Crime & Delinquency

Leveraging point-level spatial data from the Phoenix area, we consider the role of nearby organizations as contextual factors that amplify or reduce reoffending risk among juvenile offenders after court completion. Using survival models, we examine whether residential proximity to seven types of organizations impacts risk of recidivism, net of neighborhood disadvantage and offender characteristics. Aggregate neighborhood disadvantage was not associated with reoffending risk and organizational findings were mixed. Low-level offenders with more total organizations nearby had a higher risk of new property offenses, while the risk of drug and violent reoffending nearly doubled for diversion youth residing near police facilities or detention centers. Individual demographics and prior offense histories remained the strongest, most consistent predictors of juvenile recidivism.

Many college students who experience sexual assault experience subsequent (i.e., repeat) sexual assault incidents. There is also an established relationship between sexual assault and binge drinking. The “once bitten, twice shy” (OBTS) hypothesis suggests that those who experience alcohol- or drug-related (AOD) sexual assault would reduce how frequently they binge drink in an effort to avoid repeat victimization. We test this hypothesis by analyzing two years of survey data collected from a panel of three cohorts of freshmen women. Supportive of OBTS, our analyses reveal that students who experienced an AOD-related sexual assault at time 1 only reduced the number of days they binge drank from time 1 to time 2 and that this change significantly differed from repeat victims. Implications for efforts to reduce sexual victimization against college women are discussed.

We examined whether effects of an increase in school resource officer (SRO) staffing on school crime and exclusionary disciplinary responses to school crime varied by student race and ethnicity. Using monthly school level administrative data, we compared change in outcomes for 33 schools that enhanced SRO staffing and a matched sample of 72 schools that did not increase SRO staffing at the same time. We found that increases in offenses and exclusionary reactions due to increased SRO presence were most evident for Black and Hispanic as opposed to White students. Educational decision-makers should carefully weigh the benefits of placing SROs in schools against the knowledge that this practice differentially increases recorded school crime and exclusion from school for students of color.

Community-oriented policing (COP) is arguably the most popular and most misunderstood policing philosophy. Definitional ambiguity contributes to this problem, hampering theoretical development, creative new strategies of implementation, and evidence-based policy. DiMaggio and Powell’s seminal piece on institutional isomorphism provides a framework for understanding the organizational vagueness of COP, including the processes of homogenization of priorities and structures across police organizations. We propose several new dimensions of COP, developed using police mission statements from a nationally representative sample of law enforcement agencies (N = 2,826). These emergent dimensions (Shallow Community-Oriented Policing, Responsivity, Legitimacy, Constitutionality, and Inclusivity) provide new avenues of theoretical consideration of the COP construct. Exploring these novel elements may strengthen existing community-oriented strategies and encourage creative policy suggestions.

School resource officer (SRO) behavior varies across schools, but little is known about what shapes their behavior. Social ecological theories state that features of communities shapes individual behavior, including police officers. This may similarly apply to SROs. This study uses the 2015 to 2016 School Survey on Crime and Safety to test the extent to which three aspects of a school’s context related to behavior management (i.e., security measures, disciplinary environment, and restorative practices) shape SROs’ involvement in three roles: law enforcement, teacher, and mentor. Using a generalized structural equation model to examine the relationships between school context and SRO roles, consistent with ecological theories, we find that school context shapes SRO roles. Implications and future research are further discussed.

Rather than serving as a deterrent, exclusionary discipline tends to lead to a host of short and long-term negative outcomes. The mechanisms which propel students from exclusionary discipline toward these negative outcomes is understudied. The negative impact of school sanctions is particularly salient among students of color; yet the reasons for this are unclear. Informed by Sherman’s defiance theory, this study utilizes data from the National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent and Adult Health (Add Health) to identify these mechanisms among a sample of white and black students. Results suggest that defiance theory provides a theoretically relevant framework for understanding the impact of school sanctions on future outcomes as well as how the effects vary across race.