International Center

With continuous changes in technology—from the growth of air travel to the rapid advancement in electronic communications—crime has its future in an international foray. Criminal enterprises and activities have extended their reach beyond national borders, presenting new challenges for criminal justice systems around the world.

To respond to the changing nature of crime, the National Institute of Justice International Center provides communities and jurisdictions in the United States and overseas with a powerful resource to help practitioners, researchers and policymakers meet these new challenges.

It is the vision of the International Center to add value to federal, state and local criminal justice-related knowledge by incorporating the international perspective into NIJ programs.

The International Center has a fourfold mission: to stimulate, facilitate, support and disseminate national and international criminal justice research and information.

Stimulate. To advance the knowledge of criminal justice practitioners worldwide, the International Center strives to stimulate interest in and awareness of transnational crime and its effects on local communities.

Facilitate. To facilitate easy accessibility to information, research and technology, the International Center connects researchers and practitioners from around the world and helps create global research partnerships for conducting joint studies on all aspects of crime.

Support. To support NIJ research programs, the International Center works to ensure every grant has an appropriate international perspective. With support from NIJ research divisions, researchers can conduct studies, evaluate the effects of transnational crime, and compare crime prevention and control within and across countries.

Disseminate. To disseminate information, the International Center collects research information on local, national and transnational crime, and on best practices for crime control. By building information technology infrastructure, the International Center makes criminal justice information easily available to researchers, practitioners and policy makers.

The International Center is headed by Dr. Cindy J. Smith. The staff includes federal employees, an international networking liaison from the National Criminal Justice Reference Service, international visiting fellows and graduate student interns.