Micro-Grants?

Truly remarkable discussion going on at Technology Review about the possibility of setting up a website that would allow folks with small funds but interested in funding research into particular areas to pool resources, like micro-loans, to get needed research that hasn’t found favor among the priorities of the feds or foundations off the ground. The feds have funneled so much into terrorism research now that their traditional support for applied and theoretical crim just research has suffered majorly, and the few foundations interested in corrections sentencing have boards and priorities to maintain, especially with top-down, hard copy product orientations that don’t allow the bubbling of new and nontraditional platforms or ideas, like investigation of the possibilities of virtual life simulations of our crim theories or the development of agent-based modeling that we talk about here frequently. This proposal, if implemented, would promote both more opportunities for people who care about the messes we’re leaving about for future generations, in corr sent and lots of other places, but also for those researchers who don’t want to trim every good idea they have down into a suitable package for the little bit of funding that’s available. I’ll keep checking in to let you know if anything turns up, but, in the meantime, who’s stopping you from putting that site together? [While you’re at Technology Review, go to the front page and note the notice on the “Engineering the Brain” conference. Think big-time TECHNOCORRECTIONS isn’t right around the corner?]