View Research by Author - P. Mitchell Downey

Publications

This report describes adult criminal case processing and disposition in Washington, DC. In general, this analysis finds that the District follows national patterns with respect to charging practice and sentencing. Defendants in the District are slightly more likely to be charged with serious person crimes than are cases nationally, and slightly less likely to be charged with a property crime. Defendants in the District are slightly more likely than other large urban counties to receive probation, and slightly less likely to be sentenced to jail, prison, or long prison sentences, though sentences for serious person offenses are longer.

In this presentation, the authors explain the concept of Social Impact Bonds, a means of engaging private funds to help solve a public sector problem, when additional resources are not available from the government. PowerPoint file.

The Jail Sexual Assault Prevention project tests the application of violence reduction strategies informed by situational crime prevention (SCP) theory within three jail facilities. The project collected and synthesized data from multiple sources in order to identify and implement interventions to address each facility’s unique safety challenges: an officer tour system in Site A, a recording camera system in Site B, and crisis intervention training at Site C. The brief provides summary findings on the safety impacts and cost effectiveness of each intervention and discusses the utility of a SCP framework in addressing correctional violence.

State and local governments often struggle to implement evidence-based programs because of high upfront costs, even when research shows these programs to be cost-effective in the long run. Social impact bonds (SIBs) are an innovative way of attracting private funding for program implementation by offering a financial return to investors. But can social impact bonds really be used in the US to increase evidence-based programming? In this presentation, we present some key ideas behind social impact bonds, discuss challenges in getting them off the ground, and show how ongoing Urban Institute work can be used to establish the SIB market.

The Jail Sexual Assault Prevention project tests the application of violence reduction strategies informed by situational crime prevention theory (SCP) within three jail facilities. The project collected and synthesized data from multiple sources in order to identify and implement interventions to address each facility's unique safety challenges: an officer tour system in Site A, a recording camera system in Site B, and crisis intervention training at Site C. The report provides findings on the safety impacts and cost effectiveness of each intervention and discusses the utility of a SCP framework in addressing correctional violence.

This research evaluated the impact on crime of the closing, redevelopment, and subsequent reopening of three public housing developments in Milwaukee, Wis., and Washington, D.C., under the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD)'s HOPE VI initiative. We found a clear indication in all three sites that crime dropped at some point during redevelopment and we generally observed a diffusion of benefits from the redeveloped sites outward. The findings suggest that large-scale public housing redevelopment initiatives like HOPE VI can create a diffusion of benefits to nearby areas, which may also experience reductions in crime levels.

More than a dozen cost-benefit analyses have been conducted on drug courts in the last decade. We build on these findings and extend them in several ways: 1) a larger sample allows us to draw inferences from a large sample of individuals (nearly 1,800) and courts (23); 2) survey data on a number of domains which have never been included in past analyses (such as employment, hospital use, homeless shelter use, mental health treatment, and many more) increases the range of program costs and benefits considered; 3) we employ statistical techniques less common in criminal justice cost-benefit analyses, although not new, to identify individual characteristics which make drug court most cost-effective; and 4) we separately analyze each drug court’s cost effectiveness to draw inferences about which drug courts are and are not cost effective under different combinations of price structures, program design, and offender population characteristics

This presentation documents how key drug court policies and practices influence participants' outcomes related to relapse and recidivism. The policies and practices include those related to treatment, leverage, judicial supervision, judicial interaction, case management, drug testing, sanctions, rewards, and graduation requirements. It addresses the following critical research issues: 1) how policies, practices, and courtroom experiences vary across drug court programs; 2) which policies, practices, and courtroom experiences make drug courts more or less effective; and 3) whether combining particular sets of policies and practices leads to even greater success for program participants.

This report is based on research conducted by the Urban Institute's Justice Policy Center on the violence prevention activities taking place at the Thurgood Marshall Academy Public Charter High School during the 2008-2009 school year. Based on an assessment of the school's violence prevention approach using qualitative and quantitative data from stakeholder interviews, field observations, programmatic records, and surveys with students and faculty, this report includes: a logic model of the school's violence prevention approach; detailed information on each of the violence prevention activities within the violence prevention approach and how they compare to national best practices; student and faculty perceptions of the school climate and the violence prevention approach; and recommendations to the school administrators on how to strengthen their violence prevention approach based on the assessment findings. The report concludes with brief remarks on next steps in school violence prevention research.

This summary brief is based on research conducted by the Urban Institute's Justice Policy Center on the violence prevention activities taking place at the Thurgood Marshall Academy Public Charter High School during the 2008-2009 school year. Researchers from the Justice Policy Center conducted an assessment of the school's violence prevention activities using qualitative and quantitative data from stakeholder interviews, programmatic records, and surveys with students and faculty. This brief provides an overview of Thurgood Marshall Academy's violence prevention approach; a more detailed report on the full assessment will follow in Summer 2010.

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