NCJ Number
182949
Date Published
July 2000
Length
50 pages
Annotation
This annual report to Congress from the National Institute of Justice (NIJ) details NIJ’s criminal justice problem solving and policy development strategies for the year 1999.
Abstract
NIJ is committed to finding new ways to help criminal justice systems ensure fair, efficient, and effective outcomes. This report indicates that the fiscal year 1999 ushered in two pilot projects called the Strategic Approaches to Community Safety Initiative (SACSI) to develop collaborative partnerships among community organizations. Supported by more than a dozen United States Department of Justice agencies the SACSI model follows five major steps or stages including forming an interagency working group, targeting a local crime problem, designing strategic interventions, implementing the intervention, and assessing and modifying the strategy as the data reveal effects. In order to further explain the nexus between crime and other social problems, NIJ used Chicago, in 1999, as a laboratory of sorts to answer questions about the complex relationships among community, crime, delinquency, individual development, and family. In order to help break the cycle of crime, the NIJ funded a National Drug Control policy incorporating court-enforced drug treatment intervention. In terms of creating the necessary tools to combat crime, the NIJ developed a nationwide system of technology centers in 1999 with specialty offices designed to respond to the needs of State and local law enforcement and corrections agencies. Looking past traditional definitions and relationships and into developing trends, the NIJ’s International Center embarked on research and evaluation of transnational crime and justice issues and focused its attention on combating electronic crime. In 1999, in order to disseminate funding to State and local agencies, the NIJ made information available through the National Criminal Justice Reference Service and the Data Resource Program, published in print and electronic media, and used planning meeting focus groups and technical working groups to gather information, learn from the field, and help focus the Institute’s research agenda. A series of appendices presenting organization and financial data, awards made in 1999, and material published in 1999 completes this annual report.