Video: Science at the National Institute of Justice

• NCJ Number: 252750
• Date Published: April 2014
• Author(s): Greg Ridgeway; Gerald Laporte; John T. Picarelli; Mark Greene
• Length: 1 page
• Agencies: NIJ
• Publication Type: Program/Project Description; Technical Assistance

Annotation

In this 6-minute video, the mission and a sample of achievements are presented for the U.S. Justice Department's National Institute of Justice (NIJ), which is responsible for conducting research and development that serves criminal justice policymakers and practitioners at the federal, state, and local levels.

Abstract

The video's format consists of comments by various NIJ staff members regarding NIJ's overall purpose and specific examples of how its application of science and research has benefited criminal justice. Opening comments by NIJ staff members emphasize that NIJ's mission is to apply science and research to improve the effectiveness and efficiency of the work done by police, courts, and corrections. This effort by NIJ includes challenging researchers to conduct research projects that can benefit criminal justice practitioners and challenging criminal justice practitioners to rely on research and the transfer of resulting technologies when developing and implementing criminal justice policies. Some examples of NIJ achievements provided in the video are the proven effectiveness of "John Schools" in changing the behaviors of "johns" who habitually solicit prostitutes; computerizing the matching of artists' renderings of suspects based on witness memories to a database of offender mug shots; the determination of the most cost-effective length for police shifts; and the development of crime-mapping as a tool for allocating police resources.