20 July 2011

The Crime and Justice Research Centre (CJRC) is unique in being the only applied research centre in New Zealand dedicated to researching crime and social responses to crime. It was established in 2002, having grown out of a contract research group within theInstituteofCriminology, to which it remains closely aligned.

Over the last decade, CJRC has produced over 100 research reports, articles, books and presentations on a range of criminal justice issues of critical importance toNew Zealandsociety. The Centre has produced three national counts of crime victimisation which form the basis of crime prevention policy inNew Zealand. It has led international debates through its seminal research on Restorative Justice, Family Group Conferences and the decriminalisation of prostitution, and is recognised as a leader in research on youth justice. The Centre has researched the needs of some of society’s most severely victimised groups including the families of victims of homicide and those harmed by sexual violence. More recently it has carried out research that is contributing to the fight against family violence inNew Zealandand the Pacific.

CJRC is a business unit that is 100 percent funded through external research revenue. The Centre’s costs are covered each year through external research income; these valuable research outputs are produced at no cost to the university. In fact CJRC’s research generates funds for the university. The university receives 55 percent of overheads and the collection of the Centre’s end of year surpluses.

Change proposal

Victoria University proposes to disestablish CJRC on the basis that the Centre has shown a downward trend in external revenue, and on a prediction that a substantial increase in contracts from the public sector is unlikely.

Staff at CJRC oppose this change. The figures presented to justify the proposed disestablishment are misleading and erroneous. A more accurate picture is as follows:

• CJRCs total income per staff member has been increasing over the last five years from $52k per staff member in 2005 up to $172,000 in 2008 and remaining high in 2010 at $142,000
• Total income has exceeded total costs in the last four years with the Centre consistently producing surpluses averaging $56,000 per annum
• The university’s main argument for disestablishing CJRC is that total external revenue[1] from contracts has decreased since 2006. However, there is no recognition that the number of staff working in the Centre has also decreased, along with the reduced availability of Government and other external funding. In fact surpluses have tended to increase as total external revenue has decreased
• The Change Proposal presents poorly calculated forecasts which suggest that CJRC will have a significant deficit in 2011. The university’s forecasted figure for ‘total income’ in 2011 for CJRC is just $190,000. However, this only accounts for contracts or income already loaded in the financial accounting system and assumes CJRC would not generate any additional work in the last six months of 2011. In fact, since these figures were calculated, CJRC has already secured or had a verbal promise of a further $184,000 in additional total income. These figures project the Centre to be in surplus, even in the unlikely case that no other income was secured in the remainder of the year.
• The university has actively prevented the Centre from being financially viable. The Research Trust currently has $117,000 of CJRC funds that have been accumulated as the result of surpluses from completed contracts. In every year to date, CJRC has had access to these funds, using them to offset unfunded activities such as tendering for external research and to cover salaries over quieter periods. In May 2011 the Research Trust denied the Centre access to $70,000 of these funds that were due to expire. This change in policy was implemented without consultation and contrary to any normal business model which allows a business to have access to surpluses to offset future deficits. This action has placed CJRC in an apparently untenable financial position.

The criminological and social significance of the research carried out by the Centre has been widely recognised by academics, government agencies and NGOs alike (please see examples in the box below) Only management at Victoria University appear to have no understanding of the value and importance of its work.

What you can do:

• Please take a moment to make a statement to the decision panel, however brief, opposing the disestablishment of CJRC (email lillian.loftus@vuw.ac.nz, with a cc to michael.roguski@vuw.ac.nz, by midday on 3^rd August 2011).