industry had only limited incentives to conduct
basic development for an uncertain and fragmented
market, and criminal justice agencies had few
technically trained individuals on their staffs.

The President's Commission, through its reports,
succeeded in galvanizing support for a wide
variety of crime fighting programs, including a
technology development effort. As part of its
charge to encourage research and development to
improve and strengthen law enforcement, the
National Institute of Law Enforcement (NIJ) was to
focus on technology. After its inception in 1968,
NIJ also began making grants in key areas of law
enforcement technology and began holding
discussions on specific cooperative research
projects with other Federal agencies.

Initial Activities in Technology

The Institute initiated outreach activities with
other agencies. With the Defense Department, it
discussed personal transceivers for police, riot
control agents, night vision equipment, nonlethal
bullets, second-chance enlistments to provide an
alternative for certain offenders, and studies of
military rehabilitation practices. The Institute
began as observers at the regular meetings of the
Federal Council on Science and Technology but
participated formally in a Council study group to
develop cooperative research projects with the
Department of Defense. Other joint work was begun
with the Department of Transportation, the
Department of Housing and Urban Development, and
the National Aeronautics and Space Administration.

The Institute began its long relationship with the
Department of Commerce with a joint pilot study of
the problems posed by defendants on bail. But
their cooperation also had a technological
component as the Bureau of Standards worked to
provide reliable information on many
crime-reducing items. One test determined that
citizens could increase the safety of their homes
if they replaced the 1-inch screws usually found
on their door striker plates with 2.5-inch screws.
The longer screws, a simple, inexpensive solution,
made the doors almost impregnable to those who
wanted to kick them down.

One of the Institute's first grants was to the
Newton, Massachusetts, Police Department to assess
the suitability of six models of night vision
devices for law enforcement applications.5 The
study proved extremely useful. The equipment,
which permitted unobtrusive observation even in
starlight, was considered an aid to police safety
and efficiency. It was especially useful in mobile
patrol work and on evidence-gathering surveillance
missions. This study led directly to the
widespread use of night vision gear by law
enforcement agencies today.

The Seventies' Explosion

The 1970's began with NIJ's budget increasing 250
percent and its subsequent ability to fund many
more projects. At the beginning of the decade, the
Institute looked at improving such law enforcement
equipment as "air mobility" hardware. Urban law
enforcement use of fixed-wing STOL (short takeoff
and landing) aircraft was studied in Dade County,
Florida, and the use of helicopters was studied in
Washington, D.C. Results were used to assess the
effectiveness of air mobility systems in patrol,
investigation, surveillance, and search tasks.

A major area of interest was weapons: using them
and defending against their use. With Institute
support, the International Association of Chiefs
of Police (IACP) began a Police Weapons System
Program to evaluate policies and practices in the
acquisition and use of offensive and defensive
weapons by law enforcement agencies. Data from
press reports of police casualties were tabulated
as part of this study. IACP evaluations also
included available police weapons systems,
protective masks, submachine guns, water cannons,
body armor, bomb transport vehicles, and aerosol
projectors.6

Evaluation of police equipment. Evaluating weapons
and other police equipment involved establishing a
long-needed comprehensive national program of
standards for law enforcement equipment. In 1971,
the Institute established the Law Enforcement
Standards Laboratory under the auspices of the
National Bureau of Standards, Department of
Commerce. The laboratory's primary purposes have
been:

o Establishment of scientifically based, voluntary
commercial manufacturing standards so that police
agencies could select high-quality, low-cost
equipment.

o Certification of laboratories where equipment
items could be evaluated according to those
standards. 

Institute staff were to develop operational
requirements for equipment in consultation with
law enforcement departments and leaders and then
to field test the equipment to see if it met
standards. The Institute also worked with IACP to
test and disseminate information about police
equipment throughout the decade.

In fiscal year 1972, with a $5 million budget, the
Institute launched the Equipment Systems
Improvement Program (ESIP), which tested and
evaluated existing and new equipment and developed
guidelines to foster appropriate use by criminal
justice agencies. The technical work was done by
three groups-the analysis group, the development
group, and the standards group-performing under
contract to the Institute, which set policy and
provided overall supervision. Each group reported
its findings to the Institute and made
recommendations for action. For example, the
standards group formulated standards for ballistic
resistance of police body armor and for hearing
protectors used on police target firing ranges. It
issued reports on batteries used in police
communications equipment, battery charging, and
terms and definitions for communications
equipment. 

By 1973, the criminal justice community was
demanding more and moreinformation on evaluations
of technology. The demands fell basically into two
categories: the need to know what was working and
why and the need to know how an evaluation was
designed, what performance measures were most
useful, and how evaluations could be developed to
ensure maximum usefulness of the results.

By 1975, the Institute's standards laboratory had
completed performance standards for the following:

o Portable, mobile, and base station transmitters;
mobile receivers; and batteries for portable
radios.7 

o Walk-through and hand-held metal weapon
detectors.

o Portable x-ray devices for bomb disarmament.

o Communication equipment such as voice
scramblers, car location systems, and radio
transmitters, receivers, and repeaters.

o Active and passive night vision devices.

o Magnetic, mechanical, and mercury switches for
burglar alarms.

o Handcuffs, riot helmets, crash helmets, police
body armor, ballistic shields, and hearing
protectors.

One of the Institute's program managers noted the
importance of the ammunition standard. Quality
control was so poor at one supplier's factory that
muzzle velocity-and therefore, accuracy and
stopping power-varied from round to round. The
Institute's work on the ammunition standard led to
large quantities of ammunition being returned to
this manufacturer, who is no longer in business.8

The laboratory also developed standard materials
for use by forensic scientists: a collection of
1,974 paint colors and a standard sample of
automobile headlight glass. Reports were prepared
on such diverse matters as emergency warning
lights, sirens, patrol cars, police clothing, and
institutional buildings. By 1978, the laboratory
was surveying the technological needs of courts,
corrections, and community crime prevention
groups. 

Body armor. Of all the equipment developed and
evaluated in the 1970's by the Institute, one of
the most significant achievements was developing
body armor using DuPont's Kevlar material. A phone
call from the U.S. Army about DuPont's new
material, followed by a quick trip to a firing
range, led to the Institute's interest in Kevlar
being used for protection against bullets. 

From that finding came a 1972 Institute-sponsored
project with the U.S. Army's Land Warfare
Laboratory to use Kevlar in a new body armor that
would be lightweight, flexible, comfortable, and
effectively protective. Institute researchers were
concerned from the onset that the blunt trauma of
the bullet's force through the Kevlar to the body
could cause serious injuries. The Institute's
researchers conducted the most extensive tests of
blunt trauma that had ever been done, which were
not only of use to the criminal justice community
but also to the medical community.9 A byproduct of
the research on blunt trauma was improving tests
to measure blood gases, which indicate the extent
of injuries to the lungs.

In 1975, an extensive field test of the new Kevlar
body armor was conducted, with 15 urban police
departments cooperating in the test. Each
department served a population larger than
250,000, and each had experienced officer assault
rates higher than the national average. The tests
involved 5,000 garments, including 800 purchased
from commercial sources. Among the factors
evaluated were Kevlar's comfort when worn for a
full working day, its adaptability in extremes of
temperature, and its durability through long
periods of use. Equally important in this test was
the psychological effect of the garments on the
officers-whether wearing them would enable them to
be more confident or relaxed in their encounters
with the public or might inspire them to take more
chances with their lives or the lives of others.
The tests showed that the armor could be worn
without restricting the officers' ability to do
their jobs, and more importantly, the vests
worked.

While the field testing continued in 1976,
rigorous testing at the U.S. Army Land Warfare
Laboratory found that Kevlar could protect against
80 to 85 percent of the then available hand guns.
Further testing also showed it was effective
against blunt trauma. In Portland, Oregon,
Seattle, Washington, and Richmond, Virginia,
officials credited the body armor with saving the
lives of police officers.

The soft body armor introduced by the Institute
has been credited with saving more than 400 police
officers' lives within the first 6 years of its
use and more than 1,500 police officers' lives as
of 1993. Beyond the human factor, estimated
savings in survivors' benefits and replacement
costs are more than $1 million per officer, a
total of $1.5 billion. The development of body
armor has also created a new industry.10

Other aids to the police. At the beginning of the
decade, the Institute noted that foot patrolmen
were usually weighed down with about 14 pounds of
equipment. The Institute developed a project aimed
at lightening portable transceivers as well as
improving their handling and performance
characteristics and lowering cost. The Institute
supported contracts for the design, development,
fabrication, and testing of six prototype
transceivers. This work has continued in various
forms to the present time. 

In 1974, the Institute evaluated Automatic Vehicle
Monitors (AVM's) in one major city to determine
the impact of the AVM system on police operations
and response time. The researchers selected the
St. Louis Police Department for the study because
it had equipped 25 patrol cars with AVM's, which
gave dispatchers a continuous flow of information
about the status and location of the car. The
study was considered a measured success.

A 1974 survey conducted by the Institute also
revealed police departments were primarily
concerned about the performance of their patrol
cars and radios. Several projects were initiated.
The first, conducted by the MITRE Corporation,
investigated two new communications systems: an
automatic dispatching of patrol cars and a
forerunner of today's fax machines, which could
provide police departments with the ability to
transmit hard copies of documents. This device
made it possible for a police officer to obtain a
judge's signature on a warrant without leaving the
station house.

Tires on police cars became a major concern in
1975 following the death of an Alabama State
trooper after a tire blowout; the patrol car had
been equipped with steel-belted radial tires.11
The Institute asked the Law Enforcement Standards
Laboratory to conduct a "quick reaction" study,
which found that dealers had been selling ordinary
tires-rated only up to 85 mph- to police
departments rather than high-speed tires rated to
125 mph, and these tires could fail at higher
speeds. Hazard bulletins were issued by the
Institute and the National Highway Traffic Safety
Administration.

The Institute also looked into another type of
police car death. Two Baltimore police officers
died of carbon monoxide poisoning after they
unknowingly blocked their exhaust by backing into
a snow bank. In response, as part of many tests
using a police car as the testing device, the
Institute developed an internal carbon monoxide
sensor as part of the long-term project to help
individual police departments better handle the
task of procuring police vehicles. One of the
Institute's first grants was issued to Wayne State
University in 1969 to study vehicle performance
required to meet police needs and the lowest-cost
way of acquiring vehicles to answer those needs.
The study also addressed the most cost-effective
ways of maintaining police vehicles.12

Another focus in the mid-1970's was developing and
evaluating less-than-lethal weapons. Stun guns,
Mace, and other disabling weapons were becoming
increasingly available to police officers. While
less lethal than conventional firearms, such
devices nevertheless had the potential to cause
injury or death. The Institute sponsored the
Army's Land Warfare Laboratory to undertake a
major study of these weapons to enable researchers
to develop second-generation weapons that combined
acceptable levels of safety with enhanced
effectiveness. The project built a foundation for
later development and contributed to blunt trauma
tolerance measurements.

Forensic science. Two of the most important
advances in the forensic field in the early 1970's
were carried out by the Institute through
workshops for key forensic scientists from major
crime laboratories from around the country. The
first involved offender identification through
analysis of minute particles of dried blood. This
technique was brought from England to the United
States through an Institute grant to John Jay
College, City University of New York in 1970. Two
university scientists were sent to the
Metropolitan Police Forensic Science Laboratory in
London to learn the technique. A second technique,
introduced and developed by the Institute, was
that of trace metal detection to determine whether
a person recently had handled a pistol or other
metallic weapon. After some inhouse development,
the Institute awarded a grant to the Minnesota
State Bureau of Criminal Apprehension to conduct a
series of 1-day workshops on the new procedure.
Senior investigators and technicians from major
police departments attended. Within 3 months, half
of the 82 attendees had reported to the Institute
that they had taught the procedures to more than
2,000 other users.

Another key initiative in 1974 enabled forensic
scientists to individualize semen samples,
especially those that were over 24 hours old. A
grant to the University of California produced a
process to identify semen using protein markers in
the sperm cell membrane. 13

In 1977, the Institute conducted the crime
laboratory proficiency testing program, which
measured the analytical accuracy of evidence
analysis nationwide. The program identified
strengths and weaknesses in the capabilities of
crime laboratories to analyze such typical
physical evidence as bloodstains, firearms, paint,
drugs, glass, soil, metal, hair, and wood. The
test in more than 200 laboratories resulted in
providing a sound basis for devising programs to
improve evidence analysis.

Under a 1978 grant, more than 300 forensic
laboratory specialists were taught how to analyze
the types of evidence that posed the greatest
difficulties for forensic examination. Twenty
1-week workshops on forensic microscopy were held
throughout the country. In addition, with NIJ
sponsorship, more than 100 forensic serologists
learned recently-developed techniques for
analyzing blood stains and ways to automate
forensic laboratories. 

Additional work in the forensic field during the
decade included a program of certification for
forensic science personnel and development and
testing of a technique to detect gunshot residue
on a suspect's hands. This method, which was able
to connect suspects with weapons used in crime and
distinguish between homicides and self-inflicted
wounds, was used in more than 100 cases to
establish validity and applicability.

How to discover explosives. The 1970's also gave
rise to increasing concern about terrorists and
their weapons. In 1971 when terrorist bombs were
increasing in cities and on college campuses, the
Institute examined the need for technological
advancement in the remote detection of explosives,
examination of bomb containers, neutralization of
explosives, and safe removal of dangerous devices.

Along with a review of remote heroin detection
devices, military use of dogs was funded in two
grants. One went to the U.S. Army to train a
number of dogs to enter buildings and detect
hidden explosives. The other went to the New York
City Police Department to use two of these trained
dogs in field tests of the animals' detection
ability. The dog program had excellent results:
almost any dog could be trained to sniff out drugs
or explosives. Although German shepherds were
favorites of the police, Chihuahuas were
considered capable canine agents and could perform
their investigations more inconspicuously than
larger dogs.

The Institute also awarded another grant to the
U.S. Army to do field tests of bomb vapor
analyzing equipment. Once a clandestine package
was located, the equipment could remotely examine
the contents for any suspected explosive devices
and could detect vapors given off by the bombs. In
1978 the Institute conducted a symposium to
examine new techniques for detecting and
identifying explosives.

Burglary/robbery prevention and detection. In
1975, burglaries accounted for almost half of the
Nation's serious crimes. In many jurisdictions,
the arrest rate for burglary was low-about 15
percent. Yet research showed that if entry could
be frustrated for as little as 4 minutes, a
burglar generally gave up the entry attempt and
turned to a more vulnerable target. Thus,
burglar-deterrent doors and windows were called
citizens' first line of defense against this
crime.

The Law Enforcement Standards Laboratory, with
Institute funding, developed standards aimed at
helping the construction industry build safer
homes. Those and other standards were translated
into a layman's guide that enabled a homeowner or
tenant to improve the security of an existing
dwelling. The Institute found that such
precautions did not have to be elaborate. For
example, in addition to longer screws on door
jambs to make homes safer, the laboratory found
that nails driven into a window frame prevented
the sash from being raised more than 5 or 6
inches, which was often a sufficient deterrent to
forced entry. 

A more sophisticated precaution is the home
burglar alarm. Statistics have shown that such
alarms are an effective aid in both deterrence and
apprehension. Work by the Institute in the early
1970's led to burglar alarm systems being linked
directly to police communication centers. One
project in Cedar Rapids, Iowa, evaluated the
impact of 350 alarms installed on commercial
premises and connected to indicators at police
headquarters. In 1974, the Institute sponsored a
survey of available alarm systems and identified
the technological advances that could make such
alarms less costly and more sensitive. Development
continued the following year to produce a
low-cost, reliable system that would be able to
distinguish between real and false intruder
signals. Findings led to later work that advanced
burglar alarm reliability.

The Institute's involvement with Operation
Identification (O/I) projects around the Nation
was designed to improve burglary prevention,
detection of offenders, and recovery of stolen
property. In a typical project, the local police
department provided an engraving tool for citizens
to emboss their Social Security, driver's license,
or other identifying number on valuable items. The
numbers were to be registered with police. Decals
were supplied to participants to advertise the
fact that their property was marked and
registered. In 1974, NIJ sponsored a survey to see
how these projects were working nationwide. The
analysis found that citizens participating in O/I
projects experienced fewer burglaries than
neighbors who did not participate. However, there
was no reduction in overall burglary rates for O/I
communities, perhaps because the typical project
failed to recruit more than 5 percent of the
target population.

Other Institute work included a
laboratory-controlled test of a cargo security
system to prevent truck hijacking, a serious and
increasing problem in the late 1970's. The system
was later evaluated in a 400-square mile area in
Los Angeles, where a control station operation and
40 trucks were examined to determine the
cost-effectiveness of the system. The system
proved to be too costly at the time;
coincidentally truck hijacking rates dropped.

The Eighties' Reorganization and Expansion

The 1979 Justice System Improvement Act
restructured the National Institute of Justice. To
adhere to its new mandate, NIJ created the Office
of Development, Testing, and Dissemination, whose
role included assessing the technological needs of
criminal justice agencies and developing standards
for key equipment. 

TAPIC and TAPAC. In the mid-1980's, NIJ
established the Technology Assessment Program
Information Center (TAPIC) to select laboratories
to test equipment, oversee the testing process,
and publish equipment performance reports
documenting test results. One of TAPIC's first
projects was disseminating results of 1986 police
car testing to help departments make the best
choices for fleet purchases. That year, many law
enforcement agencies had online access to the
Technology Assessment Program's findings and were
receiving up-to-date information. 

The Institute also established the Technology
Assessment Program Advisory Council (TAPAC),
consisting of more than 80 senior Federal, State,
and local law enforcement officials from the
United States and Canada, to ensure that all the
Institute's technology efforts are well grounded
in the real world of police officers. 

Forensic science. Many important resources for
laboratories around the country were funded during
this period. The Sourcebook of Forensic Serology,
Immunology, and Biochemistry became a standard.14

In 1986, NIJ began its support of developing DNA
technology through a grant to one of the
developers of a new method, the Polymerase Chain
Reaction (PCR). This method promised improvement
over the existing, acceptable Restriction Fragment
Length Polymorphism (RLFP) method, which used
dangerous radioactive materials to produce an
image of the DNA on an x-ray film. Instead, PCR
technology amplified DNA samples through molecular
photocopying, thus allowing the resulting data to
be digitalized manually or by computer. NIJ sought
to help perfect the PCR technology and find ways
to overcome problems when the DNA evidence is
damaged. 

NIJ awarded a grant to advance the science of
identifying human remains in 1987. Hundreds of
cases had been encountered in which skeletal
remains or bone fragments were the only clues
found. Determination of blood groups from the
remaining bone tissue was the focus of the grant,
which was followed by a subsequent award to
develop DNA testing of the bone. This is the
current process for identifying skeletal remains.

Other important forensic science projects
included:

o Developing tests to distinguish among various
kinds of acrylic automobile paints.

o Identifying assailants through hair lost during
struggles with victims.

o Using electron microscopes to examine gunshot
residue collected from hands and clothing.

o Studying human speech patterns to develop
technology that could identify individual
"voiceprints."

o Preparing a data base for forensic anthropology.


o Detecting and analyzing substance abuse through
hair analysis.

o Preparing a study of prison fires and
methodologies to assess fire hazards in
correctional institutions that resulted in a
manual for prison administrators.

o Improving photographic image enhancement and
restoration technologies to aid in criminal
identifications.

Less-than-lethal weapons. A 1985 court case led to
intensified work in NIJ's less-than-lethal weapons
program. The case, Tennessee v. Garner, 475 U.S. 1
(1985), held that use of deadly force to apprehend
an apparently unarmed nonviolent fleeing felon is
unreasonable seizure under the Fourth Amendment.

In 1987 the Institute provided a grant to the U.S.
Army to determine if a suitable less-than-lethal
weapon could be developed for police. The study
focused on identifying chemicals that would
inhibit action without injury for use in such
situations as domestic disputes and stopping
fleeing suspects. The study covered all known
medical, biological, pharmaceutical, and Defense
Department documentation for chemicals that were
reported to be incapacitating and nontoxic, which
could then be tested for safety and effectiveness.
The report suggested that a compound was feasible
and that the fentanyl (from the family of
anesthetics) was most promising.

Other new technologies. During the 1980's, the
expansion of technology into all aspects of the
criminal justice system was seen in the range of
NIJ projects. For example, by 1986, electronic
monitoring devices were used in 10 jurisdictions.
An NIJ study was begun to examine some questions
about the monitors' performance and effectiveness:
rates of false alarms and of false positive and
negative reports. Other NIJ science and technology
grants were awarded to conduct such projects as:

o Tests of riot helmets, handcuffs, crash helmets,
transceivers, and drug test kits.

o A study of sources of electro-magnetic
interference in police cars and ways to suppress
that interference.

o Development of a calibration device for arson
detectors to "sniff" for hydrocarbon vapors at the
scene of a fire.

o Investigation into technologies to detect
concealed handguns.

o A study on the validity of polygraph
examinations in criminal investigations.

o Development of a computer sourcebook on firearms
evidence information. 

The Nineties' Focus on Multiple Applications

As the 1990's began, the need to develop
less-than-lethal weapons became even more critical
as well as the need to arrange partnerships with
other agencies to pool financial and professional
resources. One factor was the threatened
elimination of a frequently used less-than-lethal
device, oleoresin capsicum (pepper spray), to
subdue suspects. The spray produces a blinding and
choking effect and overpowers a person with a
burning sensation that makes breathing difficult.
The spray allows officers to bring violent
suspects into custody with less chance of injury.
But since 1990 at least 30 known suspects have
died in custody situations where pepper spray was
reportedly used. Critics charged that the spray
was deadly and should be discontinued.

In response, the Institute gave a small grant to
the International Association of Chiefs of Police
to conduct a study of known in-custody deaths
where pepper spray was used. The study concluded
that pepper spray was not a cause of any of the
in-custody deaths. The major cause (80 percent of
the cases) was positional asphyxia. Contributing
factors appeared to include being placed hog-tied
(and drunk or on drugs, or overweight) in the back
of patrol cars, vans, or in other custody
situations. The study has had a significant impact
on the acceptance of pepper spray as a
less-than-lethal alternative in
custody/corrections situations.

The Institute currently has grants with five
national laboratories under the Department of
Energy to adapt and transfer or develop new
less-than-lethal technologies for law enforcement,
corrections, and the criminal justice system. The
laboratories are already developing prototype
equipment to:

o Apply nontoxic sticky foam to restrain subjects
at distances more than 30 feet away.

o Use rear seat airbags to restrain uncooperative
arrestees or prisoners in the back seat of police
cars.

o Use aqueous foam to counter violence in prisons
or jails.

o Stop fleeing vehicles with retractable spiked
barrier strips.

o Develop "smart guns" that can only be fired by
designated individuals to reduce instances where
police officers on duty and civilians in their
homes are shot with their own guns.

o Use pulsed light and other physiological
responses to disorient suspects.

o Develop projectile launchers with impact
velocity control for riot control situations or
standoff confrontations with subjects who are not
armed with firearms.

The increasing level of gun violence is expected
to result in renewed interest in technologies that
can detect concealed weapons. NIJ is also working
aggressively to identify military and intelligence
community technologies that might be candidates
for dual-use, law enforcement applications. This
program was initiated through the recommendation
of an NIJ-funded Less-Than-Lethal Technology and
Policy Assessment panel comprised of senior policy
experts with law enforcement, defense, government
and industry experience. The panel recommended
that U.S. Attorney General Janet Reno formally
request assistance from the Department of Defense
(DOD) and the Intelligence Community Management
Staff (CMS) to initiate a dual-use technology
effort to support law enforcement. 

The Attorney General did just that, and the
response was positive. In fact, the initiative
resulted in a Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) on
April 20, 1994, between the Attorney General and
the Secretary of Defense to share and jointly
develop technology and systems applicable to both
defense and law enforcement. The MOU established a
new Joint Program Steering Group to be manned by
Defense and Justice Department personnel at the
DOD Advanced Research Projects Agency to carry out
the day-to-day tasks of identifying, developing,
and transferring useful defense technologies to
law enforcement.

The FY 1995 Defense appropriations bill provided
$37.5 million to support the DOD/DOJ MOU for the
development and transition of technologies
applicable to law enforcement and military
operations other than war, stipulating that such
support may include support for national law
enforcement technology centers of the National
Institute of Justice.

Forensic science. In 1990 NIJ initiated several
efforts to improve DNA testing. In one study
researchers are identifying Short, Random Repeat
(STR) DNA segments for forensic laboratories to
use in PCR-based testing. This study has developed
a standard set of STR's that are widely used by
crime labs for DNA testing throughout the country.
A 1993 grant is for development of capillary
electrophoresis for application in DNA testing
procedures. NIJ plans to focus on improving DNA
testing throughout the decade to:

o Develop and disseminate standards for the RFLP
and PCR testing methods.

o Identify and analyze statistical methodologies
for calculating DNA profile matches.

o Validate and implement a PCR-based profile
methodology for State and local crime
laboratories.

o Develop a CD-ROM computer technology sourcebook
for serology/DNA, fingerprint, drugs, and trace
evidence.

Other forensics work by the Institute included a
grant for improving the electron PLM/Microprobe
for trace evidence analysis and for a trace
evidence identification project.

A new center. 1994 marked a hallmark year for law
enforcement science and technology when the FY
1995 Justice appropriation bill mandated funds to
assist NIJ in its efforts to adopt technologies
for law enforcement purposes; it established a
Technology Information Network in conjunction with
the Regional Information Sharing System and an
Office of Law Enforcement Technology
Commercialization co-located with the National
Technology Transfer Center.

The NIJ National Law Enforcement Technology Center
(NLETC) was established in October to take over
the functions of the Technology Assessment Program
Information Center (TAPIC) and to become the
virtual hub of a national organization of regional
centers dedicated to supporting Federal, State,
and local law enforcement, corrections, and
criminal justice system science and technology
requirements. Regional centers are planned for
Charleston, Denver, San Diego (Border Research and
Technology Center), and Los Angeles with others to
be added as necessary. 

The NLETC will function as the hub for hot-line
services, standards, evaluations, data base
development for the Technology Information Network
(TIN), and for support to law enforcement
technology assessment councils, panels, and
committees. The regional centers will be centers
of excellence for respective technologies and will
act as regional interfaces for law enforcement
agencies and the Technology Information Network.

A major effort was initiated to identify what it
will take to get new technologies introduced to
the community by creating a Liability Task Group
charged with identifying liability issues and
recommending efforts law enforcement agencies
should undertake to address them. A Community
Acceptance Panel was also created to help to
identify critical community issues that might
surround a newly-developed or developing
technology.

A series of NIJ law enforcement technology
exhibits was initiated to demonstrate to law
enforcement, government, Congress, the general
public, and the media some of the kinds of
technologies that are under development. This
highly successful initiative will continue on a
national and regional basis.

The Violent Crime Control and Law Enforcement Act
of 1994 authorizes funds for competitive grant
programs for States and localities to develop or
improve DNA identification capabilities. 

What's ahead. A major NIJ national level
conference on "Law Enforcement Technology for the
21st Century" was held in Washington, D.C., in
June 1994 with major participation from Federal,
State and local law enforcement, corrections and
the criminal justice communities. The conference
was a successful catalyst to advance the pursuit
of technology for law enforcement. The conference
expanded on themes of prior conferences to
identify the need for new technology; however, it
was specifically designed to respond to an
existing "window of opportunity" that would
accelerate the development of technologies for law
enforcement. In addition to highlighting
technologies, the conference provided the
opportunity to educate the audience about the
limitations of new technologies and ways to
overcome them. Such conferences will continue to
be instrumental in cultivating and maintaining the
critical partnerships required to bring law
enforcement capabilities into the 21st century.

In order to capitalize on past achievements and
the present "window of opportunity," NIJ has
identified at least seven major elements that
should be undertaken to ensure that programs to
transfer technology to law enforcement are
effective:

o Draw attention to the advantages technology can
offer so it will not only be funded, but also
embraced by law enforcement.

o Identify a principal focus for law enforcement
technology efforts to coordinate the development
of new technologies.

o Eliminate duplication and ensure law enforcement
involvement to avoid the costly mistakes made in
other Federal research and development efforts.

o Create a mechanism to ease access to
technological information by law enforcement and
the criminal justice system.

o Build on the emerging DOD/DOJ Joint Steering
Group to establish a way to ensure public safety
needs are always taken into account in the
earliest stages of research and development.

o Establish a process to ensure the safety of law
enforcement technologies, both for the public and
the officer.

o Address the fragmented buying power of law
enforcement, and attract quality industry to
participate in the development and production of
new affordable technologies for Federal, State,
and local agencies.

The basis exists for building the infrastructure,
funding, and commitments required to meet these
needs. The task ahead is to build upon the efforts
of the past 25 years and sustain the mid-90's
"window of opportunity" to bring the benefits of
modern technology to bear on the problems of law
enforcement. The result must be affordable,
reliable, and effective equipment and systems to
support law enforcement in the 21st century.

Timothy S. McCune and Joan Alpert

Notes

1. Doyle, A. Conan, The Complete Sherlock Holmes,
New York: The Literary Guild, 1936, p.47. Nash,
Jay Robert, Almanac of World Crime, New York,
Bonanza Books, 1986, p. 292.

2. Nash, p. 233.

3. John Larson, a medical student at the
University of California; and a member of the
Berkeley police department developed the first
polygraph.

4. Institute for Defense Analyses, Task Force
Report: Science and Technology, A Report to the
President's Commission on Law Enforcement and
Administration of Justice, Washington, D.C.:
Government Printing Office, 1967, p. 1.

According to Nash, Almanac of World Crime, p. 233,
in 1912, the Cleveland Bar Association, disturbed
by the rapidly rising crime rate, requested that
the privately funded Cleveland Foundation conduct
a massive study of the city's criminal justice
system. The Foundation's findings criticized the
police for not keeping pace with modern demands
and not developing effective techniques to address
advanced social and industrial conditions.

5. LEAA, Abstracts of Grants, Contracts, and
Interagency Agreements, Washington, D.C.: U.S.
Department of Justice, Law Enforcement Assistance
Administration, National Institute of Law
Enforcement and Criminal Justice, October 1973.

6. Ibid.

7. U.S. Department of Justice, Attorney General's
Report on Federal Law Enforcement and Criminal
Justice Activities, Washington, D.C.: U.S.
Department of Justice, 1975, pp. 22-23.

8. Interview with then-Institute Program Manager,
Joseph Kochanski, October 6, 1994.

9. Kochanski interview.

10. Boyd, David G., "Finding and Applying New
Technologies to Law Enforcement," unpublished
speech delivered at Albuquerque, New Mexico,
August 24, 1993.

11. Kochanski interview.

12. LEAA, Abstracts of Grants, Contracts, and
Interagency Agreements.

13. Interview with Lester Shubin and Joseph
Kochanski, October 6, 1994. The forensic scientist
leading the project was George Sensabaugh.

14. This work was written by Robert E. Gaensslen,
Ph.D., and published in August 1983. Other NIJ
forensic publications included Forensic Evidence
and the Police: The Effects of Scientific Evidence
on Criminal Investigations by Joseph L. Peterson,
Steven Mihajluvic, and Michael Gilliland, October
1984; Procedures and Evaluations of Antisera for
the Typing of Antigens in Bloodstains by R.E.
Gaensslen and Henry C. Lee, November 1984; Death
Investigation and Examination: Medicolegal
Guidelines and Checklists, edited by Kenneth S.
Field and Beth Ann Lipskin, 1984; The
Laboratories' Role in Investigating Rape in
Diagnostic Medicine, by George F. Sensabaugh, Jan
Bashinski, and Edward T. Blake, March 1985; and
Post-Coital Detection of a Male Specific Semen
Protein by Elisa, by H. Graves, George F.
Sensabaugh, and Edward T. Blake, February 1985.

Section 3.

Turning Research Into Action

Criminal justice research provides new knowledge
that can affect policies, yield new programs, and
suggest new approaches to aid those on the front
lines of the fight against crime. Yet this 
potential can only be realized if new knowledge is
communicated effectively, to the right audiences
and in a form that facilitates implementation.
This is the task of the National Institute of
Justice's research utilization program. 

Through this program, the Institute analyzes
research findings that have implications for
public policy and day-to-day practice.
Synthesizing results from several studies, NIJ
formulates programs that can be tested to
determine if wider implementation of a new
approach is warranted. And, through training,
conferences, and information services, the
Institute fosters awareness of new knowledge
within both the research and practitioner
communities. 

Its mandate to conduct these activities began with
the Omnibus Crime Control and Safe Streets Act of
1968, which created the National Institute of Law
Enforcement and Criminal Justice.1 The Act
directed the Institute to: 

o Sponsor applied research to develop new
approaches, techniques, systems, and equipment to
improve law enforcement.

o Make recommendations for action to Federal,
State, and local governments.

o Collect and disseminate information obtained by
the Institute or other Federal agencies.

Further legislation enacted in the 1970's directed
the Institute to conduct training programs for
criminal justice professionals and establish a
clearinghouse for the exchange of information
about law enforcement and criminal justice. Thus
the Institute had a clear mandate to give criminal
justice policymakers, practitioners, and
administrators tools needed to implement new
knowledge in their own jurisdictions.

The communication of practical information to the
local level has been central in the Institute's
planning, organizational structure, and operations
from the beginning, when it established special
units charged with using research findings to
develop action agendas for State and local
agencies.

Over the course of these first 25 years, new
concerns-domestic violence and child abuse, the
emergence of drugs on the crime scene, the
criminal justice system's response to victims of
rape and other crimes-as well as advances in
communication technology have shaped both the
content of criminal justice research and the means
for its communication and use. Research
utilization efforts during this period have
involved four major sets of interrelated
activities:

o Development of programs-including model
programs, field testing, and demonstrations-that
implement research findings at the local,
operational level. 

o Provision for training-through workshops,
seminars, conferences, and fellowship
opportunities that directly impart new knowledge
about research methods, findings, and
applications. 

o Communication of new knowledge-through printed,
audiovisual, andelectronic materials tailored to
the needs of different criminal justice audiences.

o Promotion of worldwide information sharing-
through a central clearinghouse of criminal
justice data, the National Criminal Justice
Reference Service (NCJRS). 

The nature of these efforts mirrors the times. The
first decade, when the Law Enforcement Assistance
Administration (LEAA) was supporting local
criminal justice programs with substantial block
grants to the States, was one of intense
concentration on field testing, training, and
technical assistance to hasten the replication of
locally developed, innovative approaches
nationwide. This activity was fully consonant with
a strong Federal role in improving the social and
economic health of the country. 

At the beginning of the second decade, NIJ
developed research applications and forms of
information dissemination appropriate to a period
of budget constraints and at the same time
responsive to serious new problems facing criminal
justice, such as drug trafficking, victims'
rights, and prisons filled to overflowing. 

Now new communication technologies have further
revolutionized NIJ's efforts to put research
results in the hands of operating agencies. New
challenges, such as the escalation of youth
violence and other issues that led to passage of
the Violent Crime Control and Law Enforcement Act
of 1994, present additional opportunities for
developing, recording, and transmitting
information.

The 1970's-Ambitious Agenda

The National Institute during this period was
instrumental in following through on LEAA's
efforts to develop large-scale crime prevention
and system improvement. The agenda was ambitious
and involved a partnership between the Federal
Government, which provided the funding, and State
and local agencies that implemented the model
programs. The National Institute provided the
necessary linkages to accomplish the task.

The Institute communicated information on specific
program models drawn either from Institute-funded
research or from the promising approaches
stimulated and initiated by LEAA's infusion of
funds for innovations in local law enforcement,
courts, and corrections. Information reached the
field through operational handbooks, field
testing, training, full-scale demonstration, and
site visits by interested local representatives to
innovative programs. 

At the same time, the Institute's Clearinghouse,
the National Criminal Justice Reference Service,
launched in 1972, began building a collection of
criminal justice literature to respond to
information needs of policymakers, agencies, and
practitioners, and an inventory of materials for
distribution to them in conjunction with the other
facets of what came to be known as "technology
transfer."

Technology Transfer

The Institute's technology transfer efforts built
on earlier foundations and used numerous methods.
Model criminal justice programs were developed and
documentation was prepared in easy-to-use and
widely disseminated program manuals. Training
focused on key policymakers, local officials, and
managers who could implement and operate these new
program techniques. NIJ sponsored field-testing
and showcasing of the most significant new
strategies in cities throughout the country. The
Institute provided other forms of hands-on
involvement by giving local officials
opportunities to work with an agency using an
advanced practice in preparation for initiating
their own programs. Specialconferences provided
forums for exploring critical research findings or
criminal justice issues for selected national
audiences. NCJRS provided access to information on
all aspects of the criminal justice system.

These efforts formed around a variety of topics
including criminal investigative techniques,
family crisis intervention, community-based
corrections, community crime prevention, and
neighborhood team policing. They resulted in an
interrelated set of demonstration, training, and
publication initiatives, which describes the
Institute's first large-scale efforts at
transferring the results of research into the
practical administration of criminal justice at
the local level.

Exemplary projects. The 1967 President's
Commission on Law Enforcement and Administration
of Justice had noted the lack of communication
between different jurisdictions facing similar
problems.2 NIJ initiated the Exemplary Projects
program as a systematic method to draw on the
expertise of the criminal justice community
nationwide. Candidate projects had to demonstrate
measurable success in reducing a specific crime or
improving a criminal justice operation. By the
beginning of 1978, 25 Exemplary Projects had been
chosen. For each project, NIJ prepared and
distributed a descriptive brochure and detailed
operational manual. Among the innovative local
programs that merited the Exemplary label were:

o The computerized Prosecutor Management
Information System (PROMIS)developed in 1971 by
the District of Columbia Superior Court.

o A volunteer probation counselor program in
Lincoln, Nebraska.

o The operations of King County (Seattle) and San
Diego County Fraud Divisions, each of which
employed different but successful methods to deal
with economic crimes and consumer frauds.

o New York City's Street Crime Unit, which used
decoys and plain-clothes backup teams to increase
arrests for robbery, personal grand larceny, and
assault.

Model Programs. State and local programs funded by
LEAA focused on programs within operating
agencies. The Institute analyzed and assessed what
were then "new and innovative" programs, such as
crime analysis units and burglary prevention
programs. Then the Institute prepared and
published Prescriptive Packages that spelled out
the issues involved in creating and implementing
these programs for other agencies that might be
interested in starting similar ones. The packages
served as operating manuals to guide agencies in
constructing similar programs.

Training 

The Crime Control Act of 1973 expanded the
Institute's responsibilities for training State
and local criminal justice personnel. The highly
focused program the National Institute designed
offered training to people in a position to act on
the practices or techniques selected as being
model programs to replicate. Recognized experts
(the individuals who developed the techniques or
nationally known authorities in the field)
delivered the training in intensive workshops or
seminars. Each training session focused on the
concept and operation of a particular advanced
criminal justice program such as full-service
neighborhood policing. The sessions were also
organized by geographical areas: each Federal
Region had a workshop or seminar training session
on a particular program for approximately 50 of
the senior criminal justice executives or
policymakers in that field-decisionmakers who
could implement the program when they returned
home.

Training topics were selected from Institute
research or evaluation studies that had resulted
in models ready for operational application, as
well as from Prescriptive Packages and Exemplary
Projects. In a typical year, 1975, the Institute
developed training materials and curriculums in
several priority areas, then held regional
workshops that trained more than 2,000 officials.
Topics of these training sessions included how
police can help settle citizen disputes and how to
improve lower court case handling.

Nine workshops trained more than 450 judges,
probation chiefs, sheriffs, county commissioners,
and other corrections specialists in the Des
Moines Community-Based Corrections programs, which
had been chosen as an Exemplary Project. All
participants received detailed manuals to assist
in local implementation.

Technical assistance. Beginning in the spring of
1976, the Institute, through NCJRS, developed
Technical Assistance Packages for use by Regional
Offices and State Planning Agencies in helping
local jurisdictions mount new programs, such as
Victim/Witness Assistance Programs, an early
example. A typical Technical Assistance Package
included core documentation (research reports,
Exemplary Projects, Prescriptive Packages),
bibliographies, referral directories, pamphlets
and brochures, lists of ongoing LEAA projects in
the area, and lists of individuals who could act
as additional resources. 

Conferences. In 1976 the Institute also initiated
a program called Special Conferences to present
significant research findings to a select national
audience and to stimulate discussion of critical
criminal justice issues. The first such conference
brought together 120 members of the legal
profession-judges, public defenders, prosecutors,
and legal scholars-to communicate the results of
Institute-sponsored research on the implementation
of the Supreme Court's Argersinger v. Hamlin
decision, which held that both misdemeanor and
felony defendants had a right to free legal
counsel. The researchers had found only token
compliance with the decision. The conference
sessions discussed these findings and the
researchers' recommendations with respect to the
appointment of counsel, the management of defender
services, eligibility requirements, and ways to
measure the effectiveness of court-appointed
counsel.

By 1979, the number of events for special
audiences multiplied. Workshops were held that
year for more than 1,500 senior officials on the
following topics: maintaining municipal integrity,
managing the pressures of inflation in criminal
justice, operating a defender's office, and
improving probation strategies. Another series of
workshops brought together researchers and policy
officials to exchange views on major national
issues such as dealing with career criminals and
preventing and managing large-scale civil
disorders.

Demonstration projects. From the topic areas
developed in the training program each year, a few
outstanding projects were chosen for demonstration
in selected communities. Each community became a
showcase for that criminal justice practice,
acting as a host and training center for other
interested communities. The Institute provided
funding for the first 18 months of the project's
operations; local funding took over thereafter.
NIJ also sponsored an independent evaluation of
each demonstration.

Host program. Selected Exemplary Projects were
also chosen for the Institute's Host Program.
Officials seriously interested in adopting an
innovative program could visit a host site for up
to 2 weeks, gaining first-hand experience in how
the project worked. Near the end of the 1978 grant
period, 84 participants had visited 1 of the 14
host sites. A majority of the officials who
visited the sites implemented all or part of the
Host project's approach in their own
jurisdictions. 

Publications Program

The publications program was a key component of
the technology transfer process. The first step in
planning took place when the National Institute's
Research Utilization Committee, comprising
representatives from all Institute offices,
convened at the conclusion of each research effort
to identify target audiences and recommend the
most appropriate means of reaching them, a concept
that has continued with modifications to this day.

The Institute had several challenges to address in
designing publications that would support the
transfer of criminal justice knowledge to the
field. Because research reports were often written
in technical language and focused on study design
and methodology, they rarely highlighted findings
in such a way that policymakers could readily
discern their policy implications or criminal
justice administrators could apply them to their
daily operations. Moreover, these professionals
and practitioners lacked time to review all
current research, extract findings, and translate
them into operating procedure. 

Prescriptive Packages synthesized available
research information, operational experience, and
program guidelines coming out of the Model
Programs and Exemplary Projects into single,
readable documents. The reports, tailored to the
concerns of practitioners, included practical
information on staff and budget, potential
problems, and measures of effectiveness. Examples
of Prescriptive Packages produced during the
Institute's first decade show the practical nature
of these tools for using research results:

o Police Robbery Control Manual

o Police Crime Analysis Unit Handbook

o A Guide to Improved Handling of Misdemeanant
Offenders

o Methadone Treatment Manual

o Correction Health Care Manual

o Grievance Mechanisms in Correctional
Institutions

Recognizing that no single program design was
suitable for every jurisdiction, the National
Institute then developed Program Models,
publications that synthesized research data,
empirical experience, and expert opinion and
presented the advantages and the limitations of a
variety of programmatic options in a topic area.
Titles in this series included Neighborhood
Justice Centers, Police Warrant Services, and
Prevention, Detection, and Correction of
Corruption in Local Government. 

In 1979, a new series, Policy Briefs, was launched
specifically for lawmakers and government
officials. These documents briefly described a
specific innovation or emerging trend in criminal
justice, together with the particular approach and
the actions officials could take to institute the
approach. They included sample legislation and
references to additional information on the topic.
Early Policy Briefs were prepared on
administrative adjudication of traffic offenses,
Neighborhood Justice Centers, and career criminal
programs.

Annual research review. In 1979 the Institute
launched the first of an annual series of volumes
on "Crime and Justice," prepared under Institute
auspices and published by the University of
Chicago Press. The series, as the preface
indicated, would "build bridges between islands of
parochialism," a reference to the different and
sometimes isolated worlds occupied by academic
criminal lawyers, sociologists specializing in
criminology, and systems engineers interested in
criminal justice. Michael Tonry, University of
Minnesota Law School, and Norval Morris,
University of Chicago Law School, became the
series' editors, and an advisory board of
distinguished criminal justice researchers was
chosen. Essays in the first and successive volumes
consist primarily of summaries by leading scholars
on the state of the art of a defined topic,
together with their views on the policy and
research implications of that knowledge. Topics in
the first volume ranged from "Race Relations and
the Prisoner Subculture" to "Longitudinal Research
on Crime and Delinquency." The series is now in
its 16th year, and the annual volumes have
occasionally been supplemented by volumes devoted
to a single topic, such as Communities and Crime,
Family Violence, Drugs and Crime, Modern Policing,
and White Collar Crime.

National Criminal Justice Reference Service

Congress had been clear in calling for the
collection and dissemination of information that
would serve as a knowledge base for other research
and dissemination efforts and offer a nationwide
(and later worldwide) resource for information on
new policies and practices implemented in the
field. Until 1972, no central criminal justice
reference service existed. In that year the
Institute created the National Criminal Justice
Reference Service (NCJRS). By 1974, the
computerized data base contained more than 7,000
documents. Each registered user (the number topped
20,000) had an" interest profile" on file with
NCJRS. A Selective Notification of Information
program was developed through which users
regularly received abstract cards of newly
acquired documents in their area of interest.

Specialists in police, courts, juvenile
delinquency, corrections, and evaluation responded
to telephone and mail requests for information or
documents, searching the Document Data Base to
retrieve the information the requester needed.
Users could obtain free printed copies of NIJ
publications or microfiche copies of uncopyrighted
documents. They could also borrow documents in the
collection through an interlibrary document loan
program.

NCJRS' international focus was established by
Congress in the Crime Control Act of 1973. The
clearinghouse began to acquire materials produced
in other countries, for which English-language
abstracts were prepared. 

NCJRS also developed information packages for both
the academic and practitioner communities, as well
as annotated bibliographies and other data base
information products. The annotated bibliographies
contained abstracts of up to 200 documents on
specific topics such as methods to implement
speedy trials, prevention and control of arson,
and characteristics of female offenders. In 1975
NCJRS was annually publishing 50 different
information products and distributing some 500,000
copies. 

By the end of the Institute's first decade, this
information clearinghouse had more than doubled
the number of registered users, and the Document
Data Base had increased sevenfold. 

1979-A Year of Major Change

In 1979 Congress restructured the Federal crime
control grant program. This had both immediate and
long-range effects on the information transfer
that had accompanied Federal support for
innovative programs at the State and local levels.
LEAA funds had underwritten not only the
initiation of most Exemplary Projects but also the
required evaluation and covered many training
expenses, both for trainers and trainees. The
Justice System Improvement Act of 1979
restructured the Institute and created the Bureau
of Justice Assistance. In the area of technology
transfer, it directed NIJ to:

o Evaluate the effectiveness of federally funded
justice improvement programs and identify programs
that promised to be successful if continued or
repeated.

o Test and demonstrate new and improved approaches
to strengthen the justice system and recommend
actions that could be taken by Federal, State, and
local governments and private organizations and
individuals to achieve this goal.

o Disseminate information from research,
demonstrations, evaluations, and special programs
to Federal, State, and local governments, and
serve as an international clearinghouse of justice
information.

o Train criminal justice practitioners in research
and evaluation findings, and assist the research
community through fellowships and special
seminars.

Thus virtually all the responsibilities remained
in place, but changes in funding and
infrastructure led NIJ to find new ways to fulfill
its continuing responsibilities.

The 1980's-Concentrating Resources 

The 1980's saw major new challenges to criminal
justice and the concentration of resources on a
few new programs to deal with the drug-crime
linkage and prison crowding. Both of these
produced a new environment for NIJ's research and
information dissemination.

The 1980's saw the rise of new approaches
identifying innovative practices and communicating
information about them to State and local criminal
justice audiences. The National Assessment
Program, for example, was developed to determine
the needs of local police departments, courts, and
correctional institutions. The information gained
through national surveys helped to set the
Institute's research agenda and the topics for
Issues and Practices in Criminal Justice, a new
series that highlighted emerging problems and
documented theprograms that various jurisdictions
were developing.

Regional workshops, no longer financially viable
as originally designed, underwent a
transformation. NIJ supported the training teams
and some other onsite expenses, but local hosts
took responsibility for registration and
logistics, and each participant's local agency
underwrote travel expenses. This reduced total
attendance. NIJ began to focus on national rather
than regional training events.

NCJRS was growing in size and reach. By 1980 the
clearinghouse was developing new ways to share the
resources of the NCJRS document collection with a
growing body of users, through bibliographies, a
new bimonthly Selective Notification of
Information (SNI) bulletin, and International
Summaries, translations of summaries of selected
foreign language documents entering the
collection.

The economic realities that had transformed other
aspects of the research utilization task likewise
transformed the operation of NCJRS. Agencies
throughout the Government sought to recover some
of the costs of imparting information by charging
user fees for what had formerly been distributed
free. NIJ's clearinghouse was no exception and
indeed quickly adopted new practices for
recovering some costs while still continuing to
meet the field's information needs.

Identifying the Top Issues

In 1983, NIJ launched the National Assessment
Program (NAP), a program that continues today.
This survey of criminal justice professionals in
law enforcement, the courts, and corrections finds
out their most urgent or pervasive problems so
that priorities for NIJ's research and information
dissemination agenda can be determined. The NAP
ensures that NIJ programs respond to the needs of
agencies, identifies emerging issues so that new
programs can be developed quickly to address them,
and informs criminal justice professionals about
the issues that concern their colleagues
nationwide. Results of the National Assessment
Program inform NIJ's annual Program Plan, which
outlines the Institute's solicitations for
research and invites applications from the field.

Developing Information Bases To Solve Problems

Information dissemination efforts in the 1980's
took a new direction, seen in two major NIJ
programs: the Construction Information Exchange
and the Drug Use Forecasting program. Each of
these programs focused on a single problem
identified by States and localities across the
country and developed an information gathering and
dissemination strategy specific to that program.
Both applied new technologies to develop
information that could be analyzed and converted
to a form people in the field could use. 

Corrections construction initiative. When NIJ
asked criminal justice officials in the early
1980's to name the most serious problems facing
the entire system, police, courts, and corrections
officials were virtually unanimous in citing
prison and jail crowding as the number one
concern. In 1986, to respond to this need, NIJ
launched a corrections construction initiative to
spur the development and exchange of information
among local, State, and Federal officials about
ways to provide more prison and jail space quickly
and inexpensively. The linchpin of this effort,
the Construction Information Exchange, is a
computerized data base that permits local, State,
and Federal officials to share lessons learned
from recent jail and prison construction projects.
A sheriff, for example, who is planning to build a
combined jail and court facility may contact the
Exchange to obtain a special search of the data
base describing facilities of this type. The
computer printout the sheriff receives provides a
wealth of detail on projects similar to the
planned facility, together with the names of
persons to contact for more information.

NIJ has been working with the American Institute
of Architects to conduct periodic surveys of
correctional administrators and architects for
information to be entered into the data base. At
regular intervals, the data base information
isdownloaded and reformatted to produce the
National Directory of Corrections Construction, a
compendium of designs, construction methods, and
costs for recently built jails and prisons. NIJ
has also published a series of
ConstructionBulletins, each explaining a different
construction or financing approach and describing
its implementation in a specific locality.

The Drug Use Forecasting (DUF) program. Similarly,
NIJ looked for ways to provide useful information
to help cities respond to escalating drug
problems. In the early 1980's, pioneering research
on arrestees' drug use in Washington, D.C., and
New York City had revealed a level of abuse far
exceeding what many had assumed. Urinalysis
testing of some 14,000 persons arrested in both
cities showed that more than half had been using
dangerous, illegal drugs such as cocaine, PCP, or
heroin during the 48 hours preceding the test, and
that up to a third of these had used more than one
drug.

Previous NIJ-sponsored research had shown that
multiple drug use is one of the most salient
characteristics of serious, habitual offenders.
Moreover, high-risk individuals such as heroin
addicts commit four to six times more crime when
they are on drugs than when they are relatively
drug free.

In Washington, the D Pretrial Services Agency used
this knowledge and an NIJ grant to develop a
program that used state-of-the-art urinalysis
tests of arrestees to give judges a means of
deciding which arrestees could be released before
trial and under what conditions.

The program provided objective, useful information
for making pretrial release decisions. NIJ saw
that the information about arrestee drug use could
have wider use as well. Since the offender
population had higher and more long-standinglevels
of drug use than the general population, their
drug-using habits-what drugs they took and how
frequently-could warn local law enforcement and
other local officials about drugs that might soon
become widespread. Thus the Drug Use Forecasting
program was born. In 1987, NIJ launched the
program in a dozen sites across the country,
obtaining voluntary urine samples and self-report
information from samples of male arrestees in
these cities. By 1991 the number of sites had
grown to 24, and adult females and juvenile males
were added to the population tested in half the
sites.

In the years since, the information regularly
provided through DUF has allowed local officials
to allocate drug control resources and to gain a
continuing measure of the extent and nature of
drug use by the arrestee population. NIJ publishes
quarterly and annual reports of DUF results by
city. This information has had other uses as well.
It has helped advocates of more and better
prevention and drug treatment programs obtain
needed support, and it has provided a rich source
of information for researchers exploring specific
aspects of drug use. 

NIJ has been exploring ways to disseminate the DUF
data more widely and more quickly in order to get
maximum benefit from the findings. An NIJ study is
examining preparation of print and electronic
products to facilitate local analysis of DUF data
files, including statistical software programs,
codebooks to describe the data, and a guide to
help law enforcement officers analyze the data.

Communicating the Results of Criminal Justice
Research

New technologies opened new avenues for
disseminating information. Videotape technology
enabled the Institute to provide college
instructors and community advocates with visual
presentations of criminal justice issues. A
bimonthly magazine available in print and
electronically through the NCJRS Bulletin Board
increased the visibility of NIJ's research efforts
as noted researchers and professionals contributed
articles describing new research findings. Through
these means and through conferences, a network of
criminal justice editors, and an invigorated
fellowship program, NIJ continued in the 1980's to
pursue the technology transfer task begun many
years earlier.

Crime File. In 1985 NIJ commissioned the first
series of 30-minute videotapes called Crime File
to develop awareness and communicate information
on critical issues in American criminal justice.
The videotapes, moderated by James Q. Wilson, each
opened with a documentary section, followed by an
unrehearsed, spontaneous discussion between
front-line practitioners and leading researchers
on a specific topic. Prominent criminal justice
researchers, professors, officials, and
practitioners participated in each Crime File
segment, bringing the results of research and
experience to new audiences. The videotapes,
designed to increase public awareness, reached
widely into American communities when they were
broadcast on public television. They have also
been purchased by police training academies and
for use at workshops as training tools. Highly
popular, the 32 Crime File tapes (three series
were eventually produced and marketed under the
NCJRS cost recovery program) have met a need for
clear, up-to-date information about issues just
reaching public consciousness and concern.

Issues and Practices in Criminal Justice. This
series evolved into a new means of bringing to the
criminal justice policymaker and practitioner the
practical information about issues that were
emerging and practices that were being tried out
in individual localities. NIJ used several
criteria to select the topics of Issues and
Practices reports. First, the series was guided by
the results of NIJ-funded research and formed a
key means of communicating findings. Second, the
series reflected concerns of the field, as
identified through the National Assessment Program
or that posed pressing challenges such as AIDS and
privatization. The priorities of the Attorney
General and the NIJ Director played a role as
well.

The Issues and Practices report, AIDS in
Correctional Facilities, is an example of a quick
response to a critical new issue, that of
HIV-infected offenders in custody. For correction
agencies, AIDS was a pressing, formidable
challenge. A complex health problem for inmates
and corrections staff, it required decisions about
prevention, institutional management, and
equitable methods for identifying and treating
inmates with AIDS. NIJ commissioned a survey of
all State prisons, Federal Bureau of Prison
facilities, and large urban area jails to find out
how these agencies were responding to these
issues. The Issues and Practices report not only
informed the criminal justice community of the
range of responses around the country but also
explained the facts about AIDS: how it is
transmitted and how it can be prevented.
Subsequent NIJ efforts included publications on
AIDS and law enforcement and probation and parole
officers, a conference on AIDS and the courts, and
development of an information clearinghouse on
AIDS and criminal justice.

Research in Brief and other publications. NIJ
sought other ways to communicate research findings
to busy criminal justice agency executives and
lawmakers. The first vehicle, the Research in
Brief bulletin, generally summarized the findings
of a particular research study and pointed to
their application for local policy or practice.
The NIJ Research in Brief bulletin series
continues to be a leading source of public and
practitioner information on advances in criminal
justice research, with about 25 titles appearing
annually. It was followed by AIDS Bulletins,
Construction Bulletins, and a special series
titled Perspectives on Policing, produced in
conjunction with Harvard University's John F.
Kennedy School of Government. This series of
bulletins was drawn from policy discussions at the
Kennedy School's Executive Session on Policing. 

NIJ also produced an entirely new vehicle, a
bimonthly magazine, NIJ Reports, featuring one or
two articles on the application of research
findings and also containing announcements of the
most important additions to the NCJRS Document
Collection. NIJ Reports evolved into the prime and
most visible communication vehicle between NIJ and
its various user constituencies. Over the years,
issues of the magazine brought to the fore
discussions of research on such emerging criminal
justice issues as drugs and crime, intermediate
sanctions (including electronic monitoring and
boot camps), sentencing guidelines, and computer
crime. As cost recovery became an ever more
important feature of NCJRS, NIJ Reports developed
into a key vehicle to promote fee-for-service
products.

Conferences. NIJ's conference program was a
national one during the 1980's, bringing together
key criminal justice professionals to share their
views and experiences in dealing with critical
issues then facing the system. An example was the
AIDS and the Courts conference, jointly sponsored
with the State Justice Institute, held in April
1989 in Miami. The conference brought together
medical and legal experts with a group of judges
and other officials to consider the legal
challenges posed by the AIDS epidemic. Other
conferences dealt with drugs and crime,
state-of-the-art policing, and sentencing and
judicial issues.

New components of NCJRS. The 1980's were also a
period of vast growth for NIJ's information
clearinghouse. At the end of the decade, NCJRS
comprised five clearinghouses, each sharing the
NCJRS information base and reference and referral
capabilities and disseminating information on the
programs and publications of all the Office of
Justice Programs (OJP) agencies-the Office of
Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention, the
Bureau of Justice Statistics, the Bureau of
Justice Assistance, and the Office for Victims of
Crime, as well as NIJ. Toll-free 800 lines and a
variety of print, audiovisual, and electronic
products were enlarging both the audiences and the
scope of services available to them. At the same
time, in its direction of NCJRS, NIJ encouraged
the building of an information network among
public and private agencies to share in both the
gathering and dissemination of information in an
increasingly interdependent world. As OJP and its
clearinghouse entered the 1990's, the pace of
technological advances, together with increased
public concern for drugs, crime, and violence,
brought new sets of challenges.

The 1990's and Beyond

The emergence of new forms of violence, including
killings related to drug trafficking and violence
among youths, together with the proliferation of
new communications technologies, have had a great
impact on the Institute's efforts to translate the
fruits of research into action on the front lines.
The content of NIJ publications is shaped by the
concerns that are at the top of the Nation's
criminal justice agenda, and ever greater emphasis
is placed on the newest form of technology
transfer, Internet, the information superhighway.

PAVNET (Partnerships Against Violence Network). A
consortium of six Federal Government agencies3
created through an NIJ initiative begun in late
1993, PAVNET aims to integrate information on
programs and other resources addressing violence
prevention and control-with a focus on youth at
risk-and to remove all barriers to sharing that
information across the Nation. State jurisdictions
and local communities wishing to create programs
to address issues of violence can benefit from
information about other programs already under way
and from knowing where they can obtain research
data, technical assistance, curriculums and other
information sources, and funding. The net is
broad; for example, PAVNET contains information on
parent education to prevent child abuse and raise
healthy children, on interventions for high risk
adolescents, and on alternative sanctions for
youthful offenders. In 1994, this information was
gathered into an online search and retrieval
system of approximately 1,000 entries, PAVNET
Online, which can be accessed as of November 1994
through Internet by gophering to
pavnet.esusda.gov. A printed two-volume directory
of the same PAVNET information is scheduled for
publication in December 1994.

To ensure that this new source of information and
its availability is known across the Nation, NIJ
is spearheading a nationwide campaign. The
Corporation for Public Broadcasting has initiated
contacts with the Institute to explore linking its
campaign against violence with PAVNET, using its
media resources to both publicize specific local
activities and the wealth of information PAVNET
can provide. NIJ is also working with the other
Federal participating agencies and clearinghouses
to prepare articles and press releases in both
electronic and printed formats for particular
audiences.

In the future, PAVNET is expected to be
administered on an interagency distributed
platform, which will permit continuous independent
updating and expansion by the participating
Federal agencies and their clearinghouses and
resource centers. The Department of Justice will
serve as the host for justice-related information,
and NCJRS will serve as collector and verifier of
justice-related information. All participating
agencies will establish Internet technical
resources similar to the format online today that
will be linked together. The user will thus
continue to access PAVNET as a single resource.

NCJRS online. In 1994, NCJRS began development of
its Internet gopher site, ncjrs.aspensys.com 71.
Users can now directly access information about
all Office of Justice Program agencies, directly
connect to PAVNET and the U.S. Department of
Justice, and use the NCJRS Bulletin Board through
Internet. Users will soon be able to order NIJ and
NCJRS publications online as well as by keying in
their orders on a touch-tone telephone.

Other efforts to communicate up-to-date
information. NIJ's effort to communicate useful
information based on criminal justice research and
development projects not only uses technological
advances to widen dissemination efforts but also
looks to continue and expand its resources for
information useful to policymakers, professionals,
and practitioners. Thus, major programs developed
in the 1980's, such as the Construction
Information Exchange and the Drug Use Forecasting
program, have continued into the 1990's, and are
updated to meet new information needs of State and
local agencies. 

NIJ's publications agenda has included such issues
as the emergence of large numbers of cocaine and
crack abusers, the accompanying violence of drug
traffickers, and the risks of HIV infection from
intravenous drugs, which have led to a host of
anti-drug programs in the United States, some
focusing on prevention and others focusing on
treatment. Consequently, NIJ has published
documents on anti-drug programs, like the Maricopa
County, Arizona, "Do Drugs. Do Time." initiative
and Miami's Drug Court, to encourage other
jurisdictions to try similar innovations. 

To reach different types of audiences, NIJ's
publications program has expanded to encompass new
bulletin series, including Program Focus, with
attention on successful programs developed within
individual jurisdictions. In addition, NIJ
developed two new publication series, Evaluation
Reports and Evaluation Bulletins, to present the
findings of NIJ program evaluations, which have
primarily focused on anti-drug programs funded by
the Bureau of Justice Assistance, in response to a
congressional mandate. Each year NIJ summarizes
the results of these evaluations in an annual
report to Congress. The most recent series, begun
in 1994, are two-page Updates that summarize
recently released, individual NIJ-sponsored
research projects.

The National Institute of Justice Journal,
launched in 1992, devoted its premiere issue to a
major new effort to root law enforcement in
community life-the development of community
policing and problem-oriented policing. Its second
issue was devoted to the topic of drugs and crime-
still at or near the top of the agenda in city
after city.

Increasingly, all NIJ publications are available
in two forms: printed and electronic. The contents
of the NCJRS Document Data Base has for several
years been available on CD-ROM; an updated version
is issued annually. For the past couple of years,
all NIJ publications have been available online;
with the expansion of gopher technology, users can
access them today through the Library of Congress,
the U.S. Department of Justice, or the NCJRS
gophers on the Internet. 

The Institute will continue its efforts to use
emerging formats for information dissemination to
bring research results and their implications into
the hands of the policymakers, professionals, and
practitioners who can make our communities safer
and stronger. The past 25 years have been ones of
enormous growth and change for NIJ's communication
of new criminal justice knowledge to the field.
The task throughout has remained the same even
though the resources and the means of
accomplishing it have been transformed several
times over. The constant has been this change,
together with the commitment to turn the findings
of research into new and better ways to administer
criminal justice.

Monique Smith and Virginia Baldau

Notes

1. In this chapter, this entity is referred to
interchangeably as NIJ, the National Institute, or
the Institute. 

2. President's Commission on Law Enforcement and
Administration of Justice, Challenge of Crime in a
Free Society, Washington, D.C.: President's
Commission on Law Enforcement and Administration
of Justice, 1967.

3. The coalition of Federal agencies that have
contributed to building PAVNET are the U.S.
Departments of Agriculture, Education, Health and
Human Services, Housing and Urban Development,
Justice, and Labor. Over 30 clearinghouses and
resource centers operated by these agencies
assisted in the initial efforts.