This week in Los Angeles, California, the Justice Department’s National Institute of Justice (NIJ) and Bureau of Justice Assistance (BJA) hosted the Nation’s first symposium on Predictive Policing.  Predictive policing is a relatively new law enforcement concept that integrates approaches such as cutting-edge crime analysis, crime fighting technology, intelligence-lead policing and more to inform forward thinking crime prevention strategies and tactics.  

The Justice Department is supporting activities in a number of police departments nationwide, some of who are participating in demonstration projects of specific predictive policing models.  A list of those projects is located, here (PDF).

The newly confirmed Assistant Attorney General for the Office of Justice Programs, Laurie Robinson, provided luncheon remarks on Thursday and introduced keynote speaker Former Los Angeles Police Chief William Bratton. In addition, Acting NIJ Director Kristina Rose, and Acting BJA Director James Burch, spoke with Southern California Public Radio along with Chief Bratton about the importance of using information to drive innovative crime fighting strategies. The interview can be heard, here.

Although we have made impressive gains in reducing crime over the last 10 years in this country, we still face unacceptable pockets of violent crime in some neighborhoods. This symposium was an important forum for bringing together researchers, practitioners, and leaders to develop and discuss the concept of predictive policing and its impact on crime and justice. Leading criminal justice policymakers and practitioners had the opportunity to explore current issues and the future of prediction in criminal justice. In addition, attendees discussed what Predictive Policing is, where it is being practiced, and what we can learn from those experiences to develop a concrete strategy that can be replicated across the country.

The 2½ -day workshop is a springboard for action and also marks the formation of the National Predictive Policing Advisory Group. Following the symposium, the group, comprised of police chiefs, federal law enforcement experts, criminal justice researchers, and national police organizations, will begin a national dialogue about Predictive Policing and its future in the criminal justice field.

Innovative strategies, such as Predictive Policing, can help us understand our communities better and make us better partners in carrying out the mission of the Department of Justice. This symposium will help us define for the field how we should be moving forward to meet the challenges of law enforcement in a new era.

Guests sign in for the ENRD Celebration

Today, Attorney General Holder, Assistant Attorney General Ignacia S. Moreno and current and past employees gather to celebrate the 100th anniversary of the Environment and Natural Resources Division.  Special guests included former Attorney General Ramsey Clark, former Deputy Attorney General Carol Dinkins, and many former Assistant Attorneys General of the Division. 

Additionally, Attorney General Holder formally welcomed Assistant Attorney General Moreno as the new head of the Environment and Natural Resources Division: 

Ignacia is a talented, really fine attorney, and I know she arrives at this moment armed with great ideas.  I also know that she is already a friend to many of you here in the audience, and that you, like me, are looking forward to working with her to advance the Division’s important mission.  Ignacia helped develop the Department’s Environmental Justice program during the Clinton Administration, recognizing the special burden that a polluted environment puts on minority and low-income communities.  I am especially looking forward to working with her to strengthen our efforts to achieve environmental justice. 

The Assistant Attorney General arrives just in time to celebrate 100 years of work aquiring lands for national parks, working for cleaner air and water, helping to assure military readiness, and protecting wildlife. In these ways, and many more, the work of the Environment and Natural Resources Division has touched the lives of almost every American. 

 Exactly 100 years ago, on November 16, 1909, then-Attorney-General George W. Wickersham established the Public Lands Division of the United States Department of Justice.  As the nation grew and developed, the division’s name changed to the “Environment and Natural Resources Division.” The division is organized into nine sections,  has a staff of over 600 people with offices in Washington, D.C., Anchorage, Boston, Denver, Sacramento, San Francisco and Seattle.

 There are currently over 6,000 active cases, and has represented virtually every federal agency in courts all over the United States and its territories and possessions.

More information about the Environment and Natural Resources Division can be found on its centennial Web site.   There you can read about case highlights, learn about the people and resources of ENRD, and delve into the work of specific sections.

For more information about the Environment and Natural Resources Division, visit: http://www.justice.gov/enrd/index.html.

Friday afternoon, Judge Linda K. Davis formally installed Tom Perez as Assistant Attorney General of the Civil Rights Division.  Attorney General Holder, Deputy Attorney General Ogden, and Associate Attorney General Perrelli were all present to formally welcome back Tom Perez to the Civil Rights Division.

Special guests that participated in the program included Melody Barnes, the Director of the White House Domestic Policy Council and a long-time friend of Assistant Attorney General Perez, Stephen H. Sachs, former Attorney General of Maryland and U.S. Attorney for the District of Maryland; and Ralph Rouse, the Regional Manager for Civil Rights for the U.S. Department of Health & Human Services.

Members of the Perez family were also in attendance, joining Civil Rights Division leadership and staff, as well as representatives from Congress and many civil rights organizations. Attorney General Holder emphasized that the Civil Rights Division was a priority when he first started in February and continues to be a priority today. 

Attorney General Eric Holder:

We must commit ourselves to making the Division stronger and better than it has ever been before and ready to confront the 21st century issues that have already begun to present themselves. This will take time – but not too much time. The quest for justice must be an impatient thing – for we all know what happens when justice is delayed. So I am an impatient Attorney General.

During his remarks Assistant Attorney General Perez stated:

The Civil Rights Division is open for business. Our job is to enforce the civil rights laws – all the laws. Civil Rights Enforcement is not like the buffet line at the cafeteria. You can’t pick and choose which laws you like, and which ones you don’t. We will enforce all the laws in fair, aggressive and independent fashion, and we will use all the tools available to us.

This morning, at a press conference held at The Department of Justice, Attorney General Eric Holder, on behalf of The Departments of Justice and Defense, announced forum decisions for 10 Guantanamo Bay detainees.

Watch the video:

Transcript (PDF)

Read the rest of this entry »

This week’s announcement of charges against individuals from Eastern Europe and Russia for allegedly hacking into credit card processors in the United States shines a spotlight on the issue of cyber crime and security. 

The Department of Justice, through the International Criminal Investigative Training Assistance Program (ICITAP), is working diligently with foreign nations all over the world to develop professional and transparent law enforcement institutions that protect human rights, combat terrorism and corruption, and reduce the threat of transnational crime, including cyber crimes.

One of the areas that ICITAP is focused on improving is cyber security.  In Eastern Europe, for example, Department of Justice officials are working with law enforcement agencies in nations that make up the U.S. – GUAM (Georgia, Ukraine, Azerbaijan, and Moldova) Framework Program.  ICITAP helped develop a Virtual Law Enforcement Center, which links the four member countries through a secure video and criminal information network.

Increasing coordination and cyber security capabilities in these nations will help prevent fraud and allow for better communications to investigate crimes and catch criminals.  In December 2009, ICITAP will provide training in Moldova for cyber crime investigators, in partnership with other law enforcement partners.  ICITAP also provided training and equipment to the Ukrainian forensic laboratory for the examination of digital evidence seized in cyber crime investigations, including recent international investigations of child pornography and trafficking in persons.  In Serbia, ICITAP is working with the Organized Crime Directorate to develop a Cyber/High Tech Crimes Workshop and has facilitated communication between U.S. and Serbian law enforcement officials involved in joint cases.

Established in 1986, ICITAP’s first mission was to help train police officers in Latin America. Over the next two decades, ICITAP evolved into a full-service criminal justice development agency that plays an important role in fostering international stability and rule of law, which are vital to U.S. security.

During the past 20 years, ICITAP – part of the Department’s Criminal Division – has provided law enforcement development assistance around the world, including in Afghanistan, Iraq, Albania, Bosnia, Kosovo, Kenya, Indonesia, the Philippines, Thailand, Pakistan, Colombia, Paraguay and Peru.  ICITAP works in close partnership with its funders; the U.S. Department of State, the U.S. Agency for International Development, the Millennium Challenge Corporation and the Department of Defense.

The office has been particularly busy recently, with 17 field offices worldwide and three new offices opening soon. In FY 2009, ICITAP carried out more than 1,000 training events for approximately 40,000 foreign law enforcement professionals, and was involved in nearly 140 technical assistance and training partnership activities with U.S. government agencies.

In December, ICITAP personnel from the field offices will gather in Washington, D.C., for the annual managers’ conference where they will share best practices and lessons learned from their overseas programs, before heading back to the far reaches of the globe to continue their missions.

For more information on ICITAP, please visit their Web site: http://www.justice.gov/criminal/icitap

The following post appears courtesy of the National Institute of Justice and the Bureau of Justice Assistance.

You may have heard about problem-solving courts such as drug courts, which have been in use since the early 1990s and are intended to combine drug treatment and court monitoring to help offenders stay out of prison and avoid repeating their offenses.

Since the first drug court was launched in Dade County, Florida in 1989, at the height of the crack cocaine epidemic in Miami, drug courts have received enormous public attention and acclaim. This is for good reason: drug courts are viewed by many scholars as one of the most successful criminal justice innovations in the last 25 years, and have attracted bipartisan support, along with millions of dollars from Congress.

Their success has inspired other innovation which you may be less familiar with.   For example, another type of problem-solving court — community courts — are neighborhood-focused courts that attempt to harness the power of the justice system to address local problems, including drug possession, shoplifting, vandalism and assault.

Like drug courts, community courts link addicted offenders to judicially-monitored drug treatment. But they typically handle a broader caseload (for example, all misdemeanors in a given set of neighborhoods) and make use of a broader array of mandates, including job training and community restitution. Community courts strive to create new relationships with diverse stakeholders such as residents, merchants, churches and schools. They also test new and aggressive approaches to public safety rather than merely responding to crime after it has occurred.

The first community court in the U.S. was the Midtown Community Court, launched in 1993 in New York City by the Center for Court Innovation. Some three dozen community courts, inspired by the Midtown model Red Hook Community Justice Center, are currently in operation around the U.S. and a number of others are being planned.

Some evidence suggests community courts can achieve significant results with drug-addicted defendants. For example, in a research study conducted at the Midtown Community Court, re-arrest rates dropped sharply among individuals who completed more than 90 days of court-ordered drug treatment. Additionally, Midtown saw street prostitution drop 56 percent within 18 months of the court’s opening and unlicensed vending was down 24 percent. At the end of 2007, Red Hook’s police precinct was recognized as #1 in New York City for the largest reduction in major crime over the previous two-year period. The New York Police Department credited three things: their own tactics, the community, and the Justice Center.

Another positive result of the court is reflected in the opinion of the court by defendants and citizens. In a recent survey, 85 percent of Red Hook defendants felt that their case was handled fairly, and 93 percent felt that the judge treated them fairly. In Red Hook, approval ratings of courts increased from 13 percent just prior to opening to a 78 percent approval rating for the Justice Center in a recent community survey.

The Department of Justice will continue to support and pursue innovative methods to effectively fight crime and keep our neighborhoods safe. Community courts have proven a remarkably effective way to do just that, and are a perfect example of the successes possible when law enforcement agencies and community leaders work together.

More information about problem solving courts is available  here and here.