Crime Prevention and Recovery Project Wins Best Paper Award at Conference on Digital Gov. Research
Professor Jim Geller, chair of the Department of Data Science in the Ying Wu College of Computing, and Angela Garretson, chief of public and community affairs at New Jersey Institute of Technology (NJIT), along with Soon Ae Chun, professor and director of the information systems and informatics programs at the College of Staten Island campus of the City University of New York (CUNY), are co-authors on a poster describing a proposed crime prevention and response program evaluation system that has won the best poster award at the 25th Annual International Conference on Digital Government Research in Taipei, Taiwan.
The "Continuous Evaluation for a Multi-Dimensional Violent Crime Prevention and Recovery Policy" proposal aims to “close the loop" on how data flows between stakeholders who are tasked with resolving issues related to violent crime and prevention, including government offices, law enforcement, mental health experts, educators, community activists and spiritual leaders.
Statistics have shown that policing alone is not enough to reduce crime or recidivism for offenders, particularly at-risk youth. A multi-dimensional approach involving the cooperative efforts of service providers across various sectors is necessary to properly address violent crime as a public health issue.
The proposal designs a mechanism for reporting on fine-grained data and data analytics capabilities to measure the success and failure of intervention programs, including, but not limited to, monitoring of social workers and mental health counselors to validate that services were rendered effectively, and measuring results of technology, such as the use of security cameras.
It also clearly visualizes differentiations in geographic activities, e.g., theft, physical assault, etc., allows for comparative research on issues such as the rate of recidivism for subjects who received counseling and those who did not, and provides year-to-year analysis for improvement.
Resulting data can identify potential fraud by service providers (who did not provide promised services), which will lead to better fiscal responsibility, and may be used for periodic audits of the program.
Newark Mayor Ras Baraka, a pioneer in incorporating the public into the realm of public safety, is founder of The Newark Community Street Team (NCST), a cooperative effort between city agencies, service providers, policy organizations and others, to affect a community-based violence reduction strategy. Geller, Garretson and Chun view their project outline as a potentially viable solution to support such initiatives.