The public’s perspective regarding sanctioning offenders, especially violent and nonviolent, tend to support either a rehabilitative or balanced approach to justice. This study aims to better understand perspectives on sanctioning violent and nonviolent mental health offenders. We draw on a survey of 575 college students from a large university in the south. We assess public perceptions of whether

This article describes a unique researcher and policymaker partnership aimed at assessing the racial and ethnic impact of proposed criminal justice legislation. Using data from several Florida agencies, Florida State University projected trends in population and criminal justice outcomes to assess the potential impact on racial and ethnic disparities of ten bills. This article describes the project

Although prior studies have examined the association between sexual violence victimization and violent behaviors, few studies have investigated the association between sexual violence victimization and weapon carrying among adolescents in the United States. The objective of this study was to investigate the association between sexual violence victimization and weapon carrying among adolescents. Data

Criminology as an independent profession established itself just over a half century ago. An analysis of oral histories collected with seventeen leading scholars in criminology reveal how the profession has worked to establish institutional legitimacy over that time. Extending a thesis of boundary drawing (Gieryn, 1999) the present effort first briefly traces the field’s emancipation from its former

The primary purpose of the current study was to understand immigrant hate crime victimization in the U.S. Specifically, the authors analyzed the most recent data from the National Crime Victimization Survey to explore the factors that influence hate crime experiences and reporting by immigrant victims. Results from the binary logistic regression analyses revealed significant relationships between immigration

This study examines the association between extra-familial criminal victimizations in adolescence and two mental health outcomes—depressive symptomology and suicide ideation—reported in adulthood (mean age = 28). Guided by the adverse childhood experiences and the stress process model, this association is explored while considering other salient predictors of adult mental health, including childhood

The current study explores cyberstalking victims’ perceived offender motivation for using a sample of 576 young adults who had been repeatedly pursued online by someone they knew within the previous 12-months. Results revealed that cyberstalking victims most frequently believed that the perpetrator engaged in the repeated unwanted contacts because they were motivated by affection (47.22%), rejection

Scholars have examined associations between treatment orientation and staff outcomes such as stress, burnout and turnover. However, existing operationalizations of treatment orientation are inconsistent, and the construct is often measured dichotomously, which fails to capture the complexity of staff experiences and perceptions. Our mixed method study of a newly implemented therapeutic program in a

Parole officers serve a critical role for inmates who are reentering society by monitoring the transitional and rehabilitation process post incarceration. Recently, there has been increased concern among correctional professionals in regard to addressing economic and management barriers of aging inmates. Elderly offenders require unique resources with regard to their health and housing and parole officers

Some American law enforcement agencies continue to experience disruptions in the level of trust and legitimacy ascribed to them by their communities. Citizen review boards (CRBs), may be an effective means for improving the police-community relationship. Utilizing a framework grounded in procedural justice and citizen participation, this study examines whether a link exists between CRBs and community

Using Twitter messages published online from October 2018 to June 2019, and opinion mining (OM) technology, the current study analyzes the geographic sentiments toward police in 82 metropolitan areas within the United States. Building on the frameworks of the neighborhood social contextual models, the construct validity of “sentiment toward the police” is assessed via its relationship with the features

Despite numerous studies debunking the association between immigrants and crime, many residents in Pennsylvania continue to associate immigration with criminal offending, and some communities have enacted (or attempted to enact) more restrictive policies towards immigrants. These policies, and the anti-immigrant rhetoric that has become commonplace at the national level, have created a caste system

In October 2017, #MeToo became a global hashtag for victims of sexual assault and harassment. In this study, we examine the extent of unwanted sexual experiences and disclosure, as well as perceptions of #MeToo, to assess differences among students who were represented and underrepresented in #MeToo coverage. Using a stratified random sample of students at a private university in the mid-Atlantic region

Previous research indicates that individual-level factors, such as low self-control, are related to criminal involvement (Pratt & Cullen, 2000). Comparatively less research, however, has examined whether individual-level factors may also influence the likelihood of being apprehended for criminal behavior. This study addresses this gap in the literature by examining the influence of levels of self-control

The #MeToo movement illuminated vast numbers of people who experienced sexual violence, but the exact scope and impact, especially among under-studied populations (e.g., men and sexual minorities) is unclear, due in part to measurement issues. Our objective was to compare the validity of two measures of sexual violence victimization: The Sexual Experiences Survey – Short Form Victimization (SES-SFV)

Is there a “crime gene”? This question has been answered by the scientific community, and the response is a definitive “no.” Yet, it is unclear whether this information has been communicated to the general public. Furthermore, it is unclear whether people’s views about the genetics of crime influence their perceptions of the way offenders should be treated. This study uses attribution theory to understand

When the NIBRS data were introduced by the FBI, they were welcomed as representing a potential revolution in U.S. crime statistics. More than two decades later, however, participation in NIBRS remains limited. In the coming months and years, however, the FBI will transition from the UCR Summary Reporting System (SRS) to NIBRS. Once completed successfully, the ability for researchers and practitioners

The field of criminology and criminal justice encompass broad and complex multidisciplinary topics. Most of the research that falls under these areas uses either quantitative or qualitative methodologies, with historically limited use of mixed methods designs. Research utilizing mixed methods has increased within the social sciences in recent years, including a steadily growing body of mixed method

Amidst the more than 38,000 firearm related deaths in the United States annually, academic researchers, policy makers, and the general public often lack a basic understanding as to how elements of the physical environment work alongside socio-demographic characteristics of neighborhoods to influence the occurrence, prevalence, and spatial patterns in gun crime. Drawing on criminal justice, public health

A substantial body of literature connects direct experience with crime and the criminal justice system to public confidence in the police (Bradford Policing and Society, 24(1): 22-43, 2014; Gibson et al. American Journal of Political Science 47: 354-367, 2003, Political Research Quarterly, 58: 187-201, 2005; Sargeant Policing and Society 27: 927-940, 2017). However, most citizens have limited direct

According to the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), incidents of in-flight sexual assaults have increased in recent years, however, data and details of sexual misconduct that occur on commercial flights are difficult to obtain, particularly in situations that involve non-forcible sexual offenses. Therefore, it is unknown if sexual misconduct is increasing, or if people are reporting incidents more

The growing prevalence of hate material on the Internet has led to mounting concerns from scholars and policymakers alike. While recent scholarship has explored predictors of exposure, perception, and participation in online hate, few studies have empirically examined the social factors that lead individuals to produce cyberhate. Therefore, this work examines the production of online hate using online

Nordic countries incarcerate offenders at much lower rates in comparison with incarceration rates in the United States, and reincarcerate fewer people per capita. Non-custodial alternatives to sanctions, including fines and community service, are used extensively in Finland to reduce negative effects of institutionalization and subsequent disadvantage caused by incarceration. The nature of drug-involved

Critics have challenged that academics in the fields of criminal justice and criminology inadequately impact society due to their focus drifting from research and teaching practices that make a broader difference. Though the field produces research that sometimes affects policy and often directs students towards successful and fulfilling careers, there is legitimacy to the claim that faculty energies

Using 1992–2014 data from the National Incident-Based Reporting System (NIBRS), the present study examines the nature and characteristics of hate crimes against Asian Americans by comparing them with those of hate crimes against African Americans and Hispanics. Minority-general and minority-specific models are proposed to guide the analysis. The findings are mixed. The analyses of all victim-related

The #MeToo movement centers on raising awareness of risky situations for victimization and encourages the general community to intervene in these situations. Similarly, sexual violence awareness programming that take place on college campuses throughout the academic year can prime individuals to be active bystanders. Except for a handful of systematically evaluated bystander intervention programs,

Reported prevalence rates of sexual violence range widely in the literature, even in the same sample when using two different questionnaires of the same construct. These discrepancies are concerning as they indicate we may be underestimating the rate of sexual violence and, therefore, resources and treatment for victims. Thus, the current study aimed to investigate two mechanisms that may contribute

A rapidly growing crime problem in the United States and abroad, package theft is a phenomenon that is of persistent and significant concern to the public. However, the academic study on the subject has been neglected. Because package theft is understudied, the impact it has is difficult to understand, and the crime itself is hard to address. This present study defines package theft, informs readers

Individuals reentering the community after prison can face a host of complex challenges. Social support appears to be an important factor in helping recently released men and women by promoting adjustment and success in multiple areas of life. However, social support during the reentry is not well understood in terms of what types of support help individuals, who can best provide this support, how

We analyze the largest set of nations (n = 55) with a valid measure of gun ownership levels ever used to test the effect of national gun levels on homicide rates. We control for measures of national culture to better isolate the effects of firearm availability. We find that, while national gun levels have a significant positive bivariate correlation with homicide rates, once one controls for violence-related

Evaluating patterns of sexual violence against young people across the world in the era of the #MeToo movement presents great opportunities for research and practice but also challenges. The aim of this article is to critically assess an internet-based methodology employed in a comparative study conducted with university students in 18 different cities, in six continents. While our main purpose is

Media discussions of sexual violence have increased since the rapid growth of the social media movement #metoo. Specifically, the phrase resurfaced in abundance in 2017 when actress, producer, activist Alyssa Milano encouraged her social media followers to reply “me too” if they had ever been sexually harassed or assaulted. In addition to raising awareness, media coverage of historically silent topics

Sexual violence is a topic that has received increasing national attention and has been identified as a commonly occurring social issue. In response to the failure of the criminal justice system (and society at large) to adequately respond to the prevalence of sexual victimization, the #MeToo movement (which involves posting the #MeToo hashtag on social media) has acted as a mechanism to expose systemic

We appreciate Editor Miller’s invitation to provide some remarks on a recent commentary submitted by Gonzalez et al. We reflected for some time on whether to dedicate our effort and time to countering the inaccuracies in the commentary but feel that the errors, contradictions, inconsistencies, and tone of the commentary, unfortunately demand our attention. Accordingly, and because journal space is

COVID-19 has caused a wave of research publications in academic and pre-print outlets which have resulted in several high-profile retractions. While the breadth of emerging research has been instrumental in understanding and curbing the global pandemic in near real-time, unfortunately manuscripts with major methodological challenges have fallen through the cracks. In this perspective, we illustrate

To effectively respond to scenes involving people with mental illnesses (PWMI), many police departments in the United States have implemented police response models (PRMs) that improve officer training on mental illness and/or solicit cooperation with mental healthcare providers. No existing study has focused on examining police chiefs’ attitudes toward the effectiveness of PRMs. To help fill this

Self-report data is valuable to criminologists for its potential at revealing offending patterns free from biases affecting official data obtained by police. An issue of great interest is whether racial differences in crime rates evident in official data persist when analyzing self-report offending data. In their landmark study, Elliott and Ageton (1980) argued that early self-report crime studies

This study examined risk and protective factors for four types of bullying victimization – physical, verbal, relational, and cyber bullying – while assessing the influence of vicarious, anticipated, and experienced strains from General Strain Theory. In this study, experienced strain was operationalized as exposure to negative stimuli, such as rejection. Vicarious strain was operationalized as witnessing

We analyzed a large sample of sexual assaults over almost two decades in one urban U.S. jurisdiction with previously untested sexual assault kits that were initially not successfully adjudicated (n = 717). We explored patterns of attrition through descriptive statistics and predictors of attrition through continuation-ratio modeling. Findings provide a more comprehensive framework for examining attrition

In spite of its dangers and prevalence, occupational crime is rarely addressed through criminal-law channels, largely because resource constraints and legal rules or ambiguities hamper criminal investigations and prosecutions. Little empirical research exists into law-enforcement personnel’s attempts to secure arrests and prosecutions of occupational offenders. The present study uses data from in-depth

Correctional facilities have a discernible social climate, or collection of contextual properties that derive in part from the perceptions of inmates. These properties include the physical, organizational, social, and emotional characteristics of correctional institutions. Social climate directly influences the attitudes and behavior of inmates, their well-being, and prison management. The present

In 1996, 1997, and 1998, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) conducted large-scale surveys asking about defensive gun use (DGU) in four to seven states. Analysis of the raw data allows the estimation of the prevalence of DGU for those areas. Data pertaining to the same sets of states from the 1993 National Self-Defense Survey (Kleck & Gertz, 1995) allow these results to be extrapolated

Due to typesetting mistake, the last two rows of Table 6 were misaligned.

Juvenile Drug Treatment Courts (JDTCs) are designed to reduce offending and substance use among youth populations. This case study represents Louisiana’s translation of federal guidelines into best practices to address substance abuse and delinquency among youth served by the state’s JDTCs. Preliminary results from this implementation indicate positive outcomes for juvenile populations in JDTCs, including

Whether hate crime against minority groups increases or decreases over time underpins important theoretical and policy questions. However, the ability to capture trends is limited due to a dearth of data and measurement problems, especially in countries where there is no official register of hate crime. Using Chile as a case study, we compare longitudinal data from victimization surveys, registers

An abundance of research has examined the impact of legal and extra-legal variables on juvenile justice processing. Much of this research, whether explicitly or implicitly, investigates the extent to which extra-legal variables, such as race, ethnicity, and gender, impact decision making. Some of these studies have also considered how social situational factors shape outcomes. However, there remains

An increasing number of states have passed legislation allowing individuals to carry concealed weapons on university campuses. Past research has examined the perceptions of campus carry among college students, but most of the extant literature represents efforts occurring prior to these legislative changes and seldom explores the perceptions of minority populations. Current scholarship also lacks research

Despite the prevalence of guilty pleas, we know relatively little about factors that influence the decision to plead. Replicating and extending Dervan and Edkins’ Journal of Criminal Law and Criminology, 103, 1-48. https://doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.2071397, (2013), we conducted two experiments to examine the effects of guilt status, trial penalty, and conviction likelihood on plea outcomes using an adaptation

This study employed latent class analysis (LCA) to identify distinct subgroups of U.S. police agencies, each having a similar pattern of criminal investigation goals. Using a nationally representative sample of 1746 U.S. police agencies, including municipal, county sheriffs, and State police, this analysis yielded four subgroups: professional (32.5% of the sample), enforcing (25.2%), servicing (20

Approximately 20% of offenders under community supervision in the United States are currently on parole. While parole board members possess a wide range of discretionary power, the factors influencing this decision-making process have yet to be fully explored. Previous research has generally examined factors that influence time to release on parole or parole disposition (i.e. granted or denied) as

Since the Black Lives Matter movement’s rise to prominence, there has been significant opposition from both media and political figures who believe that the movement is promoting a “war on cops.” Because there is no evidence to support this claim, the current study examines the basis for negative attitudes towards Black Lives Matter using a sample of over 500 undergraduate students from a large Midwestern

Predictive policing is the newest innovation in the field of law enforcement. Predictive policing programs use algorithms to analyze existing crime data in an attempt to make predictions about future crimes: What crimes are likely to be committed, where crimes are likely to be committed, and a list of potential victims and offenders. Proponents of predictive policing champion the practice as an effective

Larry Nassar, a once world renowned Olympic doctor, was arrested and charged with child abuse and child pornography in 2016, becoming one of the most prolific abusers in history. The current paper examines Nassar’s abuse through the lens of Routine Activities Theory. Drawing from the complete transcripts of 172 victim impact statements read at his trial, a formula for Nassar’s systematic abuse was

Corresponding with the theoretical expectations of the causal attributions and focal concerns perspectives, a vast body of sentencing literature has shown that Black and Hispanic defendants, and specifically young minority males, are more likely than other offenders to receive incarceration sentences, longer prison terms, and punitive departures from sentencing guideline recommendations. To date, however

Rural criminal justice organizations have been overlooked by researchers and underfunded in the United States, exacerbating problems caused by the coronavirus pandemic. Access to victims’ services has been a longstanding issue in rural communities, but has become more difficult due to stay-at-home orders and changes in daily activities. Requirements such as social distancing, necessitated by COVID-19

This paper reviews the distinct nature of the COVID-19 pandemic and examines the resultant court responses and recommendations disseminated by various entities that support courts. Specifically, we contextualize the current environment the present pandemic has created by considering how it compares to the most-recent previous pandemics. We then review guidelines disseminated to the courts and the modifications

This study provides a comparative analysis of foiled and completed mass shootings in the United States between 2000 and 2019. Specifically, this work quantitatively examines differences in mass shooting perpetrator, motivation, and target characteristics. Findings identify significant predictors of foiled mass shootings including student-aged perpetrators, dyads, fame and ideological motivations, as

The novel corona virus COVID-19 has become a worldwide public health pandemic that has induced anomic conditions impacting daily routines. COVID-19 response measures specifically alter regular schedules and both restrict and expand opportunities for various types of crime while presenting unprecedented challenges for the criminal justice system. For criminologists and criminal justice scientists, the

In response to the COVID-19 pandemic, state-level governments across the United States issued mandatory stay-at-home orders around the end of March 2020. Though intended to stop the spread of the COVID-19 virus, the lockdowns have had sweeping impacts on life in ways which were not originally planned. This study’s purpose is to investigate the extent to which governmental responses to COVID-19 have

With the growth of qualitative research within the fields of criminology and criminal justice (CCJ) it is important to examine discipline standards and expectations of how to collect and analyze qualitative data and to present research findings. Our aim here is to assess qualitative research published in 17 top CCJ journals during the period of 2010 to 2019. We found that the number of qualitative