The crime-research budget of the U.S. Justice Department’s National Institute of Justice would rise to $70 million from $48 million under President Obama’s budget proposal for fiscal year 2011, notes the Consortium of Social Science Associations. The U.S. Bureau of Justice Statistics would get a $2.5 million raise to $62.5 million. In addition, the Office of Justice Programs, of which the two agencies are a part, is requesting a three percent set-aside of program funding for research and statistics, two percent more than approved by Congress in the FY 2010 budget.
The budget proposal includes $10 million to “reinvigorate NIJ’s social-science research mandate.” The request specifies block-by-block field experiments such as the Justice Department’s Project Safe Neighborhoods program, although it proposes to eliminate $15 million for prosecutions of local gun crimes under Project Safe Neighborhoods.