Chris Tillery, director of the National Institute of Justice, Office of Research, Evaluation and Technology, speaks with APA

George “Chris” Tillery is the director of the National Institute of Justice’s (NIJ) Office of Research, Evaluation and Technologyopens in new window, which encourages and supports research and evaluation on the causes and correlates of crime and violence, methods of crime prevention and control, and the criminal justice system’s responses to crime and violence. Tillery recently answered questions from the American Psychological Association covering NIJ’s research on policing and public safety.

The COVID-19 pandemic has provided many challenges and opportunities for the research community. What is the impact of COVID-19 on NIJ’s research moving forward?

The changes brought about by the COVID-19 pandemic had dramatic effects on some NIJ-funded research projects, but only minimal effects on others. NIJ provided enhanced flexibilities to those ongoing projects requesting it. This included providing project period extensions and allowing scope changes. NIJ has assessed specific research portfolios to anticipate and prepare for new challenges. For example, NIJ has a sizeable portfolio focused on school safety. As school districts across the nation adopted remote learning, NIJ-funded researchers had to switch from in-person interviews to online, remote ones in order to continue their research projects.  

In addition, COVID-19 has altered how the criminal justice system operates in jurisdictions across the United States. While some of these changes may be temporary, we expect that some innovative approaches that were initially advanced during the pandemic may endure. NIJ can play an important role in helping to assess and evaluate these practices to better understand their benefits and limitations.

How is NIJ-supported research helping to advance evidence-based policing? What is NIJ doing to make this research practical and usable to police departments and communities?

NIJ has developed a series of strategic research plans that reflect the existing scientific literature, community input, and the priorities of Congress and the administration. 

Our Policing Strategic Research Planopens in new window describes the current and projected efforts of NIJ to advance policing practices through research. The strategic goals outlined in the plan should be viewed as both interrelated and vital to better understanding and finding solutions to the challenges of policing. 

The research priorities and objectives included within this plan intentionally span many scientific disciplines. Given the magnitude of questions that need to be addressed within the criminal justice system, NIJ envisions that the research resulting from this agenda will require interdisciplinary collaboration. Furthermore, to ensure that the research resulting from this agenda is practicable and usable, NIJ encourages partnerships between traditional researchers and the practitioner community, including police agencies. 

This strategic research plan is principally implemented through open and competitive research solicitations that place a premium on research employing an experimental design, the most rigorous type of research. Police accountability and transparency and community engagement are among the research priorities called out in this plan. 

NIJ has also developed a strategic plan focused on advancing evidence-based policing—the Law Enforcement Advancing Data and Science (LEADS) Initiative Strategic Planopens in new window. This plan focuses on improving dissemination of research findings through, as one example, partnerships with law enforcement professional organizations. It also aims to enhance the capacity of law enforcement personnel and agencies to conduct their own research.

What are NIJ's current priorities in conducting firearms research, and in what directions is this work headed, especially given increased federal support for gun violence prevention research at other federal agencies?

NIJ’s mission is to conduct or authorize research and development concerning the criminal justice system to, among other objectives, provide more accurate information on the causes and correlates of crime, improve the functioning of the criminal justice system, and develop new methods for the prevention and reduction of crime. This mission informs NIJ’s research priorities concerning firearms. For example, NIJ is funding research into the impact of plea-bargaining firearm charges on firearm violence. NIJ has also supported recent projects that evaluated the effectiveness of gunshot detection technology, which is currently in use by police departments in most large U.S. cities. 

NIJ’s research efforts are also informed by the research funded by other agencies. NIJ invests in addressing research gaps. If another agency is funding research relevant to NIJ’s mission, NIJ will not duplicate that effort. NIJ shares information and coordinates with a range of federal partners. In the past year, NIJ has collaborated with the National Institutes of Health and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention to discuss priority research areas, share funding announcements, and ensure that funding decisions are not duplicative.

What are NIJ’s current priorities in conducting research related to those who encounter law enforcement and who have entered the criminal justice system? What research is being supported to better understand the role of racial and ethnic disparities?

NIJ has three main research areas of emphasis. First, NIJ is investigating ways to reduce use-of-force through improved decision-making and increased accountability. For example, NIJ has focused on the effects of body-worn cameras on the decision to use force. NIJ is also looking at ways to improve officer decision-making under stressful situations, including research on the effectiveness of virtual versus “hands-on” training for officers in use-of-force situations.

Second, NIJ is interested in research on improving law enforcement’s responses to individuals with mental illness. NIJ’s research includes an experimental evaluation of a collaborative police-mental health mobile crisis team developed to co-respond to mental health-related calls.

Lastly, NIJ is concerned with reducing recidivism. NIJ’s efforts have focused on development and rigorous evaluation (using experimental designs) of innovative strategies, such as the use of artificial intelligence technologies, to reduce offender recidivism.

Can you speak about the role artificial intelligence has played in NIJ-supported research and development? Where are the areas of opportunity for the application of AI technologies?

AI technologies have potential applicability across all of the criminal justice systems’ domains. Current NIJ-funded research applying AI technologies to address the challenges of crime and justice include: 

• better supervising offenders released into the community as well as improving those offender’s participation in programs to address their needs;
• interpreting DNA mixtures, thus addressing a central problem in the field of forensic DNA analysis, which is mixture deconvolution;
• predicting post-mortem intervals;
• forecasting crime, predicting risk of domestic violence victimization; and
• linking opioid traffickers on the dark web to the Internet to provide timely investigative leads to law enforcement.