Social and Behavioral Sciences Commons^™

Edward A. Ross: Social Development And Social Control, Ernest M. Oleksy

The Downtown Review

With a foundation in philosophy and history, core concepts of sociology and criminology that were initially posited over a century ago are still useful in understanding the workings of today's society. The contributions of Edward A. Ross have helped latter day researchers centralize their studies of polycentric topics by using social control as an omnipresent social fact. By comparing Ross's descriptions of 19th century society and the researcher's descriptions of 21^st century society, a continuous understanding of a heavily pluralistic discipline comes to life.

Roadblocks To The Implementation Of Problem-Oriented Policing In Montevideo, Federico Del Castillo

Student Theses

In the broad context of Uruguay’s police reform, the Ministry of Interior is implementing a pilot Problem-Oriented Policing (POP) program in Montevideo since late 2012. This research examined the obstacles confronted by the program throughout its implementation. Using a grounded theory approach, qualitative data was collected through 20 semi-structured interviews with members of the Uruguay National Police (UNP) of different ranks. Findings were analyzed based on the following categories: a) contextual factors; b) theoretical and practical inaccuracies; c) characteristics, skills and actions of project managers; d) resistance and motivational issues; e) resources; f) external support and cooperation. Consistent with research …

Predicting Law Enforcement Officer Turnover And Use Of Force From Variables Measured By The 2013 Law Enforcement Management And Administrative Statistics (Lemas) Survey, Ryan Lee Radmall

Electronic Theses, Projects, and Dissertations

Law enforcement requires comprehensive hiring and training practices in order to curb misconduct and turnover. Some of the available data suggests a shift in the dynamics of law enforcement toward a more objective approach that favors education, cognitive ability testing, a community policing orientation, and technological advances, such as body cameras, that hold enforcers of the law and the American public, accountable for misconduct and violations of the law. The utilization of various technological advances requires assessment and dynamic, comprehensive analysis. The present study examined the influence of education and the professionalization of policing hiring requirements, cognitive ability tests and …

Police Research, Officer Surveys, And Response Rates, Justin Nix, Justin T. Pickett, Hyunin Baek, Geoffrey P. Alpert

Criminology and Criminal Justice Faculty Publications

In recent years, policing scholars have increasingly used survey methods to gain insight into officers’ attitudes and behaviours. Yet, surprisingly, methodological research analysing surveys of police officers is rare. We analysed the extent and correlates of response rates in police surveys, providing insights about the survey design features and study characteristics associated with higher rates of officer participation. We examined the response rates to 497 police surveys reported in 390 articles published in 15 journals from 2008 to 2017. Findings included the following: (1) the average response rate was 64%, but there was a great deal of variation, (2) in-person …

Imprisoned In The Hood: An Examination Of Social Ecology Influenced By Mass Incarceration And Its Effects On Low Income College Students Stress Levels, Christion V. Smith

Undergraduate Research

Incarceration was once a promising crime control strategy, but over the last four decades it has increased exponentially and has been highly concentrated in disadvantaged communities. These high rates of imprisonment may be harming those communities greatly because at high rates incarceration loses its crime fighting ability and increases crime, which may compromise community safety and overall health. The current research explores the effects that high rates of neighborhood incarceration have on nonincarcerated individuals’ stress levels and mental health. Data for this study were collected from a convenience sample of students in the La Salle University’s Academic Discovery Program (ADP) …

Ignorance Is Bliss: Emotion, Politics, And Why Whites Avoid Information About Race, Evangelina Derosa

Honors Scholar Theses

This study investigated partisan differences, as well as guilt, anger, and shame as motivating emotions, to understand and predict information avoidance on topics related to race and policing. We predicted liberals would be more likely than conservatives to seek information on topics related to race; guilt, anger, and shame would be motivating emotions to seek information. We expected liberals to use guilt, anger, and shame as motivating emotions to seek information, and expected conservatives to experience lower levels of these emotions, and therefore avoid such information. Participants (N=420) were given information about police violence against people of color. …

Command-Level Police Officers’ Perceptions Of The “War On Cops” And De-Policing, Justin Nix, Scott E. Wolfe, Bradley A. Campbell

Criminology and Criminal Justice Faculty Publications

Policing has been the subject of intense public scrutiny for the better part of two years after several high-profile police killings of unarmed African Americans across the United States. The scrutiny has been so extreme that some contend there is currently a “war on cops”—whereby citizens are emboldened by protests and negative media coverage of the police, and are lashing out by assaulting police officers more frequently. In response, it is argued that officers are de-policing (i.e. avoiding proactive stops). We surveyed command-level police officers from a southeastern state about their attitudes concerning the war on cops and de-policing. The …

Course Syllabus (Su17) Coli 331: “‘World-Traveling’: Alterity And Liminality In Spike Lee’S Do The Right Thing And Amiri Baraka’S Dutchman”, Christopher Southward

Comparative Literature Faculty Scholarship

Course Description:

This semester, we’ll view Spike Lee’s 1989 Do the Right Thing and Shirley Knight’s 1966 cinematic production of Amiri Baraka’s Dutchman through the critical lenses of Maria Lugones’ notions of ‘worlds’ and ‘world-traveling,’[1] which she develops in Pilgrimages/Peregrinajes: Theorizing Coalition against Multiple Oppressions. Our task is to analyze a number of the problematics addressed in these visual works as discernible ‘world(s)’ of meaning and experience constituted by the libidinous investments, concrete practices, and ideological convictions of the human subjects who bear and circulate them.

[1] Maria Lugones, Pilgrimages/Peregrinajes: Theorizing Coalition against Multiple Oppressions, Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, …

Building An Ecology Of Routines: The Central Role Of The Broker, Jeannette A. Eberhard

Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Repository

Making progress on stubborn social problems, such as street level prostitution, requires local actors to work together in new ways across organizational boundaries. Organizational routines – defined as repetitive, recognizable patterns of interdependent actions carried out by multiple actors – are considered one of the primary means through which organizations accomplish the work they do. In my thesis, I argue that an important way to tackle stubborn social problems is through brokering, across organizational boundaries, to build and coordinate an ecology of routines. To better understand this process, I explore the following questions: How is the role of broker established? …

Demeanor, Race, And Police Perceptions Of Procedural Justice: Evidence From Two Randomized Experiments, Justin Nix, Justin T. Pickett, Scott E. Wolfe, Bradley A. Campbell

Criminology and Criminal Justice Faculty Publications

President Obama’s Task Force on 21st Century Policing recently endorsed procedural justice as a way to restore trust between police and communities. Yet police–citizen interactions vary immensely, and research has yet to give sufficient consideration to the factors that might affect the importance officers place on exercising procedural justice during interactions. Building on research examining “moral worthiness” judgments and racial stereotyping among police officers, we conducted two randomized experiments to test whether suspect race and demeanor affect officers’ perceptions of the threat of violence and importance of exercising procedural justice while interacting with suspicious persons. We find that suspect race …

Procedural Justice And Citizen Compliance: Police Officer Demeanor And Crime Severity, Shiny Sharma

Student Theses

Little is known about how police officer demeanor impacts citizen compliance under specific conditions such as the severity of a crime. Using a sample of 141 college students, we randomly assigned vignettes that manipulated crime severity type (e.g., petty theft or armed robbery) and police officer demeanor (e.g., procedurally just or not procedurally just) to gain a better understanding of this nuanced relationship. Participants were more likely to report suspicious behavior, regardless of crime severity, if the officer demeanor was procedurally just. Additionally, participants were more likely to consent to a search and report a suspicious person in the procedurally …

How Japan’S Cultural Norms Affect Policing: A Side-By-Side Comparison With The United States, Katrina Tran

Themis: Research Journal of Justice Studies and Forensic Science

The ways of policing have been critiqued throughout the years—some have advocated for a direct approach while others value diplomatic techniques. Consideration is emphasized by how culture affects policing in the United States and Japan. In the United States, the customs of policing involve violence, individualism, pragmatism, social mobility, and low power distance, whereas Japan encourages non-violence, face-saving, conservatism, and high power distance. The difference in these cultural norms reflects how policing is conducted in these two countries. To understand how policing in these two countries are different, this paper examines the difference of cultural norms and its impact on …

Armed Response: An Unfortunate Legacy Of Apartheid, Leila Lawlor

Journal of Comparative Urban Law and Policy

After apartheid was repealed in South Africa, the country’s system of forced segregation officially ended. Vestiges of racial discrimination remain, however, including spatial segregation in housing, income inequality, and huge disparities in the government’s provisioning of basic services. The poorest of South Africa’s citizens live in peripheral communities, far from city centers and employment hubs. The poorest communities often lack safe streets and safe toilets. Whereas wealthier South Africans are able to pay private policing companies to provide armed security, those in the poorest of communities must live with regular fear of violent crime. The problem is compounded by a …

An Examination Of The Evolution Of Racially Biased Pretextual Investigatory Stops And Their Legitimacy In Policing, Brett A. Lacey

Theses and Dissertations

This thesis examines the use of tactics originally purposed as a component of the Drug Enforcement Agency’s Operation Pipeline and their evolution since their creation in the 1980’s. The paper provides a history of investigatory policing stops regarding the argument of Epp et al. (2014) that primarily relied on Police Chief magazine and Remsberg’s Street Survival. Epp argues that the methods used in investigatory stops are an invasion of privacy, use racial profiling, and have proliferated from a tactic used in the war on drugs to combat drug trafficking to a routine day-to-day policing tactic. Through the use of a …

Policing A Negotiated World: A Partial Test Of Klinger’S Ecological Theory Of Policing, Christopher Salvatore, Travis A. Taniguchi

Department of Justice Studies Faculty Scholarship and Creative Works

The primary goal of the current study is to examine a portion of Klinger’s theory. Specifically, we test the influence of organizational and environmental contextual factors, guided by Klinger’s theory, on one measure of officer vigor. To date, few studies have taken this approach to examine Klinger’s theory. The study builds on prior research that has tested aspects of Klinger’s theory and adds new analytic strategies that prior studies have not used. The results of this study have implications for both theory and practice, and they add to the growing literature examining the influence of ecological and organization factors on …

Rationing Criminal Justice, Richard A. Bierschbach, Stephanos Bibas

All Faculty Scholarship

Of the many diagnoses of American criminal justice’s ills, few focus on externalities. Yet American criminal justice systematically overpunishes in large part because few mechanisms exist to force consideration of the full social costs of criminal justice interventions. Actors often lack good information or incentives to minimize the harms they impose. Part of the problem is structural: criminal justice is fragmented vertically among governments, horizontally among agencies, and individually among self-interested actors. Part is a matter of focus: doctrinally and pragmatically, actors overwhelmingly view each case as an isolated, short-term transaction to the exclusion of broader, long-term, and aggregate effects. …

Ending-Life Decisions: Some Disability Perspectives, Mary Crossley

Articles

In the forty years since Quinlan, disability has been present in the conversation within medicine, bioethics, and law about the acceptability of death-hastening medical decisions, but it has at times been viewed as an interloper, an uninvited guest to the party, or perhaps the guest whom the host was obliged to invite, but whose presence was not entirely welcomed. Notwithstanding some short-term reversals and counter-currents, the steady arc of end-of-life law during the past four decades has been towards liberalization of ending-life choices by and for patients who are severely compromised or near the end of their lives. During …

Cops And Cells : Theorizing And Assessing The Implications Of Smartphone Surveillance For Policing, Sean Patrick Roche

Legacy Theses & Dissertations (2009 - 2024)

In the United States, police officers are empowered to use force, and are often people’s first point of contact with the criminal justice system. Significantly, in the last decade, the majority of American citizens have acquired smartphone technology, which allows them to document and broadcast police behavior on a scale never before seen. Several high-profile police use of force incidents have been captured on video, and the resulting public outcries suggest that this technology now presents exceptional challenges to the maintenance of police legitimacy. Foucault (1977) argues that power in modern society is achieved by surveillance systems that work to …

Realigning Community Policing In A Homeland Security Era, Alfred Stanford Titus, Jr.

Walden Dissertations and Doctoral Studies

The priority shift from community policing to homeland security in local police departments in the United States has threatened the relationships and successes established by community policing, though little empirical research explored the relationship between funding and implementation of homeland security versus community policing objectives among local law enforcement agencies. Using Karl Popper's conceptualization of the liberal democracy as the framework, the purpose of this descriptive study was to examine how trends in funding and implementation of both community policing and homeland security objectives changed among American law enforcement agencies between 1993 and 2013. Data were acquired from the Law …

A Youth Curfew: A Retrospective View Of The Rise, Fall And Legacy Of The Northbridge Policy, Trudi Cooper, T. Love

Research outputs 2014 to 2021

This article presents policy, practice and theory implications of a case study of a youth curfew. The original case study of the Northbridge Policy Project set out to document the purposes of the Northbridge Policy, how policy was implemented, and to evaluate the effectiveness of this approach as a generalised response to child welfare and youth crime. The study synthesised data from multiple sources. The original study concluded that although the project was well resourced, well managed and had improved greatly inter-agency collaboration for child protection, these benefits could have been achieved without the curfew, which undermined some preventative aspects …

Exploring Police Officers' Perceptions Of Mobile Crisis Rapid Response Teams Within A Nodal Policing Framework, Trevor Viersen

Theses and Dissertations (Comprehensive)

An increasing portion of police service resources are being dedicated to interactions involving persons with mental illness (PMI). As a result, Mobile Crisis Rapid Response Teams (MCT) comprised of mental health professionals have been recently implemented to assist police officers in more efficiently handling police calls for service involving PMI. The current ethnographic study used data collected through researcher ride-alongs with police officers at a mid-sized police service in Ontario to assess how police officers interact with and perceive MCTs. Results from thematic analysis indicated that officers value the skill sets possessed by MCT workers, had relatively positive perceptions towards …