National Academies Press: OpenBook

Strengthening the National Institute of Justice (2010)

Chapter: 5 Building a Research Infrastructure and Guiding Policy and Practice

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Suggested Citation:"5 Building a Research Infrastructure and Guiding Policy and Practice." National Research Council. 2010. Strengthening the National Institute of Justice. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/12929.
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5
Building a Research Infrastructure and Guiding Policy and Practice

In addition to funding individual research projects, research agencies typically are also involved in building the infrastructure for research in their areas of interest and enhancing dissemination and utilization of research results. In this chapter we review and assess the efforts of the National Institute of Justice (NIJ) to improve the research infrastructure—efforts that are especially important for the development of crime and justice research—and to enhance the use of research by criminal justice practitioners and policy makers.

In 1968, when NIJ was established, the systems supporting crime and justice research were not well developed, and research efforts were underfunded and driven primarily by the interests of researchers. Few university-based researchers worked in this area, there were few doctoral programs that excelled in research training, and not-for-profit and other private-sector research capabilities devoted to these topics were almost nonexistent. In fact, included in the functions assigned to NIJ was the charge to support the growth of crime and criminal justice research and to take steps to encourage research utilization. The 1977 National Research Council (NRC) committee noted the absence of a strong crime and justice research community as one of the barriers to the success of NIJ (National Research Council, 1977). It also found few systematic efforts to translate research into practice or (where appropriate) to adopt research-based standards for practice and policy.

Building a research field and enhancing research utilization include the following types of efforts: (1) building research capacities, (2) using research to guide policy and practice, and (3) disseminating research findings

Suggested Citation:"5 Building a Research Infrastructure and Guiding Policy and Practice." National Research Council. 2010. Strengthening the National Institute of Justice. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/12929.
×

to the research and practitioner communities. Throughout its history, NIJ has supported programs aimed at addressing each of these areas. In fact, as we show, in some of these areas NIJ has been a leader at the federal level.

The efforts of NIJ described in this chapter include fellowship programs, the data archive and training programs for researchers at the National Archive of Criminal Justice Data (NACJD), the equipment compliance standards program, technology assistance1 provided to practitioners, and the communications office and its dissemination activities. In addition, we look at the function recently assigned to NIJ of administering grant programs to improve crime laboratories and reduce the backlog of DNA processing in these laboratories. We examine these forensic capacity-building grant programs as well as NIJ’s technology assistance activities to determine what, if any, impact they have had on its ability to fulfill its mission as a research agency. We conclude the chapter with a description and appraisal of NIJ’s dissemination efforts to provide information to its state and local constituents as well as the criminal justice research field.

BUILDING RESEARCH CAPACITIES

The field of crime and justice research has greatly expanded since the creation of NIJ. While this growth can be attributed mostly to changes in higher education, increased public interest in crime and justice, and the growth of the criminal justice system, the federal government, including NIJ, has played an important role. The Omnibus Crime Control and Safe Streets Act of 1968 that established NIJ also enacted the Law Enforcement Education Program, which provided almost $200 million in grants and loans to support the education of law enforcement officers returning to college as well as to the development of new doctoral programs as models for higher education (Jacobs and Magdovitz, 1977). The increased availability of federal funding for programmatic improvements inevitably attracted researchers to assist in program development and evaluations. NIJ’s efforts to provide direction to the growing number of researchers working on crime and justice topics included strategies to reach and appeal to a wide range of disciplines in solicitations for research studies as well as support for researchers through fellowship programs and the creation of a publicly available data archive for criminal justice research.

This is most notable in the growth of criminology as a scientific discipline. Prior to 1966 there were 2 doctoral programs in the field; today

1

“Technology assistance” is an elusive phrase intended to indicate support in many forms related to the operation of technology devices, such as radios or lab equipment. The committee develops a definition of technology assistance as it applies to NIJ’s activities and services later in the chapter.

Suggested Citation:"5 Building a Research Infrastructure and Guiding Policy and Practice." National Research Council. 2010. Strengthening the National Institute of Justice. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/12929.
×

there are over 30 (Association of Doctoral Programs in Criminology and Criminal Justice, 2009). Masters programs have increased from a handful to over 1,100. Membership in the American Society of Criminology has grown from under 500 in 1970 (Morris, 1975) to over 3,000 today. In 1968 there was only a single reputable peer-reviewed journal focusing on crime and justice issues; today there are over 100. One commentator on the growth of criminology concluded that the Law Enforcement Assistance Agency (most importantly the Law Enforcement Education Program) was central to the establishment of these programs and the development of the discipline (Akers, 1992). Savelsberg, Cleveland, and King (2004) have documented how federal funding, including support from NIJ, has influenced the growth and direction of criminology as a science.

Fellowship Programs

The Omnibus Crime Control Act of 1968 calls for the institute to “carry out programs of instructional assistance consisting of research fellowships.” From the beginning, it has provided support to doctoral students in their research through the Graduate Research Fellowship Program (Law Enforcement Assistance Administration, 1969) and has since expanded efforts to encourage young minority scholars to develop their research programs through the W.E.B. Du Bois Fellowship Program and to attract senior researchers and practitioners to NIJ through the Visiting Fellows Program. These programs have had as their goals increasing the number of young scholars in crime and justice research, addressing the gross underrepresentation of minority researchers in this field, and augmenting NIJ staff with short-term senior researchers and practitioners. In order to examine how successful they have been in achieving their goals, the committee had a review conducted of these programs.2 The following is a summary of that review and the committee’s assessment of the data that were gathered.

Graduate Research Fellowship Program

The Graduate Research Fellowship Program provides dissertation research support to outstanding doctoral students undertaking independent research on issues in crime and justice (Crossland, 2008). The goal of the program is to expand the pool of research talent by attracting doctoral stu-

2

The committee notes with appreciation the assistance of Nicola Smith, who prepared a report that was helpful in the preparation of this chapter. She contacted current and former NIJ staff and W.E.B. Du Bois fellowship and Graduate Research Fellowship recipients to gather information on the fellowship programs with regard to history and current management, as well as information on recipients’ research achievements.

Suggested Citation:"5 Building a Research Infrastructure and Guiding Policy and Practice." National Research Council. 2010. Strengthening the National Institute of Justice. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/12929.
×

dents who can contribute critical and innovative thinking to pressing crime and justice problems. Students from any relevant academic discipline may apply through their university. NIJ asks dissertation advisers to bring this program to the attention of their most promising students early in their dissertation pursuit. There is no predetermined number of awards each year. The monetary value of the award is a fixed amount ($20,000), although some applicants in the past have applied for less. Awardees are expected to complete their research in a 1-year period.

Individual award information is maintained through the OJP grant management system and budget files in the Planning, Budget, Management, and Administration Division. The program has been managed by four different staff members since 1999. This is not an unusual situation in government agencies. However, at no time have there been formal transition procedures from one program manager to another. As a result, the program history is not well documented, since records are missing or incomplete.

Fellows are monitored like other NIJ grantees, contacted on a monthly or quarterly basis via phone or e-mail, and required to make progress reports every six months using the categorical assistance progress report (Office of Justice Programs, 2006a). They are also encouraged to present their preliminary and final findings at appropriate academic meetings and conferences. Many fellows present their dissertation work at “job talks” when they enter the job market. No final report is required; the dissertation as approved by the grantee’s university is the final report, along with a final progress report. Fellows are invited to present at colloquia at NIJ in special cases.

According to NIJ, there was a total of 68 recipients in the period 1998-2006. The recipients, at the time of their award, represented a variety of disciplines, but most were in criminology or criminal justice (55 percent) or sociology (18 percent) departments. Other disciplines include psychology, mental health, geography, engineering, political science, social welfare, social work, anthropology, economics, and biology. According to our review,3 all but the recent awardees had completed their doctoral degrees and more than half are now in full-time teaching positions. More than half have published4 since receipt of their fellowship. Of those who have

3

Report prepared by Nicola Smith for the committee meeting January 8-9, 2009, on NIJ Fellowship Programs.

4

On the basis of information on 51 of the recipients, 425 publications were authored, which included 287 articles in peer-reviewed journals, 69 technical reports, 61 chapters, and 8 books. And 42 of the journal articles are available in Tier 1 journals and 62 in Tier 2 journals. Less than half (48 percent) of the subsequent publications were deemed unrelated to dissertation topics of the respective authors. Journal publications were classified in tiers based on the classification of the University of Maryland College of Behavioral and Social Sciences. This tier classification is used to rank research publications: typically, Tier 1 (premier), Tier 2 (leading),

Suggested Citation:"5 Building a Research Infrastructure and Guiding Policy and Practice." National Research Council. 2010. Strengthening the National Institute of Justice. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/12929.
×

published, the average number of their publications was six. The strategy employed by the fellowship program, suggesting a list of broad topic areas of research, has had success in generating research publications on a wide range of topics.

A list of fellows provided by NIJ for our assessment suggests that adequate management and monitoring of the fellowship program were not in place. The original list included individuals as having received funding when in fact they had not. It also included administrative personnel from the universities as recipients of the fellowship but no information regarding the actual recipient.

Most awards are for a 1-year period; however, time of completion is not recorded by personnel in charge of the fellowship programs. According to our review,5 more than half of the Graduate Research Fellow recipients contacted did not complete their research in 1 year—the range for completion was 1-7 years. This is not surprising for dissertation work. Although there are models for successfully completing and defending one’s dissertation within a year of proposing the research,6 the average criminology Ph.D. candidate takes 2-4 years to complete the written dissertation in a full-time program and 3-6 years in a part-time program.7 The University of Maryland allows up to 4 years for completion of the dissertation once admitted to candidacy,8 and other Ph.D. programs in criminology have similar requirements.

In summary, after making these awards, NIJ does not appear to have spent much effort to see that work was completed in a timely manner, to assess the career impacts of the award, or to continue a relationship with the awardees. The programs, while well intentioned and contributing to the growth of doctoral graduates in the criminal justice field, have not been integrated into the program plan or operations of the agency.

Tier 3 (reputable), and Tier 4 (local/others). Tier 1 journals represent the top publications in individual disciplines and for this analysis include the following publications: Criminology, Journal of Research in Crime and Delinquency, and Journal of Quantitative Criminology. The Tier 2 journals include Criminology and Public Policy, Justice Quarterly, Social Science Quarterly, Law and Social Inquiry, Psicotherma, Journal of Health and Social Behavior, and Aggression and Violent Behavior.

5

Report prepared by Nicola Smith for the committee meeting January 8-9, 2009, on NIJ Fellowship Programs.

6

See for example the Ph.D. timeline at the University of Missouri, St. Louis, available at http://www.umsl.edu/~ccj/pdfs/program_time_line.pdf [accessed July 16, 2009].

7

See information on pursuing a Ph.D. program in criminology at http://www.topcriminaljusticecolleges.com/phd-program-in-criminology.html [accessed July 16, 2009].

8

See degree program information at http://www.ccjs.umd.edu/Graduate/phd.htm [accessed July 16, 2009].

Suggested Citation:"5 Building a Research Infrastructure and Guiding Policy and Practice." National Research Council. 2010. Strengthening the National Institute of Justice. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/12929.
×
W.E.B. Du Bois Fellowship Program

The W.E.B. Du Bois Fellowship Program was undertaken to address a critical need to build the ranks of minority researchers interested in crime and justice issues. Planning of the program began in 1998-1999, with the goal of providing an opportunity for minority researchers to interact with NIJ staff and to provide their perspective on NIJ programs. Seeking the guidance of the U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) on how to initiate such a program, NIJ staff were told the department’s view that any federal program explicitly for minorities would be in violation of federal laws against discrimination and, if a suit arose challenging federal programs that were exclusively for minorities, the department would not support them.9

Despite this setback, plans for the program moved ahead. However, to address the department’s concern, the requirement that all applicants be minority researchers was revised. New guidelines were written in such a way to appeal as much as possible to minority researchers, and race as a selection criterion was dropped. The original guidelines also included a requirement that grantees spend at least a portion of their time onsite at NIJ, where they would participate in its various activities.10 In more recent years, terms of residence in the fellowship program have become more flexible.

The first W.E.B. Du Bois fellowship was awarded in 2000. The Du Bois fellowship complements NIJ’s other fellowship programs and provides talented researchers early in their professional career with an opportunity to elevate independently generated research and ideas to the level of national discussion (Crossland, 2008). Fellowship awards have the goal of supporting projects with direct implications for criminal justice policy and practice in the United States (National Institute of Justice, 2007c).

The W.E.B. Du Bois fellows are monitored like other grant recipients. Recipients are required to submit progress reports every six months for the duration of the grant. A final report is also required. Du Bois fellows are encouraged to present at professional meetings, but NIJ has neither facilitated this nor tracked when it happens. W.E.B. Du Bois individual award information is maintained in the grant management system of the Office of Justice Programs (OJP) and budget files in the Planning, Budget, Management, and Administration Division.

Since the beginning of the program there have been four different managers. Again like the Graduate Research Fellowship Program, there are no formal procedures in place for transition of the program and the program history has not been well documented.

The committee’s assessment of this program is therefore solely depen-

9

Conversations with NIJ Staff, September 9, 2009.

10

Conversations with NIJ Staff, September 9, 2009.

Suggested Citation:"5 Building a Research Infrastructure and Guiding Policy and Practice." National Research Council. 2010. Strengthening the National Institute of Justice. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/12929.
×

dent on what we learned about past recipients of the fellowship awards. There have been a total of nine recipients in the period 2000-2007, and the total amount awarded was $563,078. The awards ranged from $45,343 to $78,767, with an average of $70,385, being awarded per year. Recipients were selected from across the United States, with three selected from the South, two from the Midwest, two from the mid Atlantic, and one from the Pacific. The review of the current resumes of seven of the nine awardees, identified 67 publications11 since completion of their fellowships, approximately half of which were related to their fellowships; 16 of 37 published journal articles are available in Tier 1 and Tier 2 journals.12

All the award recipients were located in established educational institutions and committed to the field of criminology. All have stayed in the field, becoming productive scholars and continuing work that began during the fellowship. Although there is variation in the productivity of the fellows, our review of their professional careers suggests that the fellowship stimulated their work and resulted in numerous publications. Of course we cannot determine how these individuals would have done without the award, but we note that the Du Bois fellows have contributed to the breadth of crime and justice research in terms of the range of topics related to the goals of the program. In addition, those supported by this program have become productive contributors to the crime and justice research literature.

However, NIJ currently does not have a very effective way to monitor and track research produced by fellowship recipients. Without such followup, there is no way to assess the extent to which the goal of increasing the number of young scholars, particularly underrepresented minorities, is being met.

Visiting Fellows Program

The goal of the Visiting Fellows Program, begun in 1969, was to bring criminal justice professionals and researchers to NIJ for a period of 6-18 months to work on research projects or the development of research-based action programs. For the most part, the fellows were established leaders in their field. The award included salary, benefits, reasonable relocation expenses, travel and supplementary costs for their project, and office expenses. Fellows were required to spend at least 80 percent of their time at NIJ. Often they were assigned to work with a particular program or organizational unit. Over time, there may have been some deviation from

11

Publications include articles in peer-reviewed journals, books, chapters, and technical reports.

12

Report prepared by Nicola Smith for the committee meeting January 8-9, 2009, on NIJ Fellowship Programs.

Suggested Citation:"5 Building a Research Infrastructure and Guiding Policy and Practice." National Research Council. 2010. Strengthening the National Institute of Justice. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/12929.
×

the original guidelines, depending on the research tasks undertaken and the program offices involved.

The committee could not find any systematic records on the fellows program or the contributions of the fellows. Without better documentation, we cannot determine how many applications were received, how the fellows were selected, what role they played at NIJ, or how their final reports were used by the agency. We were verbally informed that the program was discontinued in 2004 because of resource constraints. The agency did not issue a solicitation for the program for fiscal year (FY) 2005-2009. As the writing of this report, the solicitation for NIJ’s Visiting Fellowship Program was released for FY 2010.

Our very impressionistic observation is that the program attracted many well-known criminal justice researchers and practitioners, many of the projects undertaken by the fellows have had influence on criminal justice practice and policy, and NIJ staff thought that many of the fellows played important roles in developing the agency’s research plans and programs. The absence of better records on this program left the committee in a position of recognizing the potential value of this type of effort but with no way to assess that value.

Data Archiving Program

NIJ has been a leader at the federal level in recognizing the importance of collecting, archiving, and making available to other researchers the data collected as a part of the projects it funds. In 1981 NIJ began requiring research award recipients to submit the data collected in their projects. This was in part a response to the recommendation of the 1977 NRC committee that NIJ “collect and maintain a data archive that retains various general criminal justice data … collected by individual investigators after the original investigator has completed use of the data” (National Research Council, 1977, p. 113). This recommendation led directly to the establishment of the Data Resources Program (DRP).

In 1984, NIJ established DRP to ensure that data collected with NIJ funding are permanently preserved and are available for use by others in the research community. NIJ-sponsored researchers are required to submit their data to the DRP at the conclusion of their projects. Since 1991, NIJ data, codebooks, and other supporting documentation are deposited with the National Archive of Criminal Justice Data (NACJD) at the University of Michigan’s Inter-university Consortium for Political and Social Research (ICPSR). Scholars, practitioners, policy makers, students, community activists, and any other interested parties throughout the world can freely use all NIJ-sponsored data collections for the purposes of conducting scientific research. This research can include verifying, refining, or refuting the origi-

Suggested Citation:"5 Building a Research Infrastructure and Guiding Policy and Practice." National Research Council. 2010. Strengthening the National Institute of Justice. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/12929.
×

nal investigator’s findings or pursuing inquiries not addressed by the other investigators by using alternative theoretical and analytical models or by combining with data collected at other sites or time periods.

With the support of NIJ, ICPSR is able to acquire and to facilitate the use of a wide variety of data in the fields of criminology, law, and justice. NIJ benefits from a number of important ICPSR roles, including (1) the perpetual preservation of its research investments and products, (2) an infrastructure on the Internet that provides worldwide dissemination of its data and related documentation to the research community, (3) added value by documenting and describing data files that aid the users of data, (4) a team of justice data specialists who have unique skills in data management and computerized mapping technical assistance needed by archive sponsors and data users, and (5) training programs to communicate quality research methods and analysis and promote the use of existing data. Funding for the archive has come from NIJ and the Bureau of Justice Statistics. NIJ has awarded approximately $6 million to ICPSR for the archive since 2001.

As with other aspects of NIJ, no systematic review has been conducted of DRP or the data archive at NACJD. In September 2003, NACJD provided a memorandum to NIJ indicating ways the program could be evaluated, but no action was taken on any of its recommendations. NACJD, however, regularly monitors submissions to the archive, uses of the archive, and feedback from its training programs. We were able to review the data assembled over the years in a report prepared for us by NACJD.13 A summary of some of the information and analyses is provided in the subsequent sections.

Monitored Data Submissions

In 1997 web access to the data from NACJD was made available. Based on web logs from 1997 to October 2008, the number of NIJ-sponsored studies in NACJD grew from 256 to 776, a 200 percent increase. In 1997, NIJ-sponsored data comprised 43.3 percent of the studies in NACJD; in October 2008, they were 50.4 percent (see Figure 5-1). The database tracking NIJ-funded research was developed in December 1999 and therefore contains complete records from the year 2000. According to NACJD records, from January 2000 to October 2008, there was data “activity” (defined as data acquired, released, or preserved only, or designated as “no data to

13

Our review of the data archive program included conversations with current and former staff at NIJ and the University of Michigan, responses to questions posed by the committee to archive staff, a site visit to the archive, and consideration of a report on the archives prepared by Kaye Marz and Christopher Maxwell. The committee notes with appreciation the contribution of the report prepared by Marz and Maxwell made to this section.

Suggested Citation:"5 Building a Research Infrastructure and Guiding Policy and Practice." National Research Council. 2010. Strengthening the National Institute of Justice. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/12929.
×
FIGURE 5-1 Total studies submitted to NACJD by year.

FIGURE 5-1 Total studies submitted to NACJD by year.

SOURCE: Report prepared for the committee by Kaye Marz and Christopher Maxwell, Inter-university Consortium for Political and Social Research.

archive”) on 395 studies, an average of 43.9 NIJ-sponsored studies per year, ranging from a low of 28 in 2004 to a high of 80 in 2007. During the same period, NACJD released data from 320 studies, an average of 35.6 studies per year, ranging from a low of 16 in 2005 to a high of 63 in 2003; and designated 28 studies as no data to archive or storage only. Data from 47 studies remained to be processed. Note that this number of studies released or preserved does not include the 174 studies from the Project on Human Development in Chicago Neighborhoods (PHDCN) released between 2005 and 2007, for which a dedicated processor was assigned, jointly supported by NIJ and the MacArthur Foundation until March 2007.

There have been improvements in the quality of files deposited in the archive. Staff and grantee efforts to raise quality have resulted in larger numbers of data sets in the archive being judged as having higher quality and therefore ease of use, according to NACJD’s data-quality measurement system, put into place in 2005. Even though data sets submitted to the archive have increased in size and complexity, their usefulness has improved as more attention has been paid to data quality. In our survey of researchers and practitioners, 75 percent of the respondents indicated that they had used the archive and 90 percent of those judged it useful to their work. Number of Studies

Suggested Citation:"5 Building a Research Infrastructure and Guiding Policy and Practice." National Research Council. 2010. Strengthening the National Institute of Justice. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/12929.
×

Over the years, NIJ and NACJD have sought to encourage submission of data by NIJ grantees. These efforts include special award conditions, letters to those who had not submitted data indicating the possibility of negative consequences for future funding if they did not submit their data, and new special conditions in 2008 that require awardees to deposit data and data documentation 90 days before award closeout or risk nonpayment of grant funds. These efforts combined with technological changes at the archives that make submission easier have resulted in increases in the number of data sets deposited.

What is not known is the current extent of data archiving that is occurring. One obvious measure is the proportion of completed awards that deposit complete and usable data in NACJD. This calculation is complicated by the difficulty of determining the number of awards made by NIJ and the number of those awards that produce data sets. Neither NIJ nor NACJD was able to provide us with the total number of awards that should have their data archived. However, records from NACJD as well as our own efforts to identify principal investigators in the archive database (see citation analysis in Chapter 6) indicate that a substantial number of projects that should have archived data have not done so—the estimates range from half to upward of 90 percent of all research awards since 1995. Even though we cannot precisely gauge the problem, we think that efforts must be undertaken to improve the archiving of data. An important first step to achieving this will be for NIJ to substantially improve its administrative records. We also urge NIJ to screen former NIJ grantees who are applying for grants as to whether they have complied with data archiving requirements and to withhold support until such requirements are met.

Monitored Uses of Data and Online Resources

MyData is the ICPSR user registration and authentication system for the NACJD website that collects user affiliation, institutional department, and statistical package preferences. In the years 2006-2008, roughly half of NACJD users were graduate students. Undergraduate students, faculty, and, to a lesser extent, nonacademic researchers constituted the rest of the users. Nearly half of the total users were from criminal justice or sociology departments. The remainder of users represented other disciplines.

In 1997, 4,544 data users accessed any file related to an NIJ-sponsored study on the NACJD website, representing 33 percent of the NACJD downloads for the year. By 2007, the number of similar accesses was 18,274, representing 35 percent of NACJD downloaded studies (see Figure 5-2). NACJD also keeps track of literature that cites any of the data it archives. This bibliography is publicly available online and contains links to the respective data sources and their descriptions (see Chapter 6). Over the

Suggested Citation:"5 Building a Research Infrastructure and Guiding Policy and Practice." National Research Council. 2010. Strengthening the National Institute of Justice. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/12929.
×
FIGURE 5-2 NACJD user access by year.

FIGURE 5-2 NACJD user access by year.

SOURCE: Report prepared for the committee by Kaye Marz and Christopher Maxwell, Inter-university Consortium for Political and Social Research.

period 1997-2007, the annual number of total publications linked to any NIJ-sponsored data housed in the archive averaged 162.

Through the DRP, NIJ not only supports an archive of data generated from the studies it sponsors, but it also funds proposals to replicate previous findings and conduct original research extending data available from the archive, as well as training programs on data acquisition and analysis.

Secondary Data Analysis

NIJ has routinely supported the use of data gathered in its earlier studies and archived at the University of Michigan in the NACJD. It has done this by issuing annual solicitations calling for secondary analysis of data to replicate findings of the original study or to test new hypotheses with existing data. In the period 2005-2008, NIJ made 16 awards under the Data Resources Program solicitation, an average of 4 awards per year. Most of these awards addressed effects on crime trends, such as mental illness, neighborhood dynamics, legal deterrents, and incarceration. One-third of

Suggested Citation:"5 Building a Research Infrastructure and Guiding Policy and Practice." National Research Council. 2010. Strengthening the National Institute of Justice. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/12929.
×

the awards were directly related to the Project on Human Development in Chicago Neighborhoods and/or neighborhood violence.

These solicitations are generally open-ended, inviting researchers to ask compelling questions that promote understanding of crime or inform criminal justice policy and practice. However, the solicitations may suggest topics of specific interest. For example, the 2007 solicitation expressed interest in studies of crime trends in cities. The 2009 solicitation interests included analysis of data and evaluation research from PHDCN, particularly the use of experimental designs and cost-benefit analysis. Awards are generally small, with a stated limit of $35,000, but may be divided into stages for sequential funding. The award cap of $35,000 has been in place since the FY 1997 solicitation Data Resources Program Funding for the Analysis of Existing Data. Given the high cost of data collection required for many studies, this small initiative leverages prior NIJ investments and can provide a good return on the funding.

Sponsored Training on Data Acquisition and Use

From 1994 to 2001, DRP sponsored a one-week workshop on crime and justice data as part of the ICPSR Summer Training Program in Quantitative Methods. The program resumed in 2008 with the sponsorship of the Workshop on the Project on Human Development in Chicago Neighborhoods. Activities continued in the federal case data course in 2009. During the period when NIJ did not support the summer workshop, NACJD hosted five workshops focused on NIJ-supported data and resources. Through funding from the MacArthur Foundation, courses on the PHDCN data were held in 2005 and 2006. In addition, a workshop on spatial statistics using CrimeStat14 was held in 2005, 2006, and 2007.

Highlighted topics and studies selected each year present substantive areas of research interest, new analytical techniques or applications, and available data on the topic from the archive. The workshops recruit expert researchers or faculty as presenters, including those who were principal investigators on the data set of interest. Workshop participants are a combination of university faculty, advanced graduate students, and criminal justice agency–based researchers or analysts. These workshops are designed to enable participants to achieve a theoretical understanding of the topic and to gain practical knowledge from using the data. Participants have consistently reported these workshops to be of high value.

14

CrimeStat is a spatial statistics program for the analysis of crime incident locations, developed by Ned Levine & Associates, that was funded by NIJ grants.

Suggested Citation:"5 Building a Research Infrastructure and Guiding Policy and Practice." National Research Council. 2010. Strengthening the National Institute of Justice. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/12929.
×

GUIDING PRACTICE AND POLICY

On a wide range of fronts, there have been increasing calls for research to inform practice (Sherman, 1998; MacKenzie, 2000; Welsh and Farrington, 2001; National Research Council, 2005c; Ritter, 2007). As part of their efforts to build research infrastructures, federal research agencies have a responsibility to facilitate the transfer of research findings to policies, applications in the field, and public knowledge. This is particularly important for NIJ, since it has a mandate to improve federal, state, and local criminal justice systems. As we outline in Box 5-1, there are many possible federal-level activities aimed at guiding practice and policy at state and local levels. One of the continuing challenges facing NIJ is to support activities that are best aligned to its research mandate and to assign a lower priority or to avoid support for activities that are best assumed by other programmatic offices in OJP, such as the Bureau of Justice Assistance.

In this section, we describe three activities currently pursued by NIJ to guide practice and policy: (1) testing and evaluation, and standards, (2) technology assistance, and (3) forensic capacity building. We show how NIJ’s role in guiding policy and practice has, in the past 5 years or more, consumed the agency. Note that the total sum of the funds for these three activities represents 15-35 percent of NIJ’s total budget for the period 1996-2001, grew to 55-65 percent from 2002 to 2007, and represents 84 percent of the total budget in 2008 (see Figure 5-3). Grants for these activities are administered primarily out of the Office of Science and Technology (OST) and supported by funds from legislative mandates, such as the President’s DNA Initiative and earmarks to the National Law Enforcement Corrections Technology Center (NLECTC), as well as from OST base funds.

Given that NIJ has a wide audience, a limited budget, and a first priority of sponsoring research aimed at accumulating knowledge, the committee grappled with the question of what assistance activities are appropriate for a federal research agency. The committee focuses the discussion here on technology development because the majority of NIJ’s assistance activities are technology-related. However, our approach is appropriate for any context in which a research agency’s role in the continuum from the accumulation of knowledge to its use or translation into practice is considered.

While there is a continuum from development of technology to adoption of new technology by state or local agencies, no clear thresholds exist between research, development, dissemination of knowledge from that research, and assistance in using that knowledge to acquire, conduct training on, or use new technologies. Because NIJ’s charter is to conduct research and currently it is devoting considerable operational resources and funds to nonresearch or assistance activities, the committee sought to define some boundaries.

Suggested Citation:"5 Building a Research Infrastructure and Guiding Policy and Practice." National Research Council. 2010. Strengthening the National Institute of Justice. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/12929.
×

BOX 5-1

The Continuum from Development of Technologies to Adoption into Practice

As the activities fall on the continuum from technology research and development to assistance as ranked by the committee

Activities that define the federal role in supplying technology-related support to state and local agencies

Research and Development

  • Sponsoring research and development

  • Testing and evaluating technology and developing performance standards for technology and its use

  • Providing information in the form of technology-related conferences

  • Providing information in the form of technology news, including federal reports, newsletters, etc.

  • Providing advice on selecting technology, such as evaluations of technology appearing in federal publication, Internet sites, etc.

  • Providing technology assistance by applying federal resources and expertise to specific problems

  • Providing access to available federal technology, such as a database

  • Providing training in the use of technology

  • Assisting with access to federally supplied technology

  • Funding the acquisition of or access to equipment and/or technology

Assistance


SOURCE: Adapted from Schwabe, Davis, and Jackson (2001, pp. 6-7, 115).

Suggested Citation:"5 Building a Research Infrastructure and Guiding Policy and Practice." National Research Council. 2010. Strengthening the National Institute of Justice. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/12929.
×
FIGURE 5-3 History of OST spending by functional efforts (in constant 2008 dollars).

FIGURE 5-3 History of OST spending by functional efforts (in constant 2008 dollars).

NOTES: OST = Office of Science and Technology, R&D = Research and Development, T&E = Testing and Evaluation.

SOURCE: Created from figures supplied by OST.

We began by adapting a list of activities that describes the federal role in supplying “technology-related support” to state and local agencies from a 2001 RAND report15 (Schwabe, Davis, and Jackson, 2001, pp. 6-7, 115). We then ranked the activities associated with technology-related support on a four-point scale from most appropriate to not at all appropriate for a federal research agency. The activities in Box 5-1 are ordered by the averages of the rankings from low (indicating lean toward research functions) to high (indicating lean toward assistance functions). This exercise was useful in identifying where on the continuum from technology development to adoption into practice the committee thinks NIJ’s program assistance activities lie and how appropriate they are for this federal research agency.

15

The RAND report was based on findings from the nationwide Law Enforcement Technology Survey and a similar Forensics Technology Survey, conducted in late spring and early summer 2000; interviews conducted throughout the year; focus groups conducted in autumn 2000; and review of an extensive, largely nonacademic literature. The report examined the technologies in use or needed by law enforcement agencies at the state and local levels, for the purpose of informing federal policy makers as they consider technology-related support for these agencies. The report peripherally addressed services and programs supported by NIJ, particularly those coordinated through the NLECTC system.

Suggested Citation:"5 Building a Research Infrastructure and Guiding Policy and Practice." National Research Council. 2010. Strengthening the National Institute of Justice. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/12929.
×

NIJ currently engages in all of the activities identified in Box 5-1. Its role in sponsoring research and development is discussed in Chapter 3. In the remainder of this chapter, we describe its activities to (1) develop performance standards, (2) provide technology assistance, and (3) build forensic capacity—discussing these three activities in an order that parallels their descending relevance to NIJ’s research mission.

Testing and Evaluation and Standards

There is continuing need in law enforcement agencies to procure products and equipment, at reasonable cost, that can be used effectively under rigid safety standards (Law Enforcement Assistance Administration, 1969; Schwabe, Davis, and Jackson, 2001). The best way to verify the capabilities and reliability of particular products is through independent, third-party testing and evaluation in combination with recognized performance standards (McBath, 2008). Federal sponsorship of such independent, third-party testing as well as establishment of the performance standards is critical because the law enforcement market is neither large nor lucrative enough to attract sufficient private-sector R&D investment (Schwabe, Davis, and Jackson, 2001).

Through OST, NIJ administers a standards and compliance testing program to help ensure that equipment will perform at a safe, dependable, and effective level. The NLECTC system (see Chapter 3) oversees the development of standards for equipment, testing protocols, and evidence collection; the production of standard reference materials, operating procedures, and equipment guidelines; and a standard-based compliance testing program. Through its testing and evaluation and standards programs, NIJ has been able to help criminal justice agencies make informed procurement, deployment, applications, operating, and training decisions for over 35 years.

The current Office of Law Enforcement Standards (OLES) has a long history. The U.S. Department of Commerce and DOJ, through a memorandum of understanding, established the Law Enforcement Standards Laboratory in 1971 under the auspices of the National Bureau of Standards (Russell and Rice, 2000), which would later become the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST). The laboratory’s primary roles were to develop scientific-based voluntary, commercial manufacturing standards and to certify laboratories in which equipment items could be evaluated according to those standards (Law Enforcement Assistance Administration, 1971). Although the Law Enforcement Standards Laboratory changed names16 over the years, its role and duties have persisted.

16

The Law Enforcement Standards Laboratory (LESL) became the Standards Group when NILECJ launched the Equipment Systems Improvement Program in 1972. LESL became part

Suggested Citation:"5 Building a Research Infrastructure and Guiding Policy and Practice." National Research Council. 2010. Strengthening the National Institute of Justice. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/12929.
×

Currently called the Office of Law Enforcement Standards, it once had NIJ as the primary sponsor of its projects, with additional support from the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, the FBI, the Federal Aviation Administration, the Federal Bureau of Prisons, and the Office of Management and Budget (Russell and Rice, 2000), but in recent years a significant amount of funding has come from the U.S. Department of Homeland Security (DHS), the Science and Technology (S&T) Directorate, and Community Oriented Policing Services (COPS). In FY 2008, OLES received approximately $55 million from partnerships with NIJ, COPS, and DHS S&T (National Institute of Standards and Technology, 2009).

Support of its testing and evaluation and standards programs represents 5-10 percent of the yearly budget of OST, according to figures supplied by NIJ. Much of the budget for the NIJ standards program goes to the interagency agreement with NIST and the contract to Aspen/Lockheed to run NLECTC–National. The cost to run a compliance program is about $1 million a year, and the cost to revise a standard is also about $1 million.17

The first standards formulated were for ballistic resistance of police body armor and for hearing protectors used on police target firing ranges. By 1975, the standards laboratory had completed nearly 20 performance standards for protective equipment (e.g., police body armor and ballistic shields), tools (e.g., handcuffs and metal detectors), and communication equipment (e.g., radio transmitters and voice scramblers) (National Institute of Justice, 1994a). There are currently 44 NIJ standards and numerous NIJ-supported reports and guides listed online at the NIST Office of Law Enforcement Standards website (see http://www.eeel.nist.gov/oles/oles_publications.html [accessed March 17, 2010]).

Through the standards contract to NIST, OST supports the development of performance testing methods and the creation of standards for equipment and operating procedures, the testing and evaluating of existing equipment, the development of examination methods for evidentiary materials, and the production of standard reference materials.

NIJ has recently revised its standards development process and is currently creating or revising standards for the chemical, biological, radioactive, nuclear (CBRN) protective ensemble, holsters, handcuffs, and electronic monitoring. In the new standards development process, NIJ iden-

of NIJ’s Technology Assessment Program in the mid-1980s. In 1994, the NIJ National Law Enforcement Technology Center was established to take over the functions of the Technology Assessment Program Information Center. Today, what once was LESL is now the Office of Law Enforcement Standards in the National Institute of Standards and Technology and part of the NLECTC system.

17

Personal communication from OST deputy director, George Tillery.

Suggested Citation:"5 Building a Research Infrastructure and Guiding Policy and Practice." National Research Council. 2010. Strengthening the National Institute of Justice. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/12929.
×

tifies the requirements of practitioners, reviews any existing standards, and performs a gap analysis between those requirements and existing standards. A special technical committee is set up to define the scope of the effort and to produce the standard and related documents. An advisory working group and steering committee18 are also established to provide guidance and oversight. Draft documents are made public for review and comment before they are approved by the steering committee and published by NIJ (Robinson, 2009).

OST also supports compliance testing based on standards and dissemination of standards and other related information through NLECTC–National. NLECTC-National oversees the equipment standards and testing program, reviews and analyzes testing data and publishes test results and consumer product reports, publishes TechBeat, and operates JUSTNET19 (see Box 5-2).

NLECTC-National also administers two types of testing programs for commercially available equipment: standards-based testing and comparative evaluations. Standards-based testing is conducted at NIJ-approved independent laboratories to confirm the equipment compliance with voluntary performance standards developed by OLES. This testing is now being performed continually on ballistic-resistant body armor, stab-resistant body armor, and computer forensic tools and periodically as needed on metallic handcuffs, semiautomatic pistols, and walk-through metal detectors. Comparative evaluations field-test equipment in order to make test data available to law enforcement agencies as well as vendors. This testing has been performed on patrol vehicles; patrol vehicle tires (including testing of winter tires); replacement brake pads; and cut, puncture, and pathogen-resistant protective gloves (see http://www.justnet.org/Pages/Topic.aspx?topic=218&ct=Service [accessed March 17, 2010]).

In nearly 40 years, OLES has developed over 300 standards, equipment guides, and technical reports, and NLECTC–National has tested over 5,000 models of body armor. The first performance standard and testing program for ballistic body armor has been credited with saving thousands of lives (National Institute of Justice, 2003d). Groundbreaking work in developing forensic science standards has pioneered advances in arson, ballistics, fingerprint, and DNA analyses (National Institute of Standards and Technology, 2009). The current committee did not explore in depth NIJ’s standards program, but notes that an NRC panel that assessed OLES and other offices in NIST (National Research Council, 2002) was impressed with the scope

18

The advisory working group consists of senior-level personnel from stakeholder organizations, NIJ, and NIST/OLES. The steering committee consists of the OST deputy director, the DHS S&T Standards executive, and the NIST/OLES director.

19

See http://www.justnet.org/Pages/Home.aspx [accessed March 17, 2010].

Suggested Citation:"5 Building a Research Infrastructure and Guiding Policy and Practice." National Research Council. 2010. Strengthening the National Institute of Justice. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/12929.
×

BOX 5-2

Descriptions of NLECTC Resources

JUSTNET is a website that provides links to the entire NLECTC system and a gateway to other technology sites in order to assist those seeking information about equipment, technology, or research findings. JUSTNET houses the body armor database, which can be searched to determine whether models are compliant with NIJ standards. It also has links to other standards documents and consumer product lists of relevance to the public safety community (see http://www.justnet.org/Pages/Home.aspx [accessed March 17, 2010]).


TechBeat is NLECTC’s news magazine published four times a year. It is intended to keep practitioners up to date with technologies currently being developed by the NLECTC system, as well as other research and development efforts within the Federal Government and private industry (see http://www.justnet.org/Pages/TechBeatAbout.aspx [accessed March 17, 2010]).


InShorts are two-page documents published by NIJ through OST and often prepared by NLECTC staff. They highlight a specific technology, identify benefits and issues, and provide resources for more information.

of its work and noted that OLES products are “widely used at the federal, state, and local levels, and in other countries as well, and they form the basis for testing and certification programs throughout the criminal justice community” (National Research Council, 2002, p. 56).

OLES, in conjunction with NLECTC-National, has provided a needed and valuable service. “The consequences of inadequate equipment performance or inadequate test methods can range from inconvenient to catastrophic” (Rosendall, 2002, p. xii). Federal support for technology standards development has protected the law enforcement community from disappointment as vendors “try to sell them secondhand technology originally designed for other purposes” (Schwabe, Davis, and Jackson, 2001). Success of the standards programs has increased the call for more standards (Schwabe, Davis, and Jackson, 2001; Law Enforcement and Corrections Technology Advisory Council, 2008).

Suggested Citation:"5 Building a Research Infrastructure and Guiding Policy and Practice." National Research Council. 2010. Strengthening the National Institute of Justice. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/12929.
×

Technology Assistance

According to figures supplied by OST, funds for technology assistance, ranging in annual amounts from $8 to $54 million, have represented roughly 10-20 percent of its budget from 1996 to 2007. However, it is difficult to separate out what specific activities are included in the budget category of technology assistance. Through a review of NIJ’s annual reports and legislative appropriations and comparison of various budget figures, the committee has discerned that much of the technology assistance monies go to the NLECTC system. And many of the activities conducted by NLECTC now or in the past fit the definition of “technology-related support” (Schwabe, Davis, and Jackson, 2001). Some of them, if they have a foundation in knowledge from research, are appropriate for a federal research agency, but several are better suited for an assistance agency (see Box 5-1).

NIJ defines technology assistance on its website20 as bringing “advances in scientific research and technology closer to the frontlines through the National Law Enforcement and Corrections Technology Center (NLECTC).” The website notes that NLECTC offers “scientific and technical support to NIJ’s research and development efforts; demonstration and transfer of technology that can be adopted by the field; assistance in the development and dissemination of technology guidelines and standards; [and] technology assistance, information, and support to law enforcement and corrections agencies, courts, and crime laboratories.” Again, we see NLECTC in the role of primary provider of technology assistance and services that advance the research mission, but some of its services appear out of scope.

NLECTC’s activities tie directly to its purpose as spelled out in the Homeland Security Act of 2002 [Sec 235]. It is interesting to note that NIJ’s broadening of scope—that is, taking on functions beyond a research agency’s mission—is marked in legislative shifts. The Omnibus Crime Control Act of 1968 authorized the institute “to make recommendations for action which can be taken by Federal, State, and local governments and by private persons and organizations to improve and strengthen law enforcement.” Thirty-four years later with the passage of the Homeland Security Act of 2002, NIJ moved beyond making recommendations and has a current legislative mandate to “provide technology assistance, information, and support for law enforcement, corrections, and criminal justice purposes.”

From funds appropriated by Congress specifically from 1995 to 2008, the NLECTC centers have been able to provide resources to law enforcement agencies, public safety personnel, and vendors. Such resources include facilities and guidance for testing and evaluating technologies

Suggested Citation:"5 Building a Research Infrastructure and Guiding Policy and Practice." National Research Council. 2010. Strengthening the National Institute of Justice. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/12929.
×

in operational environments; reports on findings from these operational tests; equipment standards; publications, such as TechBeat and consumer product reports; websites, such as JUSTNET, and online tools, such as CAPRAD, and the body armor database; training workshops; and referral services. See Box 5-2 for descriptions of some of these resources. In making these resources available to the criminal justice field at no charge, the centers support the transfer and adoption of technology into practice by law enforcement and corrections agencies, courts, and crime laboratories and stand ready to provide technology assistance, information, and support for its adoption.

A 2001 RAND report provides examples of noteworthy NLECTC early accomplishments (Schwabe, Davis, and Jackson, 2001). Of the 44 examples presented there, 13 illustrate situations in which a center served as a liaison or resource for a single law enforcement agency to gain access to or information from a particular technology in order to solve a specific case. Nine are examples of specific projects between a center and a law enforcement agency or set of agencies to develop a needed tool for a particular issue; often these were needed communication networks or information databases. There were four examples of publications and conferences produced or sponsored by the centers and four examples of training developed and administered by the centers. The remaining noteworthy accomplishments included two or three examples each of serving as a liaison in the transfer of surplus equipment to law enforcement agencies, orchestrating demonstrations of new tools and technologies, providing support for testing technologies, building alliances with groups and organizations with mutual interests, and providing referrals upon calls for assistance.

Although the examples in the 2001 RAND report are probably not representative of the centers’ workloads, the abundance of examples on direct technology assistance for individual case investigations is striking. The centers have been criticized for their limited reach, often serving only criminal justice agencies near center host institutions. The committee’s 2008 site visits to some of the centers confirmed that direct technology assistance and services to individual local agencies were still conducted.

For example, the Border Research and Technology Center views its role as outreach and technical assistance to the practitioner community on behalf of NIJ. One assistance effort grew out of a survey of local sheriffs’ administrative assistants, when the center learned that officers needed to be able to enter or type their own reports into the computer. Center staff developed a “mobile computer lab” to take laptops into the field to the actual locations for training in word processing to facilitate data entry. As of our 2008 visit, the computer class had been taught in over 30 counties with over 300 attendees.

Suggested Citation:"5 Building a Research Infrastructure and Guiding Policy and Practice." National Research Council. 2010. Strengthening the National Institute of Justice. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/12929.
×

A federal research agency’s role is to use research knowledge to influence policy and practice nationally and not just to assist individual agencies. The appropriate strategy, with limited resources, is to focus on broad dissemination and development of cost-effective training and not to provide one-time technical or training services that are tailored for a specific location or agency.

Forensic Capacity Building

NIJ’s success in the research and development of DNA analysis is described in Chapter 3. As a result of this success, during the past 10 years NIJ became a “go-to” place for anything related to DNA analysis and other forensic tools. As Congress recognized the power of DNA profiling to identify perpetrators of crimes and to exonerate persons charged with or convicted of crimes they did not commit, it passed initiatives to increase the use of this technology in the criminal justice system.

The DNA Identification Act of 1994, part of the Crime Act, modified the Omnibus Crime Control Act of 1968 “by inserting provisions regulating funding of DNA analysis laboratories and authorizing the collection of an index of DNA records and samples.”21 In 1996, with funds made available under the Crime Act, OST initiated major efforts, through the Forensic DNA Laboratory Improvement Program, to assist state and local crime laboratories with upgrading their equipment and developing simpler, quicker, and more portable methods of DNA testing (National Institute of Justice, 1997). In fiscal year (FY) 2000, through congressional appropriations, the Forensic DNA Laboratory Improvement Program became the Crime Laboratory Improvement Program (CLIP) and a portion of the appropriated funds was designated for distribution to the states to reduce the backlog of DNA samples taken from convicted offenders. Subsequently, the enactment of the DNA Backlog Elimination Act of 2000 provided funds to address the backlog of samples taken from crimes for which there is no known suspect in addition to convicted offender samples. In late 2000, Congress enacted the Paul Coverdell National Forensic Sciences Improvement Act, which authorized funding to improve the quality, timeliness, and credibility of forensic science services for criminal justice purposes (Hart, 2002b). Finally, since 2004, NIJ has received a substantial amount of monies, through the President’s DNA Initiative and the Justice for All Act of 2004, to fund state and local forensic laboratories to help reduce DNA backlogs as well as support the development of forensic science training and

Suggested Citation:"5 Building a Research Infrastructure and Guiding Policy and Practice." National Research Council. 2010. Strengthening the National Institute of Justice. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/12929.
×

delivery programs and models for improving the efficiency and capacity of public forensic DNA laboratories.22

The appropriations for DNA backlog reduction and other forensic capacity-building efforts have resulted in NIJ awards for such efforts totaling over $680 million.23 As is evident from congressional testimony by a former NIJ director (Hart, 2002b) and from financial information supplied to the committee for the period 2003-2006, much of the money appropriated by Congress was earmarked. For example, of the $95 million in total funding for FY 2000-2002 for CLIP, approximately $59 million, was designated for specific recipients (Hart, 2002b). The remaining discretionary funds were awarded through competitive solicitation processes out of OST.

NIJ’s Forensic Capacity-Building Solicitations

Since 2002, there have been nine types of solicitations, administered through OST, to sustain congressional directives and allocations. The programs resulting from these directives include

  • the Paul Coverdell Forensic Science Improvement Grants Program,

  • the Forensic DNA Capacity Enhancement Program,

  • Forensic DNA Unit Efficiency Improvement,

  • the Convicted Offender and/or Arrestee DNA Backlog Reduction Program,

  • the No Suspect Casework DNA Backlog Reduction Program,

  • Solving Cold Cases with DNA,

  • the Forensic Casework DNA Backlog Reduction Program,

  • Using DNA Technology to Identify the Missing, and

  • the Postconviction DNA Testing Assistance Program.

The Paul Coverdell Forensic Science Improvement Grants Program24 (FY 2002-2009) provides assistance to state and local crime laboratories and medical examiners to eliminate forensic backlogs, improve the timeliness of forensic science and medical examiner services, and train and em-

22

Monies from these directives were also available to support R&D awards in forensic DNA analysis (see Chapter 3).

23

This estimate is based on totals of awards for DNA backlog reduction and forensic laboratory improvements in the award database developed from NIJ’s online archive of awards 1995-2008 (see Chapter 3). The estimate was compared with award figures reported on the President’s DNA Initiative website (see http://www.dna.gov/funding/ [accessed March 17, 2010]) and figures reported in NIJ annual reports.

24

For more information, see http://www.ojp.usdoj.gov/nij/topics/forensics/nfsia [accessed March 17, 2010].

Suggested Citation:"5 Building a Research Infrastructure and Guiding Policy and Practice." National Research Council. 2010. Strengthening the National Institute of Justice. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/12929.
×

ploy personnel. Funds for this program rose from $4.9 million in 2003 to $16.1 million in 2007.

The Forensic DNA Capacity Enhancement Program (FY 2004-2006) offered states and units of local government with existing crime laboratories that conduct DNA analysis funds to improve laboratory infrastructure and analysis capacity so that DNA samples can be processed efficiently and cost-effectively. The Forensic DNA Unit Efficiency Improvement Program (FY 2008-2009) is designed to support the improvement of public forensic DNA laboratories through the development and adoption of an improved laboratory process. A major goal is to publish successful, carefully evaluated, and novel improvement methodologies as models to consider by other public laboratories.

The Convicted Offender and/or Arrestee DNA Backlog Reduction Program (FY 2000-2009) provides funds to help defray the costs of DNA testing to establish DNA identification databases, a legislative mandate in all states. This testing must be done by accredited labs and all DNA profiles must be entered into the Combined DNA Index System (CODIS).25 By 2007, NIJ had provided more than $150 million to perform DNA analysis on samples for more than 100,000 cases and the processing of DNA samples for about 2.5 million convicted criminals (National Institute of Justice, 2007a). Although NIJ awards have been successful in eliminating backlogs of DNA samples, the ultimate goal is hard to achieve because the backlog of DNA samples is a growing target. Backlogs grow because, as DNA profiles become more useful and collection of samples more efficient, states are extending the categories of individuals qualifying for DNA profiling (e.g., arrestees) and of the crimes in which DNA analysis may be used (e.g., nonviolent crimes and misdemeanors).

The No Suspect Casework DNA Backlog Reduction Program (FY 2001 and 2003) offered an opportunity for states to apply for funding for identification, processing, and analysis of cases with no suspects, either by their own public laboratories or by qualified fee-for-service vendors. Grantees were asked to process or analyze all samples according to established procedures and protocols following the Quality Assurance Standards for Forensic DNA Testing Laboratories set by the director of the FBI and to use DNA databases to solve no-suspect crimes having DNA evidence. Approximately $25 million was available for identification, processing, and analysis of no-suspect casework in FY 2003 (National Institute of Justice, 2002).

Solving Cold Cases with DNA (FY 2004, FY 2007-2009) seeks applications from states and units of local government for funding to identify, review, and investigate “violent crime cold cases” that have the potential to be solved using DNA analysis and to locate and analyze biological evidence

25

Both CODIS and the National DNA Index System (NDIS) are managed by the FBI.

Suggested Citation:"5 Building a Research Infrastructure and Guiding Policy and Practice." National Research Council. 2010. Strengthening the National Institute of Justice. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/12929.
×

associated with these cases. Advances in DNA technologies have substantially increased the successful DNA analysis of aged, degraded, limited, or otherwise compromised biological evidence. As a result, crime scene samples once thought to be unsuitable for testing may now yield DNA profiles. In addition, samples that previously generated inconclusive DNA results may now be successfully analyzed using newer methods (National Institute of Justice, 2008c). These funds allow agencies to start cold case units, hire and train personnel, or buy equipment and supplies (National Institute of Justice, 2007a).

The Forensic Casework DNA Backlog Reduction Program (FY 2004-2009) provides funding to state and local DNA laboratories to reduce the backlog of untested DNA evidence and convicted offender DNA samples that overwhelm the nation’s crime laboratories. In 2004, officials estimated a backlog of over 540,000 unsolved criminal cases with biological evidence available for DNA testing (Lovrich et al., 2003).

The program Using DNA to Identify the Missing (FY 2008-2009) provides funds (1) to assist eligible entities in performing DNA analysis on unidentified human remains or reference samples to support the efforts of states and units of local government to identify missing persons and (2) to enter the resulting DNA profiles into the FBI’s National DNA Index System using CODIS (National Institute of Justice, 2008d).

Under the Postconviction DNA Testing Assistance Program (FY 2007-2009), NIJ helps states defray the costs associated with postconviction DNA testing of violent crime cases in which actual innocence might be demonstrated. A number of people convicted of crimes have been subsequently exonerated through DNA analysis of crime scene evidence that was not tested at the time of trial. Such posttesting of samples is possible because newer technologies have substantially increased the successful analysis of aged, degraded, limited, or otherwise compromised biological evidence.

Assessment

As one can surmise from the above descriptions for numerous solicitations and annual programs, in addition to the monies spent over the past 5 years or more, NIJ puts a substantial amount of attention (i.e., funds, staff, administrative resources) on providing direct services and assistance to individual law enforcement agencies and crime laboratories. Furthermore, NIJ puts a lot of resources into assessing these forensic capacity-building programs. This kind of support for systematic assessment, described briefly below, does not exist for other NIJ programs.

Two audits constitute NIJ’s assessment of the forensic capacity-building program: the Coverdell program and the DNA Backlog Reduction Pro-

Suggested Citation:"5 Building a Research Infrastructure and Guiding Policy and Practice." National Research Council. 2010. Strengthening the National Institute of Justice. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/12929.
×

gram. Both are conducted by the National Forensic Sciences Technology Center (NFSTC), currently the grantee that administers the Forensics Science Center of Excellence (see Chapter 3). One audit review, known as External DNA Audits, grew out of the original authorizing language for the program, and funds were earmarked for this purpose. It examines operating DNA laboratories for their compliance with FBI and American Society of Crime Lab Directors standards.26

A second audit, known as the Grant Progress Assessment (GPA) Program, was established in 2004 by the NIJ director. The program assesses grantee progress in meeting program goals and objectives, reviews program documentation, and assesses the impact of the grant funding. As part of the audit, a random sampling of offender and casework DNA profile data is conducted to ensure the work quality is up to standards. The audit also assesses the lab’s internal data review and quality control programs. This review addresses the legislative requirement that DNA profile data generated under these grants meet the quality standard for submission to the national DNA database.

Management of the DNA backlog reduction programs and the Coverdell Program has been critiqued by the DOJ Office of the Inspector General (Office of the Inspector General, 2002, 2004, 2005, 2008; U.S. Department of Justice, 2009a). The essence of the critiques is that NIJ has been lax in the management of these programs, noting (among other problems) failure to provide guidance to grantees regarding programmatic requirements or to ensure grantee compliance with these requirements, failure to effectively monitor grantee financial and programmatic activities, failure to evaluate grantee effectiveness in meeting program objectives, and failure to ensure that performance reports were submitted in a timely fashion. The most recent audit, of the Convicted Offender DNA Backlog Reduction program (U.S. Department of Justice, 2009a), made 11 recommendations, all of which were accepted by OJP with proposed or already implemented corrective actions.

DISSEMINATING RESEARCH KNOWLEDGE

Dissemination of knowledge has always been part of the NIJ mission. The Omnibus Crime Control Act of 1968 mandated that the institute “carry out a program of collection and dissemination of information pertinent to crime and justice issues.” To accomplish this mission, NIJ historically has pursued a two-fold strategy: (1) put research findings into the hands of policy makers and practitioners and (2) inform and communicate

26

For more information, see http://www.nfstc.org/assessments/external-dna-audit-program/ [accessed March 19, 2010].

Suggested Citation:"5 Building a Research Infrastructure and Guiding Policy and Practice." National Research Council. 2010. Strengthening the National Institute of Justice. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/12929.
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with the research community about ongoing research and current state of knowledge.

NIJ views policy makers and practitioners, particularly at state and local levels, as the primary audience for its dissemination activities. But by reaching out to researchers and encouraging their discourse, a research agency invests in building a research infrastructure, fosters a scientifically competent, highly qualified community of researchers, and strengthens its own research capacity.

While it expects that many of the researchers it supports will seek to have their work privately published, and citation analysis is one performance measure in the Program Assessment Rating Tool (PART) assessment of the Office of Management and Budget, NIJ does not appear to place great importance on its research being presented in peer-reviewed journals. This judgment is based on the fact that NIJ expends few resources on tracking such data (see Chapter 6) and makes few public references (outside its PART submission) that reflect its interest in the privately published work of researchers.27 The committee believes that publication of findings in peer-reviewed journals is a critically important dissemination product and researchers should be encouraged by NIJ to submit their reports and acknowledged when publication occurs.

While many of its dissemination products emanate from NIJ’s research studies, many do not. This practice of not focusing exclusively on research findings dates back to NIJ’s inception when it was required by Congress to begin research and to disseminate results simultaneously. With the criminology field in its infancy and years to go before NIJ-sponsored research would yield a sizeable body of knowledge, there simply was not much research to disseminate. With little choice, NIJ turned to what the 1977 NRC review committee called a “highly aggressive marketing approach” that involved disseminating nonresearch-based “products,” an approach the committee felt was highly inappropriate for a research institute (National Research Council, 1977).

Today, the context in which NIJ operates is quite different and the field of criminology has matured. In the following sections, we provide a brief overview of the size and scope of NIJ’s current dissemination activities, how its products and audiences have changed over time to reflect its current portfolio, and its efforts to assess its dissemination activities.

27

The committee found only one public reference to the peer-reviewed publications of NIJ-supported researchers, in a presentation by Margaret Zahn at the NIJ meeting called Stimulating the Adoption of NIJ Research Results (December 12, 2008).

Suggested Citation:"5 Building a Research Infrastructure and Guiding Policy and Practice." National Research Council. 2010. Strengthening the National Institute of Justice. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/12929.
×

Size and Scope of Dissemination Activities

Budget

Dissemination is generally handled by the Communications Division located in the Office of the Director. Over the past 5 years, the dissemination budget has remained stable. In FY 2009, the Communication Division’s budget totaled $4.6 million, of which $1.05 million was designated for publications; $1.7 for the National Criminal Justice Reference Service (NCJRS); $1.5 million for NIJ’s annual conference; and the balance of $385,000 for two websites, one for NIJ and the DNA.gov website. In addition to the resources budgeted to the Communication Division, OST expends its own funds to support and manage certain dissemination activities. For example, about 30 percent of the NLECTC system budget, approximately $4 million, goes toward informational activities. Of that amount, NLECTC–National expends about $1.1 million a year on costs associated with an 800 Line Call Center, various publications including TechBeat, conferences exhibits, and JUSTNET. In addition, another $2 million is spent by the four Centers of Excellence on informational activities. Included in this budget is also the Applied Technology Conference,28 a major showcase for NIJ technology work. OST also expends about $330,000 on its Technologies for Critical Incident Preparedness and Response Conference, a joint venture with the Department of Defense and the Department of Homeland Security.29 Prior to 2002, the funds for dissemination have been about 10 percent of NIJ’s total budget. This percentage for dissemination is reasonable for a research agency.30 However, in the past 6 years, the percentage of NIJ’s budget for dissemination has dropped to about 2-6 percent, due primarily to the dramatic increase in OST’s overall budget while the total amount of funds for dissemination has remained fairly constant (roughly $10 million).

With no increase in the dissemination budget for 5 years, NIJ staff expressed the view that they were hard-pressed to keep up with major changes that are taking place in the communications field. Greater reliance on the Internet requires additional resources to support a variety of new activities, such as podcasts and video productions, writers trained to write for the web, and web analytics necessary for understanding and optimizing web usage. In some cases, it is not a matter of NIJ deciding to allocate its own

28

See http://www.ojp.usdoj.gov/nij/events/applied-technologies/welcome.html [accessed March 17, 2010].

29

Personal communications from George Tillery, acting director, OST.

30

See for comparison the Institute of Education Sciences FY 2010 budget request, which notes spending about 12 percent of its FY 2008 $160 million budget for research, development, and dissemination (U.S. Department of Education, 2010).

Suggested Citation:"5 Building a Research Infrastructure and Guiding Policy and Practice." National Research Council. 2010. Strengthening the National Institute of Justice. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/12929.
×

resources but requesting and then competing against the other OJP bureaus for additional administrative funds for information-related services.

NIJ Publications and Products

Since its inception, NIJ has had to grapple with the issue of how best to serve the different information needs of many diverse groups: researchers, both academics and analysts based in criminal justice agencies; criminal justice officials and practitioners at federal, state, and local levels; policy makers; advocacy groups; and the public. During administrations of different NIJ directors, the emphasis has shifted back and forth between a greater focus on dissemination activities and publications geared to researchers and a focus on publications and activities intended to provide practical advice and guidance to the broader criminal justice practitioner community. In addition to a shift in intended audiences, a shift has also occurred in the volume of information being disseminated as well as its content.

As reflected in its annual reports to Congress, NIJ dramatically changed the scope and focus of its dissemination activities in 2002 from what it had produced during the previous 6 years.31 During the period FY 1995-2001, NIJ published, either in hard copy or electronically, a variety of documents geared to inform the criminal justice field about the latest social science and technology research findings. Through the late 1990s, there was a heavy emphasis on producing reports based on NIJ research grants. More than eight different formats of varying lengths were used to describe research in progress and completed research studies. Some formats presented the findings in summary form only; others presented the full reports containing all the details of the research. Most focused on NIJ-sponsored research, but some described research activities being undertaken by other agencies, such as the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and the Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention. In addition to reporting on findings, NIJ published documents that provided information on specific programs being conducted by state and local criminal justice agencies that appeared to be promising crime prevention or reduction efforts. It also produced and distributed videotapes of 60-minute lectures with a question and answer segment presented by well-known scholars and accompanied by a Research Preview summarizing the salient points of the discussion.

To illustrate the expanse of NIJ’s prior dissemination efforts, one need only look at the materials published in FY 1999, the year between 1995

31

This analysis is based on a review of titles of dissemination materials contained in NIJ annual report appendices. The lists appear to be inclusive until about 2004, when materials produced by NCLETC tended not to be included (see Appendix D).

Suggested Citation:"5 Building a Research Infrastructure and Guiding Policy and Practice." National Research Council. 2010. Strengthening the National Institute of Justice. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/12929.
×

and 2007 when NIJ publication activities reached their peak. That year, NIJ produced more than 75 different publications and products. Of these, approximately 61 documents were based on social science research activities and 14 on technology R&D efforts (see Box 5-3).

During this same year, NIJ produced volumes 23 and 24 of its Crime and Justice Journal, a series devoted to essays by leading criminal justice researchers that summarized current knowledge on topical subjects. It also produced several brochures, a videotape, three NCLETC Bulletins, three issues of TechBeat, and three issues of the NIJ Journal.

BOX 5-3

NIJ Publications and Products in FY 1999

A Research in Action report on case management in the criminal justice system (12 pp.)


18 Research in Briefs: summaries of recent NIJ research and evaluation findings (4-12 pp.)


16 research reports providing more detailed information on R&D projects (40-60 pp.)


10 Research Previews: 2- to 4-page summaries on research and evaluation findings


3 Issues and Practices reports on program options for criminal justice managers and administrators (50-100 pp.)


3 Program Focus reports highlighting specific state and local criminal justice programs (20-40 pp.)


5 publications resulting from NIJ research forums and conferences


2 guides on batteries and police body armor


2 equipment performance reports on auto-loading pistols and vehicle tires


SOURCE: National Institute of Justice (1999, Appendix C).

Suggested Citation:"5 Building a Research Infrastructure and Guiding Policy and Practice." National Research Council. 2010. Strengthening the National Institute of Justice. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/12929.
×

In reviewing the documents from the period 1995-2002, one is struck not only by the volume of reports but also by the degree to which various formats were tailored to specific audiences (see Appendix D). With the exception of some of the reports specifically labeled “research reports” and some equipment-related materials, such as guides, test protocols, and testing results, most were written in nontechnical language and emphasized research findings that had implications for policy and practice as appropriate.

After 2002, however, there was a sharp decline in the total number of publications and products. In the NIJ FY 2002 annual report, 20 publications and reports are listed. The numbers have increased only slightly since then, and, through 2007, NIJ produced on average about 30 products and publications exclusive of issues of TechBeat, NIJ Journal, and the newly developed Geography and Public Safety Bulletin, a quarterly publication produced jointly by COPS and NIJ.

There also appears to be a shift from targeting a readership made up of both practitioners and researchers to one aimed primarily at practitioners and policy makers. In 2002, NIJ abandoned several of its former report formats, including Research Previews (two-page summaries), Research in Action, and Issues and Practices. The currently named Research in Brief, a document of 16-20 pages, is the only publication specifically intended for researchers and scholars as well high-level practitioners and policy makers (National Institute of Justice, 2005) (see Table 5-1). By producing fewer documents for the research community, NIJ appears to have abandoned an important strategy for encouraging interest in criminal justice research and for keeping researchers informed about its research activities.

The committee also notes that, in 2003, NIJ discontinued its long-term support for Crime and Justice, A Review of Research. Begun in 1978, Crime and Justice was intended to be an annual volume of essays on crime and justice. The rationale behind the series was to bring together the very best thinkers to address a particular topic and purposefully look beyond their own specialty to develop a broader understanding of crime and justice. NIJ provided support for an editorial board, editors, and commissioned papers. The average cost of a volume was approximately $175,000. The staple essays presented a summary of the state-of-the-art with authors also presenting their views on the policy and research implications of what was known at that time. Crime and Justice has continued to be funded, most often with funding from European sources, and its content consists primarily of European topics. The committee did not discuss whether funding for such a publication should be reinstated but offers it as an example of a

Suggested Citation:"5 Building a Research Infrastructure and Guiding Policy and Practice." National Research Council. 2010. Strengthening the National Institute of Justice. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/12929.
×

TABLE 5-1 Types of NIJ Grant Products

Type

Audience

Length

Research for Practice

Practitioners and their staff

3,000-5,000 words

20-30 manuscript pages

8-16 printed pages

Research for Policy

Policy makers and their staff

500-1,000 words

4-8 manuscript pages

16-20 printed pages

Research in Brief

Researchers and scholars; high-level policy makers, practitioners, and their staffs

4,000-6,000 words

32-40 manuscript pages

16-20 printed pages

NIJ Journal

High-level policy makers, practitioners, and their staffs

500-5,000 words

3-35 manuscript pages

1-5 printed pages

Science and Technology Report

Practitioners and policy makers

Varies with content (20-500 printed pages)

Special Report

Varies with content

Varies with content (20-500 printed pages)

Web-only Document

Varies with content

Varies with content (20-500 printed pages)

research tool that was of value to the scholarly community and contributed to NIJ’s stature as a research institute.32

With the shift in the NIJ budget to one in which technology-related research activities receive heavy support, it is not surprising that there has also been a marked shift in the number of reports that focus on technology and, in particular, forensic science. This is most dramatically reflected by the most requested documents compiled annually by the National Criminal Justice Clearinghouse. In FY 2000, of the top 24 most requested documents, 10 dealt with technology topics. For each subsequent year, the number of technology-related reports has increased. In FY 2007, 19 reports dealt with technology issues, 3 reports dealt with social science research, and the 2 remaining reports were issues of NIJ Journal, the semiannual periodical. The shift is also reflected in NIJ’s FY 2006 and FY 2007 annual reports. In the 2006 annual report, only two of its six chapters describe social science research on victims and victimization and improving corrections programs

32

In 2005 ISI citation analyses showed Crime and Justice had the highest “impact” (frequency of citation per article published) of any “criminology, criminal justice, or penology” journal. No later statistics are available because the Crime and Justice data were inadvertently dropped in 2006-2008 but reinstated in 2009 (Tonry, 2009).

Suggested Citation:"5 Building a Research Infrastructure and Guiding Policy and Practice." National Research Council. 2010. Strengthening the National Institute of Justice. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/12929.
×

and practices. The remaining four chapters are devoted to technology activities. The 2007 annual report devotes even fewer pages to social science research. In its five chapters, only one chapter on courts and corrections describes past and ongoing social science research activities.33

In addition to its own sponsored publications, NIJ also relies on other venues to disseminate useful information to the practitioner and policy maker. An example that was touted by NIJ was the regular appearance of articles authored by NIJ staff or others writing about NIJ research activities in Corrections Today, a monthly publication produced by the American Correctional Association with a monthly distribution of 36,000. The committee reviewed these articles because of criticism from national corrections leaders regarding NIJ’s failure “to do a good job of marketing to constituents” and a failure to disseminate executive summaries of NIJ research as well as other information of use to corrections but not necessarily produced by NIJ.

Since 2003, NIJ has submitted 33 articles to Corrections Today for inclusion under its “NIJ Update” or NIJ “Technology Update” bylines or as a Corrections Today feature. (The latter publication is produced approximately 4-5 times a year.) Three topics have been the subject of multiple articles: stress reduction, reentry, and federal benefits for disabled offenders. Other articles highlight a specific research project (e.g., boot camps); describe several studies on a similar topic (e.g., drug courts); identify new technologies being developed and adapted for corrections use (e.g., duress systems in correctional facilities); and approaches to improving security (e.g., cell phone smuggling); one describes the difficulties in undertaking cost–benefit analyses. Interestingly, one article reports on an unsuccessful program, Project Greenlight, a reentry program in New York, and the possible reasons for its failure. In almost all cases, the articles provide citations and web addresses.

The committee notes the usefulness of this approach for disseminating information about NIJ activities but makes no judgment regarding the quality or usefulness of the information itself. Given the criticism we heard and the relatively low satisfaction ratings with NIJ, there do seem to be questions as to whether NIJ is providing topics of interest to the corrections field and whether the current format and content lend themselves to increased familiarity with NIJ and its activities. A systematic assessment might shed some light on these questions.

33

Singled out in this chapter are activities that involve adoption of a mental health screening tool developed by an NIJ-funded researcher, an evaluation of a domestic violence field experiment, and an analysis of California’s parole policy.

Suggested Citation:"5 Building a Research Infrastructure and Guiding Policy and Practice." National Research Council. 2010. Strengthening the National Institute of Justice. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/12929.
×
National Criminal Justice Reference Service

NIJ relies heavily on NCJRS, the federally supported information clearinghouse, to disseminate information about its research program and related activities. It also serves as the archive for all grantee final reports. Initiated in the mid-1970s through a competitive contract, NCJRS now serves as the information clearinghouse for 13 other federal offices and bureaus who contribute funding support. It has approximately 14,600 registered users, who can tailor the information they want to receive.34 Throughout 2008, NIJ sought to attract more users for its information by offering direct subscription from its own website. In 5 months since e-mail alerts were offered, almost 3,000 subscribers have signed on.35

The activities associated with the clearinghouse include a call center, a library and abstract service, a website (see http://www.ncjrs.gov [accessed March 17, 2010]), a warehouse and fulfillment function, conference exhibits, and associated management/administration expenses. NCJRS also assists NIJ with editorial and graphics work on their publications.

Numerous changes occurred with NCJRS in the late 1990s. A major shift to electronic technologies occurred, and the warehouse was emptied out. After 2003, documents could be downloaded. This had a significant impact, with major changes in the basic operation and a shift in costs. Mailing lists needed to be developed, and priorities for other OJP offices (that were contributing to NCJRS) needed to be redefined. This process took a couple of years.

In 2002, responsibility for NCJRS was transferred to the Office of Communication in OJP. The NIJ staff member responsible for the contract was moved to that office, but, by 2007 when that person was reassigned, for the first time in NCJRS history, no one with former or current ties to NIJ was responsible for the oversight and management of NCJRS.

It is difficult to ascertain whether this change has impacted the quality or efficiency of the NIJ dissemination activities conducted by NCJRS. No records are available to compare the costs or services prior to and after OJP assumed responsibility. Former and current NIJ staff members who were interviewed reported that from time to time there are disagreements with OJP management over NCJRS policies and practices, but no details were offered.

One observation was made that OJP centralized management of NCJRS has appeared to impact NIJ in the degree to which NIJ as an organization is visible at various conferences and meetings. Since OJP assumed responsibility for the NCJRS contract, there has been an OJP policy that prohibited an

34

E-mail communication from Lesley C. Flaim, NCJRS, May 22, 2009.

35

E-mail communication from Lee Mockensturm, NIJ, May 22, 2009.

Suggested Citation:"5 Building a Research Infrastructure and Guiding Policy and Practice." National Research Council. 2010. Strengthening the National Institute of Justice. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/12929.
×

individual agency from displaying its own banner at the NCJRS conference booth if two or more OJP bureaus wanted to have a staff person there. Attendance by multiple OJP bureaus occurs frequently because many of them view attendance there as an effective way to share information about their office’s activities and to communicate with the broader criminal justice community. Also, the bureaus often want to reap the benefits of sharing the costs of the NCJRS booth. Without individual banners, OJP is the focus of attention and is viewed as the developer and provider of the informational materials and activities rather than the individual bureaus, such as NIJ. As a result, NIJ’s visibility as well as those of other OJP bureaus is significantly reduced.

NIJ-Sponsored Conferences

Conferences constitute a major dissemination strategy. Some of the regular conferences that highlight research sponsored by NIJ include its Annual Conference on Research and Evaluation, the Applied Technology Conference, Technologies for Critical Incident Preparedness Conference (cosponsored with the Department of Defense and the Department of Homeland Security), and a Crime Mapping Conference. In addition, NIJ sponsors electronic seminars (webinars) and symposia.

NIJ’s Assessment of Its Dissemination Activities

NIJ relies on several methods to assess the quality and utility of its dissemination activities. These include direct feedback from users from a regular 800 number, flyers attached to periodicals, and occasional NCJRS user surveys and focus groups. The most recent survey of NCJRS users by an outside organization was completed by the Gallup Organization in 2000. Gallup conducted a series of three focus groups, drawing on attendees at an OJP-sponsored conference on corrections and a national meeting of forensics science directors. The survey of NCJRS users reported a high familiarity with NIJ products and services (95 percent); high satisfaction with publications and videos (89 percent); and a high rating of NIJ as an excellent or very good source of criminal justice information (81 percent). The Gallup report of the focus groups also reported great familiarity with NIJ products and services, a finding not surprising since the focus group members were drawn from the ranks of policy makers attending OJP- and NIJ-sponsored conferences. As might be expected in any survey of users, some respondents reported that the NIJ information was not concise enough and that they were more likely to read and use quick summaries. NIJ has not conducted a similar survey since 2000, instead relying on online surveys distributed randomly to its website users.

Suggested Citation:"5 Building a Research Infrastructure and Guiding Policy and Practice." National Research Council. 2010. Strengthening the National Institute of Justice. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/12929.
×

Other kinds of data compiled and used to assess the use of NCJRS and the quality of NIJ products include statistics on requests for reprints; the use of the website (characteristics of users accessing documents; numbers of documents downloaded; and customer satisfaction index ratings); and citations of NIJ documents as well as anecdotal information and communications from the field through “ASK NIJ.” Finally, the NIJ considers the more than half a dozen awards for content and visual display received in 2007 and 2008 from government and private communication organizations as evidence of the high caliber of its publications.

Although NIJ conducts some assessment of its dissemination activities, its efforts are limited and are not designed to improve its targeting of the information or to assess its quality or utility. For example, data being compiled by NIJ on web usage and the distribution and accessing of documents will not reveal who is using NIJ-produced materials and to what use they are being put. It is this kind of critical look that needs to be undertaken by an outside entity to ensure proper distancing and validity.

Our survey of researchers and practitioners (see Appendix B) found very high levels of use of the major dissemination modalities supported by NIJ: 98 percent had used the NIJ website and 73 percent of those found it useful; 90 percent had used NCJRS and 89 percent of those found it useful. Practitioners (83 percent) tended to find the NIJ-sponsored workshops more useful than researchers (60 percent). Of the three NIJ conferences, 77 percent of practitioners found the NIJ Research and Evaluation Conference useful; 62 percent found the NIJ annual technology conferences useful; and 50 percent found the NIJ critical incidents conferences useful. However, only 56 percent of respondents thought NIJ did a good job of disseminating information to policy makers, and only 64 percent thought that NIJ did a good job of disseminating information to researchers.

CONCLUSIONS

The 1977 NRC committee concluded that NIJ was doing little to establish a foundation for crime and justice research and its dissemination efforts were not well developed. That group found little if anything being done by NIJ to attract new researchers to the field, make data available for secondary analysis, provide continuity to research efforts, or promote effective dissemination of research results. Over 30 years later, we have found substantial efforts and accomplishments by NIJ in each of these areas and commend it for them.

In the past three decades, NIJ has developed and sustained fellowship programs at three levels: (1) doctoral candidates, (2) young faculty, and (3) visiting fellows. The recipients of NIJ fellowships have made scholarly contributions to the criminal justice literature or to NIJ’s research programs

Suggested Citation:"5 Building a Research Infrastructure and Guiding Policy and Practice." National Research Council. 2010. Strengthening the National Institute of Justice. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/12929.
×

and many have remained in the criminal justice field. NIJ has supported the development and operation of a publicly available criminal justice data archive, which serves to extend research capabilities and opportunities to a broad pool of researchers. NIJ’s DRP and the resulting data archive at the National Archive of Criminal Justice Data are unparalleled and have provided the community with valuable research and information resources.

NIJ has carried out its mission to guide policy and practice by pursuing a broad range of activities that include testing and evaluation and standards, technology assistance, and forensic capacity building. Since their inception, these activities have helped criminal justice agencies make informed procurement, deployment, operating, and training decisions and have enabled them to improve and expand their facilities and equipment and to process growing backlogs of DNA samples. The police body armor is the best known of the technologies that NIJ has pioneered and run through its standards process. To its credit, NIJ has continued to refine the standards development process and to expand its testing to include comparative evaluations.

Finally, NIJ has expended considerable efforts and resources to provide useful information and assistance to the field. The agency has developed and supported a series of publications, websites, workshops, and conferences aimed at different audiences. Our survey of criminal justice researchers and practitioners indicated a high level of use of NIJ resources.

The committee’s review of NIJ’s efforts to build a research infrastructure strongly suggests that many of its programs have been successful enough that they warrant significant continuation and expansion, although with important modifications as described below. Some functions that have been recently assigned to or taken on by NIJ (e.g., providing direct technology assistance to individual agencies and building forensic laboratory capacities), though successful to some degrees, have been shown to consume its operations. As a result, they detract from the agency’s research mission.

In our review, the committee identified the following circumstances that limit NIJ’s ability to fulfill its research mission.

  • The NIJ budget contains large segments designated by earmark or congressional mandate for functions that are at best minimally related to research. These mandates include funds for the NLECTC system and associated technology assistance activities and the more recent congressional appropriations for the DNA backlog reduction and crime laboratory improvement programs. Funds for forensic laboratory capacity-building and forensic training activities, such as the Paul Coverdell, DNA Backlog Reduction, Solving Cold Cases, and Forensic DNA Unit Efficiency Improvement programs, swamp the NIJ program and now represent more than half of the

Suggested Citation:"5 Building a Research Infrastructure and Guiding Policy and Practice." National Research Council. 2010. Strengthening the National Institute of Justice. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/12929.
×

OST budget. NIJ bears the burden of administering these funds, a drain on resources that might otherwise be directed toward advancing its research mission.

  • Some of NIJ’s efforts are directed toward programs that are better suited for other agencies with clearly defined technical assistance missions. For example, management of the forensic capacity-building programs diverts a considerable fraction of NIJ’s time and resources away from its research mission. Although there is potential to incorporate research questions into the capacity-building programs (asking, for example, about the impact of backlog clearance on police operations, prosecutions, and crime rates), both the legislative intent and the grantee perception is that these programs are vehicles for the distribution of funds to state and local agencies. This situation is unlikely to change, particularly in the current economic climate, as cash-strapped local forensic laboratories can be expected to look increasingly to the federal treasury for relief. Moreover, the administrative burden of these programs is likely to increase as OJP implements the recommendations encouraged by reports of the Office of the Inspector General. These considerations lead us to question whether the DNA backlog reduction and the forensic laboratory capacity-building programs properly belong in NIJ. Relocation of these programs to bureaus more accustomed to managing assistance programs to state and local agencies such as the Bureau of Justice Assistance or the Community Policing Oriented Services office would remove a major distraction from NIJ’s ability to focus on its research mission.

  • NIJ’s outreach activities to the research community have declined. As a federal research agency, NIJ has a duty to transfer knowledge from research in a way that helps its constituencies improve skills and practices. NIJ’s audiences include both the nation’s criminal justice practitioners and its researchers. Historically, NIJ has played an important role in helping build the research field by reaching out to researchers in a wide range of disciplines, communicating useful information, and providing a variety of venues in which researchers can learn from each other. In the past 5 to 10 years, NIJ has reduced its activities and products intended specifically for the research community. Examples of such activities and products include research forums for discussing research in progress or completed research and written and electronic products that present syntheses of research or research reviews across broad topics, as was done in the Crime and Justice series. NIJ does not make public

Suggested Citation:"5 Building a Research Infrastructure and Guiding Policy and Practice." National Research Council. 2010. Strengthening the National Institute of Justice. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/12929.
×

available information on ongoing research, such as the names of principal investigators and abstracts useful for scientific pursuit. NIJ appears to have shifted dramatically the balance of its dissemination activities to an almost exclusive focus on the information needs of practitioners and policy makers.

The committee does not intend to imply that the shift in NIJ’s dissemination strategy conflicts with the goal of creating appropriate and effective mechanisms for translating research into policy and practice. The committee does not see a conflict between a strategy that is aimed at getting research findings into the hands of policy makers and practitioners and a strategy aimed at informing and communicating with the research community about ongoing research and the current state of knowledge. NIJ needs to pursue both strategies and its products and services should be tailored to each group.

  • The practitioner community appears less satisfied. A common thread running through the presentations and interviews was the valuable contribution NIJ has made to improving criminal justice practices. NIJ was cited as being helpful in providing services for specific activities, such as those in connection with the 2002 Washington, DC, sniper investigation, Hurricane Katrina, and the 2009 presidential inauguration and in supporting crime lab improvements. But these types of anecdotal comments were offset by numerous criticisms, which the committee also heard from practitioners who had a long relationship and were very familiar with NIJ. Some commented that NIJ was no longer the go-to place for information and guidance. Leaders of the largest police and corrections agencies said that they had limited contact in the past 5 years with NIJ and that they had not been consulted on important crime-related issues despite their positions and expertise.

In our review, the committee identified numerous failings in NIJ’s programs. They are highlighted below. If these failings are addressed, NIJ would be in a better position to document the successes of its programs, to determine if program goals have been achieved, and to set a program agenda that is more appropriate to its role of building a research infrastructure and enhancing dissemination and utilization of research results. Addressing these failings will lay the groundwork for more effective expansion of important programs.

  • NIJ lacks proper procedures for staff transitions. Management of the fellowship programs has not been as efficient as one would

Suggested Citation:"5 Building a Research Infrastructure and Guiding Policy and Practice." National Research Council. 2010. Strengthening the National Institute of Justice. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/12929.
×

expect. This has had an impact on NIJ’s ability to effectively carry out the goals of these programs. Over the years, procedures have not been in place for a smooth transition of information and documentation regarding the fellowship programs for the NIJ personnel in charge of the programs. This has led to inaccurate documentation of basic and relevant information regarding the fellowship recipients.

  • NIJ lacks a culture of self-assessment. NIJ does not maintain proper records for assessment. The committee notes the lack of documentation that was available to us on the activities reported in this chapter and their impact. Assessing NIJ programs was challenging, furthermore, because of the amalgamation of different types of activities in available records. NIJ has not conducted formal assessments of the fellowship programs, DRP, nor its standards program. Given NIJ’s sustained support for them, they should be fully assessed and the results of the assessment made publicly available. There were extensive external assessments of NLECTC and the federal role in technology assistance, but these were both conducted at about the same time in early 2000. Very little transparent assessment is done periodically and systematically (this is discussed further in Chapter 6). This is also true of its dissemination activities. The limited efforts undertaken cannot reveal who is using NIJ products and, equally important, to what use are they being put. The regular assessments NIJ does support are conducted in conjunction with its forensic capacity-building programs and not for the programs that better reflect the research mission. In part this is due to the absence of a plan to guide these efforts, to funding problems, and to the absence of an effective advisory structure. More generally, it reflects an agency more focused on processing awards than in building a research infrastructure and enhancing research utilization.

  • NIJ’s status quo management of its fellowship programs has limited its ability to build the field. Programs aimed at supporting new and more diverse scholars working on crime and justice issues have been modest in size, not well managed, and poorly integrated into the operations of NIJ. The need for new and diverse researchers studying crime and justice issues is as critical today as it was when NIJ was founded. Expanded fellowship programs, especially ones that more effectively reach out to new disciplines, could be an important component of a federal research agency for crime and justice studies. Moreover, in being targeted to provide only

Suggested Citation:"5 Building a Research Infrastructure and Guiding Policy and Practice." National Research Council. 2010. Strengthening the National Institute of Justice. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/12929.
×

1 year of support for graduate students, typically the final year, the graduate fellowship programs offered by NIJ are compromised in their capacity to attract new scholars to criminal justice studies. Specifically, the NIJ fellowship programs do not compare well against other graduate fellowship programs, such as the multiyear programs offered by the National Institutes of Health and the National Science Foundation and the training grant programs offered by NIH.

  • NIJ has not lived up to its potential in contributing to the development of a resource database for use by the criminal justice research community. Although a significant fraction of the data in the National Archive of Criminal Justice Data originates from NIJ grant activities, too many grantees continue to ignore requirements for submitting data generated by their grants to the data archive. Contributing to the problem, NIJ has not mounted a successful strategy to obtain compliance from research grantees or to provide the necessary support to produce quality data sets for NACJD. For example, NIJ could require applicants to designate funds in their budgets for this purpose.

Our review suggests that the data archive program is effective, well run, and making significant contributions to research. To maximize the contributions of NIJ’s data archiving program, we encourage NIJ to adopt practices as outlined to NIJ in a 2003 memorandum from ICPSR/NACJD. These efforts include (1) being more diligent in making sure that all grantees with data submit it to the archive in user-friendly formats, refusing to continue or make new awards to any university or research organization whose projects have failed to submit data is a reasonable step to enforce the data submission requirement; (2) requiring grantees who generate data to include in their proposals funding to cover the costs of preparing data for archiving; and (3) expanding the summer program to cover more topics and to include researchers who are in criminal justice policy and operational agencies. These steps, combined with careful monitoring by NIJ of compliance with its own requirements and efforts already under way at ICPSR, will greatly improve this important aspect of NIJ.

Suggested Citation:"5 Building a Research Infrastructure and Guiding Policy and Practice." National Research Council. 2010. Strengthening the National Institute of Justice. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/12929.
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The National Institute of Justice (NIJ) is the nation's primary resource for advancing scientific research, development, and evaluation on crime and crime control and the administration of justice in the United States. Headed by a presidentially appointed director, it is one of the major units in the Office of Justice Programs (OJP) of the U.S. Department of Justice. Under its authorizing legislation, NIJ awards grants and contracts to a variety of public and private organizations and individuals.

At the request of NIJ, Strengthening the National Institute of Justice assesses the operations and quality of the full range of its programs. These include social science research, science and technology research and development, capacity building, and technology assistance.

The book concludes that a federal research institute such as NIJ is vital to the nation's continuing efforts to control crime and administer justice. No other federal, state, local, or private organization can do what NIJ was created to do. Forty years ago, Congress envisioned a science agency dedicated to building knowledge to support crime prevention and control by developing a wide range of techniques for dealing with individual offenders, identifying injustices and biases in the administration of justice, and supporting more basic and operational research on crime and the criminal justice system and the involvement of the community in crime control efforts. As the embodiment of that vision, NIJ has accomplished a great deal. It has succeeded in developing a body of knowledge on such important topics as hot spots policing, violence against women, the role of firearms and drugs in crime, drug courts, and forensic DNA analysis. It has helped build the crime and justice research infrastructure. It has also widely disseminated the results of its research programs to help guide practice and policy. But its efforts have been severely hampered by a lack of independence, authority, and discretionary resources to carry out its mission.

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