Restricted Research - Award List, Note/Discussion Page
Fiscal Year: 2023
372 Sam Houston State University (142260)
Principal Investigator: Zhang, Yan
Total Amount of Contract, Award, or Gift (Annual before 2011): $ 150,641
Exceeds $250,000 (Is it flagged?): No
Start and End Dates: 10/1/22 - 9/30/23
Restricted Research: YES
Academic Discipline: Criminal Justice
Department, Center, School, or Institute: Department of Criminal Justice
Title of Contract, Award, or Gift: Evaluating Project Safe Neighborhoods in the Southern District of Texas Year 4
Name of Granting or Contracting Agency/Entity:
State of Texas Office of the Govenor
CFDA Link: DOJ
16.609
Program Title:
n/a
CFDA Linked: Community Prosecution and Project Safe Neighborhoods
Note:
SAMs 1.1.1: This project is a continuation of the Evaluating Project Safe Neighborhoods in the Southern District of Texas project that has been funded in fiscal years 2020, 2021 and 2022. In this project, we will continue to collaborate with the Southern District of Texas U.S. Attorney’s Office (USAO-SDTX), and the SDTX PSN task forces to provide needed research support, help the PSN team to develop and execute effective strategic plans to reduce violent crimes, and conduct independent assessments of PSN efforts. This project will continue serving the accountability design feature of the PSN program implemented by the USAO-SDTX. The project will focus on collecting data on outcomes achieved through the program by different local agencies, documenting strategic plans, and evaluating the effects on the violent crime rate, incarceration rate, and recidivism rate in the jurisdiction. The research activities described in this proposal include: 1) collecting and analyzing data that measure crime, incarceration, and recidivism in Houston and Harris County (Fort Bend County and Montgomery County will also be included if they are part of the PSN FY2023); 2) helping local agencies identify locations in greatest need of comprehensive violent crime reduction efforts, and identify key individuals or organizations driving crime in the target areas; 3) helping agencies develop and monitor their implementation of intervention strategies; and 4) providing evidence-based and data-driven evaluation of PSN effects on the violent crime rate, incarceration rate and recidivism rate in the targeted areas. The project will utilize statistical modeling of survey and agency data to identify target areas, measure outcomes, and for the way interventions are being implemented and carried out. Surveys and interviews with key criminal justice stakeholder will help to identify the most serious crime problems and crime hot spots the local agencies believe they are facing and classify tactics the local agencies have been implementing to combat these problems. Agency data will provide data sources for measuring crime, incarceration, and recidivism in the jurisdictions. Statistical analyses, including longitudinal crime trend analysis, hot spots analysis, and space time pattern mining can describe characteristics of crime and criminals, identify locations that have the most serious risks of violent crime, and discover the dynamic crime trends in the targeted areas. Further statistical methods, such as t-tests, interrupted time series analyses, synthetic control methods, as well as other advanced statistical methods, will be used to evaluate the effects of PSN initiatives on crime in the targeted areas or the targeted problems. The research-practitioner model that has been promoted in our previous practice will be utilized continuously to ensure effective collaboration between the research team, the USAO-SDTX, and PSN task forces. This evidence-based model emphasizes respectful, two-way communication, open-mindedness, established roles and expectations, and research products that meet the team’s needs. Furthermore, members of the research team have extensive substantive knowledge of the proposed methodologies, knowledge of the target area and local data sources, prior experience working with PSN initiatives, and have collaborated with criminal justice agencies using the research-practitioner model approach. Finally, to ensure the project tasks and deliverables are appropriate, on schedule, and within specification and cost parameters, checkpoints for receiving and recording the accomplishments within specific task domains are part of the proposal.
Discussion: No discussion notes