Community Context, Weapon Use, and Victim Injury: A Multi-Level Study of Offense Severity in the Sexual Victimization of Women Abstract Prior studies of the sexual assault of women suggest the importance of weapon use, victim/offender familiarity, and offender intoxication as factors that contribute to offense severity in the form of victim injury. This body of literature is, however, inconsistent and limited insofar as it relies heavily on micro-level analysis of geographically limited samples of survivors and offenders. This study contributes to the literature through application of Agnew’s General Strain Theory and race-specific hierarchical generalized linear modeling to incident-level data from the National Incident-Based Reporting System in conjunction with contextual-level data from cities in which the incidents are nested. Our findings suggest weapon use, victim-offender familiarity, and offender intoxication each contribute to offense severity, but these relationships are conditioned by strain-inducing community characteristics.

Navigating Get-Tough and Support-Oriented Philosophies for Improving School Safety: Insights from School Administrators and School Safety Staff Abstract Schools in the United States are increasingly faced with the challenge of navigating two seemingly contradictory approaches to school safety. On the one hand, they attempt to make schools safer by employing get-tough, punishment-oriented policies. On the other hand, schools promote support-oriented policies that seek to address the root causes of students’ behavioral issues. Despite considerable advances in research on school safety, little is known about how schools balance the implementation of these two approaches. To address this research gap, we present findings from interviews with school principals, assistant principals, discipline coordinators, police, and district leaders to illustrate how schools navigate the implementation of these competing school safety philosophies. Implications for theory, research, and policy are discussed.

Regulating Guns among Young Adults Abstract This paper reports the results of two studies of the impact of gun control measures on violent criminal behavior among persons age 18 to 20. The first study assessed the impact of state bans on gun carrying among persons age 18 to 20 on rates of violent crime committed by persons in that age group. The research used a state-level cross-sectional weighted least squares analysis of murder, robbery, and aggravated assault rates in 2000, controlling for possible confounding variables. The results indicate no significant effect of these carry bans on any of the three violent crime rates. The second study was a longitudinal analysis performed to evaluate the impact of a single previously unstudied element of the federal Gun Control Act of 1968 – its ban on the purchase of handguns by persons aged 18 to 20. The analysis tested whether the share of arrests for three violent crime types trended downward, or less strongly upward, after the law went into effect, controlling for trends in the share of the population in this age group. Results indicate that there was no impact of this ban on the 18-to-20 year-old share of arrests for homicide, robbery, or aggravated assault.

The Battlefield Behind Bars: How Mental Disorder and Suicidal Behavior Impacts the Prison Experience for Veterans Abstract Military veteran status has been associated with a variety of criminal justice outcomes as well as higher rates of mental illness and suicide when compared to the general population. Although research has generally focused on why veterans become involved with the justice system, less is known about their experiences while incarcerated. In particular, studies of veterans in the community context indicate that they are unwilling to seek out mental health treatment due to potential stigmas, suggesting that this reluctance may extend into the prison environment. Using a sample of 14,278 veteran and nonveteran inmates, we find that veterans do not necessarily fare worse in prison and are actually more likely to obtain treatment. However, this effect is largely mediated by the greater history of mental disorders and suicidal behaviors among veterans. Our findings lend credence to recent efforts designed to screen and manage justice-involved veterans as a distinct, at-risk group.

Empty Homes and Acquisitive Crime: Does Vacancy Type Matter? Abstract Research suggests that vacant homes are associated with a variety of negative outcomes for communities, including higher rates of some crimes. A few studies in this vein have examined the effects of particular types of vacancy, such as abandoned homes, empty occupiable residences, seasonal housing, and undeveloped lots. However, these works have focused on a single state or urban area. The present study sought to advance the understanding of vacancy’s relationship to acquisitive crime (burglary, robbery, and larceny) by including several vacancy rates (homeowner, rental, seasonal, and overall) as distinct predictors and by using a sample of large cities from across the United States. The analysis also controlled for social, demographic, and economic factors relevant to crime and vacancy. Results from negative binomial regression models indicated that the relationship between empty residences and crime varied depending upon the particular form of vacancy and upon the type of criminal offense.

The Relative Influence of Legal Pressure on Outcomes in a Rehabilitation Aftercare Drug Court Abstract The concept of legal pressure has been used in research to study the effect threats of increased punishment have on the rehabilitation trajectory of individuals with substance use disorders under community supervision. This study investigates how unequal legal pressures affect the chances of success for participants in a drug court-supervised rehabilitation aftercare program. Using bivariate and logistic regression analyses, we compare the successful program completion rates of individuals charged with felony- and misdemeanor-level offenses. Consistent with the legal pressure thesis, we find that clients under misdemeanor-level charges become more likely to fail probation than those under the threat of felony-level punishment upon transition to community aftercare. Moreover, the higher rate of failure in the lower legal pressure group is strongly associated with their failure to abstain from drug use during the outpatient phase of community supervision. A shift in legal pressure is thus identified as a potential dynamic risk factor in substance abuse aftercare. The implications for community supervision of offenders recovering from addictions are discussed.

Construing the Legality of Solitary Confinement: Analysis of United States Federal Court Jurisprudence Abstract This article analyzes the constitutional parameters of solitary confinement, administrative segregation, and/or punitive isolation within correctional facilities in the United States. After briefly discussing the harmful effects of isolation and the number of inmates subject to this type of confinement, it explains the U.S. Supreme Court’s “atypical and significant hardship” standard for assessing the legality of segregation. Evaluation of 68 cases decided by the 12 U.S. Circuit Courts of Appeals reveals how each Circuit decides when conditions of segregation amount to an “atypical and significant hardship” for the inmate, creating a liberty interest protected by the Fourteenth Amendment Due Process clause. Due to the Supreme Court’s ambiguity, the Federal Circuit Courts of Appeals lack agreement on (1) when liberty interests attach and (2) which confinement conditions outside of segregation should serve as a comparison baseline to assess “atypicality” and “hardship.” While inmates possess limited liberty interests when placed in segregation, the physical and psychological harms wrought by segregation, isolation, and solitary confinement are rarely considered when courts make constitutional determinations of such practices.

Feeling Blue: Officer Perceptions of Public Antipathy Predict Police Occupational Norms Abstract Recent protests against law enforcement have spurred claims by practitioners and editorialists that public antipathy toward the police may influence police occupational norms. A number of classic police ethnographies also suggest a link between perceived public antipathy and police culture, but limited empirical research has examined this claim. Using a sample of 12,376 sworn law enforcement officers who participated in the National Police Research Platform, and a series of ordinary least squares regressions, this study examines whether officers’ perceptions of public support predict their cultural orientations. Results reveal that officers perceiving greater public antipathy report higher levels of social isolation, work-group solidarity, cynicism toward the public, and coercive attitudes. We identify practical implications and potential organizational remedies to address these perceptions, and situate these findings within theoretical arguments of early police ethnographers and contemporary claims of the “Ferguson Effect.”

An Examination of the Effects of Personal and Workplace Variables on Correctional Staff Perceptions of Safety Abstract Research on victimization has progressed dramatically over the last four decades. This research has identified important individual and contextual predictors of both fear and perceived risk. Nevertheless, few studies have examined perceptions of safety among corrections employees. The current study used data from 322 correctional staff working at a large Southern prison to explore personal and workplace predictors of perceived safety. Specifically, it examined the effects of personal and workplace variables on three measures of perceived safety: perceived dangerousness of the job, concerns about inmate-on-staff physical assault, and concerns about inmates verbally assaulting staff. Across all three measures of perceived safety, workplace characteristics mattered more than personal characteristics. The personal and workplace variables were grouped into fear facilitators (i.e., variables that increase perceptions of one’s safety being at risk) and fear inhibitors (i.e., variables that decrease perceptions of one’s safety being at risk). Gender, age, and organizational climate (i.e., disobedient inmates, unethical staff behaviors, role ambiguity, and overload) represented fear facilitators and social support (i.e., support from coworkers, supervisors, and home), quality training, and input into decision-making represented fear inhibitors. In the current study both fear facilitators and fear inhibitors were important, but the nature of their effects differed depending on the employee’s position and the type of perceived safety under consideration.

Assessing the Impact of Restrictive Housing on Inmate Post-Release Criminal Behavior Abstract The placement of inmates in restrictive housing (RH) units has become a staple of corrections policy in recent years. Despite its increased use, research on its continued effects is relatively rare when compared to the breadth of general correctional research. This study contributes to the literature by examining the effect placement in restrictive housing has on offender recidivism post prison release. Subjects include approximately 4000 inmates matched through Propensity Score Matching (PSM) techniques and followed 36 months post-release. The findings reveal that inmates placed in restrictive housing had elevated levels of recidivism and proportionally more new commitments for all crime types than those not placed in restrictive housing. Restrictive housing subjects also displayed shorter time to rearrest than non-RH individuals. The theoretical and policy implications of these findings are discussed.