Research by Author & Topic

Publications by John Roman on Courts and Policing

A National Academy of Sciences report addresses the science-or lack thereof-in America's crime labs and criminal justice system. John Roman explains why a new era of scientific policing may be at hand.

The primary goal of this research is to estimate the costs and benefits of serving misdemeanor DUI offenders in the Anchorage Wellness Court (AWC), a specialized court employing principles of therapeutic jurisprudence. The Urban Institute conducted an impact and a cost-benefit analysis (CBA) to estimate the effectiveness of the AWC. The study focused on the impact of the program on reducing the prevalence and incidence of new criminal justice system contact. Costs were collected to estimate the opportunity cost of the AWC. Recidivism variables were monetized to estimate the benefits from crime reductions. Outcomes were observed at 24, 30, 36, and 48 months.

The study compared traditional crime solving to biological evidence techniques in hundreds of cases where biological evidence was available. When conventional investigative techniques were used, a suspect was identified 12 percent of the time, compared to 31 percent of the cases using DNA evidence. In eight percent of cases built on traditional evidence alone a suspect was arrested, compared to the 16 percent arrest rate in DNA cases. The average added cost for processing a single case with DNA evidence was about $1,397. Each additional arrest-an arrest that would not have occurred without DNA processing-cost $14,169.

Despite a growing consensus among scholars that substance abuse treatment is effective in reducing recidivism, strict eligibility rules have limited the impact of current models of therapeutic jurisprudence on public safety. This research effort was aimed at providing policy makers some guidance on whether expanding this model to more drug-involved offenders is cost-beneficial. We find that roughly 1.5 million arrestees who are probably guilty (the population most likely to participate in court monitored substance abuse treatment) are currently at risk of drug dependence or abuse and that several million crimes could be averted if current eligibility limitations were suspended and all at-risk arrestees were treated.

This study assesses the death penalty's costs to Maryland taxpayers by examining a sample of the 1,136 death-eligible murder cases occurring between 1978 and 1999. We find that an average capital-eligible case in which prosecutors did not seek the death penalty will cost approximately $1.1 million over the lifetime of the case. A capital-eligible case in which prosecutors unsuccessfully sought the death penalty will cost $1.8 million and a capital-eligible case resulting in a death sentence will cost approximately $3 million. In total, we forecast that the lifetime costs to Maryland taxpayers of these capitally-prosecuted cases will be $186 million.

The recent increase in violent crime defies easy explanation, and many hypotheses have been put forward for debate. In this brief, we propose that the rise in violent offending and the explosion in the sales of iPods and other portable media devices is more than coincidental. We propose that, over the past two years, America may have experienced an iCrime wave.

This study evaluates the impact of the Maryland Reentry Partnership Initiative (REP) on crime in Baltimore between 2001 and 2005. It compares 229 REP clients to a contemporaneous cohort of 370 prisoners released to non-REP neighborhoods in Baltimore City. The quasi-experimental design tests whether REP reduced the prevalence and incidence of criminal justice contact, and whether the program was cost-beneficial. REP clients committed fewer new crimes, and that REP was cost-beneficial, returning $3 in benefits per dollar in new costs. The total net benefit to the citizens of Baltimore is $7.2 million, or $21,500 per REP participant.

John Roman, a senior research associate in the Urban Institute’s Justice Policy Center, explores the challenges interpreting increases in the FBI's crime statistics for 2005.

This document contains testimony delivered to the Connecticut Judiciary and Appropriations Committees, on the economic impact of raising the age of juvenile jurisdiction from 16 to 18. The study finds that moving 16- and 17-year-old youth out of the adult system into the juvenile system, while maintaining all other services for youth as they are today, will return about $3 in benefit for every $1 in cost, assuming no new juvenile detention construction is required. If new construction is required, the transition of juveniles would result in slightly less than a $1 in benefit for every $1 in cost in the year the construction occurs, and $3 in benefit for every $1 in cost in subsequent years.

Commissioned by the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation Research Network on Adolescent Development and Juvenile Justice, this paper proposes methods for an economic analysis of the nation's separate system of juvenile laws and juvenile courts. Arguments about the value of juvenile justice versus criminal justice traditionally focus on legal principles, adolescent development, and the relative effects of prevention and punishment. This paper suggests adding a cost-benefit approach to the debate. Do the benefits of maintaining a separate legal system for young offenders outweigh the costs? What are those costs and benefits, and can they be measured?