Tactical Incident Team Advisory Network – TITAN
The Justice Academy is pleased to announce the creation of the Tactical Incident Team Advisory Network. The purpose of the program is to establish a real-time video network of experienced professionals who can serve to provide advice and support to departments and agencies that find themselves in unfamiliar tactical situations such as; hostage negotiations, barricaded suspect incidents, terrorist threat incidents, and other similar high risk scenarios. The program uses high speed tactical multipoint video conferencing to link any agency in the nation that is encountering such challenge with a team of highly experienced tactical officers, combat medicine experts, hostage negotiators, and command level personnel who can provide advice and guidance during such situations. The TITAN project will utilize ooVoo.com software, which affords every agency in the nation with a free high-speed multi-point video communications network capability that can be used on iPhones, Androids, iPads, or Mac and Windows based laptop computers to communicate instantly with multiple TITAN Team members. Departments interested is taking advantage of this opportunity should contact either Judge Hal Campbell, Ph.D. at [email protected] or Commander Sid Heal, LASD Special Enforcement Bureau (Retired) at [email protected]

eLearning Courseware Development Service
The Justice Academy is pleased to announce a new service program designed to support small and medium sized justice agencies with the development of high-end training classes, entitled the eLearning Courseware Development Service. The ECDS program assists police, prosecution, and judicial agencies with the development of eLearning courseware that is used for asynchronous training and is FREE to participating agencies. Under the terms of the program,,agencies that wish to use eLearning in support of training, but which do not have ready access to experts in this area, may request support from JusticeAcademy.org. Our staff will then coordinate with the agency’s designated departmental training representative to collect and assemble pertinent training materials for inclusion within the course and host the class at no cost. Using Moodle LMS, under Justice Academy.org’s eCampus server, the classes that are developed under this program can be delivered locally, regionally, and nationally, depending upon the department’s targeted audience. Both open and confidential training programs can be supported by this service. If you have an interest in finding out more about this program, please direct your inquiry to [email protected] Please include a brief descriptive narrative of your goals and objectives.

Law School Video Lecture Library Initiative
JusticeAcademy.org is pleased to announce the creation of a new national initiative designed to broaden access by the law and justice profession to training and educational assets prepared by various law schools located throughout the country. As part of the initiative, Justice Academy staff are currently coordinating with participating law school faculty and administrators who have expressed an interest in the project to record and post selected lectures dealing with criminal law, criminal procedure, evidence, civil litigation, trial advocacy, and other pertinent subjects for review by the national audience of law and criminal justice practitioners. The intent of the program is to provide a free source of quality lectures and information created by outstanding institutions that teach within these disciplines for use as remedial training, recurring training, and professional development by police sheriffs, prosecutors, public defenders, and judges. If you have an interest in participating in this exciting initiative, please contact me at [email protected] for more information.

Police Academy Video Lecture Library Initiative
The Justice Academy is pleased to announce our most recent national initiative and we are extending an invitation to every police chief, sheriff, and department executive in the nation to consider the merits of participation in this most relevant and impactful project. The Police Academy Video Lecture Library Initiative is designed specifically to support law enforcement agencies, throughout the nation, by encouraging police organizations that operate police academies to capture and record lectures presented by their faculty during the normal course of instruction, and then assembling these training assets within an aggregate repository that is made available to all departments throughout the nation, at no charge. Needless to say, there are innumerable benefits associated with this concept, and very few drawbacks. Several agencies have already expressed interest in participating and I would encourage each and every one of you who read this announcement to consider becoming involved, at some level, for the greater good of the profession. Imagine the impact it would have across the country if any officer, anywhere in the nation, could instantly access a lecture that they needed that helped them perform their job better, more effectively, and more professionally. If you have an interest in participating in this initiative, please contact me at [email protected]

National Institute for Law and Justice Education Project
The National Institute for Law and Justice Education project (nilj.org) sponsored by the Accrediting Commission for Law and Justice Education (aclje.org) and The Justice Academy has recently concluded a four year long examination of best and worst practices in these related academic disciplines, combined with an analysis of the ever changing needs of the profession. This endeavor involved a cross section of participants from throughout the professions, as well as representatives of the academic community, and has culminated in the creation of a model curriculum and pedagogical strategy for law and justice education, designed specifically to meet the existing and expressed future needs of the professions, as articulated. The Institute project not only addressed the importance of adaptive curricula that keeps pace with the ever changing demands of the profession and specialization requirements, but also focused on a review of the business strategies used by higher education including; cost-effectiveness and benefit, program pricing and fair market value of education, the adoption of public domain Learning Management System architecture to assure independence away from commercial providers and to lessen reliance and vulnerability to outside influences, admissions standards and testing requirements, hiring requirements for faculty, the autonomy and compensation standards for faculty who develop and deliver courses, and the use of client side system architecture as opposed to server-side architectures to improve system reliability. Additionally the project reviewed current practices and as a result of the findings, prescribed mandated requirements for each class within the curriculum to contain fully narrated lectures, the use of multi-point video conference meetings for each class throughout the term, the use of custom published text books to assure academic freedom and relevance of the topics being delivered, the requirement for aggregated term papers in all classes to improve student writing and research skills, critical thinking based unit assignments to foster enhanced student comprehension and improve decision making skills, and the elimination of blog based discussions as an instruction and performance mechanism. The National Institute for Law and Justice Education was envisaged and created by the Accrediting Commission in recognition of specific needs of the profession to have a formalized academy for the development of leaders who were selected and trained with this specific goal in mind. It was also formulated based on the recognition of some significant failures by the justice profession and the collegiate community, to adequately prepare people for positions of leadership. Our profession is, for the most part, closely predicated upon a military model of hierarchical organization and command and control. The major difference between the justice system and the military however, is that the military recognized early on that officers possess a different set of qualities than supervisors or managers. Some of these qualities are inherent, others cultivated through experience, and still others imparted through intense training and education. Conversely, the justice profession through its practices, has been forced to select future leaders from the pool of existing supervisors and managers within the ranks, and trust that additional training will be sufficient to help them evolve into a leader. As we all recognize, this approach does not always work out well. The next step in the Institute project will be to approach regionally accredited colleges and universities throughout the nation and exemplary justice agencies to explore the viability of a network affiliate program. This phase of the project is expected to take several years, culminating in each participating institution offering a portion of the overall curricula, in accordance with the standards defined and prescribed. Please visit www.nilj.org for further information about this project.

Mandatory Text Blocking APP For Drivers
Traffic collisions caused by texting result in nearly 1.6 million accidents every year and 500,000 preventable injuries and deaths. Since there are free APPS in existence that can block all texts on both Androids and iPhones, and which essentially disable this feature from everyone’s cell phone while driving, and since people seem either unable or unwilling to stop such foolish behavior, why is it that we as a profession have not yet taken positive action to influence new legislation and corporate action to make this feature mandatory in all states, for all drivers? The Justice Academy is sponsoring a new initiative designed specifically to raise awareness of this (resolvable) problem and to influence a national level debate concerning the merits of new legislation designed to make mandatory the use of blocking technology. All cell phone carriers have the ability to “push” software updates to every type of cell phone in use. Insurance companies can also provide assistance by requiring the adoption of such technologies, as a condition of policy issuance, which means with a simple new requirement adopted by every state legislature mandating the use of such blocking software, and a little cooperation from cell phone carriers and the insurance industry, the law and justice profession can (essentially) take positive action to eliminate half a million deaths and serious injuries every year that are caused by people texting while they are driving. Isn’t it time we stopped talking about this issue and actually did something to eliminate it. This is an easy problem to solve (technologically speaking) and yet we haven’t resolved it. We encourage your active involvement in this initiative and invite you to take action in your jurisdiction to raise awareness that leads to a solution. If you have an interest is becoming part of this initiative, please email the Executive Director at [email protected]

Last Chance Deferred Sentencing Program
The Last Chance Deferred Sentencing Program deals with a seldom invoked judicial option, which is specifically designed to enhance the prerogatives of the lower courts in extending their reach beyond the maximum allowable sentence under the law and to provide a mechanism whereby the court can impose stringent sentencing conditions that address the multivariate nature of an offender’s criminality. The philosophy behind the use of deferred imposition of sentence, along with a multivariate sentencing and release strategy seeks to force behavior modification and treatment as part of the sentencing conditions that are invoked by the court. Last Chance sends a clear message to a potentially salvageable offender and affords a reasoned program of addressing an offender’s behavior to eliminate certain factors that result in temptations and choices that have brought the accused to the attention of the justice system. This project holds tremendous nationwide potential as a community based sentencing alternative to demonstrate compassionate justice, but with teeth. The objective of the Last Chance program is to raise awareness of the potential of applying sentencing practices that incorporate a multivariate strategy that seeks to alter offender behavior by removing or reducing causal factors associated with past incidents of criminality and to create a systemic sentencing program that enlists the concurrence, support, and involvement of all facets of the justice system. Included below are a preliminary multivariate criminality array that identifies major, minor, and subtle level variables, along with a short lecture regarding the Last Chance program. If you have an interest in participating in this study and contributing your time and energy to endeavor, please contact Judge Hal Campbell, Ph.D. at [email protected]

School Violence Predictive Model
The Justice Academy (justiceacademy.org) is pleased to announce a new research endeavor designed to facilitate a national level inquiry into the contributive factors associated with school violence. The aim of the project is to produce a risk assessment tool that can serve as a screening mechanism that seeks to provide an empirically based predictive risk assessment equation in order to anticipate the propensity of violence posed by individuals. The School Violence Predictive Model project will endeavor to isolate, quantify, and prioritize discriminant variables that perpetuate such situations and then assemble the contributive factors into primary, secondary, and tertiary levels of influence in order to create a predictive equation that can be used to determine the likelihood of individual risk to the campus community. Predicated on the findings of the national study of past cases that have occurred, it is the goal of the research team to use the collected information to create a predictive algorithm that can be employed by campus administrators in order to assess the risk of violence that each student presents campus community as well as providing a means of isolating controllable variables that minimize the risk factors associated with events proactively, based on historical analysis. As the study progresses the research team will be issuing updates and information that will allow agencies to participate in the data collection phase of the project and upon completion of the research project a final report will be issued to every agency in the country, along with instructions regarding how to access the School Violence Predictive Model. Please contact Dr. Rick Walker, Project Director at [email protected] if you have an interest in finding out more about this research project.