Council On Criminal Justice Starts Crime Trends Working Group

The think tank Council on Criminal Justice has created a crime trends working group "to explore and explain current crime trends and offer recommendations for improving the nation’s capacity to produce timely, accurate, and complete crime data." The council described the panel as a cross-section of leaders from academia, advocacy, law enforcement, government, and the public health sector. It is chaired by criminologist Richard Rosenfeld of the niversity of Missouri-St. Louis, and directed by John Buntin, a journalist who recently served as director of community safety for the mayor of Nashville. Members will examine the federal National Incident-Based Reporting System and assess the strengths and weaknesses of other data sources, including the Bureau of Justice Statistics’ National Crime Victimization Survey and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s Web-based Injury Statistics Query and Reporting System. The council said the group's findings will be summarized in regular reports and periodic public web events. Other members are Thomas Abt of the University of Maryland Violence Reduction Center, Delrice Adams of the Illinois Criminal Justice Information Authority, Jeff Asher of AH Datalytics, Deborah Azrael of the Harvard Injury Control Research Center, Prof. Jamein Cunningham of Cornell University, Drew Evans of the Minnesota Department of Public Safety, Dallas Police Chief Edgardo Garcia, Brandon Gibson, chief operating officer of Tennessee, criminologist of the University of Missouri-St. Louis, Jim MacMillan of the Philadelphia Center for Gun Violence, former Philadelphia mayor Michael Nutter, former Seattle police chief Kathleen O'Toole, Fernando Rejón of the Urban Peace Institute, John Roman of NORC at the University of Chicago, Lisa Shoaf of the Ohio Office of Criminal Justice Services and Keon Turner of the Vrginia Department of State Policing