Digital Commons Network^™

Mental Illness, Substance Use, And Co-Occurring Disorders Among Jail Inmates: Prevalence, Recidivism, And Gender Differences, Nicky Dalbir, Emily M. Wright, Benjamin Steiner

Criminology and Criminal Justice Faculty Publications

Mental illnesses, substance use, and their co-occurrence are significant predictors of maladaptive outcomes such as aggression, criminal behavior, and recidivism. These problems are theorized to be more prevalent and problematic among female inmates than male inmates and may be more relevant in jail settings. However, few studies have examined the relationship between these factors, including gender differences among the jail population. This study seeks to fill these gaps by examining – a) the prevalence of these problems, b) their effects on recidivism, and c) gender differences in these relationships – among jail inmates. Results indicate that mental illness significantly increased …

Baseline Needs Assessment For A Hospital-Based Violence Intervention Program 1-Year Pilot, Nathan Foje, Ashley Ann Raposo-Hadley, Ashley Farrens, Jenny Burt, Charity H. Evans, Zachary M. Bauman, Gaylene Armstrong, Mark Foxall, Julie D. Garman

Criminology and Criminal Justice Faculty Publications

The objectives of the present study were to measure and describe the baseline participant needs of a hospital-based violence intervention 1-year pilot program, assess differences in expected hospital revenue based on changes in health insurance coverage resulting from program implementation and discuss the program’s limitations. Methods: Between September 2020 and September 2021 Encompass Omaha enrolled 36 participants. A content analysis of 1199 progress notes detailing points of contact with participants was performed to determine goal status. Goals were categorized and goal status was defined as met, in process, dropped, or participant refusal. Results: The most frequently identified needs were help …

The Cpacs Collective June 2022, College Of Public Affairs And Community Service, University Of Nebraska At Omaha

CPACS Newsletters

The College of Public Affairs and Community Service (CPACS) newsletter that reported on the news, collaborations, events, and general happenings of the UNO College of Public Affairs and Community Service. This newsletter has had many names and variations over the years including SPACS Newsletter (1973); Newsletter of the College of Public Affairs and Community Service (1973-1974): Happenings (1974-1980s); and the current e-newsletter titled the CPACS Collective (2021-)

Facilitating Suspicious Activity Reporting At The Community Level: Family Members’ Observations Of Non-Ideological Risk Factors And Signs Of Radicalization Among Violent Extremists, Karyn Sporer

Reports, Projects, and Research

David Headley’s pathway to violent radicalization was no secret before he helped plan the 2008 Mumbai attacks that left 166 dead, including six Americans. His ex-girlfriend, wife, friends, and mother all expressed concern about his radicalization to local community members and government agencies, including New York City’s Joint Terrorism Task Force and the U.S. Embassy in Islamabad. Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab’s father, concerned with a disturbing text message from his son in October 2009, raised alarms at the U.S. Embassy in Nigeria two months before his son’s failed underwear bombing of a transatlantic flight from Amsterdam to Detroit on Christmas Day. …

“Put It In Your Toolbox”: How Vocational Programs Support Formerly Incarcerated Persons Through Reentry, Katelynn Towne, Michael Campagna, Ryan E. Spohn, Amber Richey

Criminology and Criminal Justice Faculty Publications

This study utilized life story interviews with 21 formerly incarcerated individuals to examine the role vocational reentry programming played in the desistance process. We begin with a review of theories of desistance and the state of reentry programs. A thematic analysis revealed that providers assisted individuals to understand their behavioral trajectories and to take steps toward desistance. Further, participants felt empowered by program provided social support, developed strategies to overcome employment barriers, and held resilient and optimistic attitudes in changing their identities and behavioral trajectories. We conclude with a discussion on how these findings can inform desistance theory and reentry …

Do Body-Worn Cameras Reduce Disparities In Police Behavior In Minority Communities? Evidence Of Nuanced Influences Across Black And Hispanic Neighborhoods, Jessica Huff

Criminology and Criminal Justice Faculty Publications

Research Summary

The adoption of body-worn cameras (BWCs) is often promoted in response to contentious police use of force incidents involving minority civilians. BWCs are expected to improve policing outcomes by enhancing accountability, although researchers have yet to determine whether BWCs can reduce racial/ethnic disparities. I examine whether BWCs mitigate the influence of neighborhood racial/ethnic context on arrests and use of force using cross-classified logistic regression models to examine the outcomes of 900,000+ police–civilian contacts in Phoenix. Arrests were significantly more likely to occur in Hispanic and Black neighborhoods before and after BWC deployment, even accounting for situational, officer, and …

Promoting Women Police Officers: Does Exam Format Matter?, Jessica Huff, Natalie Todak

Criminology and Criminal Justice Faculty Publications

Despite decades of calls to diversify policing, women continue to be underrepresented in the field, and this problem compounds when looking up the ranks. One explanation is that police organizations are “gendered” in that their structures, processes, and cultures support men’s career advancement over women’s. To investigate this possibility, we analyzed survey results from 685 women police officers to examine whether career advancement is influenced by the composition of an agency’s promotional process. Most agencies used a combination of testing components, with written exams being the most common, but also a heavy reliance on interviews, assessment centers, and career portfolios. …

The Achilles Heel Of Police Body-Worn Cameras: Understanding The Factors That Influence Variation In Body-Worn Camera Activation, Charles M. Katz, Jessica Huff

Criminology and Criminal Justice Faculty Publications

While body-worn cameras (BWCs) are increasingly becoming commonplace in police organizations, researchers and policymakers still know little about their implementation in the field and the factors related to their actual use. Using data collected from 146,601 incidents in Phoenix, Arizona, the present study examines the prevalence and correlates of BWC activation. In doing so, we examine the impact of incident-level factors, officer characteristics, neighborhood context, and changes in BWC activation policy on whether an officer who is assigned to wear a BWC activates their camera during a police-citizen contact. Cross-classified models are used to simultaneously assess the influence of factors …

Innovations In Supervision Reducing Violence And Recidivism Through Vrp Aftercare And Cbi Open Groups, Jennifer Miller, Ryan E. Spohn, Michael Campagna

Reports

Nebraska Division of Parole Supervision has created a violence-reduction (VRP) aftercare program and a CBI intervention which maintains an open group structure to effectively reduce the recidivism rate of high-risk parole clients, particularly those who have been identified as likely to reoffend violently and those who have previously failed on community supervision. Long-term goals are to ensure 1) the highest risk parole clients receive a higher dosage of evidence-based interventions, 2) the reduced use of parole sanctions and revocations and 3) a reduced overall recidivism rate for parole clients. The ‘open’ nature of the programs (i.e., clients can begin at …

University Of Nebraska At Omaha Commencement: May 2022, University Of Nebraska At Omaha

Commencement Programs

No abstract provided.

The Impact Of Stimulus Age On Emotional Face Recognition, Morgan Goslar

Theses/Capstones/Creative Projects

Research supports the theory that stimuli, including experiences, words, and faces, with an emotional connotation are more easily remembered than stimuli with a more neutral connotation. The scientific community has expanded this theory by manipulating a variety of variables, including participant age, time between encoding and retrieval, and “taboo” words in comparison to more neutral categories, to name a few. The current study seeks to expand upon the previous findings by examining emotional and neutral facial stimuli while manipulating the age of the stimulus face. To do this, participants were shown 10 photos in each of the following categories: young …

Anger In The Overlooked: A Gendered Analysis Of The January 6, 2021 Capitol Hill Breach, Elizabeth Bender

Theses/Capstones/Creative Projects

The violence seen at the U.S. Capitol Building on January 6, 2021 has sparked concern at the threat of domestic violent extremism (DVE) within the United States. Over 700 individuals have been federally charged in connection with the events of January 6 including almost 100 women. Women’s involvement in DVE is underestimated and understudied. This project utilized a corpus of over 1,000 court documents to content code variables relating to violence and DVE affiliation for the individuals who have been federally charged in relation to January 6th. The results of the coding process were then used to compare the rates …

Medical Ethics: From The Perspective Of Undergraduate Pre-Health Students, Hannah Im

Theses/Capstones/Creative Projects

The burden of ethical decision-making is a significant contributor to compassion fatigue in healthcare professionals. Due to the impact of moral conflicts, it may be beneficial to reassess the effectiveness of current ethics education and training. While previous studies have surveyed a range of medical professionals and students, it remains unclear if exposure to ethics topics during undergraduate education could better prepare future healthcare workers. Thus, there is a need to identify the necessity of introducing ethics courses into the required pre-health curriculum. The following study took the first step to gauge this by surveying undergraduate pre-health students on their …

Eco: A Sustainability Education Chatbot, Joey Gruber

Theses/Capstones/Creative Projects

There is a lack of access to information about sustainability from what the climate crisis is to how to recycle properly. For both sustainability-informed and uninformed individuals, learning new information about sustainability and reducing their waste in a way that compliments their lifestyle is time-consuming, requires strategic skills, and can cost them money. ECO is an audio and text-based chatbot that teaches users to be more environmentally conscious through waste reduction.

Fact Book, Academic Year 2021, Uno Office Of Institutional Effectiveness

Fact Book

The Fact Book presents important campus information in data tables and charts. Included are details regarding students, faculty, staff, and alumni. Generally, data are broken out by college, rank, level, gender, age and ethnicity for both spring and fall semesters, past to present. There are a few academic year tables that include information on tuition & fees, student credit hours by program, and degrees conferred. We wish to thank the many individuals and departments at the University for their contributions to the Fact Book.

Family Support Evaluation Fy 2017-2021, Julie D. Garman, Anne M. Hobbs, Erin Wasserburger, Juvenile Justice Institute, University Of Nebraska At Omaha

Reports

Evidence-Based Nebraska.

Family Support programs are prevention-focused efforts that seek to improve upon family function and communication through referrals and interactions with youth and families in Nebraska. Youth and families are referred for various reasons and community-based programs respond to these youth and family needs in a variety of ways, depending upon their individual needs and involve organizations throughout the community as needed. Through interviews with Family Support staff and directors, we learned that programs take different approaches to providing services to youth and families that are individualized to address emergent issues. Youth and families are commonly referred to the …

Divergent Perspectives: Autistic Adults' Perceptions Of The Police, Megan M. Parry, Jessica Huff

Criminology and Criminal Justice Faculty Publications

Purpose

Much of the current criminological research regarding police and the autistic community focuses on police training for interacting with autistic individuals or the experiences, fears and perceptions of parents or caregivers. Largely absent from the criminological research are the opinions and perceptions of autistic adults. The purpose of the paper is to examine perceptions of the police and police-led initiatives among these individuals.

Design/methodology/approach

The authors analyze data from 121 autistic adults regarding their perceptions of the police and police-led autism awareness efforts using ordinary least squares (OLS) regression. Variables of interest include perceptions of procedural justice, police treatment …

The Cpacs Collective March 2022, College Of Public Affairs And Community Service, University Of Nebraska At Omaha

CPACS Newsletters

The College of Public Affairs and Community Service (CPACS) newsletter that reported on the news, collaborations, events, and general happenings of the UNO College of Public Affairs and Community Service. This newsletter has had many names and variations over the years including SPACS Newsletter (1973); Newsletter of the College of Public Affairs and Community Service (1973-1974): Happenings (1974-1980s); and the current e-newsletter titled the CPACS Collective (2021-)

Whose Lives Matter? Race, Public Opinion, And Military Conflict, Whitney Hua, Thomas Jamieson

Public Administration Faculty Publications

This paper examines how race affects attitudes towards conflict beyond the water’s edge. While prior literature largely assumes that all casualties affect voters’ attitudes similarly, we argue that attitudes toward casualties are importantly shaped by racial-group identities. More specifically, we argue that domestic responses to international events – namely American casualties in military conflict – are conditioned by individuals’ attitudes and biases toward the race of fallen soldiers. Using a novel survey experiment, we find that while people become more supportive of conflict when informed of any soldier’s death, support for escalating conflict only increases when the fallen soldiers have …

Violent Victimization Among Immigrants: Using The National Violent Death Reporting System To Examine Foreign-Born Homicide Victimization In The United States, Kayla R. Freemon, Melissa A. Gutierrez, Jessica Huff, Hyunjung Cheon, David Choate, Taylor Cox, Charles M. Katz

Criminology and Criminal Justice Faculty Publications

Limited research attention has focused on homicides involving foreign-born victims. Using data from the National Violent Death Reporting System, we examined 9428 homicides that occurred in 2017 in the United States across 32 states and D.C. Approximately 8% of homicide victims were foreign-born. Homicide victimization rates were substantially lower for foreign-born persons, compared to U.S.-born persons. However, foreign-born persons from Honduras, El Salvador, and Jamaica had a substantially higher risk of homicide victimization. Notably, few homicides involving foreign-born victims were gang- or drug-trade-related. With the growing number of immigrants in the United States, policy and prevention efforts should be guided …

Defense, Disrespect, And #Deadly: A Qualitative Exploration Of Precursors To Youth Violence Informed Through Hospital-Based Violence Prevention Program Follow Up, Katherine B. Snyder, Ashley Ann Raposo-Hadley, Charity H. Evans, Ashley Farrens, Jenny Burt, Gaylene Armstrong, Julie D. Garman, Lindsey Wylie, Mark Foxall

Criminology and Criminal Justice Faculty Publications

Success of youth violence intervention and prevention effects, particularly for gun violence, will be enhanced when efforts are appropriately informed by the antecedents and context of violence. Youth violence is guided by social and cultural norms that are shifting with the rise of technology. Bullying, gang violence, and self-directed violence is increasingly found to occur in the online space influencing peer groups across contexts. Through focus groups with youth at risk for violence and victimization, this study finds three themes emerge as common precursors to violence: defense of self or others, disrespect of self or family occurring in traditional community-based …

Completions 2022-2023, Systems Intelligence And Data Analytics, University Of Nebraska At Omaha

IPEDS Completions

Welcome to the IPEDS Completions survey component. The Completions component is one of several IPEDS components that is conducted during the Fall data collection period. It collects the number of degrees and certificates awarded by field of study, level of award, race/ethnicity, and gender. The reporting period for the Completions component is during the 12-month time period beginning July 1 of the previous calendar year and ending June 30 of the current calendar year; therefore, for this year’s Completions component, the reporting period is between July 1, 2021 and June 30, 2022. The Completions component is also collecting the number …

Annual Report 2022, Nebraska Center For Justice Research, University Of Nebraska At Omaha, Ryan E. Spohn

Reports

Mission Statement The Nebraska Center for Justice Research’s (NCJR) mission is “to develop and sustain research capacity internal to the State of Nebraska, assist the Legislature in research, evaluation, and policymaking to reduce recidivism, promote the use of evidence-based practices in corrections, and improve public safety.” Our research focus is to use data, research, and evaluation to reduce recidivism, promote the use of evidence-based practices, and improve public safety in Nebraska with an emphasis on reducing prison overcrowding

2022 Year In Review, Leonard And Shirley Goldstein Center For Human Rights - University Of Nebraska At Omaha

GCHR Reports

This New Year’s Eve, we have an anniversary to celebrate! Five years ago, the Leonard and Shirley Goldstein Center for Human Rights at the University of Nebraska at Omaha officially opened its doors. The Goldstein Center for Human Rights and the new Goldstein Family Community Chair in Human Rights were established in January of 2017, the result of a decades-long partnership with UNO Religious Studies. This faculty-governed Center is housed in the UNO College of Arts & Sciences and is composed of over fifty affiliated UNO faculty from six different Colleges at UNO. Since its founding, it has established a …

Internal Funding Newsletter, Academic Year 2021-2022, Uno Office Of Research And Creative Activity

Internal Funding Newsletters

The University of Nebraska at Omaha is committed to exceptional education, groundbreaking research, and the life-long success of our students and alumni. The 2021- 2022 Academic Year brought many exciting opportunities for us to invest in a multitude of funding programs that promote research and creative activity. This year’s programs provided over $600,000 for student and faculty projects that reflect the broad range of scholarly interests of the UNO community, including evaluating marmoset stress responses to music, examining factors that influence undergraduate women to leave (or remain in) computer science majors, the human experience of dementia, aging, and caregiving, and …

The Juvenile Reentry Mentoring Project: Adaptations During Covid-19, Anne M. Hobbs, Marta Dzieniszewska

Criminology and Criminal Justice Faculty Publications

Delinquent youths oft en do not receive the opportunity to be mentored. Th is is especially true for youths who have committed serious law violations or are detained for multiple law violations. In the United States, youths with the most serious off enses are oft en committed to detention, or rehabilitation, or treatment centers. Since 2011, the Juvenile Reentry Mentoring Project (JRMP) has matched mentors to youths detained in Nebraska Detention, and Treatment Facilities. Th e Nebraska Youth Rehabilitation, and Treatment Centers (YRTCs), specifi cally, are for youths with the highest level of needs and who have exhausted all other …

Racial Attitudes And Criminal Justice Policy, Francis T. Cullen, Leah C. Butler, Amanda Graham

Criminology and Criminal Justice Faculty Publications

Empirical research on public policy preferences must attend to Whites’ animus toward Blacks. For a quarter-century, studies have consistently found that Kinder and Sanders’s four-item measure of “racial resentment” is a robust predictor of almost every social and criminal justice policy opinion. Racial animus increases Whites’ opposition to social welfare policies that benefit Blacks and their support for punitive policies that disadvantage this “outgroup.” Any public opinion study that fails to include racial resentment risks omitted variable bias. Despite the continuing salience of out-group animus, recent scholarship, especially in political science, has highlighted other racial attitudes that can influence public …

Examining The Effect Of Perceived Responsibility On Online Bystander Intervention, Target Hardening, And Inaction, Leah C. Butler, Amanda Graham, Bonnie S. Fisher, Billy Henson, Bradford W. Reyns

Criminology and Criminal Justice Faculty Publications

Failure to take responsibility for intervening has been identified as a primary barrier to bystander intervention. Building on these findings, we examine how perceptions of responsibility affect responses to witnessing victimization in the online realm—a topic that has received limited attention. Using a maximum-likelihood selection model, we analyze data from the Pew American Trends Panel (N = 3709) to estimate the effects of respondents’ perceptions of the role different groups should play in addressing online harassment on their likelihood to engage in intervention, target hardening, or inaction in response to witnessing online harassment, conditioned upon their likelihood of having …

The Influence Of Youth And Parent Reports Of Parental Knowledge And Monitoring And Reporting Discrepancy On High Risk Youth Offending, Leana A. Bouffard, Gaylene Armstrong

Criminology and Criminal Justice Faculty Publications

Introduction

Positive parenting practices are known to be related to lower levels of youth offending. Questions remain as to the overlap between youth and parent perceptions of parenting practices, and the relationship of perception discrepancies with youth offending. This study examines the concordance of parenting behaviors reports, the relationship between parent and youth perceptions of parenting measures with youth offending, and whether discordant youth and parent reports are related to heterogeneity in youth offending.

Methods

Survey data from 818 high risk U.S. youth averaging 16 years old who participated in the Pathways to Desistance study and his or her parent …

Agatha Christie: A Look Into Criminal Procedure And Gender, Carmella Monico

Theses/Capstones/Creative Projects

With 2020 being the 100^th year since Agatha Christie’s first novel, The Mysterious Affair at Styles, was published, it seems fitting to celebrate such an accomplished author with a deeper look into the inner workings of her novels. While she wrote mystery novels that involved many detectives, the two most popular are Hercule Poirot and Miss Marple. This paper will examine these two detectives in regard to the criminal procedure each uses to solve their respective cases. Would her detectives’ work hold up in court then or even today? Additionally, the difference in gender between Poirot and Marple …