View Research by Author - Janine M. Zweig

Citation URL: http://www.urban.org/JanineMZweig

Many humans are trafficked across international borders for the purposes of labor or sexual exploitation. The Office for Victims of Crime (OVC) developed the “Services for Trafficking Victims Discretionary Grant Program - Comprehensive Services Sites.” The program provides direct services, such as legal and crisis counseling to assist victims once they are identified until they are “certified” to receive other federal benefits. Urban Institute researchers conducted face-to-face interviews with survivors and with key service providers in three evaluation sites. The in-depth interviews document victims’ service needs, their experiences using OVC-funded services, and barriers to services. They also provide a unique opportunity to listen directly to the voices of the victims.

An interview with Janine M. Zweig, a senior research associate at the Urban Institute’s Justice Policy Center. Zweig is an author of "Addressing Sexual Violence in Prisons: A National Snapshot of Approaches and Highlights of Innovative Strategies."

Before the Prison Rape Elimination Act (PREA) of 2003, it was not clear the extent to which state departments of corrections (DOCs) were addressing sexual violence in systematic ways. Little information existed about what strategies were being put into practice in prison systems across the country. PREA has changed the way DOCs are addressing prison sexual violence (PSV). The purpose of the current project was to provide a national snapshot of DOC initiatives to address PSV, as well as to identify specific practices that seemed to be, in the absence of formal evaluations, particularly promising or innovative in nature. Practices were identified related to policy development, prevention, investigation and prosecution, victim services, staff training, documenting incidents, and funding.

The Office of Adolescent Pregnancy Programs (OAPP/DHHS) has been encouraging its abstinence-oriented grantees to incorporate youth development strategies. It wanted to learn (1) more about the relationship between these strategies and prevention of sexual risk taking, (2) how its funded programs have combined youth development and abstinence education components, and (3) whether one could determine the independent effects of each component on youth outcomes. This report describes findings related to these issues from a comprehensive literature review, examination of grantee documents, and site visits. Recommendations focus on strengthening the usefulness of grantee year-end reports, strengthening individual grantee evaluations, and strengthening OAPP's ability to assess effectiveness across grantees.

As part of a five-year joint project, RTI International and the Urban Institute have produced National Portrait of SVORI: the Serious and Violent Offender Reentry Initiative. Funded by the departments of Justice, Labor, Education, Housing and Urban Development, and Health and Human Services, SVORI provides over $100 million to 69 grantees in all 50 states and the Virgin Islands to develop programming, training, and state-of-the-art reentry strategies at the community level. SVORI programs intend to reduce recidivism and improve employment, housing, and health outcomes for participants. This report outlines SVORI and the planned impact evaluation, and describes each grantee's program.

This project identifies and describes seven community-wide approaches to ending chronic street homelessness that are working in cities around the country. Elements that appear to maximize progress include a paradigm shift in the goals and approaches of the homeless assistance network; setting a clear goal of reducing chronic street homelessness; committing to a community-wide level of organization; having leadership and an effective organizational structure; having significant resources from mainstream public agencies that go well beyond homeless-specific funding sources; commitment and support from mayors, city and county councils, and other local elected officials; and having a mechanism to track progress, provide feedback, and support improvements. This report describes these common elements and their role in approaches to reducing chronic street homelessness. Communities just beginning to develop their own plans for reducing chronic homelessness should be able to find illustrative practices and programs that they can learn from and adapt to their own situations.

Chapter 1 of this document examines the need for alternative education among vulnerable youth and describes the numbers and characteristics of youth who disconnect from mainstream developmental pathways. Chapter 2 examines the question what is an alternative education school or program? and suggests the beginnings of a typology defining and organizing the varieties of educational alternatives. Chapter 3 summarizes the findings of a roundtable on directions for future research on alternative education and describes the types of information needed to advance the field and foster more support for the development of high-quality educational alternatives.

Most youth move through adolescence experiencing little or no adversity and successfully transition into adult roles and responsibilities. However, a proportion of youth struggle to achieve developmental goals and become disconnected from mainstream institutions and systems-including schools. These youth are vulnerable to further failures and continued disconnection from society, often resulting in lifelong economic and social hardship. Alternative education may be a source of both disconnection from and reconnection to mainstream institutions for these youth. This paper describes the ways youth disconnect from developmental pathways and examines how alternative education schools and programs can meet the needs of vulnerable youth.

During summer and fall 2002, Urban Institute staff visited three communities for The Wallace Foundation to learn as much as possible about existing community-based programs for children and youth and the interconnections among them. This brief describes the goals of this work, what we did to accomplish them, and what we learned in the process. It focuses particularly on the technique of "community mapping" as we used it. We present results obtained for the three communities visited, not for their own sake but as illustrations of how other communities or funders might apply the technique to expand and improve their programming for children and youth. Because of its graphical nature, community mapping reveals otherwise hidden patterns in community programs, which can lead to more informed and effective decisions about these programs.

The purpose of this evaluation was to assess whether STOP's financial support for direct victim services offered through private nonprofit agencies helps victims of domestic violence and sexual assault improve their safety and well-being, and work successfully with legal system and other relevant agencies. Results show that women benefit from services of private nonprofit victim service agencies and the benefit of these services is enhanced when victim service agencies work in collaboration with the legal system and other relevant agencies in their community. When community agencies worked together to address domestic violence and sexual assault, women found them to be more helpful and effective and were more satisfied with the treatment they received from the legal system and their case outcomes. Legal system outcomes of arrests and convictions also happened more frequently when community agencies worked together.

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