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A large body of research demonstrates the toll stress takes on police. However, with recent high-profile force incidents that have fueled distrust of police especially within minority communities, there is reason to expect that minority officers experience stress differently than their white counterparts. Within the context of Agnew’s (1992) General Strain Theory, this study examines the relationship between police stress and misconduct. As well, since a police stress/anger relationship has been found, we also analyze racial differences in the extent to which negative affect (anger) mediates the stress/outcome relationship. Using data from a survey of over 1,400 police officers working in three large cities in Texas, we find that stress is significantly related to officers’ acts of misconduct within both races. Moreover, there are noticeable differences in the role anger plays in the stress/misconduct relationship among white and minority officers.

In Moore v. Texas (2017), the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that Texas death penalty definitions of intellectual disability were inadequate because they strayed too far from clinical definitions. This study examines how each state defines intellectual disability with regard to death penalty eligibility. It reveals a wide variation in the standards used by states, with no clear consensus on definitions of intellectual disability or who should measure it. Variations pertain to age at onset, proof of intellectual disability status at the time of the crime, burden of proof required to make the intellectual disability determination, and who makes the final decision. Implications and suggestions for the future are discussed.

The larger literature on police stress indicates that much of their stress emanates from two sources: organizational and environmental. These sources coexist in officers’ lives but function differently across police agencies. Officer experiences with stress also tend to lead to emotional reactions, some of which can be negative and increase the risk of misconduct. Agnew’s general strain theory provides one useful theoretical framework within which the relationship between officer strain and negative emotions can be investigated. Using data from three urban Texas police agencies, this study investigates the main sources of police strain as predictors of anger, depression, and burnout. Further, differences in negative emotions across agencies are also examined. Results show that organizational stress is significantly related to all three negative emotions across agencies. Implications and future research directions are highlighted.

Previous tests of the maturity gap thesis incorporated one-dimensional autonomy-based measures of social maturity. We present the first test of the maturity gap thesis to incorporate psychosocial measures (i.e., temperance, responsibility, and perspective). Four delinquency and substance abuse variables from Wave 2 of the Add Health data were regressed on the following variables developed from Wave 1: relative pubertal development, relative psychosocial maturity, personal autonomy, and interactions among each ( n = 4,530 participants younger than 18 and 294 older than 18). Personal autonomy lost significance when psychosocial maturity, personal autonomy, and pubertal development were included in the same model. However, psychosocial maturity did not clearly interact with either personal autonomy or pubertal development. Psychosocial maturity was associated with deviant behaviors for both males and females, above and below age 18.

Purpose The purpose of this paper is to examine the utility of general strain theory in explaining the relationship between organizational stress and police deviance. Design/methodology/approach Data were collected from a non-random sample of 1,389 police officers in three large cities in Texas. The survey instrument used for this research was the Police Work Experience Survey. Results from regression analyses are presented. Findings Findings showed that the organization influenced police misconduct, but misconduct was dependent upon the specific type of strain encountered. Research limitations/implications Results show that instances of police deviance depend on the types of strains encountered. Additionally, anger plays a significant role when examining organizational strain. Police administrators should move to reduce organizational strains to reduce instances of police misconduct. Originality/value Currently, there is very little theoretical work in understanding police misconduct. And no studies have drawn linkages between organizational stressors and self-reported officer misconduct. At a time when police behavior is at the forefront of the social policy reform, the examination of potential correlates of police misconduct is the first step toward controlling it.

Purpose– The purpose of this paper is to evaluate a foot patrol and citizen contact-based policing intervention in a suburb outside Dallas. Funded by the Bureau of Justice Assistance “Smart Policing” initiative, the intervention consisted of assigning a single bilingual officer to an economically disadvantaged apartment complex in the heart of the city.Design/methodology/approach– An examination of calls for service across several offense types was performed for the target complex, the adjacent neighborhood, and a nearby apartment complex. The aims of the study were to determine whether the intervention affected specific calls for service and geographic and/or temporal displacement/diffusion occurred.Findings– Two key findings emerged. First, the intervention produced several hypothesized reductions and increases in specific call types, but temporal displacement rendered those effects short-lived. Second, diffusion to surrounding areas was observed and persisted through various treatment dosages.Practical implications– The study provides useful information to practitioners who might seek to implement foot-patrol-based tactics in hot spots and micro-places. However, foot patrol and/or citizen contact patrol alone may not yield sustainable crime reductions in their target areas.Originality/value– Few recent studies have examined the efficacy of foot patrol in crime hot spots. No recent studies have evaluated citizen contact patrol within micro-places. This study sought to address both limitations.

Following recent high-profile deaths of unarmed African American suspects at the hands of police, a number of reforms have been proposed, among them improved minority representation in the ranks of law enforcement organizations. Previous research has explored the effects of minority representation on complaints against the police and other behaviors, but very few studies have examined violence toward the police. We merged several data sources together and tested the hypothesis that minority representation within police departments is inversely associated with assaults against the police. In an extension of prior research, we also conducted separate analyses for African American, Hispanic, and Asian officer representation. The results did not support the expectation that diversity within police organizations results in improved police-citizen interactions, as measured by assaults on police. This study is one of the few to examine how different measures of minority representation in police agencies relates to assaults on the police.

Peer review is the bedrock of the scientific enterprise, yet it enjoys scant validation. The federal government’s CrimeSolutions.gov initiative provides a unique opportunity to address this limitation. As part of the initiative, trained experts evaluate criminal justice evaluation research on several of the same criteria editors use to make publication decisions. Data from a sample of articles published in Social Sciences Citation Index journals were obtained from the CrimeSolutions.gov database, then used to model publication quality, operationalized as the product of the journal’s five-year impact factor and article citations per year (an article-level measure). The model explained only five percent of the variation in publication quality, raising several questions about the validity of peer review in criminal justice evaluation research.

This study extends research on recidivism by examining the phenomenon via a survival mixture modeling approach, a method that is analogous to mixture modeling approaches used in trajectory analyses. Using this approach, the authors discover that multiple recidivism profiles are identifiable within a random sample of inmates released from Florida prisons between January 1998 and June 2001. Findings revealed that certain covariates predicted class membership and operated differently across the groups in predicting the hazard of recidivism, suggesting that a unilateral approach to reducing recidivism risk is an ineffective strategy. The Discussion section presents the findings in the context of theory, research, and policy.

Deterrence researchers have abandoned a one-size-fits-all approach and identified a wide range of individual characteristics (e.g., low self-control, emotional arousal) associated with the decision to offend. Comparatively less attention has been given to the moderating effects of purely situational factors on intentions to break the law. Drawing on social control and rational choice literatures, we utilized a vignette-based survey and asked a sample of young adults to report on their likelihood of driving drunk under conditions of high and low informal social control. We then explored the effects of certainty and severity of punishment on offending likelihood across both conditions. Among deterrable offenders, we found that the relationship between severity and compliance manifested only in the presence of high informal social control. Certainty was significantly and inversely associated with offending likelihood in both high and low informal social control conditions—among both deterrables and the full sample. Implications for deterrence theory are discussed.

Purpose Gang membership has been linked in a number of prior studies with inmate misconduct; known gang members are more prone than non-gang members to act violently behind bars. Theories of intergroup conflict suggest, however, there is reason to expect that broader within-prison gang dynamics, not just gang membership alone, are associated with the incidence of violence. Methods We collected data on inmates from a large southern state and estimated multilevel models of inmate-on-inmate violence. Included in our models were a variety of common individual-level correlates of violent misconduct, among them gang membership. Substantive prison-level correlates included the percentage of gang members and “gang integration,” the latter being a measure of gang heterogeneity. Results We found a modest association between both gang variables and inmate-on-inmate violence, with gang integration being the most significant of the two. Conclusions Gang membership is an important correlate of inmate violence, but attention to broader prison gang dynamics is clearly necessary. We discuss the implications of this finding for theories of inmate violence.

Police officers are said to possess a “sixth sense,” defined in terms of suspicion, fear, intuition, and even common sense. Research and training on the sixth sense, however, lack theoretical guidance. To address this shortcoming, the author likens the sixth sense to an experiential thinking style, which not only explains why police officers presumably have it, but also makes it possible to know whether they even have a sixth sense at all.

A number of academic disciplines permit doctoral students to choose between completing a traditional dissertation or a multi-paper option that replaces the dissertation. We surveyed members of ASC and ACJS and gathered data on their perceptions of the suitability of a multi-paper option in lieu of the dissertation for criminology and criminal justice graduate students. Responses revealed a fair degree of opposition to the multi-paper option. We also estimated a series of regression models in an effort to model the correlates of support for the multi-paper option. Faculty in Ph.D. programs were most opposed to the option, suggesting preference for the status quo. Finally, we included several responses to open-ended questions, thus shedding light on respondents’ reason for supporting or opposing the multi-paper option.

Purpose Tests of social support theory have relied on aggregate crime rates as the outcome of interest, but such a focus ignores the potentially important macro-level processes and effects on individual-level behavior We thus perform the first multi-level investigation of social support theory. Methods Multilevel modeling is used to explore whether the two varieties of county-level social support – the presence of charitable organizations and AFDC expenditures – are associated with recidivism in a sample of Florida prison releasees. Results Results show that while social support explains little variation in individual-level recidivism, a combination of private and public social support may reduce the likelihood of reconviction for drug offenses. Conclusion Findings provide mixed evidence for the prospect that social support—whether governmental or nongovernmental—is associated with recidivism among recently-released inmates.

Researchers have recently combined individual-level data with institutional measures to detect prison-level correlates of inmate misconduct. Although this body of literature has yielded insights into how the prison environment contributes to misconduct, we argue that it has ignored an important level of analysis, namely the custody level. As some inmates are placed in more restrictive confinement than others, custody levels may absorb some of the variation in individual-level and/or prison-level correlates of misconduct. Accordingly, we analyzed data from over 70,000 inmates who were housed in Texas prisons during 2008 and found that custody levels were strongly and positively associated with misconduct, even (a) after accounting for the endogeneity of custody levels and (b) once inmate- and prison-level measures were included. We draw on labeling theory in our efforts to explain the relationship between custody levels and misconduct.

Researchers have not yet devoted sufficient attention to the effect of prison architecture on inmate misconduct. Using data from the population of male prisoners in Texas, the authors explored the association between two prison architectural design types (as determined by satellite imagery) and inmate misconduct. The results from multilevel statistical analyses suggest that architectural design is associated with nonviolent misconduct but not violent misconduct. Policy implications and directions for future research are discussed.

This article tests social support theory with a focus on the relationship between general relief payments to the poor and homicide. General relief, a new and untapped measure of social support, represents an improvement on earlier measures of social support, such as welfare spending, because it (a) reflects local priorities, (b) includes both cash grants and in-kind services, and (c) is sufficiently variable at the local level to make it statistically useful. Data from Worrall (2005) were reanalyzed, revealing that general relief was inversely related to homicide, even in the face of various robustness checks.

Drug arrests have increased steadily for going on 30 years, yet drug use has fluctuated wildly during the same period. Some have argued (and found) that state forfeiture laws may explain variation in drug arrests. Using data from 572 law enforcement agencies, we sought to replicate such findings and test their robustness by invoking a variety of forfeiture measures. Our findings indicate that drug asset forfeiture laws (and even past forfeiture activities) have no discernible effect on drug arrest rates.

Research Summary Critics have argued that asset forfeiture encourages policing for profit, but their arguments have yet to transcend the anecdotal arena. We gathered data on asset forfeiture payments from a multistate sample of 572 law enforcement agencies and tested two hypotheses aimed at answering the question, is policing for profit? Although we found no clear evidence of more forfeiture in states that permit local agencies to receive the most proceeds, we did find that local law-enforcement agencies circumvent restrictive state laws (those placing limits on the proceeds they can receive) by teaming up with federal officials to participate in so-called adoptive forfeitures, which permit them to receive equitable sharing payments. This latter finding was robust to numerous specifications, not altered in models estimated on various subsamples, and not affected by extreme values. Policy Implications Our study lends a measure of support to the arguments espoused by forfeiture's critics, namely that forfeiture may be pursued for financial reasons. We cannot, however, assert that policing for profit is necessarily problematic, as it is difficult to fault financially strapped public agencies for seeking needed resources. Nor can we assert that forfeiture supersedes other criminal justice goals, such as enforcement of antidrug laws.

PurposeThe growth of formal police‐probation partnerships in the USA has been accompanied by an increased awareness of the potential threats of mission distortion. The purpose of this paper is to analyze the dynamics of mission distributionDesign/methodology/approachThe paper is based on interviews with police and community corrections officers involved in an active partnership in Spokane, Washington. The paper emphasizes the abuse of authority, stalking horse incidents, and the scope of legitimate police and probation authority.FindingsUltimately, mission distortion has the potential to undermine the credibility of police‐probation partnerships.Originality/valueThe paper offers training and policy recommendations for police and community corrections administrators.

Researchers have been unable to determine whether individuals’ estimates of incivilities can be separated from constructs such as crime and victimization. Accordingly, survey respondents’ perceptions of incivilities were compared first to their perceptions of neighborhood crime and then to their personal victimization experiences. Exploratory and confirmatory factor analyses revealed that perceptions of incivilities (of the physical variety) loaded on factors separate from personal victimization. It was not clear, however, whether perceptions of incivilities were independent from perceived crime. Even so, the findings provide some evidence that estimates of incivilities represent a construct separate from estimates of crime, thereby increasing the likelihood that certain perceptual incivility measures enjoy discriminant validity.

Several researchers have found an inverse relationship between welfare spending and serious crime. With few exceptions, these findings have been based on cross‐sectional designs, single measures of welfare spending, and few indicators of crime. In response to these limitations, the relationship between welfare spending and crime was reconsidered using panel data from California counties. Fixed‐effects regressions revealed virtually no relationship between several measures of welfare spending and five types of serious crime: (1) homicide; (2) robbery; (3) assault; (4) burglary; and (5) larceny. The estimates were resistant to numerous robustness checks and alternative specifications. The most plausible explanation for the findings is that heterogeneity was not controlled for in previous studies. Implications for social support theory are discussed.

Proponents of police officer residency requirements maintain that police officers who live in the area they serve contribute to the local tax base, provide better information dissemination, and represent community interests in their agencies. However, little research has been conducted to assess the extent to which residency requirements affect public perceptions of the police. This paper explores the relationship between police residency requirements at the municipal level and citizen satisfaction with law enforcement – specifically, the connection between residency requirements and reported confidence in the abilities of the police to prevent crime, solve crime, and protect citizens. Data derived from a national survey of citizen satisfaction with criminal justice institutions conducted during 1995 and from the 1993 Law Enforcement Management and Administrative Statistics survey of agencies with more than 100 sworn officers reveal, among other things, that residency requirements affect citizens’ perceptions of the police in a negative way.

Most studies concerning police-community relations have operationalized support for-law enforcement agencies in unidimensional terms. The present study dissects the notion of support for the police into two distinct dimensions: efficacy and image. Efficacy includes perceptions of the police ability to protect citizens, solve crime, and prevent crime. Image includes perceptions of friendliness and fairness of the police. A series of conventional individual-level and contextual variables are modeled in an effort to explore their relative influence on citizen perceptions of police efficacy and image. Data gathered from a national telephone survey of 1,005 citizens reveal that support for local police is both complex and multidimensional. Moreover, the results demonstrate that efficacy and image are independent dimensions, and that each is susceptible to quite different ratings depending upon which independent and dependent variables are modeled.

Racial composition and unemployment have appeared as either theoretically-relevant controls or variables of substantive interest in numerous studies of crime. While there is no clear consensus in the literature as to their statistical significance, the lack of consensus has been most apparent in panel analyses with unit fixed effects. One explanation for this is that racial composition and unemployment are fairly invariant, or slow-moving, which leads to collinearity with unit dummies. A number of pertinent studies are reviewed to illustrate how two slow-moving variables, percent black and percent unemployed, have behaved inconsistently. A fixed effects vector decomposition procedure [Plumper, V., Troeger, V. E., 2007. Efficient estimation of time-invariant and rarely changing variables in finite sample panel analyses with unit fixed effects. Political Analysis, 15, 124-139.] is used to illustrate how these variables' coefficients appear positive and significant when the slow-moving process is accounted for.