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The Presley Center is a unique unit in the University of California system.
It's the only
research center funded directly by the legislature. It's been a very
exciting opportunity to have the resources that the center has
and to be able to use them to work with law enforcement to work with
state agencies and community organizations and city governments
in the region and also throughout the state to try to
fulfill the mission of
understanding crime and violence, where it comes from, and how we can prevent it.
I was approached
several years ago by
the group in San Bernardino called the Institute for Public Strategies. They
approached me to see if there was some
way that I could help them
come up with research that would look at the relationship between liquor stores
and their locations and their density and so on
and, you know, the outcomes of crime and violence. We found
two things. One, that the density of alcohol outlets period just by itself
was significantly positively related to the rate of violence,
but second, independent of the density of stores themselves,
stores with higher
percentages of
single serve containers on their shelves
had an independent positive effect on violence. So when we got done with the study we went
before the city council to present the results to the city council. They decided to
construct an ordinance, a new law,
which would
prohibit
new stores being opened from now on in San Bernardino
from selling single serve containers period.
One of the things that's unique about UCR that really contributes to my
success
is the diversity of the students we have at UCR. What that
diversity does, among other things, is it
gives me access to folks who have a wide range of experience
and a wide range of personal histories
coming from different kinds of communities, many of these
communities are affected by crime and violence. I really am motivated in part
by just a desire to understand why violence happens. Where does it come from?
What are its origins? What are the factors that make it more likely? What are
the factors that make it less likely?
Just from a pure knowledge sake I'm interested in solving that puzzle.
Second though, I'm very much interested and motivated by the idea
that once we have some new knowledge about why crime occurs,
how can we use that knowledge to help the communities
reduce crime?