Criminology and Criminal Justice Commons^™

Grassroots Approach Of Embracing Survivors To Inform The Fight Against Human Trafficking, Christina S. Bentch, Gordon A. Crews

Criminal Justice Faculty Publications

When human trafficking survivors work as “informants and advocates,” they keep systems trying to end this horrific crime honest and open to receiving new input. Grassroots approaches can inform many of the systems survivors pass through to improve or add to policies and procedures. Survivors can reveal new dynamics of transnational criminal networks and the development of new indicators and typologies in several systems. The systems discussed in this chapter will highlight the benefits and barriers to approaching an anti-trafficking agenda through a systems theory lens. The authors suggest ways to amend the limitations of these current systems by utilizing …

Using Google Alerts To Study Police Crime, Chloe Wentzlof, Philip M. Stinson, John Liederbach

Criminal Justice Faculty Publications

Presentation from the annual meeting of the Criminology Consortium on October 18, 2021.

Bench Vs. Jury Trials: Sentencing And Conviction Outcomes For Criminally Charged Police Officers, Bethany R. Sager, Chloe Wentzlof, Philip M. Stinson

Criminal Justice Faculty Publications

Presentation at the Annual Meeting of the Midwestern Criminal Justice Association in Chicago, IL, on September 24, 2021.

On-Duty Fatal Police Shootings:Patterns Of Officers Charged With Murder Or Manslaughter, 2005-2020, Chloe Wentzlof, Philip M. Stinson

Criminal Justice Faculty Publications

Presentation at the Annual Meeting of the Midwestern Criminal Justice Association in Chicago, IL, on September 24, 2021.

Racial Disparities In Police Crime Victimization, Philip M. Stinson, Chloe Wentzlof, John Liederbach, Steven L. Brewer

Criminal Justice Faculty Publications

No abstract provided.

Media Framing, Moral Panic And Covid-19: A Comparative Analysis Of China, South Korea, And The Us., Deena Devore, Sinyong Choi, Yudu Li, Hong Lu

Criminal Justice Faculty Publications

COVID-19 is perhaps the single most impactful event defining 2020 globally. Drawing on theory on media typology involving freedom and responsibility, media framing and moral panic theories, this paper examines media coverage on COVID-19 in three countries, China, South Korea and the United States. Data were obtained from six news outlets, Xinhua News, South China Morning Post, Chosun, Hankyoreh, CNN and Breitbart, two from each of the three countries. More than 1,000 COVID-19 related reports, spanning six days (the last day of January to June, 2020) were selected and coded based on common priming themes such as tone, the othering, …

Covid-19 Student Mental Health Check Ii, Dianna Blankenship, Irma S. Jones

Criminal Justice Faculty Publications

The year 2020 will forever be known as the year of the COVID-19 pandemic which has affected the entire population in one way or another. What began in January 2020 still has the world population firmly in its grip a year later. The students’ responses, in their own words, to changes in living, daily `routines, and health fears can be seen in the following paper. In this article, the responses of students in several undergraduate classes at a Hispanic serving institution in south Texas were collected and synthesized. The 155 responses were divided into seven frequently observed and repeated themes: …

Covid-19 Student Mental Health Check, Dianna Blankenship, Irma S. Jones

Criminal Justice Faculty Publications

The COVID-19 pandemic has produced many changes in the lives of our students and families. In this article, the responses of students in criminal justice classes at a Hispanic serving institution in south Texas were collected and synthesized. The 252 responses were divided into seven frequently observed and repeated themes: jobs and job related, school and courses, graduation, routine, family, positivity, and groceries/shopping. Findings for this time period matched what much of what the national and international news and reports have all reported. It indicates that, as teaching professionals, we must be mindful to provide the added support to assist …

Folie À Deux In The 21st Century: Qanon And The American Dream Delusion, Gordon A. Crews, Christina S. Bentch, Garrison A. Crews

Criminal Justice Faculty Publications

The purpose of this chapter is to use the concept of folie à deux (or shared delusion disorder) to examine the phenomena of “Q” and the “QAnon” movement in the 21st century. The insurrection which occurred on January 6, 2021 during the attack on the United States’ capitol, drew the authors’ attention to try to understand the reason for this mass violence and to determine what individuals, motivations, and beliefs brought this violence to life. The allegory of Plato’s Cave is used by the authors to offer the reader a context to place the current increasingly bizarre claims and conspiracies …

The American K-12 School Violence Incident: A Brief Study, Gordon A. Crews, Garrison A. Crews

Criminal Justice Faculty Publications

The authors give an overview of a research project that examined in detail 106 characteristics of 78 school violence incidents that occurred in the United States between 1979 and 2011. The result is an extensive overview of the location, date, and time of school violence incidents; the school environment in which violence occurred; the school violence incident itself; the characteristics of the perpetrators involved; characteristics of weapons used; and injuries incurred. The authors pose to the reader six major findings of the characteristics of K-12 school violence incidents in the United States which they argue must be considered as we …

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 …

Life On Death Row, Gordon A. Crews, Stephen C. Stanko, Garrison A. Crews, Luzenski A. Cottrell

Criminal Justice Faculty Publications

The purpose of this chapter is to examine the general conditions for those living on death row in the United States. This examination involves the various restrictions of freedom outside of cell, size and conditions in cells, allowances on personal property, and limits on food and recreation. Special attention is given to discussing the unique relationships that often develop between correctional officers and death row inmates. These relationships are explored through the phenomena of “Hustling” (i.e., any actions taken by an inmate to generate revenue, power, or control over their environment). This type of behavior often is used as …

Exposure To Urbanized Poverty And Attitude Change: A Longitudinal Case Study On Service-Learning With Rural Undergraduate Criminal Justice Students, April Terry Ph.D., Ashley Lockwood

Criminal Justice Faculty Publications

Criminal justice departments recognize the value of connecting students to real-world problems through service-learning activities. Yet, challenges exist in exposing students to diverse populations. The current study stepped outside the classroom, involving an extra-curricular group of criminal justice students, in a unique service-learning project. Students from a rurally located university traveled to the most poverty-stricken area in Los Angeles, California, known as Skid Row. Students partnered with The Burrito Project, making and serving 950 burritos to people living on the streets. To assess the impact on exposure to poverty, students completed a pre and post-test utilizing the Undergraduate Perceptions of …

Satellite Sensory Mind Control Technology: An Examination Of The Kelly Elementary School Shooting (Carlsbad, California, October 8, 2010), Gordon A. Crews

Criminal Justice Faculty Publications

•The increasing number of K-12 school violence incidents across the United States since the late 1990s seems to have only been mitigated in 2020 due to various “shelter in place” orders enacted since March requiring schools to switch to an “online format” in their teaching of students in response to the COVID-19 pandemic. •Although there have been actual “domestic acts of violence” witnessed by teachers in working with their students through online formats like Skype or Zoom. •Eventually, all students will return to the traditional classroom thus reviving the fears and concerns over violent attacks at and upon American schools. …

Child (Un)Awareness Of Parental Incarceration As A Risk Factor: Evidence From South Korea, Youngki Woo, Melissa A. Kowalski

Criminal Justice Faculty Publications

A large body of research has been devoted to the relationship between parental incarceration and adverse outcomes for children, but such studies often compare children of incarcerated parents to those whose parents have never been imprisoned. Research is lacking regarding the effects of parental incarceration on children aware of their parent’s imprisonment compared to those who are unaware of their parent’s incarceration. In the current study we use propensity score weighting with a sample of 219 incarcerated Korean parents to examine differences in developmental outcomes between children cognizant of their parent’s incarceration and those who are unaware of parental imprisonment. …

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 …

Police Sexual Violence: A Few Bad Apples Or A Cultural Norm?, Philip M. Stinson, John Liederbach, Robert W. Taylor, Chloe Wentzlof, Natalie M. Wise, Bethany R. Sager, Marta Bettinelli

Criminal Justice Faculty Publications

Approximately 1,600 police officers across the United States were arrested for sex-related crimes during the ten year period 2005-2014. The arrested officers were employed by more than 1,100 state and local law enforcement agencies located in all fifty states and the District of Columbia. These data suggest that police sexual violence is a problem involving more than a few “bad apples” and that the phenomenon of police sexual violence may be a cultural norm within many state and local law enforcement agencies.

This presentation was accepted for presentation at the annual meeting of the Academy of Criminal Justice Sciences in …

An Exploration Of Correctional Counselor Workloads In A Midwestern State, Adam K. Matz, Nathan C. Lowe

Criminal Justice Faculty Publications

Time studies have been conducted with a variety of occupations. However, no known research has examined the workload of correctional counselors. The Iowa Department of Corrections, in partnership with the American Probation and Parole Association, performed the first known workload evaluation of this population. Over a hundred correctional counselors participated in a time study informed by a task analysis conducted with a representative advisory committee. The most common activities concerned inmate requests, classification, assessment, release planning, treatment group work, and administrative tasks. Most concerning, respondents indicated anywhere from 20-to-50% of the activities engaged in were unsatisfactorily completed.

Effects Of Different Types Of Forensic Evidence On Arrest Probability: Toward A New Typology Of Evidence, Morgan Steele Ph.D.

Criminal Justice Faculty Publications

Forensic evidence is an important component in criminal justice decision - making. Yet, few studies have examined the effectiveness of the various macro - types of forensic evidence in facilitating arrest. This article analyzed over 4000 case files from five cities to determine how the collection and analysis of three macro - types of forensic evidence (Classification, Identification, and Progenitor) affect the probability of arrest across five different crime types. The results of several sets of logistic regression analyses suggest that forensic evidence affects the probability of arrest, but that the impact is not consistent across different types of crime …

Mother Knows Best: A Brief Examination Of The 1982- 2019 Us Mass Shootings Data From Mother Jones’S Investigation, Gordon A. Crews, Garrison A. Crews

Criminal Justice Faculty Publications

In the aftermath of the movie theater mass shooting in July of 2012 in Aurora, Colorado, Mother Jones magazine created one of the first open-source databases documenting mass shootings in the United States. They focused on documenting rampage shootings in public places which resulted in four or more victims killed by the attacker(s). Their initial database consisted of incidents between 1982 and 2012, then an additional 54 cases were added to this data base of incidents which occurred between 2013 and August 2019. The purpose of this chapter is to analyze the incidents gathered in this complete database from 1982 …

Mi Casa No Es Tu Casa: Attitudes Of Rio Grande Valley Police Regarding Immigration And Crime, Catherine E. Burton, Gordon A. Crews

Criminal Justice Faculty Publications

No abstract provided.

Extremism In Society, Gordon A. Crews

Criminal Justice Faculty Publications

No abstract provided.

Crime By Policewomen In The United States, 2005-2014, Chloe Wentzlof, Philip M. Stinson

Criminal Justice Faculty Publications

This study is a replication and extension of Stinson, Todak, and Dodge’s (2015) study of crime by policewomen across the United States in years 2005-2007. The sample for the current study includes 597 arrest cases involving 555 female police officers, each of whom were arrested during the decade 2005-2014. The arrested female officers were employed by 353 state and local law enforcement agencies located in 273 counties and independent cities within 44 states and the District of Columbia. Findings indicate that crimes committed by policewomen are most often violence-related, alcohol-related, and/or profit-motivated offenses. Descriptive and bivariate statistics are reported on …

Police Crime Across The Life Course: An Exploratory Study Of Arrested Officers Who Reoffend, Chloe Wentzlof, Philip M. Stinson

Criminal Justice Faculty Publications

The purpose of this study is to improve policing and inform the public about police crime and patterns of repeat or habitual police crime offenders. The study identified 10,287 arrest cases involving 8,495 individual nonfederal sworn law enforcement officers, each of whom were arrested during the decade 2005-2014. Of these, 505 officers (5.94%) were arrested more than once in the study years and account for 1,343 (13.06%) of the arrest cases in our database. This poster presents data on the criminal arrest cases and the officers who have been arrested multiple times while employed by a state or local law …

K-12 School Killers Speak: A Qualitative Analysis Of Interviews, Surveys, Holiday Cards, And Conversations, Gordon A. Crews, Garrison A. Crews

Criminal Justice Faculty Publications

•The purpose of this presentation is to offer: •Qualitative content analysis of various communications •interviews, surveys, holiday cards, and conversations •36 current/former incarcerated K-12 American school violence perpetrators •their views on the causes of K-12 school violence in the United States •Extremely candid and unique information •many freely offered insights as to their own involvement in incidents •analyzed using the qualitative data analysis software package NVivo 12 •Coding categories and themes •analytical units/categories •relationship between teachers and students •personal views on such violence (placing of blame/lack of personal guilt) •causes of violence (revenge, mistreatment, hopelessness, environment), and, possible solutions •Materials …

Understanding Offender Needs Over Forms Of Isolation Using A Repeated Measures Design, Michael F. Campagna, Melissa A. Kowalski, Laurie A. Drapela, Mary K. Stohr, Elizabeth Thompson Tollefsbol, Youngki Woo, Xiaohan Mei, Zachary K. Hamilton

Criminal Justice Faculty Publications

A number of studies find that solitary confinement is associated with mental impairment. Yet, confinement dosage and which individual and exogenous variables lead to mental impairment have received less attention. This study of 2 years of data on disciplinary segregation male inmates employs a repeated measures design to examine how isolation affects mental health and psychological needs. The findings indicate that the duration of disciplinary segregation and incarceration, incidence of homelessness, and other individual-level factors had deleterious effects on mental health and psychological needs. Vocational programming and a high school education were found to be protective factors for psychological needs.

Working With The Police: A Positive Outlook From A National Sample Of Probation And Parole Officers, Adam K. Matz, Bitna Kim

Criminal Justice Faculty Publications

No abstract provided.

Reconciliation Potential Of Rwandans Convicted Of Genocide, Kevin Barnes-Ceeney, Laurie Leitch, Lior Gideon

Criminal Justice Faculty Publications

This study examines the reconciliation potential of Rwandans incarcerated for the crime of genocide. Utilising survey data from 302 male and female prisoners incar‐ cerated in the Rwandan Correctional System, this study explores genocide perpe‐ trators’ depression, anxiety, anger-hostility and somatic symptoms, levels of post‐ traumatic stress, degree of social support and attitudes towards unity and reconci‐ liation. The data demonstrate that engaging in killing can have deep psychological impacts for genocide perpetrators. The data indicate that although more than two decades have passed since the genocide, perpetrators are experiencing high levels of genocide-related posttraumatic suffering. Perpetrators are persistently re-experi‐ …

The "Great American Crime Decline": Possible Explanations, Maria Tcherni-Buzzeo

Criminal Justice Faculty Publications

This chapter examines the most important features of the crime decline in the United States during the 1990s-2010s but also takes a broader look at the violence declines of the last three centuries. The author argues that violent and property crime trends might have diverged in the 1990s, with property crimes increasingly happening in the online sphere and thus traditional property crime statistics not being reflective of the full picture. An important distinction is made between ‘contact crimes’ and crimes that do not require a victim and offender to be present in the same physical space. Contrary to the uncertainties …

Disciplinary Segregation’S Effects On Inmate Behavior: Institutional And Community Outcomes, Youngki Woo, Laurie A. Drapela, Michael F. Campagna, Mary K. Stohr, Zachary K. Hamilton, Xiaohan Mei, Elizabeth Thompson Tollefsbol

Criminal Justice Faculty Publications

Disciplinary segregation (DS) is practiced in a variety of correctional settings and a growing body of research explores its subsequent effects among offenders. The present study contributes to this literature by analyzing the impact of short-term DS on violent infractions and community recidivism among a sample of inmates in Washington State. We assessed the impact of DS on these outcomes from deterrence and stain theory perspectives while controlling for social support variables such as visitations and correctional programming. Mentally ill offenders were excluded, as their abilities to make rational choices may be inconsistent with deterrence theory. Results show DS does …