Tuesday, June 8, 2010

Dr. Myrstol invited to BJS/NIJ expert topic meeting

Dr. Brad Myrstol, Justice faculty, was invited to attend an Expert Topic Meeting sponsored by the U.S. Department of Justice, Office of Justice Programs (OJP) on May 27, 2010 in Washington, D.C. Dr. Myrstol was one of nine panelists asked to discuss OJP’s Offender/Arrestee Drug Abuse Monitoring (ADAM) program before an audience of federal law enforcement and public policy officials, including the Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) and White House Office of National Drug Control Policy (ONDCP). Research scientists from the National Institute of Justice (NIJ), the Bureau of Justice Statistics (BJS), the U.S. Public Health Service (PHS), the National Institute on Drug Abuse (NIDA),and the Substance Abuse & Mental Health Services Administration (SAMHSA)were also in attendance.

Dr. Myrstol presented his paper, entitled “Demonstrating the Utility of ADAM’s Drug Use Calendar Data: A Group-based Trajectory Analysis of Crack Cocaine Use Among Adult Male Arrestees,” which focuses on the potential of the event history calendar methodology. Incorporating the event history calendar into the current ADAM program can provide unique and theoretically significant contributions to our present knowledge about the complex relationship between illicit drug use and criminal offending. He also made a PowerPoint presentation, "Arrestees' Drug Use Trajectories: Using the ADAM Drug Use Calendar to Model Patterns of Illicit Drug Use."

Other panel experts included representatives from the fields of social work, criminology, psychology, anthropology, statistics, law enforcement, and government and private research. The papers presented at the proceedings will be published by OJP.