Preface
OJP Bureaus and Program Offices
Fiscal Year 1998 Program Plans
Over the recent past, my colleagues and I at the Office of Justice Programs (OJP) have been thinking more and more about what the appropriate federal role in crime and justice should be. This question was especially timely as we commemorated two important anniversaries in the history of federal involvement in crime control. In July 1996, I brought together past leaders of the program to mark the 28th anniversary of the establishment of OJP's predecessor agency--the Law Enforcement Assistance Administration (LEAA). LEAA was created by Congress to help prevent and reduce crime--previously solely a state and local issue. And last summer, we celebrated the 30th anniversary of the 1967 President's Crime Commission Report, "The Challenge of Crime in a Free Society." We brought together former commissioners and their staff to talk with criminal and juvenile justice practitioners, researchers, and experts working today to reflect on the progress we have made during the past 30 years and to consider what that history can teach us as we move forward toward the 21st century.
We learned that, while the path ahead is never the same as the one just traveled, reflecting on where we have been is an important part of helping us better see where we should be going. The Fiscal Year 1998 Program Plans--published jointly for the fourth year--reflect, in part, the lessons we have learned from looking at crime and justice through the lens of history.
The Fiscal Year 1998 Program Plans emphasize the need for a broad-based attack on crime, drawing in as appropriate a host of non-criminal justice agencies, the private sector, and the community. This need for a cross-cutting approach that expands beyond traditional, formal justice system agencies was recognized by the 1967 Crime Commission and continues to be a top priority for the Attorney General, as well as OJP. Along with embracing comprehensive, cross-disciplinary approaches, there is growing support across the country for "community justice." Community justice flows from the proposition that justice agencies--courts, police, prosecutors, and others--must consider fundamental changes in the way they do business to regain the public's full confidence. It builds on the problem-solving element of community policing and envisions all the components of the criminal and juvenile justice systems linking with the communities they serve through community prosecution, community courts, and community-focused corrections. Again, the Commission recognized 30 years ago that crime control is ineffective without strong community interest and participation.
We also know now--and the 1967 Crime Commission knew then--that effective crime-fighting efforts can be significantly enhanced through information sharing across local, state, and federal information systems and among the various components of the system in any one jurisdiction. During the last few years, more and more OJP funding has helped support state and local justice information technology--complex computer systems that the Commission could not have imagined. And a key role for federal funding in this area today is to assist state and local governments in coordinating the application of the myriad current information technologies. Our goal is to foster information sharing that can serve the collective needs of various justice system components and that will prevent the development of repetitive, overlapping, and non-compatible systems--while at the same time addressing important privacy and security concerns. In short, OJP is working toward promoting compatibility of criminal and juvenile justice information systems that make the best use of federal dollars, and help state and local justice agencies better accomplish their mission of effectively addressing crime.
Another critical part of the federal role is to develop information and knowledge--through research and evaluation--about what works in controlling crime and improving the criminal and juvenile justice systems. As the primary recommendation noted in the 1997 University of Maryland Report, "Preventing Crime: What Works, What Doesn't, What's Promising"--commissioned at the request of Congress to evaluate the effectiveness of the overall OJP crime prevention program--the federal government can make a significant contribution to preventing crime in this country through "rigorous testing of innovative programs" and transferring that knowledge to other areas nationwide.
While state and local jurisdictions frequently lack the infrastructure and funds to fill this role, at OJP we have more than 30 years of research and evaluation experience to build on. We already know a great deal about what works, and we collect needed information and statistics that serve to inform criminal justice policy and practice.
As we move ahead with the initiatives outlined in these Program Plans, our challenge is to increase the impact of federal dollars by providing state and local jurisdictions--our "customers" and partners--with funds and programming that are based on the best that we know from sound research and rigorous evaluations, and that provide communities with the knowledge and resources they need to strategically address their crime control concerns.
Laurie Robinson
Assistant Attorney General
Office of Justice Programs