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John Jay College President Jeremy Travis Testifies Before Senate Judiciary Committee On Strategies to Reduce Violent Crime In America

New York, NY, September 10, 2008 – President Jeremy Travis today testified before the United States Senate Judiciary Committee at a hearing on “New Strategies for Combating Violent Crime: Drawing Lessons from Recent Experience”.

“In my view, we should not be complacent, for one minute, about the current rate of violence,” said President Travis as he outlined a federal strategy for promoting public safety in communities plagued by high levels of violent crimes.

President Travis called for federal leadership in helping to lower current rates of violence in cities and neighborhoods across the country. His recommendations included:

• The creation of a robust and timely national crime data system that would allow police executives, policy makers, elected officials, academics and community groups to have a data informed policy discussion about crime trends and effective responses.

• Support for the implementation of proven crime reduction strategies on a national scale. Currently, demands for successful approaches such as Operation Ceasefire, the Cincinnati Initiative to Reduce Violence and the High Point, NC Strategy outstrip local capacity to assist communities with high rates of violence.

• Proposal for a “The National Safety Network”, an initiative to simultaneously reduce crime, abate drug markets, reduce reliance on incarceration, and promote better relationships between the police and minority communities.

• Federal leadership in testing new ideas and responses to problems facing the criminal justice system and the dissemination of successful models for use by state and local agencies.

For full text of President Travis’ testimony, click here.

 

About John Jay College of Criminal Justice: An international leader in educating for justice, John Jay College of Criminal Justice of The City University of New York offers a rich liberal arts and professional studies curriculum to upwards of 14,000 undergraduate and graduate students from more than 135 nations.  In teaching, scholarship and research, the College approaches justice as an applied art and science in service to society and as an ongoing conversation about fundamental human desires for fairness, equality and the rule of law.  For more information, visit http://www.jjay.cuny.edu/.