APRI Highlights - Winter 2002

Office of Research and Evaluation

Elaine Nugent, Director

The Office of Research and Evaluation (OR&E) at APRI announces the availability of a new report on an effective truancy intervention program called Abolish Chronic Truancy (ACT) Now. The ACT Now program in Pima County, Arizona, is designed to break the cycle of truancy through prevention and intervention by holding parents accountable for their child’s truancy. The report, entitled Truancy Reduction: Keeping Students in School (NCJ#188947), can be obtained free of charge from the National Criminal Justice Reference Service at (800) 638-8736 or on-line at www.ncjrs.org.

The OR&E also continues its groundbreaking work in the area of prosecutor workload. In the past three years, staff has conducted workload assessments in six states and three counties, collecting detailed information about case processing activities and the time associated with these activities from more than 1,000 prosecutors. The staff at OR&E is currently analyzing the information to determine if national standards can be developed. The final report and a monograph for prosecutors on how to assess their own workload will be available later this year.

In addition to ongoing work, the OR&E is pleased to announce several new research efforts. These new studies include an assessment of victim/witness services in rural prosecutors’ offices, an evaluation of the impact of forensic interviewing training on child abuse case outcomes, a census of prosecutors’ offices on the practice of community prosecution and an assessment of the challenges facing local prosecutors in elder abuse cases. Other planned efforts include research on gun prosecution strategies and a survey of prosecutors on the use of the National Instant Criminal History Background Check system.