Article archive / March 1, 2013
Originally published: . Volume 4, No. 7. Source pages: 12.
The LSU School of Social Work professors Dr. Cecile Guin and Juan Barthelemy have linked up with the East Baton Rouge Parish law enforcement project, called BRAVE, along with organizational psychologist Dr. Tracey Rizutto from the School of Human Resource Education and Workforce Development, and Dr. Edward Shihadeh of the Department of Sociology, to help the Baton Rouge Police in dealing with violence and crime.
BRAVE stands for Baton Rouge Area Violence Elimination and is a law enforcement-based effort that began in 2011 to address problems with gun violence, homicide, and drug deals, noted LSU news reporter Billy Gomila recently.
According to the report, the LSU research team will help use geographic and social network information to map the actions of offenders and help predict their movements in the community.
The model is based on the work of criminologist David Kennedy of the John Jay School of Criminology, noted the report.
Dr. Tracey Rizutto, an organizational psychologist previously in the Psychology Department and who is now located in the School of Human Resource Education and Workforce Development, will help with the analysis. She will be developing diagrams that show the activity and movements of the groups, and how they are connected to others, said the report. This will help police understand where to concentrate their efforts, said the report.
The information will be automated to help the police officers see who is committing crimes and even why people are prone to the crimes they commit. The combined work between the social scientists and police will bring together theory, methods, and statistical tools to understand the criminal patterns in the community.
The new LSU College of Human Sciences & Education combines the School of Education, School of Human Resource Education and Workforce Development, School of Kinesiology, School of Library and Information Science and the University Lab School.
This article is part of a historical newspaper archive. Read the original issue for its original layout, photographs and graphics.