What Do We Know About Crime?

by Te-Ping Chen · 2010-07-13 08:04:00 UTC
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If you haven't heard of the National Institute of Justice before, the agency is worth a second look. The forgotten stepchild of the Justice Department, NIJ has an unusual charge — to scientifically research and evaluate what actually works in crime prevention. In a nation notorious for its emotional, tough-on-crime approach to sentencing, you might say that NIJ's goal is to provide a dose of reason.

Unfortunately, declares a new report issued by an expert panel convened by the National Research Council, NIJ has fallen down on the job. Thanks to years of Congressional and departmental domineering, the report paints an image of an agency that's both weak-kneed and neglected. (That this report marks the first time NIJ has been evaluated in 33 years is itself telling.)

As the authors note, NIJ wasn't created with the goal of "improving the status quo." But NIJ's mandate has been steadily whittled down to that object. Though the report credits NIJ for improving knowledge about violence against women (due to funding from the 1994 Violence Against Women Act), it also blasts the agency's absence of strong leadership, as well as its "lack of a robust scientific culture."

If NIJ wants to fulfill its charge, the report argues, the agency needs to quit being subservient to Congress — as well as the Office of Justice Programs, which oversees its work.

That means a better budget, more insulation from short-term political power grabs and steady leadership. It also means taking on deeper, more pressing questions about policing, fairly administrated justice and the etiology of criminal behavior. (Or, as the panelists put it, learning more about what policies work "for whom, when and under what circumstances.")

Matt's blogged here before about how for many states, the recession is an opportunity to reevaluate past failed criminal justice policies. But if states and the federal government really want to intelligently re-boot how we fight crime, we have to first invest in how we understand it.

(h/t the excellent Ted Gest)

Photo Credit: ktylerconk

Te-Ping Chen Te-Ping Chen is a freelance writer and U.S. Truman Scholar whose writing has appeared in the Nation Magazine, the South China Morning Post magazine, Le Soir, and Slate.com.
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