@John Jay News and Events of Interest

to the College Community

December 10, 2008

Worth Noting John Jay “Elves” Continue Tradition

December 18 3:30 PM
28th Annual Jack Brennan
of Holiday Cheer for Families in Need
It’s December, and the calendar is down to a
Children’s Holiday Party
single page. That means the John Jay community
Volunteers and sponsors needed
is abuzz with preparations for the Children’s
(see article at right)
Holiday Party.
Gymnasium This annual affair, which brings Christmas to
hundreds of less fortunate children and their
families, was created by friends and colleagues
January 16 8:30 AM
of the late Jack Brennan, the beloved former
Prisoner Reentry Institute John Jay security director. Brennan was a devoted
Occasional Series on family man with a soft spot for children, and the
holiday party seemed a fitting way to remember
Reentry Research him.
The Impact of Reentry Services on
On the afternoon of December 18, the John
Juvenile Offenders’ Recidivism
Jay gymnasium will be transformed into a giant
Jeffrey Bouffard
party space, as a host of faculty, staff and student
Washington State University
volunteers swing into action to serve as guides
Room 630 Haaren Hall for wide-eyed youngsters, provide face painting,
snacks and beverages, and act as Santa’s helpers
when the big moment arrives at party’s end.
January 22 10:30 AM & 3:30 PM
The 27th annual holiday party will also include
Freshman & Transfer a magic act and “live” cartoon characters, along
Student Orientation with DJ services donated by George Marchelos of
Fine Time Entertainment.
Locations vary, Haaren Hall Santa Claus, joined by several helpers and a happy party guest, waves goodbye at the close of the 2007 children’s party.
Overseeing the well-organized frenzy are
Johnny Taveras and Rosalie Macaluso of the There are guest lists to formulate, contributions addition, party organizers have to arrange for a
February 2-3 8:30 AM Department of Institutional Advancement. of funds and goods to be obtained, security special pre-Christmas visit to John Jay by Santa
“I couldn’t do it without Rosalie’s help, and
4th Annual needs to be covered, transportation to be Claus himself, who usually brings a retinue that
the help of all our volunteers, including the provided and entertainment to be hired. In includes Mrs. Claus, elves and other helpers.
Guggenheim Conference baseball team,” said Taveras, the College’s soft-
on Crime in America spoken web manager. “Yet all the effort — and it
Please Join Us in Helping Make This Year’s Party The Best YET!!!
A New Beginning: Exploring the Criminal takes plenty — is so well worth it when you think
Justice Challenges for the Next Four Years of the thousands of kids we’ve helped bring
Presented by the Center on some cheer to over the years.” Give Generously and Volunteer!
Media, Crime and Justice. Includes This year, Taveras said, the College will host an
presentation of the annual John Jay estimated 600 children at the holiday party, many Please make checks payable to the John Jay College Foundation,
Excellence in Journalism Awards. of them from shelters run by the New York City c/o Children’s Holiday Party, and send to Johnny Taveras,
Department of Homeless Services. Department of Institutional Advancement, Room 532T.
Room 630 Haaren Hall
Organizing the children’s party is a months- (To volunteer, e-mail jtaveras@jjay.cuny.edu.)
long labor of love for Taveras and Macaluso.

ASC Asked to Back Justice Department Research Upgrade

A delegation of some 90 John Jay faculty
members, graduate students and doctoral
candidates made their presence felt at the recent
annual meeting of the American Society of
Criminology (ASC) in St. Louis, MO.
The John Jay contingent was led by President
Jeremy Travis, who called on the ASC to
support his proposal for the creation of a
new Office of Justice Research within the U.S.
Department of Justice. Travis, who served as
Director of the National Institute of Justice
from 1994-2000, said in an open letter to
the ASC, “The nation urgently needs a top-
notch research and development program to
improve our understanding of, and responses
to, the challenges of violent crime and the
administration of justice.”
The existing structure of the Department
of Justice, Travis pointed out, places the
responsibility for criminal justice research and
statistics within the Office of Justice Programs,
an entity that is primarily responsible for the
administration of federal assistance programs.
That organizational reality, he said, leaves the
research function at the Justice Department
vulnerable to compromise and deprives justice
research of the priority treatment it deserves.
“The current systems in place to support
research, statistics and technology are outmoded,
under-resourced and insufficiently responsive to
the needs of practitioners and policy-makers,”
Travis wrote.
Travis said the election of a new President
and the advent of the 111th Congress presents
“an unprecedented opportunity for the nation
to rethink the federal role in promoting research
on crime, society’s responses to crime, and the
administration of justice.”
The proposed Office of Justice Research
would be headed by an Assistant Attorney
General for Justice Research, nominated by the
President and confirmed by the Senate. The
person holding that office should be a scientist of
national reputation, with significant experience
conducting and overseeing research in this field.

Truth, Honor and Murder Take the Stage
Long before Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, became
synonymous with the internment of suspected
terrorists, it was best known as an outpost in the
Cold War, where a detachment of U.S. Marines
kept a wary eye on Communist Cuba on the
other side of a security fence.
Guantanamo in the mid-1980s is the setting
for the play A Few Good Men, a court-martial
thriller by Aaron Sorkin that — retitled A Few
Good woMen — recently concluded an eight-
performance run at the Gerald W. Lynch Theater.
Directed by Professor Lorraine Moller of the
Department of Communication and Theatre Arts,
A Few Good woMen featured an ensemble of
students, faculty and alumni in a production that
successfully took a few creative liberties with the
casting.
“Most of the roles in this play were written
for men,” Moller pointed out in a production
note. “However, when auditions took place,
several of the strongest actors were women,
two of whom were currently in either the armed
forces or the ROTC. These women were the most
suitable actors for the roles in the play, resulting
in gender-blind casting. As the rehearsals
In a scene from A Few Good woMen, the snarling, no-non-
sense Marine commander Col. Nathan Jessup (right), played
by Professor Greg Donaldson, confronts Lt. Cmdr. Joanne
Galloway of the Naval Investigative Service (played by
Brittney Chavez), as his aide, Lt. Jonathan Kendrick (played
by Army veteran Timothy Skeen), stands by.
progressed, the dynamics between characters
changed, creating love triangles and female
characters who were as driven and honor-bound
as any male, resulting in a gripping depiction of
women in the military.”
One of those gender-blind roles was that of
Lance Corporal Dawson, one of two defendants
charged with the murder of a fellow Marine. The
role, originally written for a man, was shared by
alumna and John Jay theater veteran Amarylis
Rivera and sophomore forensic psychology major
Bianca Morisset.
As part of their preparation for the show, cast
members endured rounds of basic training, rifle-
team exercises and drill sessions led by actual
U.S. Marines and David Ruth, assistant coach of
the John Jay Rifle Team.
Moller’s other directing credits for the John
Jay stage include Dracula, The Crucible and
Metamorphoses. She is also the Program Director
for Theater Arts Connection at the Bayview
Correctional Facility in Manhattan, where she
recently directed a production of For Colored
Girls Who Have Considered Suicide When the
Rainbow Is Enuf.
The Office of Justice Research would comprise
the existing Bureau of Justice Statistics and
National Institute of Justice, along with a new
National Institute of Justice Technology.
Through the open letter to the ASC and
similar letters that were sent to members of other
associations of criminal justice professionals,
Travis said he hoped to generate a “a lively
debate” within the justice policy and the
academic communities. “We need to move
beyond the status quo,” he concluded.
The John Jay delegation at the ASC meeting
included faculty from the following departments:
Sociology, Psychology, Anthropology, Public
Management, Government, Mathematics and
Computer Science, SEEK, and Law, Police Science
and Criminal Justice Administration. In addition,
representatives from the Library, the Prisoner
Reentry Institute, the Catholic Bishops’ Study,
Freshman Services and the journal Criminal
Justice Ethics were on hand as panel presenters
and discussants.
[For the complete text of President Travis’s
open letter to the ASC, as well as a list of
members of the John Jay community at the ASC
meeting, visit the College’s Web site at www.jjay.
cuny.edu.]
 Forever Hold Your Banners High!
Crisp new championship banners hang from the rafters of The Doghouse, John Jay’s main gymnasium, bearing witness to the fact that John Jay is the home of winners. Still draped in black is the 2008 championship banner for the men’s basketball team,
which was to be formally unveiled at the homecoming game on December 2. (Photographs of the event were not available at press time.) To see the new banners, visit The Doghouse for one of this season’s home basketball games. The full schedule for
men’s and women’s basketball is available online at www.johnjayathletics.com.
When Domestic Violence Turns Lethal
With disturbing frequency, the news media are
awash in stories of women killed by their spouses
or partners. On November 7, hot on the heels
of yet another such incident, John Jay College,
in concert with the Urban Resource Institute,
explored this subject in an all-day conference,
“Femicide: Understanding and Preventing the
Murder of Women in Intimate Relationships.”
The Femicide Conference brought together
faculty members from the psychology and sociol-
ogy departments, the Center on
Media, Crime and Justice, and the
John Jay Women’s Center, along
with outside experts from such
fields as medicine, victim advoca-
cy, law enforcement, prosecution
and legal services.
“I know people think that
homicide cannot be prevented,
but I believe that through
research it can be,” said the
conference’s keynote speaker,
Rebecca Block, a senior research
analyst with the Illinois Criminal
Justice Information Authority.
“In order to prevent femicide,”
Block said, “it helps to examine
the causes.” Among female vic-
tims ages 10-14, 21 percent of
the homicides involved a rape or
attempted rape. Among 15- to Keynote speaker Rebecca Block of the Illinois Criminal Justice Information Authority gets animated as violence against women, and
19-year-old girls, 20 percent of she drives home a point about the causes and prevention of domestic violence homicides.
FACULTY / STAFF NOTES
ON BOARD
MICHELLE RAHMEH (Physical Education and
Athletics) was named as the College’s new head
athletic trainer. Rahmeh, a New Jersey native
who holds a bachelor’s and master’s degrees
from the University of Akron, brings to the
position a diverse résumé in the fields of health,
health education and physical therapy.
PRESENTING…
ELIZABETH HEGEMAN (Anthropology) spoke
at the American Red Cross on November 13
on “Post-Traumatic Growth: Organizational
and Individual Perspectives.” She addressed the
issues of compassion fatigue and compassion
satisfaction for mental health workers facing
disaster.
SIMON BAATZ (History) gave the annual
Lawrence J. Gutter Literary Lecture at North
Shore Congregation Israel in Glencoe, IL, in
November.
ANISSA HÉLIE (History) was recently invited
@ John Jay is published by the
Department of Institutional Advancement
John Jay College of Criminal Justice
899 Tenth Avenue,
New York, NY 10019
www.jjay.cuny.edu
Editor Peter Dodenhoff
Submissions should be faxed or e-mailed to:
Office of Communications
fax: (212) 237-8642
e-mail: pdodenhoff@jjay.cuny.edu
the victims were killed by an intimate partner,
and another 15 percent died in gang-related
violence. Among elderly women, home invasion
was a common underlying cause.
Risk factors for fatal domestic violence against
women include the partner’s use of drugs and
any propensity to violence outside the home.
During a panel discussion on “Threats to Life,”
Wanda Lucibello, head of the Special Victims Di-
vision for the Brooklyn District Attorney’s Office,
by the University of the Philippines, in Manila,
to lecture on issues of religious fundamentalism
and present research undertaken by the group
Women Living Under Muslim Laws. The lecture,
“The Great Ancestors: Women Asserting Rights
in Muslim Contexts,” highlighted the lives and
deeds of women throughout history who have
promoted gender equality in diverse Muslim
countries and communities, including the
Arabian Peninsula, Egypt, Muslim Spain, India,
Pakistan, Algeria, Iran, Turkey, Central Asia,
Nigeria and Indonesia.
STEPHEN HANDELMAN (Center on Media,
Crime and Justice) appeared on the CUNY TV
“Independent Sources” program on December
3, where he discussed the New York City Police
Department’s press accreditation policies. In
October, Handelman delivered a talk on U.S.
media and criminal justice issues to a group
of more than 100 army, police and security
officials from Latin America and the Caribbean
— this year’s class of the Inter-American Defense
College — at the Americas Society/Council of the
Americas in New York.
BETWEEN THE COVERS
KIMORA (Law, Police Science and Criminal
Justice Administration) authored an article titled
“The Bard Prison Initiative: Excellent Example of
Empowering Education behind the Walls that
Needs to Be Replicated,” which will appear in
the January/February 2009 issue of Offender
Programs Report, a publication from the Civic
Research Institute. Kimora’s book Prison: Getting
pointed out that her jurisdiction has the highest
number of domestic violence cases in New York
City, with some 8,000 prosecutions annually.
Although there is a mandatory arrest statute in
New York City for domestic violence cases, pros-
ecutors do not have to prosecute.
Domestic violence cases are sharply different
from other crimes, Lucibello observed. They are
slow and resource-intensive, with “two parallel
tracks in motion,” namely the work of victim’s
advocates and that of the prosecu-
tor’s office.
Professor Chitra Raghavan of
the psychology department noted
that 30 percent of victims were
not abused prior to the lethal act.
Signs that may point to a fatal do-
mestic assault include coercive or
fear-inducing control on the part
of the spouse or partner, the avail-
ability of weapons, and rape or
previous threats to a woman’s life.
“When women say they are
in danger, they are in danger,”
Raghavan said.
The conference also featured
discussions on race, class and
gender; domestic violence in
immigrant communities; manda-
tory arrest; how the press covers
women who kill their abusers.
Out by Going In (Instructor’s Manual) will be
published in December 2008. She wrote the
book to provide a teaching tool for correctional
educators who work with offenders at the
Century Detention Center in Lynwood, CA.
MONICA VARSANYI (Government) published a
paper in the December 2008 issue of the Annals
of the Association of American Geographers,
the flagship journal in the academic field
of geography. Her paper, “Rescaling the
‘Alien,’ Rescaling Personhood: Neoliberalism,
Immigration and the State,” was the lead article
in the journal’s human geography subsection.
EUGENE O’DONNELL (Law, Police Science
and Criminal Justice Administration) published a
commentary, “Shot in the Dark: Why Was Crime
Overlooked in This Campaign,” in the November
3 issue of Newsweek magazine. The article,
which appear just before the recent presidential
election, said “it would be a crime” for the next
President not to make criminal justice matters a
priority.
PEER REVIEW
ISABELLE CURRO (Security) was named winner
of the 2009 Commitment to Justice Award for
Outstanding Solo Practitioner by inMotion, an
organization that provides low-income women
with free legal services in matrimonial, family and
immigration law. Curro, an attorney, was cited
for her “commitment to pro bono legal services.”
The award will be formally presented at a gala in
early February.
Student
Ambassador Sings
the Praises of
Federal Service
Forensic science major Nadia Bruce recently
was named Federal Student Ambassador for
the 2008-2009 academic year. Annually, only
15 students nationwide are selected for this
prestigious program.
The student ambassador program was created
to promote interest in federal service on college
campuses through a corps of student advocates
who will actively promote public service. It has
been estimated that over the next five years,
nearly one-third of the federal workforce will
reach retirement age. In the next two years
alone, according to projections, the federal
government will need to hire more than 173,000
people in critical areas.
Bruce grew up in Trinidad and came back
to New York when she was 16. Her interest in
forensic toxicology prompted her to enroll at
John Jay. “I came here on a hope and a dream,”
she said. “John Jay was my No. 1 choice.”
She applied for the student ambassador
program while she was in Washington, DC,
completing a toxicology internship with the
Food and Drug Administration’s Office of Food
Additive Safety. “It was wonderful,” said Bruce.
“I had such a good experience with the FDA that
I felt I could easily talk to other students about
federal service.”
Bruce has her sights set on a career with
the FDA’s Office of Regulatory Affairs after she
graduates from John Jay in May 2009.
On campus, Bruce has recruited other students
to advocate for careers in public service, recently
addressing more than 175 students at an
Internship Day program. She has also created a
Facebook group to communicate with interested
fellow students.
“The area of federal public service is so
personally rewarding, so varied, so flexible, with
so much opportunity and mobility, that students
should certainly consider the federal government
for jobs when they graduate,” she said.
President Jeremy Travis, himself a former
high-ranking official with the Department of
Justice, said of Bruce’s selection: “This is a real
coup for our College and a tribute to the energy
and dedication of Nadia Bruce. We will find
many ways to celebrate this honor and to let our
students know more about the value of federal
service.”
Psyched Up
Jared Kean McIntyre, a doctoral student in
the John Jay/CUNY Graduate Center program
in clinical forensic psychology, was honored at
the 7th annual Latino Trendsetter Awards and
Scholarship Gala, held in November at the United
Nations.
McIntyre was presented with a Recognition of
Scholarship Award, which was accompanied by
a check for $3,000. He currently works at Bronx
TASC (Treatment Alternatives to Street Crime),
performing evaluations for the Alternatives to
Incarceration program. His research interest
focuses on understanding the developmental
pathways to criminal behavior.