Criminology & Criminal Justice

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    An Analysis of the Correlation Between the Attitude, Belief, Opinion, and Demographic Components of Voluntary Forfeiture of One's Fourth Amendment Constitutional Right in Order to Permit Police Officers the use of New Concealed Weapons Detection Technology
    (2002) Vann, Diane Hill Esq.; Wellford, Charles; Criminology & Criminal Justice; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, MD)
    The primary purpose of the study is to determine and analyze relationships between the major components of the participants' opinions, attitudes, and beliefs as to the effectiveness and willingness of individuals to voluntarily forfeit their Fourth Amendment Constitutional rights to permit the use of the new Concealed Weapons Detection Technology ("CWDT"). The new CWDT, as described in this study is capable of performing hands-off, non-intrusive body searches for contraband such as plastic explosives, drugs, and concealed weapons, specifically concealed guns. The study questions that Constitutionality of permitting police officers the use of such CWDT, and the Constitutionality of one's voluntary forfeiture of a Constitutional right to permit such use. Data collected for the study is from 100 residents of Madison, Wisconsin, and Washington, D.C., aged 18 years or older. The study analyzes Frequencies, Crosstabs, Chi Square, and Pearson's (r) and Spearman's (rs). The study although conducted before September 11, 2001, found that crime and terror remain great oppressors in the Nation, and that citizens are desparate for a resolution. The study reveals that the great majority of the study participants consider CWDT a positive solution.
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    The Effects of Police Systems and Their Environments on Police Homicides: An Exploratory Analysis
    (1988) Taylor-Greene, Helen Elizabeth; Wellford, Charles; Criminology & Criminal Justice; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, MD)
    The purpose of this study was to examine the effects of police systems and their environments on police homicides. Data from five sources, the Crime Control Institute, International Association of Chiefs of Police, Joint Center for Political Studies, Police Executive Research Forum, and the United States Bureau of the Census were used to create the database which included information on police systems, their environments and reported police homicides. This study provided an exploratory analysis of the effect, if any, of the following on police homicides: (1) police administrative review and investigation policies, (2) firearms training standards, (3 ) police system resources (4) demographic community characteristics, (5 ) political community characteristics, and (6 ) community crime characteristics. The most significant findings of the research were the following: (1) In a multivariate analysis of police homicides, the civilian homicide rate was the best predictor of police homicides. (2) There was no significant association between restrictiveness of review and investigation policies (Control), moral, legal and ethical aspects of firearms training, financial resources or education of sworn personnel and police homicides. (3) Race as a system environment variable was correlated with other environment variables at the zero order level but not significant in the multivariate analyses. (4) Civilian Homicides, Race, Black Political Empowerment and Family Ratio were moderately associated with police homicides at the zero order level. (5) Demographic characteristics had little, if any, effect on police homicides. (6) Interjurisdictional variation existed not only in police homicides but also in system management, resources and environments. These findings suggest that police system environmental factors are the best predictors of police homicides. While police departments should continue to strengthen the internal management of police homicides through policies and training, they should include other approaches to controlling and preventing police homicides. One approach should be the development of a model program to educate officers and civilians on police use of deadly force. These programs should focus on (1) attitudes and fears of police officers towards Black citizens and vice versa (2) human relations training and (3) the role of community violence in police violence. The systematic collection and dissemination of police homicide data is essential to future police use of force research. The data should include fatal and nonfatal shootings and be easily accessible. Future research should examine race as an organizational factor. Analyses of the effect, if any, of racial attitudes of police officers and racial composition of police departments on police homicides are needed.
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    An Analysis of the Correlation Between the Attitude, Belief, Opinion, and Demographic Components of Voluntary Forfeiture of One's Fourth Amendment Constitutional Right in Order to Permit Police Officers the Use of New Concealed Weapons Detection Technology
    (2002) Vann, Diane Hill; Wellford, Charles; Criminology and Criminal Justice; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md)
    The primary purpose of the study is to determine and analyze relationships between the major components of the participants ' opinions , attitudes , and beliefs as to the effectiveness and willingness of individuals to voluntarily forfeit their Fourth Amendment Constitutional rights to permit the use of the new Concealed Weapons Detection Technology ("CWDT"). The new CWDT, as described in his study is capable of performing hands-off, noninrusive body searches for contraband such as plastic explosives, drugs, and concealed weapons, specifically concealed guns. The study questions the Constitutionality of permitting police officers the use of such CWDT, and the Constitutionality of one's voluntary forfeiture of a Constitutional right to permit such use. Data collected for the study is from 100 residents of Madison, Wisconsin , and Washington, D.C., aged 18 years or older. The study analyzes Frequencies, Crosstabs, Chi Square, and Pearson's(r) and Spearman's(r5). The study although conducted before September 11, 2001, found that crime and terror remain great oppressors in the Nation , and that citizens are desperate for a resolution. The study reveals that the great majority of the study participants consider CWDT a positive solution.
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    Evaluation of Prince George's County, Maryland Day Reporting Program
    (1996) Trader, Lois LaChance; MacKenzie, Doris; Institute of Criminology and Criminal Justice; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md)
    Prefaced by an ever-increasing prison population, departments of correction are turning toward alternatives to incarceration for many non-violent, low-risk offenders. The need for alternatives to incarceration has spurred the development of community based programs to house these offenders. Electronic monitoring, intensive probation, shock incarceration and community service are some of the community based programs currently available. The late 1980s introduced a further community based treatment program, day reporting. Based on a British model, day reporting is an extension of intensive supervised probation that incorporates counselling, rehabilitative and treatment services with intensive supervision. Since the inception of day reporting centers in Massachusetts, 22 states in the U.S. have developed and implemented 114 day reporting centers. While the content of each program differs, the underlying concept of public safety through intensive supervision and offender rehabilitation remains constant across all programs. In January, 1994, the Prince George's County, Maryland Department of Corrections, Community corrections Division, together with the State of Maryland, Division of Probation and Parole opened a day reporting program to facilitate community reintegration of low-risk, non-violent offenders. This report provides a descriptive analysis of the program's first year of operation. The results indicate that while the Prince George's County Day Reporting Program implemented many of the initially proposed features, further effort must be made to ensure that all participants receive the necessary treatment and rehabilitative services.
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    Spatial video geonarratives and health: case studies in post-disaster recovery, crime, mosquito control and tuberculosis in the homeless
    (Springer Nature, 2015-08-08) Curtis, Andrew; Curtis, Jacqueline W; Shook, Eric; Smith, Steve; Jefferis, Eric; Porter, Lauren; Schuch, Laura; Felix, Chaz; Kerndt, Peter R
    A call has recently been made by the public health and medical communities to understand the neighborhood context of a patient’s life in order to improve education and treatment. To do this, methods are required that can collect “contextual” characteristics while complementing the spatial analysis of more traditional data. This also needs to happen within a standardized, transferable, easy-to-implement framework. The Spatial Video Geonarrative (SVG) is an environmentally-cued narrative where place is used to stimulate discussion about fine-scale geographic characteristics of an area and the context of their occurrence. It is a simple yet powerful approach to enable collection and spatial analysis of expert and resident health-related perceptions and experiences of places. Participants comment about where they live or work while guiding a driver through the area. Four GPS-enabled cameras are attached to the vehicle to capture the places that are observed and discussed by the participant. Audio recording of this narrative is linked to the video via time stamp. A program (G-Code) is then used to geotag each word as a point in a geographic information system (GIS). Querying and density analysis can then be performed on the narrative text to identify spatial patterns within one narrative or across multiple narratives. This approach is illustrated using case studies on post-disaster psychopathology, crime, mosquito control, and TB in homeless populations. SVG can be used to map individual, group, or contested group context for an environment. The method can also gather data for cohorts where traditional spatial data are absent. In addition, SVG provides a means to spatially capture, map and archive institutional knowledge. SVG GIS output can be used to advance theory by being used as input into qualitative and/or spatial analyses. SVG can also be used to gain near-real time insight therefore supporting applied interventions. Advances over existing geonarrative approaches include the simultaneous collection of video data to visually support any commentary, and the ease-of-application making it a transferable method across different environments and skillsets.
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    Examining subgroup effects by socioeconomic status of public health interventions targeting multiple risk behaviour in adolescence
    (Springer Nature, 2018-10-16) Tinner, Laura; Caldwell, Deborah; Hickman, Matthew; MacArthur, Georgina J; Gottfredson, Denise; Perez, Alberto Lana; Moberg, D Paul; Wolfe, David; Campbell, Rona
    Multiple risk behaviour (MRB) refers to two or more risk behaviours such as smoking, drinking alcohol, poor diet and unsafe sex. Such behaviours are known to co-occur in adolescence. It is unknown whether MRB interventions are equally effective for young people of low and high socioeconomic status (SES). There is a need to examine these effects to determine whether MRB interventions have the potential to narrow or widen inequalities. Two Cochrane systematic reviews that examined interventions to reduce adolescent MRB were screened to identify universal interventions that reported SES. Study authors were contacted, and outcome data stratified by SES and intervention status were requested. Risk behaviour outcomes alcohol use, smoking, drug use, unsafe sex, overweight/obesity, sedentarism, peer violence and dating violence were examined in random effects meta-analyses and subgroup analyses conducted to explore differences between high SES and low SES adolescents. Of 49 studies reporting universal interventions, only 16 also reported having measured SES. Of these 16 studies, four study authors provided data sufficient for subgroup analysis. There was no evidence of subgroup differences for any of the outcomes. For alcohol use, the direction of effect was the same for both the high SES group (RR 1.26, 95% CI: 0.96, 1.65, p = 0.09) and low SES group (RR 1.14, 95% CI: 0.98, 1.32, p = 0.08). The direction of effect was different for smoking behaviour in favour of the low SES group (RR 0.83, 95% CI: 0.66, 1.03, p = 0.09) versus the high SES group (RR 1.16, 95% CI: 0.82, 1.63, p = 0.39). For drug use, the direction of effect was the same for both the high SES group (RR 1.29, 95% CI: 0.97, 1.73, p = 0.08) and the low SES group (RR 1.28, 95% CI: 0.84, 1.96, p = 0.25). The majority of studies identified did not report having measured SES. There was no evidence of subgroup difference for all outcomes analysed among the four included studies. There is a need for routine reporting of demographic information within studies so that stronger evidence of effect by SES can be demonstrated and that interventions can be evaluated for their impact on health inequalities.
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    Neighborhood Transition and the Criminalization of Minorities
    (2019) Triece, Molly; Xie, Min; Criminology and Criminal Justice; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)
    This study investigates the relationship between neighborhood transition and criminalization in Washington, D.C. census tracts. The main hypothesis predicts that racially diversified census tracts will experience increases in formal social control (a.k.a. criminalization) of minority and low-income groups due to social tension between race groups. Existing ethnographic literature links neighborhood levels of racial diversity to various forms of criminalization but quantitative literature on the topic is sparse. This study uses demographic census data and official stop-and-frisk data to examine how changes in neighborhood racial composition affect police stop-and-frisk practices in Washington, D.C. The longitudinal nature of the data and the spatial methods employed build upon the existing body of quantitative criminalization research. Findings indicate that increases in racial diversity are associated with increases in the criminalization of black individuals, particularly in tracts that were predominantly black at the beginning of the study period.
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    IMMIGRATION EFFECTS ON FAMILY STRUCTURE AND HOMICIDE VICTIMIZATION FOR GROUPS WITH DIFFERENT RACE AND ETHNICITY STATUS
    (2019) Luna, Mathew; Xie, Min; Criminology and Criminal Justice; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)
    Guided by the immigrant revitalization theory, this paper will argue that improvements in family structure play a role in the immigration-crime relationship. The data used in this study were obtained from the National Vital Statistics System, the American Community Survey, and the decennial census. This paper uses cross-sectional and longitudinal models to investigate whether family structure plays a role in the immigration-crime relationship. The longitudinal models will look at changes in homicide data from 2007 and 2017. Findings from the longitudinal models show no support to indicate that family structure plays a role in the immigration-crime relationship. However, findings from Black and White non-Hispanic cross-sectional models do show some support for the argument that family structure does play a role in the immigration-crime relationship.
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    When “Tough” Cops Divert and “Soft” Cops Charge: Trait Attitudes vs. State Situational Narratives in a Focal Concerns Process of Police Decision-Making
    (2019) Slothower, Molly P; Sherman, Lawrence; Criminology and Criminal Justice; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)
    Research Question Do police officers’ overall “tough” or “soft” attitudes toward crime and defendants determine how they handle discretionary cases, or does each officer look at the elements in each case to see whether they should act “tough” or “soft” in the given situation? This study tests whether police decisions to divert cases from prosecution into diversionary out-of-court disposals are driven by “trait attitudes”—each officer’s overall “tough” or “soft” attitudes toward defendants, which are stable characteristics of each officer regardless of the situation—versus officers’ “state attitudes”—their narratives about the meaning of specific elements present in each case as they make decisions. Methods Thirty-four officers in a large urban force completed attitudinal surveys and 20 case study vignettes. For each vignette, officers recorded: each relevant element (e.g. criminal history, alcohol involvement); whether each element pushed them toward prosecution or diversion, and why; and whether they would prosecute or divert the case. Officers recorded 2,241 elements across 645 case responses. Using primarily hierarchical logistic regression models, this study tests the impact of trait attitudes versus state narratives on recommended case outcomes. Results Officer decision-making was more influenced by officers’ interpretations of whether elements signaled each defendant was “reformable” or “incorrigible” than by their overall “tough” or “soft” attitudes. Officers often disagreed on how they interpreted the same elements in the same cases, leading to different outcomes. State narratives were strong predictors in most models regardless of officers’ overall attitudes, including predicting diversion. Trait attitudes had little or no impact in most models, except for one subset of officers—officers in the “toughest” quartile of attitudes were more likely to perceive defendants as incorrigible and less likely to divert. Implications This study provides evidence against the theory that officers are primarily driven by their overall attitudes toward defendants, and instead suggests their narratives interpreting case elements are important drivers of differences between officers in decision-making—officers try to pick the "correct" outcome in each case using these narratives. Therefore, research and police departments should explore officers’ interpretation of situational elements, and test mechanisms to provide feedback regarding accuracy of assumptions.
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    INTEGRATING OFFENDING VERSATILITY INTO THE BALANCE PERSPECTIVE OF PEER INFLUENCE
    (2019) Pheasant, Benjamin; McGloin, Jean M; Criminology and Criminal Justice; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)
    The balance perspective advocates for scholars to consider peer influence as both reciprocal and relative, asserting that adolescents will alter their behavior when there is an imbalance in delinquency with a peer. McGloin (2009) found support for balance when applied to frequency of offending. There is reason to suspect that this drive for behavioral homeostasis should emerge with regard to an adolescent’s offending versatility, as well. This thesis uses the AddHealth data to explore whether adolescent alter their offending versatility to achieve behavioral “balance” with a best friend, and friendship stability moderates this relationship. The results provide support for the balance perspective and suggest that respondents alter their offending versatility to become more similar to their best friend over time.