Research by Author & Topic

Publications by Nancy G. La Vigne on Crime Statistics

This guide is designed to provide merchants and retailers with a framework for understanding the underlying causes of their shoplifting problems and developing effective strategies to reduce shoplifting. It describes ways in which data on shoplifting can be collected and analyzed; helps readers identify and close off opportunities for shoplifting; and provides guidance on measuring the impact of those strategies. The guide offers an array of shoplifting prevention strategies that may prove effective, including: conducting employee bag checks at the end of each shift; partnering with local schools on anti-truancy efforts; increasing visible security guard presence during after-school hours; and tightening inventory control protocols.

This guide provides guidance to merchants and their law enforcement partners in developing strategies to prevent public disorder problems, such as public intoxication, vandalism, and loitering. The guide walks readers through the process of understanding the root causes of public disorders, identifying potential strategies, and measuring the impact of those strategies. While public disorder problems vary based on local context, promising strategies to address them include: broadcasting classical music; improving lighting in parking facilities and building exteriors; securing perimeters to limit pedestrian access; and establishing policies and sanctions regarding acceptable public behavior.

This guide is tailored toward private businesses interested in new approaches to the prevention of retail burglary. Designed to encourage partnerships between businesses and local law enforcement, the guide walks readers through the process of understanding retail burglary, collecting crime data, identifying potential strategies, and measuring the impact of those strategies. Several promising strategies for preventing retail burglary are highlighted, including: removing obstructions from windows to provide a clear line of sight into stores from the street and parking lot; improving lighting around doorways and other entry points; launching a public awareness campaign to inform would-be burglars of legal repercussions of burglarizing; and limiting inventory on-hand.

This guide is designed to equip local merchants and retailers with problem solving strategies aimed at reducing panhandling in and around their properties. Focusing heavily on the value of partnerships with law enforcement, the guide walks readers through the process of understanding their panhandling problem; collecting crime data; identifying potential strategies; and measuring the impact of those strategies. Several promising strategies to reduce panhandling are described, including: providing informational brochures about available social services to panhandlers; requiring all vendors to have permits; initiating civilian patrols to monitor and discourage activity; and prohibiting the sale of single servings of alcohol through a city ordinance.

This guide is designed to encourage retailers to partner with local law enforcement to prevent vandalism occurring in and around their properties. The guide walks readers through the process of understanding the nature of their local vandalism problem, collecting and analyzing data, identifying potential strategies to reduce vandalism, and measuring the impact of those strategies. Promising strategies to reduce vandalism are described, including: monitoring vandalism prone areas; using graffiti resistant paint; and applying protective film to glass surfaces to minimize acid damage.

This guide is designed to help merchants and retailers partner with local law enforcement to assess their auto theft, car break-in, and vehicle vandalism problems and to develop strategies to address them. The guide walks readers through the process of understanding their car crime problem; collecting crime data; identifying potential strategies; and measuring the impact of those strategies. While each jurisdiction's problems will be different, effective strategies may include: introducing bike patrols; improving lighting; restricting pedestrian traffic; and requiring tickets to both enter and exit parking facilities.

This guidebook explores ways in which mapping can aid police responses to prisoner reentry. It addresses why and how police can take an active role in prisoner reentry efforts and how mapping can aid in those efforts. It describes strategies for engaging in data-sharing partnerships with corrections agencies, and the useful maps that can be produced. It closes with a discussion of how police agencies, in partnership with corrections, service providers, and community representatives, can use maps to better enhance public safety by reducing recidivism among released prisoners and apprehending those who do recidivate swiftly and efficiently.

In 2002, the Urban Institute established the Reentry Mapping Network (RMN), a partnership of jurisdictions throughout the country that are engaged in mapping and analyzing prisoner reentry and community data to help inform local policies and practices. This report describes the methods underlying the RMN so that other jurisdictions can learn from these experiences and replicate their efforts in the interests of crafting more effective and successful reentry strategies at the community level. These experiences learned are derived from the three RMN partners funded by the National Institute of Justice (NIJ): Washington, DC, Winston-Salem, NC, and Milwaukee, WI.

This report describes the process of prisoner reentry* in Ohio by examining the policy context surrounding reentry in Ohio, the characteristics of inmates exiting Ohio prisons, the efforts to prepare inmates for release, the geographic distribution of prisoners returning home, and the social and economic climates of the communities that are home to some of the highest concentrations of released prisoners. This report does not attempt to evaluate a specific reentry program or empirically assess Ohio's reentry policies and practices. Rather, the report consolidates existing data on incarceration and release trends and presents a new analysis of data on Ohio prisoners released in 2001. [View the corresponding press release.]

The number of people released from Illinois prisons increased by 157 percent over the past two decades. Half of those released from prison in 2001 returned to the city of Chicago, and many were even more concentrated within a few distressed neighborhoods. This report describes the process of prisoner reentry in Illinois by examining the policy context surrounding reentry, the characteristics of Illinois' returning inmates, the geographic distribution of returning prisoners, and the social and economic climates of the communities that are home to the highest concentrations of returning prisoners. [View the corresponding press release]