Criminology Commons^™

Does Change In Binge Drinking Reduce Risk Of Repeat Sexual Assault Victimization? Evidence From Three Cohorts Of Freshman Undergraduate Women, Leah C. Butler, Bonnie S. Fisher, Bradford W. Reyns

Criminology and Criminal Justice Faculty Publications

Many college students who experience sexual assault experience subsequent (i.e., repeat) sexual assault incidents. There is also an established relationship between sexual assault and binge drinking. The “once bitten, twice shy” (OBTS) hypothesis suggests that those who experience alcohol- or drugrelated (AOD) sexual assault would reduce how frequently they binge drink in an effort to avoid repeat victimization. We test this hypothesis by analyzing two years of survey data collected from a panel of three cohorts of freshmen women. Supportive of OBTS, our analyses reveal that students who experienced an AOD-related sexual assault at time 1 only reduced the number …

Wait Line Behaviors At Restaurants During Covid-19, Pamela E. Hollis, Cheyenne Vannier, Patrick Millegan, Jessica Reagan

Undergraduate Presentations

We were assigned to do field work observations through a series of individual data collection sessions. My group member and I choose to do observations at restaurants to see how covid has impacted waiting in line due to their facility reaching capacity. We each chose different locations to observe and collect data. Within this research project, we were able to identify different behaviors of people waiting. Some people were patient, kind, and courteous while other’s were impatient and rude. These observations were made by each observer at these different locations.

Justifying Force: Police Procedurals And The Normalization Of Violence, Emily Brenner

Faculty Curated Undergraduate Works

Much like the CSI effect in forensic crime dramas, portrayals of law enforcement in crime media can potentially skew a viewer’s perception of what the profession actually entails. Many studies address the depiction of law enforcement in the media, but few solely examine the use of force by television police officers, and the impact this may have on frequent viewers. In an era of calls for accountability over growing attention towards police brutality and misconduct, the media as an influencer has the potential to play a role in how real-world instances of brutality are perceived, and more importantly, how it …

[Preprint] University Of Missouri-St. Louis Comprehensive Safe Schools Initiative (Umsl Cssi), Finn-Aage Esbensen, Stephanie Wiley, Timothy Mccuddy, Elaine Doherty, Lee Slocum, Terrance Taylor, Kyle Thomas, Matt Vogel

Criminology and Criminal Justice Faculty Works

This resource has not been published by the U.S. Department of Justice. This resource is being made publically available through the Office of Justice Programs’ National Criminal Justice Reference Service.

Beyond The New Jim Crow: Public Support For Removing And Regulating Collateral Consequences, Alexander L. Burton, Velmer S. Burton Jr., Francis T. Cullen, Justin T. Pickett, Leah C. Butler, Angela J. Thielo

Criminology and Criminal Justice Faculty Publications

In The New Jim Crow, Michelle Alexander drew national attention to the extensive imposition of collateral consequences on those convicted of a crime and to their racially disparate effects. Based on a 2017 national-level YouGov survey, supplemented by a second 2019 YouGov survey, the current study finds that the public is split on allowing ex-offenders to sit on juries, but supportive of removing barriers to voting and employment. The respondents also favored providing defendants with a list of restrictions linked to conviction as well as having lawmakers review and eliminate collateral consequences found to have no purpose and to …

Who Dreams Of Badges? Gendered Self-Concept And Policing Career Aspirations, Samantha S. Clinkinbeard, Starr J. Solomon, Rachael M. Rief

Criminology and Criminal Justice Faculty Publications

NIJ’s Policing Research Plan (2017-2022) highlights the need to understand factors that attract diverse candidates. We explored whether college students had ever considered policing and found men were significantly more likely than women to contemplate policing careers. Further, we found higher levels of masculinity were associated with greater odds of policing aspirations; the relationship between gender and aspirations was fully mediated by masculine self-concept. Although men typically reported higher masculinity scores, within-gender analyses indicated that masculinity was important for both men and women. Our findings suggest the continued association of masculinity with policing may undercut efforts to recruit a representative …

'Gangstas' And Preachers: A Deeper Look Into The Code Of The Street And Hip-Hop And Rap Music, Alise Greco

Senior Honors Projects

Music’s depth is easy to overlook during casual listening. We often listen to a song without fully considering its meaning, implications, purpose, or the effect that it may have on its listeners. Hip-hop and rap have been and continue to be hotly contested for what critics proclaim to be a “promotion” or portrayal of a message and lifestyle that is harmful to a peaceful and orderly society. Elijah Anderson’s (1999) “Code of the Street” can be used to make sense of this deviant, oppositional subculture prevalent in hip-hop, characterized by toxic masculinity, a street form of justice, and violence. Much …

How Perpetrator Identity (Sometimes) Influences Media Framing Attacks As “Terrorism” Or “Mental Illness”, Allison E. Betus, Erin M. Kearns, Anthony F. Lemieux

Criminology and Criminal Justice Faculty Publications

Do media frame attacks with Muslim perpetrators as “terrorism” and attacks with White perpetrators as the result of “mental illness”? Despite public speculation and limited academic work with relatively small subsets of cases, there have been no systematic analyses of potential biases in how media frame terrorism. We addressed this gap by examining the text of print news coverage of all terrorist attacks in the United States between 2006 and 2015. Controlling for fatalities, affiliation with a group, and existing mental illness, the odds that an article references terrorism are approximately five times greater for a Muslim versus a non-Muslim …

Environmental Factors Influencing Urban Homicide Clearance Rates: A Spatial Analysis Of New York City, Leslie W. Kennedy, Joel M. Caoplan, Eric L. Piza, Amanda L. Thomas

Publications and Research

In this paper, we explore the conditions under which clearance rates improve by looking at the experience across New York City. Using one agency provides a control on the administrative differences that appear across other jurisdictions that have been studied, usually through cross-national analysis. Our analysis uses Risk Terrain Modeling (RTM) to identify environmental features that relate to closed versus open homicide cases using two years of New York City Police Department (NYPD) data. This analysis is supplemented with an investigation of precinct-wide social structure variables to examine how context matters in influencing closure rates.

Police Crime Against Black Victims, 2005-2014, Philip M. Stinson, Chloe Wentzlof, Steven L. Brewer

Criminal Justice Faculty Publications

This study reports the findings of a pilot study to add new variables on race of victims to a larger existing data set of police crime arrest cases from years 2005-2014. The purpose of this study is to improve policing and inform the public about patterns of police crimes perpetrated against Black victims at state and local law enforcement agencies across the United States. This study aims to identify characteristics and associations of police crime arrest cases and victim race. Bivariate analyses found statistically significant associations between violence-related police crimes against black victims. CHAID regression models explored multivariate relationships.

Presented …

Covid-19 And Stay-At-Home Orders: An Application Of Routine Activity Theory In Philadelphia, Jessica M. Brain

Undergraduate Research

The coronavirus pandemic changed the routines of people all over the world. Because of the implementation of government stay-at-home orders, people started doing more of their daily activities from home. This explores the impact coronavirus had on burglary counts in Philadelphia. Data were used from OpenDataPhilly to compare both non-residential and residential burglary counts from April through June 2019 and April through June 2020, a latter time frame, a period when routine activities were likely significantly altered as many more people stayed at home. It was anticipated that as more people stay at home and Philadelphia would experience fewer residential …

Is Executive Function The Universal Acid?, Stephen J. Morse

All Faculty Scholarship

This essay responds to Hirstein, Sifferd and Fagan’s book, Responsible Brains (MIT Press, 2018), which claims that executive function is the guiding mechanism that supports both responsible agency and the necessity for some excuses. In contrast, I suggest that executive function is not the universal acid and the neuroscience at present contributes almost nothing to the necessary psychological level of explanation and analysis. To the extent neuroscience can be useful, it is virtually entirely dependent on well-validated psychology to correlate with the neuroscientific variables under investigation. The essay considers what executive function is and what the neuroscience adds to our …

Change Matters: Binge Drinking And Drugging Victimization Over Time In Three College Freshman Cohorts, Leah C. Butler, Bonnie S. Fisher, Rachael Schilling, Nicole V. Lasky, Suzanne C. Swan

Criminology and Criminal Justice Faculty Publications

The “once bitten, twice shy” (OBTS) hypothesis argues that crime victims who change their involvement in risky lifestyle behaviors reduce their likelihood of experiencing repeat victimization. Tests of this hypothesis have yielded weak to mixed results, which may be due to methodological issues. We address these methodological issues by testing the OBTS hypothesis for repeat drugging victimization with survey data from a panel of three freshman cohorts at three large, public universities. Supportive of the OBTS hypothesis, the multivariate results show that, on average, those not drugged at Time 1 or Time 2 and those drugged at Time 1 and …

A Randomized Controlled Trial Of The Impact Of Body-Worn Camera Activation On The Outcomes Of Individual Incidents, Jessica Huff, Charles M. Katz, E. C. Hedberg

Criminology and Criminal Justice Faculty Publications

Objectives

Evaluate the impact of body-worn cameras (BWCs) on officer-initiated activity, arrests, use of force, and complaints.

Methods

We use instrumental variable analysis to examine the impact of BWC assignment and BWC activation on the outcomes of individual incidents through a randomized controlled trial of 436 officers in the Phoenix Police Department.

Results

Incidents involving BWC activations were associated with a lower likelihood of officer-initiated contacts and complaints, but a greater likelihood of arrests and use of force. BWC assignment alone was unrelated to arrests or complaints; however, incidents involving officers who were assigned and activated their BWC were significantly …

Biased Coverage Of Bias Crime: Examining Differences In Media Coverage Of Hate Crimes And Terrorism, Adam Ghazi-Tehrani, Erin M. Kearns

Criminology and Criminal Justice Faculty Publications

News media differentially cover violence based on social identity. How does media bias apply to terrorist attacks—typically “upward crimes” where perpetrators hold less power than targets—that are also hate crimes—typically “downward crimes”? We compare coverage of incidents that are both terrorist attacks and hate crimes to coverage of incidents that are just terrorism in the U.S. from 2006 to 2015. Attacks that are also hate crimes receive less media attention. Articles are more likely to reference hate crimes when the perpetrator is unknown and more likely to reference terrorism when the perpetrator is non-white in some models.

The Effect Of Program Staffing Difficulties On Changes In Dynamic Risk And Reoffending Among Juvenile Offenders In Residential Placement, Kevin T. Wolff, Katherine E. Limoncelli, Michael T. Baglivio

Publications and Research

Recently there has been growing concern regarding the staffing challenges that plague the U.S. correctional system. This study examines whether staffing challenges within residential facilities are associated with changes in dynamic risk and the likelihood of reoffending among a sample of serious juvenile offenders returning to the community from residential placement. Using administrative data on 2,022 youth who completed a court-imposed placement, in combination with information drawn from a provider’s human resources database, we employ several analytical techniques to untangle the effects of staffing difficulties on youth outcomes. Results indicate that the rate of unscheduled absences was associated with changes …

The Internet Never Forgets: Image-Based Sexual Abuse And The Workplace, John Schriner, Melody Lee Rood

Publications and Research

Image-based sexual abuse (IBSA), commonly known as revenge pornography, is a type of cyberharassment that often results in detrimental effects to an individual's career and livelihood. Although there exists valuable research concerning cyberharassment in the workplace generally, there is little written about specifically IBSA and the workplace. This chapter examines current academic research on IBSA, the issues with defining this type of abuse, victim blaming, workplace policy, and challenges to victim-survivors' redress. The authors explore monetary motivation for websites that host revenge pornography and unpack how the dark web presents new challenges to seeking justice. Additionally, this chapter presents recommendations …

A Truce In Criminal Law's Distributive Principle Wars?, Paul H. Robinson

All Faculty Scholarship

Crime-control utilitarians and retributivist philosophers have long been at war over the appropriate distributive principle for criminal liability and punishment, with little apparent possibility of reconciliation between the two. In the utilitarians’ view, the imposition of punishment can be justified only by the practical benefit that it provides: avoiding future crime. In the retributivists’ view, doing justice for past wrongs is a value in itself that requires no further justification. The competing approaches simply use different currencies: fighting future crime versus doing justice for past wrongs.

It is argued here that the two are in fact reconcilable, in a fashion. …

The Effects Of Police Contact And Neighborhood Context On Delinquency And Violence, Joselyne L. Chenane, Emily M. Wright, Yan Wang

Criminology and Criminal Justice Faculty Publications

We examined both main effects and cross-level effects of prior criminal justice contact on delinquency and violence. Using multilevel longitudinal data from the Project on Human Development on Chicago Neighborhoods (PHDCN, 1994–2001), this paper addresses a lack of clarity on the effect of police contact on delinquency and violence. We found that police contacts (three types) were associated with increases in delinquency and violence. These effects remained robust after controlling for individual‐level covariates such as low self‐control. Importantly, the effect of jail contact on the number of delinquent acts a youth engages in was stronger in neighborhoods with high levels …

Body-Worn Cameras And Transparency: Experimental Evidence Of Inconsistency In Police Executive Decision-Making, Brandon Tregle, Justin Nix, Justin T. Pickett

Criminology and Criminal Justice Faculty Publications

Body-worn cameras (BWC) have diffused rapidly throughout policing as a means of promoting transparency and accountability. Yet, whether to release BWC footage to the public remains largely up to the discretion of police executives, and we know little about how they interpret and respond to BWC footage – particularly footage involving critical incidents. We asked a nationally representative sample of police executives (N=476) how supportive they were of legislation that would mandate releasing BWC footage upon request as public information, and presented them with an experimental vignette about BWC capturing one of their officers fatally shooting an [armed/unarmed] [Black/White] suspect. …

The Sensitivity Of Repeat And Near Repeat Analysis To Geocoding Algorithms, Cory P. Haberman, David Hatten, Jeremy G. Carter, Eric L. Piza

Publications and Research

Purpose: To determine if repeat and near repeat analysis is sensitive to the geocoding algorithm used for the underlying crime incident data.

Methods: The Indianapolis Metropolitan Police Department provided 2016 crime incident data for five crime types: (1) shootings, (2) robberies, (3) residential burglaries, (4) theft of automobiles, and (5) theft from automobiles. The incident data were geocoded using a dual ranges algorithm and a composite algorithm. First, descriptive analysis of the distances between the two point patterns were conducted. Second, repeat and near repeat analysis was performed. Third, the resulting repeat and near repeat patterns were compared across geocoding …

Faith In Trump, Moral Foundations, And Social Distancing Defiance During The Coronavirus Pandemic, Amanda K. Graham, Francis T. Cullen, Justin T. Pickett, Cheryl Lero Jonson, Murat Haner, Melissa M. Sloan

Department of Criminal Justice and Criminology Faculty Publications

Purpose:

Over the past several months, the coronavirus has infected more than six million Americans and killed nearly 200,000. Governors have issued stay-at-home orders, and prosecutors have filed criminal charges against individuals for defying those orders. And yet many Americans have still refused to keep their distance from their fellow citizens, even if they had symptoms of infection. The authors explore the underlying causes for those who intend to defy these norms.

Methods:

Using national-level data from a March 2020 survey of 989 Americans, the authors explore intentions to defy social distancing norms by testing an interactionist theory of foundation-based …

The Situational Context Of Police Sexual Violence: Data And Policy Implications, Philip M. Stinson, Robert W. Taylor, John Liederbach

Criminal Justice Faculty Publications

The horrors of sexual crimes perpetrated by law enforcement officers are laid bare in this study of 669 cases of police sexual violence. Here, authors Philip Matthew Stinson, Robert W. Taylor, and John Liederbach identify three scenarios in which law enforcement officers inflict sexual violence upon their mostly-female victims: 1) “driving while female,” 2) child predation, and 3) involvement in the sex worker industry. Especially sobering is the fact that, as opposed to law enforcement doing its solemn duty to report criminality on the part of fellow police officers, “citizens rather than police initiated the detection of the crimes in …

Caregivers’ Expectations, Reflected Appraisals, And Arrests Among Adolescents Who Experienced Parental Incarceration, Cynthia J. Najdowski, Melissa Noel

Psychology Faculty Scholarship

This research sought to identify a potential process by which intergenerational crime occurs, focusing on the effect of parental incarceration on adolescents’ subsequent arrests. We drew from Matsueda’s work on reflected appraisals as an explanatory mechanism for this effect. Thus, the present research examined whether caregivers’ and adolescents’ expectations for adolescents’ future incarceration sequentially mediated the effect of parental incarceration on adolescents’ actual arrest outcomes. Propensity score matching was used to examine this effect in a sample of 1,735 15- to 16-year-olds using NLSY97 data. Parental incarceration was positively related to caregivers’ expectations of adolescents’ future arrest. Moreover, caregivers’ expectations …

Health Implications Of Incarceration And Reentry On Returning Citizens: A Qualitative Examination Of Black Men’S Experiences In A Northeastern City, Jason Williams, Sean K. Wilson, Carrie Bergeson

Department of Justice Studies Faculty Scholarship and Creative Works

While a great deal of research captures the lived experiences of Black men as they navigate through the criminal legal system and onto reentry, very little research is grounded in how those processes are directly connected to their health. Although some research argues that mass incarceration is a determinant of poor health, there is a lack of qualitative analyses from the perspective of Black men. Black men face distinct pathways that lead them into the criminal legal system, and these same pathways await them upon reentry. This study aims to examine the health implications associated with incarceration and reentry of …

Cultivating And Reporting Of Campus Threats, Louis K. Falk, Douglas Stoves, Audrey W. Falk, Hilda Silva

Communication Faculty Publications and Presentations

The consumption of media has been established as one of the elements responsible for changing the general population’s perceptions. Specifically, cultivation theory (depending on the amount of media use) points to an enhanced representation of a characterization conveyed through the media. This depiction has the potential to create an inaccurate portrayal (stereotype) leading to an increased level of anxiety. The proliferation of reported incidents (real or perceived) associated with mass shootings in the U.S. over the last 20 years is an example. This paper traces the relatively recent coverage of mass shootings in the U.S. by the media and the …

On The Challenges Associated With The Study Of Police Use Of Deadly Force In The United States: A Response To Schwartz & Jahn, Justin Nix

Criminology and Criminal Justice Faculty Publications

In response to Gabriel Schwartz and Jaquelyn Jahn’s descriptive study, “Mapping fatal police violence across U.S. metropolitan areas: Overall rates and racial/ethnic inequalities, 2013–2017,” I provide three reflections. First, the framing of this issue is vitally important. Second, police-involved fatalities represent a nonrandom sample of all incidents involving police use of deadly force (i.e., physical force that causes or is likely to cause death), and unfortunately, we lack comprehensive data on use of deadly force that does not result in fatalities. Finally, to make sense of who is killed by the police, researchers must also identify who was exposed to …

Gun Victimization In The Line Of Duty: Fatal And Non-Fatal Firearm Assaults On Police Officers In The United States, 2014-2019, Michael Sierra-Arévalo, Justin Nix

Criminology and Criminal Justice Faculty Publications

Research Summary

Using open‐source data from the Gun Violence Archive (GVA), we analyze national‐ and state‐level trends in fatal and nonfatal firearm assaults of U.S. police officers from 2014 to 2019 (N = 1,467). Results show that (a) most firearm assaults are nonfatal, (b) there is no compelling evidence that the national rate of firearm assault on police has substantially increased during the last 6 years, and (c) there is substantial state‐level variation in rates of firearm assault on police officers.

Policy Implications

GVA has decided strengths relative to existing data sources on police victimization and danger in policing. …

How Social Dominance Orientation Shapes Perceptions Of Police, Belen Lowrey-Kinberg, Hillary Mellinger, Erin M. Kearns

Criminology and Criminal Justice Faculty Publications

Purpose

There remain several underaddressed issues in the procedural justice literature. The authors draw from a rich body of psychological research on how the sociopolitical orientation to group inequality influences individual views on government and apply this to perceptions of procedural justice.

Design/methodology/approach

This study uses a laboratory-style experimental design to examine the extent to which social dominance orientation (SDO) shapes how people view the language of law enforcement. Four treatments are tested: procedural justice, rapport, deference, and direct.

Findings

The authors find that, overall, exclusively emphasizing rapport – as opposed to procedural justice, deference, or directness – is not …

Immigrants And Crime, Daniel L. Stageman

Publications and Research

The gap between public perception of immigrant criminality and the research consensus on immigrants’ actual rates of criminal participation is persistent and cross-cultural. While the available evidence shows that immigrants worldwide tend to participate in criminal activity at rates slightly lower than the native-born, media and political discourse portraying immigrants as uniquely crime-prone remains a pervasive global phenomenon. This apparent disconnect is rooted in the dynamics of othering, or the tendency to dehumanize and criminalize identifiable out-groups. Given that most migration decisions are motivated by economic factors, othering is commonly used to justify subjecting immigrants to exploitative labor practices, with …