The California State Library's California Research Bureau, or CRB Nexus, is a community of Golden State researchers, practitioners, policymakers and organizations committed to public policy solutions informed by data-driven research. They come together to connect, build professional relationships and share information. Together, they translate evidence into action and foster the next generation of public scholarship aimed at identifying and solving policy issues.
Panelists and special guests for this public safety presentation are:
Dr. Cid Martnez of University of San Diego's Department of Sociology. Dr. Martinez has evaluated community policing programs, in Northern California and Southern California, with a focus on gang intervention, violence reduction and trust building. His current research is an ethnographic study that examines the relationship between urban poverty, policing and gun violence in California. His book 'The Neighborhood Has Its Own Rules: Latinos and African Americans in South Los Angeles,' moves beyond traditional black and white paradigms of urban poverty and violence and introduces a new conceptual framework for understanding how Latinos have transformed the black ghetto. The book illustrates how interracial relations between Latinos and blacks, policing, religion, gangs and local municipal government shape the way violence is managed. His newest book manuscript, tentatively entitled 'Cops and Clergy: Legitimacy, Trust and Violence Reduction,' builds on previous research by exploring how perceived legitimacy of local clergy can be leveraged by law enforcement to reduce violence. It draws on more than two years of ethnographic field data with a Northern California community policing program, which operates as a partnership between members of the police department’s gang unit and local clergy. The program is designed to increase trust between police and residents in mostly poor black and Latino neighborhoods.
Dr. Ojmarrh "OJ" Mitchell of UC Irvine's Department of Criminology Law and Society earned his Ph.D. in Criminology and Criminal Justice from the University of Maryland with a doctoral minor in Measurement, Statistics, and Evaluation. His research interests center on criminal justice policy, particularly in the areas of drug control, sentencing and corrections, and racial/ethnic fairness in the criminal justice system. Most recently, Professor Mitchell has been investigating prosecutorial discretion and its influence on case processing, case outcomes, and racial disparities in Florida’s courts. For his research on racial and ethnic issues in the criminal justice system, he received the Western Society of Criminology’s W.E.B. Du Bois award. Dr. Mitchell has served in numerous advisory roles, including the U.S. Department of Justice’s Science Advisory Board, New York City’s Pretrial Research Advisory Council, Philadelphia’s Pretrial Reform Advisory Council, and the American Society of Criminology’s Executive Board. Professor Mitchell is also Vice President-elect of the American Society of Criminology and the incoming editor-in-chief for Criminology & Public Policy.
Dr. George Tita of UC Irvine's Criminology, Law and Society and Urban Planning and Public Policy departments is the director of the Livable Cities Lab. His interests include the study of inter-personal violence with a focus of homicide, urban street gangs, and the community context of crime. Professor Tita is involved with an interdisciplinary group of scholars working to promote the use of spatial statistics and analysis throughout the social sciences. Prior to joining UCI, Dr. Tita spent two years at the RAND Corporation as a policy analyst. There he directed an NIJ funded gun-violence reduction program in the Boyle Heights neighborhood of Los Angeles. The goal of this project is to work with all invested stakeholders to devise and test strategies for reducing gun violence. Partners in this effort include representatives from the criminal justice agencies (LAPD, City Attorney, District Attorney, U.S. Attorney and Los Angeles County Probation Department) as well as the community at large (Homeboy Industries/Jobs For a Future, the local Catholic Dioceses, White Memorial Hospital, and the Association of Street Gang Workers). Dr. Tita is continuing his work on modeling the epidemics/spatial diffusion of violence over space and time and is examining the causal relationship between homicide and the economic decisions made by firms, such as firm births and deaths and employment decisions.
Special policy guest Thomas Nosewicz is the legal director of CA Commitee on Revision of the Penal Code.
