See also:
Background Papers
Event Summaries

The University of Pennsylvania, through the Washington Office of the Jerry Lee Center of Criminology, has launched an ongoing public policy initiative - the Forum on Crime & Justice - to help promote better informed governmental decision-making in the area of crime.

The Forum's Executive Director is former Assistant Attorney General Laurie Robinson, now a Distinguished Senior Scholar with the two Penn Centers.

A broad, bipartisan Advisory Board - including former senior government officials, as well as representatives from law enforcement, prosecution, the judiciary, corrections, and Capitol Hill - provides counsel and guidance to the Forum's work.

The Forum is aimed at creating a nonpartisan setting for interaction and dialogue between government representatives, on the one hand, and criminal justice practitioners and researchers, on the other. The Forum sponsors regular educational sessions to showcase promising approaches being pioneered at the frontlines of state and local criminal justice around the country (initiatives in areas like law enforcement technology, offender reentry, and community-based crime control). For these sessions, the Forum produces brief background papers providing distilled information about the topic and about relevant evaluations and research. Invitees to these sessions include Capitol Hill and Executive Branch staff, as well as selected representatives from the practitioner and research communities and key interest group leadership.

Forum event summaries are produced following each event, describing presentations and interactive discussion.

The Forum's goal is to help better connect Washington policy discussions about crime with frontline criminal justice practice and with knowledge from research about "what works."

For additional information contact:

Forum on Crime & Justice
University of Pennsylvania
Jerry Lee Center of Criminology
720 - 7th St., NW - Third Floor
Washington, DC 20001
Tel: 202/448-1717
Fax: 202/628-0080
E-mail: cjforum@sas.upenn.edu

The Jerry Lee Center
of Criminology
483 McNeil Building
3718 Locust Walk
Philadelphia, PA 19104-6286

Phone:215-746-3537
Fax: 215-746-4239