In This Issue:

• Recent Events:
  D.C. Crime Policy Institute Website Launch
  
• Conference Presentations:
  National Association of Drug Court Professionals Conference
  

Causal Inference in Social Science Conference

• JPC on the Hill:
  Alternatives for Drug-Involved Offenders
  

Female D.C. Code Felons

• Publications:
  The U.S. Juvenile Justice Policy Landscape
  

System Change Accomplishments of the Corporation for Supportive Housing’s Returning Home Initiative

Measuring the Impact of Reentry Efforts

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The District of Columbia Crime Policy Institute (DCPI), funded in October 2009 by the Justice Grants Administration in the Executive Office of the Mayor has launched its website and research library (www.dccrimepolicy.org). The research library contains findings from prior studies of crime and justice in the District of Columbia and reports from criminal justice and public safety agencies within the District. The DCPI website also provides a guide to the criminal justice stakeholders operating in the District at both the local and federal levels. Where applicable, links are provided to reports and publications provided by these stakeholders. In addition, updates and interim and final reports are provided for all of DCPI’s original research projects; shorter policy briefs discussing relevant crime and safety topics in D.C. will be produced on an ongoing basis. Finally, DCPI’s events page provides information on coming criminal and juvenile justice events occurring throughout the District.

In addition, this month JPC Senior Research Associate John Roman and Research Associate Mitch Downey, staff on the DCPI, presented the preliminary results of a meta-analytic cost-benefit analysis of drug courts at the Brookings Institution. The research is part of the core research activities of the DCPI. The project builds off the work of the Washington State Institute for Public Policy, and is designed to inform executive decision making in the District by using past research on a variety of crime and justice policies and programs to develop DC-specific cost and benefit estimates.

At the 2010 National Association of Drug Court Professionals Conference JPC Senior Research Associate Janine Zweig presented preliminary findings from the Urban Institute’s Multi-Site Adult Drug Court Evaluation, conducted in partnership with the Center for Court Innovation and RTI International with funding from the National Institute of Justice. Her presentation used data collected for drug court participants to describe key court policies, practices, and dynamics (e.g., treatment, leverage, judicial supervision, judicial interaction, case management, drug testing, sanctions, rewards, etc.).

JPC Research Associate KiDeuk Kim participated in a statistical workshop at the Causal Inference in Social Science conference in Ann Arbor, MI. The workshop focused on recent developments in the causal inference literature, including synthetic controls, optimization of propensity scores, and regression discontinuity designs. Kim presented the application of such techniques in evaluating criminal justice policy at the individual level (e.g., the impact of pretrial supervision on defendants) as well as at the aggregate level (e.g., the impact of sentencing policy on district-level outcomes).

JPC Senior Research Associate John Roman testified before the Domestic Policy Subcommittee of the Oversight and Government Reform Committee in the U.S. House of Representatives on July 22, 2010. The topic of the hearing was front-end alternatives to incarceration for drug-involved offenders; Roman discussed preliminary findings from the Multi-Site Adult Drug Court Evaluation, conducted by the Urban Institute, RTI International and the Center for Court Innovation, which indicate that drug courts can significantly reduce recidivism and are cost-effective. Click here to read Roman’s complete testimony.

On July 27th, 2010, JPC Director Nancy La Vigne testified before the U.S. House of Representatives Subcommittee on Federal Workforce, Postal Service, and the District of Columbia at a hearing entitled “Female D.C. Code Felons: Unique Challenges in Prison and at Home.” La Vigne discussed the findings from the Urban Institute study “Returning Home: Understanding the Challenges of Prisoner Reentry.” The study found that women have worse reentry outcomes than men, particularly in employment, health, and substance use. Her full testimony can be found here.

Janeen Buck Willison (the Urban Institute), Daniel P. Mears (Florida State University), and Jeffrey A. Butts (John Jay College of Criminal Justice)

This book chapter, which appears in U.S. Criminal Justice Policy: A Contemporary Reader, examines the state of juvenile justice policy nationally to investigate the various reforms to the juvenile justice system over the past twenty years. When juvenile arrests for violent crime reached an all-time high in 1994, lawmakers responded by implementing a host of reforms that profoundly altered and by some accounts “criminalized” juvenile justice policy and practice by making the juvenile justice system more like the adult system. The goal of this chapter is to investigate this claim and explore whether juvenile justice today is uniformly punitive in its orientation or whether it reflects the founding tenets of the original juvenile court. The authors draw on analyses from a review of recent legislation and practice and a national survey of juvenile justice practitioners, and find evidence that juvenile justice today clearly represents a mix of punitive and rehabilitative approaches and that states vary dramatically in the extent to which they lean toward greater punitiveness or rehabilitation.

Jocelyn Fontaine (the Urban Institute), Caterina Gouvis Roman (Temple University), and Martha R. Burt (the Urban Institute)

In 2006, the Corporation for Supportive Housing launched its Returning Home Initiative (RHI) with two goals: 1) to establish permanent supportive housing as an essential reentry component for formerly incarcerated persons with histories of homelessness, mental illness, and chronic health conditions; and 2) to promote local and national policy changes to integrate the corrections, housing, mental health, and human service systems. This report summarizes the Urban Institute’s assessment of the system change process in three communities that received significant RHI investment, and also highlights the RHI activities taking place in other jurisdictions. In addition, the report identifies challenges and lessons learned from the RHI to date.

Shelli Rossman and Laura Winterfield

This coaching packet was developed for the FY 2007 Prisoner Reentry Initiative Grant Program, sponsored by the Bureau of Justice Assistance and administered by the Center for Effective Public Policy, with its partners the Urban Institute and The Carey Group. It describes methods that jurisdictions can employ to assess the effectiveness of their reentry efforts. The other coaching packets that were developed as part of the Prisoner Reentry Initiative Training and Technical Assistance Program are available here.