NIJ Research Review, Volume 5, Issue 1

• NCJ Number: 203600
• Date Published: March 2003
• Length: 8 pages
• Agencies: NIJ
• Publication Type: News and Announcement

Annotation

This review of research sponsored by the U.S. Justice Department's National Institute of Justice (NIJ) summarizes the findings of 11 selected research projects and presents grant information and Web site addresses for summaries of 76 other NIJ-sponsored research projects.

Abstract

One of the 11 projects selected for a summary found that a police department's media image may be affected more by how it handles news and manages information than by crime rates. A progress report on another research project details the development of a cellular sorting method for recovering sperm that may be used as evidence in sexual assault cases. A third project found that most 4-year public and private nonprofit institutions of higher education have made substantial progress in developing explicit policies for responding to sexual assault. Another project found significant rehabilitative benefits in involving families of offenders in case management and other services related to offender drug treatment and supervision in the community. A research project found that police use of force was more common and more severe when arrests occurred on the weekend, in response to a priority call, and when police used lights and sirens. Other research projects summarized evaluated a university drug screen program, the accuracy of arrestee reports of their criminal justice histories, the susceptibility of PharmCheck drug abuse patch to environmental contamination, and the effectiveness of the denial of handgun purchases to violent misdemeanants. Another research project summarized showed that hair analysis and ion mobility spectrometry were more effective than urinalysis in detecting cocaine, although it was not as reliable as the others in the detection of marijuana use. Information on the other projects includes author, number of pages in the report, the grant number, the NCJRS (National Criminal Justice Reference Service) number, and the Web site address for the full abstract of the project.