There is little doubt that policing is a stressful occupation. Officers must manage a variety of situations, under oftentimes less-than-ideal circumstances. While departments may provide Employee Assistance Programs or a Departmental Psychologist, there is often little support for officers to utilize these services. Certainly, the culture surrounding policing has often acted as an additional barrier for officers to seek out mental healthcare services. What is more, there is a dearth of research examining the experiences of Hispanic/Latinx police officers, as compared to their White or Black counterparts. The current project was conducted in collaboration with the Las Cruces Police Department as part of a larger series of projects. These data include self-report surveys completed by 109 officers of all ranks from within the police department in 2019. I utilized a modified version of Spielberger and colleagues (1981) Police Stress Survey, Cohen’s (1994) Perceived Stress Scale, and Reisig and Mesko’s (2009) procedural justice scale, in addition to questions regarding their personal methods of coping, knowledge of services, and willingness to access services. I examined three research questions. First, what do officers in this department identify as stressful? Second, how are the officers in this department currently coping with stress, including through both prosocial and maladaptive ways? Finally, what barriers do these officers identify to accessing mental healthcare services? Using a series of regression models, I found that officers generally ranked organizational sources of stress, such as political pressure within the department or inadequate salaries as more stressful than occupational sources of stress, such as writing traffic tickets or going to court. Additionally, while officers generally coped with stress in prosocial ways such as physical fitness or family activities, they did not access departmentally provided services. Importantly, however, these officers indicated a willingness to access specific types of services, such as educational classes or check-ups. Finally, officers predominately identified resource-related barriers, such as knowledge about services, to accessing mental healthcare services. These findings suggest that the culture within policing may be shifting to one that is less stigmatizing towards mental health services and welcome increased knowledge disbursement about such services.

The presence of police officers is not an assurance of safety for everyone. Yet,

modern concerns for school safety suggest there is a need for more police officers in

schools. Over the last 70 years of School Resource Officer (SRO) programs, the variations

of SRO program implementation and the expectation of roles and responsibilities has

produced conflicting research on benefits or harms of police in the school environment.

The purpose of police in schools has shuffled from relationship-building ambassadors for

the community, to educators on crime prevention and drug use, to law enforcement

officers for punitive juvenile sanctions, to counselors and role models for legal

socialization, and other roles for emergency management and crisis response. Plans to

place more officers in schools for purposes of “school safety” requires an examination of

the SROs’ roles within the school, their interactions with students, and how these roles

and interactions contribute to safety. This study explores the roles of SROs to

understand the variations of roles within a program and understand factors influencing

the roles of SROs (e.g., school climate, initiation by others). To evaluate these roles and

potential influences, cluster analysis and multinomial regression models were developed

from one year of SRO-student interaction data (n=12, 466) collected daily from the

Richland County (SC) Sheriff’s Department SRO Division located in South Carolina.

These interactions were defined by the framework of counseling, educating, and law

enforcing roles. Results indicate the variations of roles performed are largely influenced

by the school type (e.g., elementary), SRO perceptions (e.g., counselor), and the

engagement of SROs by school officials for specific roles.

Social media has become a significant aspect of American life and culture.

Criminal groups including extremists of various ideological milieus have found social

media useful in their recruitment efforts. Further, these online spaces allow extremists to

easily interact with one another, reinforcing each other’s radical perspectives. Little

research has examined social media’s role in radicalization and fewer studies have tested

the differences between the radicalization processes of individuals espousing disparate

ideologies. Using Profiles of Individual Radicalization in the United States, a data set of

804 extremist men, this study sets out to determine whether the role of social media in the

radicalization process varies between Islamist and far right extremists using social

learning as a theoretical framework. The results indicate no significant difference

regarding the role of social media in radicalization between Islamists and far rightists.

Additionally, the odds of having radical friends and family were much lower for Islamists

than far rightists, suggesting only partial support for social learning theory as an

explanation of radicalization.

The presence of restorative justice (RJ) in the United States has grown steadily within the last five decades. The dynamics of RJ programs are meant to more holistically address the harms caused by crime in comparison to the traditional criminal justice system (CJS). Yet, evaluative research has provided inconsistent evidence of their effectiveness and the quality of empirical study has gone untested. The current study sought to fill the gaps within past research by examining how success has been measured, assessing the rigor of study methodology using the Maryland Scientific Methods Scale (SMS), and determining the impact of RJ programs on recidivism, victim satisfaction and restitution compliance using meta-analysis. A systematic search of past literature identified a sample of 121 studies whose dependent measures were coded, and methodological designs were rated using the SMS. Most studies failed to include community-based measures of success or measures which reflect the goals of RJ to undue harms and restore relationships. SMS scores were well distributed within the sample. Despite restricted sample sizes, meta-analyses used extracted data from 35 case-control, quasi-experimental and experimental studies to generate 43 unique treatment contrasts and 3 summary effects. Meta-analytic findings favored RJ treatment over CJS control groups across all dependent measures. Heterogeneity between subsequent arrest studies was scrutinized using subgroup analysis. The fewest subsequent arrests were associated with adult offenders, mandated participation, mediation and hybrid programs, and the most rigorous methodologies. Findings support continued efforts to improve the methodological rigor of evaluations, targeted focus on specific program types and delivery characteristics. Future meta-analyses would benefit from the inclusion of non-American RJ program evaluations to enlarge pooled sample populations and better detect moderating influences. Other suggestions for research design improvements include the use of more holistic and stakeholder-centric measures for success, use of continuous measures, and refined indicator variables for heterogeneity testing (e.g., crime type severity, characteristics of program fidelity). The author recommends continued use of these programs, specifically with adult offenders and incidents of serious crime toward a better understanding of the true impacts of RJ on stakeholders. More detailed results, study limitations and implications are discussed herein.

Officials employed in the criminal justice system have a duty to serve, protect, and uphold the law. Nevertheless, previous research has found problematic drinking and illegal substance use exists among criminal justice system employees. Criminal justice employees may be more likely to use substances due to strains or due to increased access to drug. On the other hand, self-selection and screening processes may result in a pool of employees who fewer substances than the general population. Using waves 1 through 17 of the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth 1997, the current research examines substance use patterns of criminal justice system employees, assessing how their rate of substance use compares to a nationally representative sample, and how their substance use changes once employed with the criminal justice system, this research surveys the alcohol and illicit drug use of people who went on to work in the criminal justice system and how their substance use compares to the general population. In addition, this research compares police officer substance use to the general population. When compared to a nationally represented sample, criminal justice system employees consistently use illegal substances at lower rates. However, the prevalence of alcohol use among police officers specifically is higher when compared to the general population and increases once employed with the criminal justice system. Information from this research can be used to help agencies with employee selection procedures and employee assistance programs for current employees.

Criminological theories have long incorporated personality traits as key explanatory factors and have generally relied on assumptions of trait stability. However, growing evidence from a variety of fields including criminology, psychology, and neurobiology is demonstrating that personality traits are malleable over the life-course, and substantial individual variation exists in the developmental patterns of personality traits over time. This research is forcing criminologists to consider how and why “enduring” individual characteristics may change over the life course in ways that are meaningfully related to offending. Two traits that have been consistently linked to offending and conflated in key criminological theories (i.e. Gottfredson and Hirschi’s self-control theory), impulsivity and sensation seeking, have recently been shown to be independent personality traits with different normative maturational timetables and biological underpinnings. This dissertation extends this work by examining developmental patterns of impulsivity and sensation seeking and social sources of variation in these traits with the Family and Community Health Survey, a longitudinal data set that consists of approximately 900 African American youth and their families followed from late childhood to their late-twenties. Multiple longitudinal modeling methods are employed (hierarchical linear modeling and group-based trajectory modeling) to address this research agenda. Results from this dissertation lead to four broad conclusions. First, and in support of existing research, there is substantial variability in developmental trajectories of impulsivity and sensation seeking. Average developmental trajectories of these traits greatly mask the degree of individual variability in developmental patterns that exists. Second, social factors are significantly associated with levels of impulsivity and sensation seeking. Socio-environmental experiences characterized by hostility and unsupportiveness are generally associated with elevated levels of impulsivity and sensation seeking while socio-environmental experiences characterized by warmth and supportiveness are associated with lower levels of impulsivity and sensation seeking. Third, sex differences in developmental patterns of impulsivity are nonexistent while sex differences in developmental patterns of sensation seeking are significant. Finally, with few exceptions, predictors of trait levels operate in a general fashion such the same factors typically explain both male and female trait levels and produce similar effects on impulsivity and sensation seeking.

In the artificial intelligence literature, three forms of reasoning are commonly employed to understand agent behavior: inductive, deductive, and abductive.  More recently, data-driven approaches leveraging ideas such as machine learning, data mining, and social network analysis have gained popularity. While data-driven variants of the aforementioned forms of reasoning have been applied separately, there is little work on how data-driven approaches across all three forms relate and lend themselves to practical applications. Given an agent behavior and the percept sequence, how one can identify a specific outcome such as the likeliest explanation? To address real-world problems, it is vital to understand the different types of reasonings which can lead to better data-driven inference.  

This dissertation has laid the groundwork for studying these relationships and applying them to three real-world problems. In criminal modeling, inductive and deductive reasonings are applied to early prediction of violent criminal gang members. To address this problem the features derived from the co-arrestee social network as well as geographical and temporal features are leveraged. Then, a data-driven variant of geospatial abductive inference is studied in missing person problem to locate the missing person. Finally, induction and abduction reasonings are studied for identifying pathogenic accounts of a cascade in social networks.

In the United States, approximately 400,000 youth are in out-of-home care in the custody of child protection systems (CPS). They are incarcerated, but not as punishment for a crime. States place youth in CPS custody for many different reasons, centered around legal determinations of families’ failure to provide adequate care. Such youth are forcibly separated from their biological (“bio”) families and required to live in shelters, group homes, and foster households at the threat of arrest. Through the socio-legal concept of parens patriae, the government assumes responsibility for their safety and development. In other words, the state assumes the role of parents to children it places in CPS. Still, despite years of social work research, three fundamental questions remain about CPS for criminology. First, criminologists are beginning to recognize the overlap between criminology and CPS but lack a theoretical framework for analyzing that intersection. Second, the proper role of the state in youth development and the measurement of its relative success are of central importance to criminal justice, but at best loosely defined. Finally, this dissertation asks: how do entering CPS custody, growing up in state care, and (someday) exiting CPS shape the experiences and perceptions of CPS youth? Given the attenuated social processes associated with CPS, criminologists might expect youth to experience significant barriers to transitioning successfully to adulthood. At the same time, therapeutic assessment and treatment in CPS should ameliorate those barriers. This dissertation addresses that theoretical paradox in eight chapters. After an introductory overview, Chapter Two posits social control, social support, and agency over the life course as a theoretical framework for understanding the implications of growing up in CPS. Chapter Three details the phronetic and ethnographic approach of the study, designed to encounter the perspectives of youth themselves in their “natural” setting. Chapters Four through Seven present findings from interviews with participants in an arts-based therapy program for youth in CPS (n=33). Chapter Eight concludes the study with a discussion of the implications of this work for criminological research, juvenile justice policy, and youth who grow up in CPS.

The tough on crime movement in the United States was prevalent in the 1970's through 1990's; however, it seems to have never left Arizona. Arizona has the 6th highest prison population in America. According to the Arizona Department of Corrections, there are over 42,000 people incarcerated in Arizona and about half of those people have been in prison before. Other states populations are going down; ours is going up. While rising prison populations may not directly affect everyone in Arizona, they do have an indirect effect on everyone in Arizona. Recommendations to reduce correctional populations are often limited to "silos" of the correctional system. This is problematic, as only attending to one area of the system invites the other areas to block that progress. Seven steps that involve the entirety of Arizona's criminal justice system could help reverse the effects of Arizona's "tough on crime" era and reduce correctional populations. These steps should occur before, during, and after prison.