Socioeconomic Status and Violent Crime

Community level analysis suggests that class-related measures, not race per se, are most related with violent crime.

A Descriptive Analysis of Police Shootings in Houston

Understanding the nature of officer-involved shootings is of critical interest to policy makers, scholars, and the public. In the current article, we examined descriptive trends in officer-involved shootings in the Houston Police Department between the years 2005 and 2019. Overall, the incidence of such shootings declined over time. Officer-involved shootings reflected demographic changes in the underlying police department composition. Officer-suspect shooting dyads tended to reflect same-race characteristics, and most suspects were armed at the time of the shooting (though approximately 20% were not). Officers’ race appeared to be a minor component of officer-involved shootings. Female officers were underrepresented in officer-involved shootings. We conclude that institutional factors related to officer training rather than officer race are more crucial to consider in regard to reducing police shootings.

Examining Defense Decision-Making During Case Processing

Prosecutors are afforded significant discretionary power in the current justice system. while much attention has been given to the factors that influence charging decisions, little is known about decision-making in the charging process itself. Moreover, research has yet to examine the mechanisms used to initiate charging: grand jury indictments or the information. As these charging processes are characteristically different and may have significant implications for case processing and justice outcomes, it is important to explore what factors influence decision-making at this early stage. The current study addresses these shortcomings using case-processing data from a large urban jurisdiction. Results indicate significant differences between defendants charged via grand jury and information processes. In addition, charging pathways have important consequences for case outcomes.

Separate and Still Unequal: An Analysis of School Discipline

This chapter will examine the disproportionate rate of minority school suspensions relative to race/ethnicity, gender, socioeconomic status, grade level, and school population size.

Relative Rate Index, Racial Disparity and School Suspensions

This chapter will analyze school disciplinary actions across large metropolitan school districts. In recent decades, K-12 school disciplinary practices have garnered national attention from researchers, policymakers, and educators. Racial disparity among school discipline raises serious questions about continued violations of the 1954 Brown vs. Board of Education decision. The purpose of the chapter is to provide a series of evidence-supported recommendations for the dismantling of the school to-prison pipeline

The Forgotten: The Impact of Parental and Familial Incarceration on Fragile Communities

The incarceration of a parent negatively affects children’s physical and mental health requiring different approaches in examining the impact on fragile communities.

An Exploratory Study of Environmental Stress in Four High Violent Crime Cities: What Sets Them Apart?

Class-related measures, not race, influence the occurrence of violent crimes, highlighting necessary public policy efforts.

Rethinking Prisoner Reentry

Prisoner reentry is a critical piece of any racial justice agenda as the lack of education or vocational training within carcer institutions impose barriers to job opportunities that, coupled with societal stigmas, often make reintegration extremely challenging. Read recent publication in Context, a publication of the American Sociological Association.

The Criminal Justice System: George Floyd Bill & Qualified Immunity

Qualified immunity is a legal protection that law enforcement and government officials utilize when they are sued for money or damages in a civil suit. In the panel discussion "The Criminal Justice System: 'George Floyd Bill' & Qualified Immunity," attorneys, scholars, and legal experts debate the use of qualified immunity, and how it has been used to prevent police from being held accountable for misconduct. This panel discussion on qualified immunity was published in "The Bridge: Interdisciplinary Perspectives on Legal & Social Policy" from Texas Southern University.

Enabling Individualized Criminal Sentencing While Reducing Subjectivity: A Tablet-Based Assessment of Recidivism Risk

According to conservative estimates, the country spends a minimum of $25,500-$26,000 per year on each person incarcerated. Incarceration also has long-term costs for both offenders and society. For example, a young person with a prison record may be precluded from becoming a citizen who votes, participates in community-building, and contributes to the community. Someone’s re-offending (i.e., in the case of recidivism, defined broadly as re-offending with any jailable offense) means social resources were squandered without rehabilitating the offender (i.e., without resulting in future behavior for which one could be arrested). Unfortunately, the United States has high rates of recidivism: two separate Bureau of Justice Statistics studies have found that more than 62 percent of offenders released from prison are rearrested within three years. Society thus achieves minimal rewards in return for its costly expenses, because nearly two-thirds of convicts re-offend and return to the criminal justice system. Moreover, incarceration is potentially criminogenic: as a result of foregone employment opportunities and broken social circles, a person sent to prison might be more likely to return to crime after release. Specifically, research suggests that offenders who receive a suspended sentence instead of incarceration are less likely to re-offend. Therefore, to make the most effective use of incarceration and limited social resources, researchers should strive to develop recidivism risk assessment and measurement tools. Some progress has been made toward this goal with data-driven interview-based questionnaires, but we believe more can be done by harnessing advances from neuroscience and cognitive psychology. We briefly review the history of existing tools and describe our efforts to create a promising assessment battery through Baylor College of Medicine’s Initiative on Neuroscience and the Law to measure cognitive and empathetic traits associated with recidivism. In addition to its practical contributions, this project touches on a fundamental ethical question: should individual profiles affect the treatment modalities used for offenders convicted of the same crime? This is a thorny problem, but, ultimately, we believe that, in a criminal justice system that already makes person-by-person judgments, our tablet- and game-based approach will make the process more objective and results-oriented.

Exploring the Impact of the Opioid Epidemic in Black and Hispanic Communities

In recent years, due to an alarming increase in the number of opioid-related overdose fatalities for White, Non-Hispanics in rural and suburban communities across the United States, they have been considered as the face of this epidemic. However, there has also been a staggering rise in the number of opioid overdoses in urban, minority communities, which have not been thoroughly addressed by the literature. Read the full article in the Journal of Drug Science, Policy & Law.

Predicting Risk in Community Corrections

We seek to address current limitations of forensic risk assessments by introducing the first mobile, self-scoring, risk assessment software that relies on neurocognitive testing to predict reoffense. This assessment, run entirely on a tablet, measures decision-making via a suite of neurocognitive tests in less than 30 minutes. The software measures several cognitive and decision-making traits of the user, including impulsivity, empathy, aggression, and several other traits linked to reoffending. Our analysis measured whether this assessment successfully predicted recidivism by testing probationers in a large urban city (Houston, TX, United States) from 2017 to 2019. To determine predictive validity, we used machine learning to yield cross-validated receiver–operator characteristics. Results gave a recidivism prediction value of 0.70, making it comparable to commonly used risk assessments. This novel approach diverges from traditional self-reporting, interview-based, and criminal-records-based approaches, and can also add a protective layer against bias, while strengthening model accuracy in predicting reoffense. In addition, subjectivity is eliminated and time-consuming administrative efforts are reduced. With continued data collection, this approach opens the possibility of identifying different levels of recidivism risk, by crime type, for any age, or gender, and seeks to steer individuals appropriately toward rehabilitative programs. Suggestions for future research directions are provided.

Gender, Race/Ethnicity, and Prediction: Risk in Behavioral Assessment

Utilizing risk scores from the Wisconsin Risk Needs Assessment Instrument and other contextual variables (location and offense severity) the present analysis examines probation outcomes across a sample of female minority probationers.

Predicting Staff Assault in Juvenile Correctional Facilities

This study examines the predictive utility of the community-based Positive Achievement Change Tool–Prescreen (PACT-PS) for staff assault in a sample of 787 state-committed male youth.

Psychometric Racial and Ethnic Predictive Inequities

The discussion presents issues for consideration by policy makers, practitioners, and future researchers motivated by the minimization of predictive bias.

Predicting Youth Assault and Institutional Danger in Juvenile Correctional Facilities

This research proposes a promising avenue for future research that could have a significant practical impact on classification.

The Influence of Race, Gender, and Offense Severity on Probation Outcomes

This analysis examines the impact of established predictors on probation failure utilizing a large randomly selected sample of adult probationers. Initial findings suggest that race, gender, location, offense severity as well as risk assessment scores significantly predict probation failure. This study then examines interaction effects between race and gender as well as race and offense severity.

The (Twice) Failure of the Wisconsin Risk Need Assessment in a Sample of Probationers

This study examines the original instrument and is the first to examine the proposed reweighted risk scale’s relationship to recidivism with an independent sample of 194 male probationers.

The Predictive Utility of the Wisconsin Risk Needs Assessment Instrument

Predictive actuarial risk needs assessment research has focused on probation completion. This research examines the predictive utility of the Wisconsin Risk Needs Assessment instrument as used with Texas probationers.

Differential Racial-Ethnic Predictive Validity

Recent findings indicate that including White offenders in the sample biases the predictability of risk and needs assessment instruments. As a result, this study examines the predictability of the Los Angeles County Needs Assessment Instrument (LAC) on a sample of African American and Hispanic juvenile probationers.

Predicting Risk in Community Corrections

In this study, we use machine learning to examine the predictive validity of the NeuroCognitive Risk Assessment (NCRA) in a forensic community corrections population. We seek to address current limitations of forensic risk assessments by introducing the first mobile, self-scoring, risk assessment software that relies on neurocognitive testing to predict reoffense. This assessment, run entirely on a tablet, measures decision-making via a suite of neurocognitive tests in less than 30 minutes. The software measures several cognitive and decision-making traits of the user, including impulsivity, empathy, aggression, and several other traits linked to reoffending. Our analysis measured whether this assessment successfully predicted recidivism by testing probationers in a large urban city (Houston, TX, United States) from 2017 to 2019.

Criminal Justice Students’ Perceptions and Awareness of Racism and Discrimination

The recent focus on the controversial deaths of minorities at the hands of police officers has led to increased attention on racial bias among the law enforcement community. However, this focus does not extend to criminal justice students. Instead, research examining undergraduates’ racial attitudes focuses on the general student body. In addition to reviewing literature related to criminal justice students’ attitudes toward a variety of criminal justice and social issues, the current study used multiple regression analyses to examine racial and gender differences in a Southwestern University’s criminal justice students’ perceptions of and sensitivity to racism.

Marijuana Decriminalization

In this paper, the new definitions of legal Hemp vs. illegal Marijuana will be presented along with the potential considerations and implications for the criminal justice system and crime laboratories in Texas.

Reflections on race, personality, and crime

We argue that the research suggests that there are no genetic components of personality disorder and also that this disorder has been found to be equally distributed across racial/ethnic groups. Understanding why there appears to be a racial/ethnic personality disorder disparity within the criminal justice system may be more a function of social class and historical circumstance than genetic composition.

Police Use of Force

Findings revealed that White officers were overwhelmingly represented in use of force scenes, while minority officer scenes were isolated to specific years and films. Findings also demonstrated a dependence on a White officer’s presence when minority officers used force on Whites. The historical origins and role of such depictions in cultivating current public perceptions of use of force are discussed.