Kevin Roy, Ph.D., Associate Professor & Craig Fryer, Ph.D., Associate Professor
School of Public Health

This evidence-based pilot project works closely with formerly incarcerated Black men who are at-risk for continued gun and community violence, as well as drug trafficking, upon reentry back into their families and communities. The research investigates how prior experiences of trauma and violence, as well as incarceration-related trauma, shape the reentry and reintegration pathways of Black men and their families. Using a community-based participatory research (CBPR) approach, the research works closely with Black men to investigate their experiences and their strengths-based strategies to counter trauma and violence as they transition — often repeatedly — between correctional facilities and their home communities.

The researchers are conducting life history interviews with 20 Black men in both a social setting and during incarceration to identify traumatic life experiences that have led to depression, other mental and physical health issues, and incarceration and effects of definitions of masculinity on health. A focus group (8 men each) and individual life history interviews are being conducted at a correctional facility and at a barbershop in Prince George’s County. The research seeks to identify how experiences of trauma and violence (including incarceration-related trauma) shape the reentry and reintegration pathways of Black men and their families.

The focus group protocol is a more general discussion-based guide, with a discussion of what men know about trauma (with a focus on violence), how they define it, and what its effects are for men’s health. The individual interview protocol to discuss exposure to violence and traumatic events, including incarceration. Men will also discuss strategies that they have developed to cope with trauma and identify barriers that continue to affect their daily routines in employment, health, and family life.

Jinney Smith, Ph.D., Department of Criminology and Criminal Justice
Kiminori Nakumura, Ph.D., Department of Criminology and Criminal Justice

This research examines the risk of violent recidivism, focusing on offenders of drug offenses (particularly drug trafficking) in Maryland Circuit Courts. Using three different data sources, researchers profile drug traffickers’ juvenile and criminal history and predict their risk of violent recidivism by incorporating predictors such as age at first arrest/conviction, prior violent and weapon charges, and other variables. This research also hopes to display patterns of offending and criminal history that leads to current drug offense sentences and asks whether sentences for drug traffickers are proportional to the violent recidivism risk they pose and whether or not they are effective in preventing violent recidivism.

Recent criminal justice reform efforts characterize drug offenders as non-violence offenders who warrant reduced sentences but relying on the instant offense to determine which offenders are a low public safety risk could be misleading. Though drug dealers and traffickers are targeted for punitive sanctions (i.e. mandatory minimums and sentence enhancements), little is known empirically about their future propensity for violence.

Individual sentencing data from the State Commission on Criminal Sentencing (MSCCSP), Criminal Justice Information System (CJIS), Department of Public Safety and Correctional Services (DPSCS) and the Department of Juvenile Services (DJS) are merged to identify patterns of criminal history among drug offenders and drug traffickers. To date, researchers have identified factors which may help differentiate subsets of drug offenders with a particularly heightened risk of violent recidivism, including violent crime, and are completing the data cleaning and merging. Once the final dataset is completed, the researchers will examine descriptive statistics and use a regression model to assess drug offenders and their criminal histories.

Laura Ardito, Deputy Director, SAFE Center & Brian Kim, Assistant Research Professor
SAFE Center for Human Trafficking Survivors and the College of Behavioral and Social Sciences

The University of Maryland SAFE Center for Human Trafficking Survivors is testing the feasibility of Respondent Driven Sampling (RDS) to estimate the prevalence and nature of human trafficking in Prince George’s and Montgomery Counties in Maryland.

Using respondent driven sampling (RDS), a network-based survey approach, researchers hope to address: 1) whether RDS is appropriate for estimating the prevalence and nature of sex trafficking in Prince George’s County and Montgomery County, and 2) the nature and scope of human trafficking in the defined geographic regions, including victims’ reported victimization experiences and service needs.

The researchers have designed a survey that the participants will complete, and will analyze the results as part of this study.

At the end of the project, the researchers anticipate that they will have a tool ready to implement.

The results from this project will inform future RDS studies as well as potential new services and interventions for victims. Ultimately, this project hopes to produce quantitative and qualitative data statewide to inform policy, resource allocation and funding decisions for human trafficking projects/programs.

March 2019

The Maryland Crime Research and Innovation Center (MCRIC) has announced five pilot research projects that will advance the Center’s interdisciplinary research agenda in its first year.

MCRIC, supported by a grant from the Governor’s Office of Crime Control & Prevention (GOCCP), provides academic research expertise to advance evidence-based policies and practices to help the state’s crime control and prevention efforts. The initiative benefits from Maryland’s collective talent and expertise to conduct interdisciplinary research and to help inform state policies and programs.

The pilot projects are:

• Using RDS to Identify Human Trafficking Victims in Prince George’s County and Montgomery County
  • Laura Ardito, Deputy Director, SAFE Center & Brian Kim, Assistant Research Professor, SAFE Center for Human Trafficking Survivors and the College of Behavioral and Social Sciences
• Drug Traffickers in the Maryland Circuit Court: Their Past, Their Sentences, and Prediction and Prevention of Future Violence
  • ​​​​​​​​​​​​​​Jinney Smith, Ph.D., & Kiminori Nakumura, Ph.D., Department of Criminology and Criminal Justice
• Trauma, Incarceration, and Black Men’s Health in Maryland
  • ​​​​​​​Kevin Roy, Ph.D., Associate Professor & Craig Fryer, Ph.D., Associate Professor, School of Public Health
• Stop the Addiction Fatality Epidemic (SAFE) Project Treatment Locator Application
  • ​​​​​​​Stephanie Weaver, Jeff Horwitz, and Charles Harry, Associate Research Professor, School of Public Policy
• Violence Diffusion Prediction via Deep Learning
  • ​​​​​​​Kunpeng Zhang, Assistant Professor, Robert H. Smith School of Business

For more information about the research projects, contact us at mcric@umd.edu.

April 2019

The Maryland Crime Research and Innovation Center (MCRIC) has announced the appointment of Dr. Gary LaFree as its new Director.

The University of Maryland launched MCRIC in 2018 with support from the Governor’s Office of Crime Prevention, Youth, and Victim Services in order to harness the power of research, data, and science to reduce crime and improve lives across Maryland. The Center provides academic expertise, conducts research, integrates data, and develops and evaluates research-based, innovative criminal justice strategies aimed at preventing and reducing crime.

Dr. Gary LaFree is Professor and Chair of the Criminology and Criminal Justice Department at the University of Maryland. He is also the former Director of the National Consortium for the Study of Terrorism and Responses to Terrorism (START) at the University of Maryland.

The START Center is a Department of Homeland Security Emeritus Center of Excellence headquartered at the University of Maryland. START supports the research efforts of leading social scientists at more than 50 academic and research institutions, each of whom is conducting original investigations into fundamental questions about terrorism. During his time as Director of START, the Center launched the development of the Global Terrorism Database (GTD), an open-source database that includes information on terrorist attacks around the world since 1970, more than 180,000 cases in all.

Dr. LaFree received his Ph.D. in Sociology from Indiana University in 1979. During 2005-2006, he served as President of the American Society of Criminology (ASC). Dr. LaFree was named a Fellow of the American Society of Criminology in 2006 and a member of the National Academy of Science's Committee on Law and Justice in 2008. He has also served as the Past President of the ASC’s Division on International Criminology (1991-1993), the chair of the American Sociological Association’s Section on Crime, Law and Deviance (1991-1993), the Executive Board of the Harry Frank Guggenheim Foundation (2001-2006), and the Executive Committee of the Justice Research Statistics Association (2000-2001, 1993-1994).

While at the University of Maryland, Dr. LaFree has been a founding member of the Democracy Collaborative and an invited member of the National Consortium of Violence Research. Before joining the faculty at Maryland, Dr. LaFree served as the Chair of the Sociology and Criminology Department at the University of New Mexico for six years and as the Director of the New Mexico Criminal Justice Statistics Analysis Center for 13 years. Dr. LaFree was appointed by the Governor of New Mexico to chair the State Crime and Juvenile Justice Coordinating Council—a position that he filled for four years.

Dr. LaFree received the G. Paul Sylvestre Award for outstanding achievements in advancing criminal justice statistics in 1994, and the Phillip Hoke Award for excellence in applied research in 1994 and 1998, from the Justice Research Statistics Association. LaFree has written more than 60 articles and book chapters and three books and is currently on the editorial boards of seven journals.

Dr. LaFree will work closely with the Governor's Office and MCRIC researchers to advance the Center’s mission to provide academic expertise, conduct research, integrate data, and develop and evaluate research-based, innovative criminal justice strategies aimed at preventing and reducing crime in Maryland.

The Maryland Crime Research and Innovation Center (MCRIC) at the University of Maryland draws upon academic research expertise to develop and evaluate innovative criminal justice strategies aimed at reducing and preventing crime to benefit Maryland citizens. Launched in 2018 with support from the Governor’s Office of Crime Control & Prevention (GOCCP), MCRIC supports interdisciplinary projects that align with GOCCP’s efforts to prevent and reduce crime, drawing from research expertise from across the Maryland academic community.  

A particular focus for MCRIC is to develop research-informed, data-driven methodologies and strategies for crime prevention and reduction, and to help foster data sharing, collaboration, and cooperation among partner organizations, agencies, and stakeholders across Maryland.  MCRIC invites proposals from the Maryland research community to engage in one of three data projects.

See here for memo describing application process.

The American Society of Criminology (ASC) awarded Maryland Crime Research and Innovation Center (MCRIC) Director Gary LaFree the Edwin H. Sutherland Award. The award recognizes outstanding contributions to theory or research in criminology on the etiology of criminal and deviant behavior, the criminal justice system, corrections, law or justice.

LaFree is professor and chair of the Department of Criminology and Criminal Justice, in addition to serving as MCRIC Director. He was recognized by ASC for his research on the causes and consequences of violent crime, and in particular, his efforts to bring terrorism and responses to terrorism into the mainstream of criminology and criminal justice research and education.

The Maryland Crime Research and Innovation Center (MCRIC) has partnered with the Salisbury Police Department on a predictive analytics project involving machine learning and data analysis to help support crime reduction efforts.

The main objective of the project, which was supported by an Edward Byrne Memorial Justice Assistance Grant, is to increase the availability of data-driven predictive analytics that offer the local police department an additional set of tools that can supplement and enhance existing proactive strategies. In order to achieve this objective, this project will develop and test predictive models and incorporate stakeholder feedback to refine analysis and prepare for implementation and deployment.

The project, made possible by a partnership between researchers in Criminology and Engineering, includes data collection and curation, research and analysis, presentation, and reports/policy briefs/other dissemination activities.  Building on Salisbury’s previous project and its recommendations, MCRIC is exploring new machine learning techniques as well as new data sources to improve the value of predictive information for city and local law enforcement.

After rigorous testing and evaluation, the machine learning-based predictive models will be presented by the MCRIC team to the Salisbury stakeholders for feedback. The models will be revised to reflect the feedback received before they are finalized and the final report is prepared for model development.

The Maryland Crime Research and Innovation Center (MCRIC) is partnering with the Baltimore Police Department (BPD) and the Baltimore Mayor’s Office of Criminal Justice (MOCJ) to conduct an implantation evaluation of the Swift, Certain, and Fair program, supported by the Bureau of Justice Assistance. The goal of MCRIC’s planning support is to help BPD and MOCJ validate the problems that were targeted in the application, provide information on appropriate best practices given the community’s identified problems, and to assist in the development of an action plan for the initiative. 

In the early phase of the project, MCRIC will work closely with BPD and to collect comprehensive data and conduct analyses. MCRIC will also assist in the development of an action plan that will guide implementation and assessment of the SCF intervention. The action plan will identify a set of appropriate best practices given the nature of community, criminal activity, and resource constraints.

MCRIC will analyze crime, gun violence and gang surveillance data to monitor the progress of the initiative’s efforts and make suggestions as needed for any changes to the strategy, if challenges arise. In the last three months of the effort, MCRIC will conduct an overall outcome analysis of the effort focusing on the direct goals of the program: reduce violent crime, substance abuse, recidivism, and gun violence, and improve integration of community stakeholders. The following activities will be part of the outcome analysis:

1. Analyze trends in crime and intermediate measures affected by group violence intervention (GVI) operations.
2. Evaluate development of police and stakeholder practices related to gun crime, including new police practices to incorporate data generated by social network analysis, qualitative and quantitative data.
3. Produce, as needed, briefs or descriptions of regular analysis of crime and other data in order to inform and provide feedback to the program partners during planning and implementation.

The Maryland Crime Research and Innovation Center (MCRIC) is partnering with the Greater Baybrook Alliance and the Baltimore Police Department to conduct a mixed method implementation and impact evaluation to inform the Community-Based Group Violence Intervention (CGVI) program. Funded by the Bureau of Justice Assistance, the CGVI program has three objectives that are measurable using data collected by Baltimore Police Department (BPD), service providers, and community stakeholders with formal ties to the program:

Overall Program Objectives:

• Reduce gun violence (homicides and non-fatal shootings)
• Successfully deliver services to vulnerable individuals (at greatest risk of victimization or perpetration of gun violence)
• Reduce recidivism rate among vulnerable individuals who receive services

These objectives are aligned with three goals that rely on a mix of quantitative risk and needs assessment: to identify individuals that are at high risk of being vulnerable to gun violence, identification of service providers with whom the GBA interacts to connect with identified individuals, and to improve norms affecting public safety.

This project will evaluate the needs, theory of change, implementation, and outcomes of a community-based group violence intervention effort in the Greater Baybrook area to be completed in four phases. Leveraging longitudinal, time series data collected on crime rates, arrest, calls for service, overdose responses, shooting incidents, property-based databases, and offender-based data, we will model and assess the impact of the intervention.