help to create national centers of expertise in a 

 given program area. 



Four research agreements have been in opera- 

 tion since FY 1975. The Rand Corporation is study- 

 ing the characteristics of habitual criminal oflFend- 

 ers and the treatment they receive in the criminal 

 justice system. The Hoover Institution is applying 

 econometric techniques to crime and criminal jus- 

 tice analysis, initially in examining the deterrent 

 effect of punishment. Northwestern University is 

 researching how individuals and groups in different 

 urban locales perceive and respond to crime, and 

 how information about crime is communicated. 

 Yale University is concentrating on white collar 

 crime, including studies of certain aspects of scan- 

 dal and corruption and the regulation and control 

 of white collar crime at the Federal level. 



The habitual offender. The Rand research agree- 

 ment is attempting to answer the following ques- 

 tions: 



• How many habitual offenders are there? 



• How much crime do they account for? 



• Can they be identified? 



• How effective is the criminal justice system in 

 controlling the habitual offender? 



• How can it be made more effective in the fu- 

 ture? 



During the past two years. Rand has undertaken 

 seven separate studies to collect information. 

 Some concentrate on habitual offender characteris- 

 tics; others involve analysis of criminal justice sys- 

 tem treatment of such offenders. Examples of 

 some preliminary findings to date include: 



• New sentencing policies should deal with 

 those offenders who have been convicted at 

 least once of a serious offense, but never sent 

 to prison. This group accounts for a large 

 proportion of self-reported felonies and felo- 

 ny arrests. 



• Even those offenders who continue to be ar- 

 rested after their young adult years show a 

 decline jn the frequency of their criminal acts. 



• Within a group of offenders who can be char- 

 acterized as habitual and dangerous by their 

 prior conviction record, at least two different 

 patterns of behavior can be distinguished: 

 The intensive offenders, who are most dedicat- 

 ed to crime, commit more frequent offenses, 

 and are more likely to avoid arrest and con- 

 viction; and the intermittent offenders, who 

 commit crimes in a more sporadic and reck- 

 less fashion and are much more likely to be 

 arrested. 



• In California, the severity of the defendant's 

 prior record is consistently related to more 

 severe treatment by the system. 



• Interviews with offenders have not suggested 

 any means of intervening in the habitual of- 



144 JUSTICE 



fender's career short of incarceration. Most 

 offenders attributed their continuation in 

 crime to their own personal choice and not to 

 external factors. Nevertheless, many were 

 quite fatalistic about their possible return to 

 prison in the future. 

 During the next two years, the work completed 

 to date will be extended and refined to permit more 

 precise policy evaluation. The continuation effort 

 will involve: A study of approximately 3,000 of- 

 fenders and four different criminal behavior pat- 

 terns; a study of sentencing patterns in several 

 States as they relate to the most serious offenders; 

 and a study synthesizing current empirical data 

 and developing policy models useful in estimating 

 the impact of policy changes on crime, processing 

 of offenders, and criminal justice system work- 

 loads. 



Community reactions to crime. The Northwest- 

 ern research agreement focuses on urban crime 

 and the strategies developed by different neighbor- 

 hoods to cope with crime problems. Research 

 questions include: 



• What are the variations in the ways communi- 

 ties organize and implement strategies to fight 

 crime? 



• What are the causes and conditions that deter- 

 mine how a community organizes to imple- 

 ment anticrime strategies? 



• What is the impact on both the individual and 

 the community of the ways in which com- 

 munities organize to combat crime? 



• What are the variations in individual percep- 

 tions of crime? 



• What are the variations in the individual per- 

 ceptions of crime and individual patterns of 

 behavior? 



The first two years of the Northwestern program 

 have been spent conducting background work on 

 reactions to crime and field research studies in 12 

 neighborhoods in 3 cities — Chicago, Philadelphia, 

 and San Francisco. The Northwestern RAP also 

 completed an extensive literature search on reac- 

 tions to crime, including published and unpub- 

 lished work as well as research in progress. A bib- 

 liographic essay integrating work to date and an 

 annotated bibliography are now in preparation. 



To summarize the state-of-the-art in the area of 

 collective and individual responses to crime: This 

 is a new field where concepts are still being clari- 

 fied and measurement techniques refined. Much of 

 the available literature is inconclusive and consists 

 largely of sporadic, divergent research efforts. 



Northwestern's background work also included 

 secondary and comparative analyses of seven 

 criminal justice evaluation studies: (1) The Kansas 

 City preventive patrol experiment; (2) the 

 COMSEC team policing effort in Cincinnati, Ohio; 



