APRI Highlights - Winter 2002

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Debra Whitcomb

Director, Grant Programs and Development

As we enter a new federal fiscal year, it is time to reflect on APRI’s accomplishments in maintaining and expanding the important work we do for the nation’s prosecutors. There is much to celebrate!

As you will see elsewhere in this newsletter, APRI is venturing into several new areas:

• Project Safe Neighborhoods, the Bush Administration’s $550 million initiative to reduce gun violence, includes $75 million for local prosecutors. APRI is already planning and designing various training and research activities related to this effort with support from the Bureau of Justice Assistance.
  
  
• Half a Nation by 2010, a plan to “roll out” APRI’s highly regarded forensic interview training program on a grand scale, received a substantial boost from the Children’s Bureau (Administration for Children, Youth and Families).
  
  
• Two new research projects will extend our capacity to assist prosecutors with victims’ issues, specifically, the special needs of the nation’s elderly crime victims and victims living in rural communities.

APRI also received continuing support for its work in juvenile justice, child abuse, violence against women, community prosecution and traffic law.

Increasingly, APRI’s programs are gaining national recognition as centers of very specialized expertise: We now house the National Traffic Law Center, the National Center for Prosecution of Child Abuse, the National Juvenile Justice Prosecution Center and the National Center for Community Prosecution. Our research on prosecutor workload is informing policy decision-makers across the country.

Each of our centers and program areas has mapped out an ambitious schedule over the coming year, including trainings and publications along with ongoing technical assistance. Each is advancing its work, whether by developing new curricula (e.g., mental health issues for juvenile offenders, basic training for new domestic violence prosecutors) or branching out into related areas of concern (e.g., Internet fraud and identity theft).

Meanwhile, we continue to monitor prosecutors’ needs for training and technical assistance and to seek opportunities that will support our efforts to meet those needs. At this writing we are exploring the role of local prosecutors in terrorism cases, prevention and treatment of drug offenses and various forms of cybercrime including identity theft and Internet fraud. We especially welcome your input. Please take a moment to contact me at (703) 549-4253 to share your good ideas!