Office of Justice Programs Weekly News Brief

WASHINGTON, Sept. 16, 2011 /PRNewswire-USNewswire/ -- The following is being released today by The Office of Justice Programs:

AAG Robinson Receives Margaret Mead Award – OJP's Laurie Robinson, Assistant Attorney General, received the Margaret Mead Award, the highest honor the International Community Corrections Association (ICCA) bestows on an individual in recognition of leadership and innovation in advancing the goals of community-based correctional programming.  In her remarks when she received the award on Tuesday, September 13, AAG Robinson said, "Let me say at the outset how honored I am to be placed among the many distinguished past recipients of this award - and I'm humbled to have my name connected with the extraordinary woman in whose honor this award is given.   Margaret Mead made a lifetime of traveling to unvisited lands and recording her meticulous observations. But her goal wasn't simply to accumulate data. It was to make that information useful.  As she once told a colleague, 'I care about my work for what it may mean in the world.'" http://www.ojp.gov/newsroom/speeches/2011/11_0913lrobinson.htm

BJS Releases Criminal Victimization, 2010 Report – According to the Bureau of Justice Statistics, U.S. residents age 12 or older experienced a double-digit drop (down 13 percent) in the rate of violent victimization during 2010.  Violent crime includes rape or sexual assault, robbery, aggravated assault and simple assault. BJS's National Crime Victimization Survey (NCVS) collects self-reported information from victims on their experiences of criminal victimization.  The survey provides the largest data collection on criminal victimization independent of crimes documented by law enforcement. Estimates from the NCVS, which includes offenses both reported and not reported to police, complement those from the Federal Bureau of Investigation's (FBI) Uniform Crime Reporting Program (UCR), which measures crimes reported to law enforcement agencies across the nation. http://www.bjs.gov.

VP Biden Calls on Generation to Take Action, Stop Dating Violence  – In a video message tweeted by @VP on Tuesday, Vice President Joseph Biden called on high school and college students to share their ideas for how to prevent dating violence and sexual assault at their schools and on their college campuses.  During the next two weeks, young adults are invited to join this important conversation by submitting their ideas via the new whitehouse.gov/lis2many page or by using the hashtag #1is2many on Twitter.

NIJ's NamUs Program Awarded Service to America Medal – The National Institute of Justice's National Missing and Unidentified Persons System (NamUs) team was awarded the 2011 Samuel J. Heyman Service to America Medal (Justice and Law Enforcement category) Thursday, September 15, in Washington, D.C.  The system allows law enforcement, families, and others to share information and potentially solve cases nationwide.  Since its formal launch in 2009, NamUs.gov has helped resolve cases involving 61 unidentified persons and 113 missing persons. http://namus.gov/

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SOURCE The Office of Justice Programs