Criminology Commons^™

Crime Attractors In Sin City? A Pre/Post Test Of Crime Patterns And Police Enforcement Around Recreational Marijuana Facilities, Joshua Donnelly

UNLV Theses, Dissertations, Professional Papers, and Capstones

The federalist system in the United States has created criminal opportunities within jurisdictions that have approved recreational marijuana facilities (RMFs). These facilities have characteristics that are attractive for motivated offenders including marijuana and marijuana-related tangible goods. Through ArcGIS, this research examined the crime patterns and police enforcement patterns that occurred within a 288-meter street-network buffer around RMFs through a pre/post-test exploratory design in the Las Vegas area. The time periods examined were 2015 to 2016 (pre-legalization), and 2018 to 2019 (post-legalization). Calls for service data were used to demonstrate both crime and enforcement patterns. Furthermore, facilities were classified into “local …

The American Racial Divide In Fear Of The Police, Justin T. Pickett, Amanda Graham, Francis T. Cullen

Department of Criminal Justice and Criminology Faculty Publications

The mission of policing is “to protect and serve,” but recent events suggest that many Americans, and especially Black Americans, do not feel protected from the police. Understanding police-related fear is important because it may impact civilians’ health, daily lives, and policy attitudes. To examine the prevalence, sources, and consequences of both personal and altruistic fear of the police, we surveyed a nationwide sample (N = 1,150), which included comparable numbers of Black (N = 517) and White (N = 492) respondents. Most White respondents felt safe, but most Black respondents lived in fear of the police killing them and …

Does Diversity Matter? Police Violence, Minority Representation, And Urban Policing, Maddy Mcvaugh

PPPA Paper Prize

This paper argues that, while increasing officer diversity may prove beneficial to some urban departments, for the majority, increased diversity within law enforcement does not substantially decrease the amount of violence towards racial minorities due to police culture and institutional practices. Specifically, I examine how structural policing methods target and excessively monitor Black and Hispanic communities, which leads to increased police encounters. Through police culture, these increased encounters then create further opportunities for acts of violence to be used against these minority communities. I begin by discussing several claims regarding the value of increased officer diversity. I then discuss why …

A Comprehensive Evaluation Of An Offender-Focused Domestic Violence Policing Strategy Using The Emmie Framework, Sara C. Mcfann

FIU Electronic Theses and Dissertations

As the emphasis on increasing the body of evidence for (or against) policing interventions grows, so does scholars' responsibility to identify not only what works but why, for whom, and in what contexts. An emerging police approach to domestic violence (DV) using offender-focused strategies has grown in popularity. However, the evidence base is small and does not explore inside the “black box” of the main strategic activities. To address this evidence deficiency and provide the first-ever primary study of this type of program, a comprehensive evaluation of a focused deterrence-based policing intervention for DV situated around the EMMIE (Effects, …

Bio-Spatial Policing In Theory And Practice: Examining Impacts And Resistance Through Mobilities And Children's Everyday Life, Emily Kaufman

Theses and Dissertations--Geography

Despite decades of reforms and technological innovations, increasing evidence shows that state securitization disproportionately harms already racially, spatially, and socio-economically marginalized communities. My research investigates uneven impacts of state securitization, from punitive welfare programs to school surveillance to policing. Across sites, I focus on scales, voices and the everyday lived experiences often left out of scholarly discourse and sensational media. In the current climate of growing awareness and scholarship on police violence, my dissertation addresses three less-studied areas: 1) the interplay between racial, gendered, spatial, and technified police practices; 2) how these practices impact the everyday lives of those racially …

Creating And Undoing Legacies Of Resilience: Black Women As Martyrs In The Black Community Under Oppressive Social Control, Leah Iman Aniefuna, M. Amari Aniefuna, Jason M. Williams

Department of Justice Studies Faculty Scholarship and Creative Works

This paper contextualizes the struggles and contributions of Black motherhood and reproductive justice under police surveillance in Baltimore, Maryland. We conducted semi-structured interviews with mothers regarding their experiences and perceptions of policing in their community during the aftermath of the police-involved death of Freddie Gray. While the literature disproportionately focuses on Black males, little knowledge is known about the struggles and contributions of Black mothers in matters concerning police brutality and the fight against institutional violence. There still remains the question regarding the role of and impact on Black mothers during matters of institutional violence against Black children. We fill …

Public Perceptions Of Police Militarization: A Nuanced Understanding Of Public Support For Police Practices, Leobardo Lopez-Cristobal

UNLV Theses, Dissertations, Professional Papers, and Capstones

In recent years, there has been heavily publicized incidents of police use of military weapons and tactics, which has raised concerns regarding the militarization of police. More famously, in 2014, Ferguson police utilized military weapons and tactics to quell the masses after the police shooting of Michael Brown incited protests and riots. Despite an overall decrease in incidents of police use of force and deadly shootings, individual dramatic events of police militarization paint a picture of a militarized police force. This coincides with an overall increase in military equipment transfers (e.g., weapons, vehicles) to police agencies in the United States. …

Where Concerned Citizens Perceive Police As More Responsive To Troublesome Teen Groups: Theoretical Implications For Political Economy, Incivilities And Policing, Christopher Salvatore, Ralph B. Taylor, Christopher Kelly

Christopher Salvatore

The current investigation extends previous work on citizens' perceptions of police performance. It examines the origins of between-community differences in concerned citizens' judgments that police are responding sufficiently to a local social problem. The problem is local unsupervised teen groups, a key indicator for both the revised systemic social disorganization perspective and the incivilities thesis. Four theoretical perspectives predict ecological determinants of these shared judgments. Less perceived police responsiveness is anticipated in lower socioeconomic status (SES) police districts by both a political economy and a stratified incivilities perspective; more predominantly minority police districts by a racialized justice perspective; and in …

Policing Protests: An Exploratory Analysis Of Crowd Management Policies, Logan P. Kennedy

UNLV Theses, Dissertations, Professional Papers, and Capstones

Several policing strategies have been used to manage protest crowds over the past 50 years. Research suggests that escalated force and command and control strategies were utilized until the 1990’s (Bourne, 2011; Schweingruber, 2000), while negotiated management has emerged as a prominent protest management strategy within recent decades (Gillham, 2011; Gillham & Noakes, 2006). While literature describes the general evolution of protest strategies over time, there has been no systematic documentation of police approaches to crowd management.

This study examines police policies governing protest management to identify current U.S. police practices. The International Association of Chiefs of Police (IACP) provides …

Exploring Places Of Street Drug Dealing In A Downtown Area In Brazil: An Analysis Of The Reliability Of Google Street View In International Criminological Research, Elenice De Souza Oliveira, Ko-Hsin Hsu

Elenice De Souza Oliveira

This study assesses the reliability of Google Street View (GSV) in auditing environmental features that help create hotbeds of drug dealing in Belo Horizonte, one of Brazil’s largest cities. Based on concepts of “crime generators” and “crime enablers,” a set of 40 items were selected using arrest data related to drug activities for the period between 2007 and 2011. These items served to develop a GSV data collection instrument used to observe features of 135 street segments that were identified as drug dealing hot spots in downtown Belo Horizonte. The study employs an intra-class correlation (ICC) statistics as a measure …

Police Body-Worn Camera Perceptions Pre/Post Deployment, Aaron Veerman

Theses and Dissertations

The purpose of this study was to determine if officers’ perceptions of Body-Worn Cameras (BWCs) changed over the course of a six-month pilot program. Officers from a Midwest police department were surveyed prior to or shortly after receiving their BWCs (Pre-Test) and again approximately six months later (Post-Test). Once completed, independent samples t-tests, mean comparisons, and Pearson’s correlations were used to analyze the data. This study did not produce many significant differences in officers’ perceptions over the course of the study, according to t-test results. However, several significant differences were found after each shift was analyzed separately. Overall, less than …

Examining Perceptions Of Online Harassment Among Constables In England And Wales, Thomas J. Holt, Jin R. Lee, Roberta Liggett, Karen M. Holt, Adam Bossler

International Journal of Cybersecurity Intelligence & Cybercrime

The ubiquity of the Internet and computer technology has enabled individuals to engage in bullying, threats, and harassing communications online. Limited research has found that local line officers may not view these offenses as serious compared to real world crimes despite their negative physical and emotional impact on victims. The perceptions of officers can produce poor interactions with victims during calls for service, particularly victim blaming, which can reduce citizens’ confidence in police agencies generally. However, local law enforcement agencies are increasingly mandated to respond to these cases, calling to question how their views may impact the community. This study …

Exploring Places Of Street Drug Dealing In A Downtown Area In Brazil: An Analysis Of The Reliability Of Google Street View In International Criminological Research, Elenice De Souza Oliveira, Ko-Hsin Hsu

Department of Justice Studies Faculty Scholarship and Creative Works

This study assesses the reliability of Google Street View (GSV) in auditing environmental features that help create hotbeds of drug dealing in Belo Horizonte, one of Brazil’s largest cities. Based on concepts of “crime generators” and “crime enablers,” a set of 40 items were selected using arrest data related to drug activities for the period between 2007 and 2011. These items served to develop a GSV data collection instrument used to observe features of 135 street segments that were identified as drug dealing hot spots in downtown Belo Horizonte. The study employs an intra-class correlation (ICC) statistics as a measure …

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 …

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 …

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 …

Token Female Police Officers Or Police Exemplars: An Evaluation Of The Theory Of Tokenism, Cameron Michael Harper

Theses and Dissertations

Despite gains in the percentage of female police officers over past decades, female police officers are vastly underrepresented in modern policing. Female police officers face barriers to integration into policing and the surrounding culture that male police officers do not face, including unbalanced physical testing, double standards for success, and others. One explanation for the different experiences of female police officers compared to male police officers is the token status of women in policing. Instead of taking the token status of female police officers for granted, this study explored the utility of the theory of tokenism (Kanter, 1977) in explaining …

A Comparative Study Of Satisfaction With The Police In The United States And Australia, Mengyan Dai, Xin Jiang

Sociology & Criminal Justice Faculty Publications

This study comparatively examines three major models of citizens' satisfaction with the police, using two similar community surveys on policing from Cincinnati, Ohio, USA and Queensland, Australia. It tests the wider applicability of the demographic model, the neighborhood condition model, and the prior contacts with police model and analyzes whether the effects of common determinants on citizens' satisfaction remain the same across the two international samples. Results from a series of comparisons show that there is a substantial amount of similarity across statistical models for Cincinnati and Queensland, suggesting a general framework of citizens' satisfaction with the police that could …

Drunk Driving Cops: A Study Of Police Officers Arrested 2005-2010, Philip M. Stinson, John Liederbach, Natalie E. Todak, Steven L. Brewer

Philip M Stinson

Police officers are generally exempt from law enforcement (Reiss, 1971) and it is widely known that police officers who drive drunk are rarely arrested, even when they are pulled over in a traffic stop for driving drunk. Using data from a larger study on police crime arrests, this is an exploratory study of 763 cases from years 2005-2010 of on- and off-duty police officers arrested for driving under the influence (DUI). The officers arrested for DUI were employed by nonfederal law enforcement agencies located in all 50 states and the District of Columbia. Preliminary findings indicate that almost half of …

Homeland Security And Community Policing: Shift In Federal Funding Post Sep. 11: From Community Policing To Homeland Security, Mohsen S. Alizadeh

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

In the aftermath of the 9/11, Homeland Security became the major model of the American Policing system, thus superseding community policing model. The purpose of this research is to use "before and after study design" to follow the grant trends of policing systems in order to examine whether the catastrophic events of 9/11 had a positive or negative impact on the grant funds of the mentioned policing models. Preliminary analyses revealed that there is significant difference in the mean level of funding prior and after the event for Homeland Security, community policing, and general policing programs. Segmented and Stepwise Regressions …

An Evidential Review Of Police Misconduct: Officer Versus Organization, Emma Rose Bonanno

2015 Undergraduate Awards

This paper explores the critical societal issue of police misconduct. Though a vast amount of literature surrounds the issue of police misconduct, conclusions regarding the correlates of police misconduct remain inconclusive. Previous research that attempts to explain police misconduct has consistently shown to be divided based on either individual or organizational correlates. Thus, the crux of the debate has become whether police misconduct is the product of a "bad apple" (individual or micro-level correlates), or a "bad barrel" (organizational or macro-level correlates). The aim of this paper is to explore existing empirical evidence, and discover which factors most strongly correlate …

Aligning Policing And Public Health Promotion: Insights From The World Of Foot Patrol, Jennifer Wood, Caitlin J. Taylor, Elizabeth Groff, Jerry Ratcliffe

Sociology and Criminal Justice Faculty work

Foot patrol work is rarely described in relation to public health, even though police routinely encounter health risk behaviors and environments. Through a qualitative study of foot patrol policing in violent ‘hotspots’ of Philadelphia, we explore some prospects and challenges associated with bridging security and public health considerations in law enforcement. Noting existing efforts to help advance police officer knowledge of, and attitudes toward health vulnerabilities, we incorporate perspectives from environmental criminology to help advance this bridging agenda. Extending the notion of capable guardianship to understand foot patrol work, we suggest that the way forward for theory, policy, and practice …

Comparing The Recruitment Of Ethnic And Racial Minorities In Police Departments In England And Wales With The Usa, Jeffrey Ian Ross Ph.D., Mike Rowe Ph.D.

Jeffrey Ian Ross Ph.D.

No abstract provided.

Policing Cyber Bullying: How Parents, Educators, And Law Enforcement Respond To Digital Harassment, Ryan Broll

Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Repository

Some prior research has emphasised how adults ought to address cyber bullying, yet little is known about how they actually prevent and respond to digital harassment. This study addresses this gap in the literature by exploring the formal and informal “policing” of cyber bullying by a network of security actors: parents, teachers and school administrators, and the public police. Data were collected through a mixed methods research design consisting of semi-structured qualitative interviews with eight parents, 14 teachers, and 12 members of law enforcement (n = 34) and quantitative surveys completed by 52 parents.

Drawing upon nodal governance theory as …

When Speech Isn't Free: Legal Barriers And Consequences Of Reporting Sexual Violence, Kevin M. Fleming

Departmental Honors Projects

Incidents of sexual violence continue to be a serious problem for society. Likewise, acts of sexual violence impose severe consequences for survivors. The consequences initially begin at the onset of the survivor’s journey to psychological recovery following the traumatic sexual assault. The consequences take on a unique set of characteristics when the survivor attempts to use the justice system to confront the perpetrator who committed the offense. These characteristics can transform an adversarial process into an isolated battle for the survivor. In the worst cases, the justice system empowers individuals who wish to silence survivors with free speech restrictions instead …

Drunk Driving Cops: A Study Of Police Officers Arrested 2005-2010, Philip M. Stinson, John Liederbach, Natalie E. Todak, Steven L. Brewer

Criminal Justice Faculty Publications

Police officers are generally exempt from law enforcement (Reiss, 1971) and it is widely known that police officers who drive drunk are rarely arrested, even when they are pulled over in a traffic stop for driving drunk. Using data from a larger study on police crime arrests, this is an exploratory study of 763 cases from years 2005-2010 of on- and off-duty police officers arrested for driving under the influence (DUI). The officers arrested for DUI were employed by nonfederal law enforcement agencies located in all 50 states and the District of Columbia. Preliminary findings indicate that almost half of …

Where Concerned Citizens Perceive Police As More Responsive To Troublesome Teen Groups: Theoretical Implications For Political Economy, Incivilities And Policing, Christopher Salvatore, Ralph B. Taylor, Christopher Kelly

Department of Justice Studies Faculty Scholarship and Creative Works

The current investigation extends previous work on citizens' perceptions of police performance. It examines the origins of between-community differences in concerned citizens' judgments that police are responding sufficiently to a local social problem. The problem is local unsupervised teen groups, a key indicator for both the revised systemic social disorganization perspective and the incivilities thesis. Four theoretical perspectives predict ecological determinants of these shared judgments. Less perceived police responsiveness is anticipated in lower socioeconomic status (SES) police districts by both a political economy and a stratified incivilities perspective; more predominantly minority police districts by a racialized justice perspective; and in …

Policing Native Americans Off The Rez, Jeffrey Ian Ross Ph.D.

Jeffrey Ian Ross Ph.D.

No abstract provided.

Policing Native Americans Off The Rez, Jeffrey Ian Ross Ph.D.

Jeffrey Ian Ross Ph.D.

No abstract provided.

The Current Status Of Comparative Policing In The Curriculum, Jeffrey Ian Ross Ph.D.

Jeffrey Ian Ross Ph.D.

No abstract provided.