We will end our work on regional security in Latin America and the Middle East. And since Russian U.S. relations are critical to further progress on reduction of nuclear arms and building a stable world order, we will be increasing our work in human rights, building civil society, and strengthening scholarly infrastructure in Russia. This process of readjusting our portfolio of programs will be gradual but three to five years from now look for a more sharply focused MacArthur Foundation. In the domestic arena we have programs in education, juvenile justice, employment, building community capacity, and mental health. We believe that research is essential in the crafting of public policies that can improve American society.
Research comes in many forms.
MacArthur pioneered the concept of networks that enable scholars from different fields and different universities to work for as long as ten years at a time on critical problems. These inter-disciplinary networks are producing results which have clear policy implications. This idea of collective efficacy is central to much of the work we are supporting in Chicago s neighborhoods. A researcher in our Network on Adolescent Development and Juvenile Justice compared what happened to young people who ran afoul of the law in New Jersey and were handled as juveniles in the criminal justice system with another group of young people who committed exactly the same type of crimes in New York state but were treated as adults. He found that the young people who were treated as adults were significantly more likely to commit serious crimes later in their lives.