Strengthening the National Institute of Justice (2010) / Chapter Skim
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2 The Federal Role in Research on Crime and Justice
2 The Federal Role in Research on Crime and Justice
Pages 25-44
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; (3) the period following the passage of the Violent Crime Control and Law Enforcement Act of 1994 (1994-2000)
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. The commission's recommendations fit with the policy approaches of President Johnson's Great Society and provided a blueprint for the Omnibus Crime Control and Safe Streets Act of 1968 (President's Commission on Law Enforcement and the Administration of Justice, 1967; Woolley and Peters, 2010)
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. Omnibus Crime Control and Safe Streets Act of 1968 Following the recommendations of the Katzenbach Commission, Congress passed the Omnibus Crime Control and Safe Streets Act of 1968, establishing the Law Enforcement Assistance Administration (LEAA)
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to carry out programs of behavioral research designed to provide more accurate information on the causes of crime and the effective ness of various means of preventing crime, and to evaluate the suc cess of correctional procedures; (4) to make recommendations for action which can be taken by Fed eral, State, and local governments and by private persons and orga nizations to improve and strengthen law enforcement; (5)
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However, its total budget declined through the decade from a high of $53 million in 1975 to a low of $20 million in 1981. Its total annual budget remained below $25 million through 1988.1 Because NIJ's limited appropriations were not increased to support the new provisions, most were never carried out.
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programs of research on the causes and correlates of crime and on correc Figure 2-1 tions, police science, public administration, and law; and began planning R01756 national statistics programs. Although the mandate in the 1979 legislation was in many senses editable vectors broader than that of the Omnibus Crime Control and Safe Streets Act, NIJ's appropriation remained the same or decreased between 1979 and 1994 (see Figure 2-1)
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The specific research studies authorized in the act include an NRC study to develop a research agenda on violence against women; research on drug addiction and antidrug technologies to be conducted by the Office of National Drug Control Policy in consultation with the National Institute of Drug Abuse and the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency; and the study of family support to police officers by awarding research grants to state and local agencies. Goernance and Mission Leadership.
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. None of these had experience in directing crime and justice research, was recognized as a highly qualified authority in the fields of crime and justice research, or had demonstrated success in managing crime and justice research efforts.
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It was not required by the authorizing legislation but was established by the NILECJ director, who appointed its 19 members, drawn primarily from the medical, education, public policy, and law fields. Three members were practicing law enforcement, courts, and corrections officials and two were researchers.
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The report, Too Much Crime, Too Little Justice (President's Advisory Board, National Institute of Justice, 1983) , dealt exclusively with serious violent crime and included research recommendations in a number of broad areas: law enforcement; costs and fear of crime: response to career criminals; community involvement in crime control; criminal justice management; improving adjudication programs; victims, jails, and prisons; probation and parole; and federal and state local cooperation.
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, the ever-expanding and changing OJP program priorities over the years have resulted in a scattershot approach by the institute to the development of knowledge on crime and justice, despite the best intentions of staff and new directors to develop a strong and sustainable program. Post Crime Act Period In the years immediately following the passage of the Crime Act of 1994, NIJ was impacted in several ways.
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Prior to the Crime Act, NIJ's most notable accomplishments in the area of science and technology were the development and testing of soft body armor for police, support for research on forensic DNA testing and automated fingerprint systems, and development of modern protocols in death investigations. Nearly half of the office's annual budget was spent developing standards for soft body armor, which had become commercially available to police and sheriff's departments.
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and, during the period 2002-2008, all funded research required sign-off by the assistant attorney general for OJP. During the transition period in early 2009 and prior to a permanent assistant attorney general's being named head of the Office of Justice Programs, OJP's general
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For example, both the peer review process and dissemination activities carried out by the National Criminal Justice Reference Service are managed centrally through contracts administered by OJP. Various documents, such as solicitations, adhere to an OJP-wide template, go through numerous OJP offices during review, and must be approved by the assistant attorney general.
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Relationship with Other OJP and Department of Justice Agencies NIJ research activities are intertwined in various ways with the activities of its six OJP sister agencies as well as agencies within DOJ like COPS, the Federal Bureau of Investigation, the Drug Enforcement Administration, and others. The activities take many forms: participating on DOJ-wide task forces and OJP committees and working groups; providing findings and relevant research information on specific issues; obtaining funding support from these agencies for research and evaluations of interest to them; and advising on program development.
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According to its annual reports, between 1990 and 2000 the budget of OJP for state and local assistance grew in constant fiscal 2000 dollars by 610 percent, from about $640 million in fiscal year (FY) 1990 to $3.9 billion in FY 2000, and the OJP budget remained at that level through 2003 (Office of Justice Programs, 1990, 2001)
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NOTES: COPS = Community Oriented Policing Services, NIJ = National Institute of Justice, OJP = Office of Justice Programs. SOURCE: Created from OJP and COPS figures available from an Office of the Inspector General report (2002)
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1977 NATIONAL RESEARCH COuNCIL ASSESSMENT In 1977 an NRC study assessed the operations of NIJ's predecessor agency. Understanding Crime: An Ealuation of the National Institute of Law Enforcement and Criminal Justice was undertaken at the request of the administrator of LEAA in an attempt to strengthen scientific processes and improve the quality of the institute's awards and their results.
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CONCLuSIONS From this brief review of NIJ's history, several important conclusions begin to emerge. First, it is clear that Congress intended NIJ to conduct a broad program of research related to crime causation and prevention, but, through the years, this mandate has shifted to a focus on improving criminal justice administration that is of more immediate benefit to state and local criminal justice agencies.
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