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Northeastern University
School of Criminology & Criminal Justice
CrimRxiv Consortium, Founding Member
Northeastern University's School of Criminology and Criminal Justice (SCCJ) prepares students for professional and research careers by applying multidisciplinary and comparative social science to understand, predict, and explain crime and contribute to the development of public policy within urban communities. Faculty are internationally recognized scholars in a range of substantive areas, inclusive of policing, corrections, crime prevention, and reentry. SCCJ is the home of the Center on Race Crime & Justice, which is comprised of five labs that represent distinct but interconnected areas of research: Corrections & Reentry; Crime Prevention; Public Evaluation; Race & Justice; Violence & Justice. Follow them on Twitter @NU_SCCJ.
Published: Dec 07, 2024
Computers and the Internet are widely recognized as fundamental to academic and future success on both the individual and the societal level. Moreover, the academic success of school-age children is now increasingly tied to access to educational technology, a reality that ...
Published: Nov 26, 2024
While several prior studies have examined the prevalence and predictors of recidivism among juvenile homicide offenders (JHOs), much less scholarly attention has been devoted to exploring the post-release factors that influence JHOs to desist from criminal behavior. Given ...
Published: Nov 26, 2024
This study employed technological frames of reference (TFR) theory to explore officer attitudes toward body-worn cameras (BWCs) in the Chicago Police Department (CPD) to uncover frames that may undermine compliance with BWC policy.
Published: Nov 25, 2024
Little is known about the prevalence of neurodevelopmental, mental, or behavioral disorders among CSEC survivors, and the experiences of CSEC survivors with these disorders with health care. We conducted a self-report survey study with N = 269 youths between the ages of 13 ...
Published: Nov 21, 2024
This study explores the correlates of use of force (UOF) in police responses to calls for service (CFS), drawing on situational, community, and organizational perspectives. Linear probability models were used to analyze CFS and UOF records for Cincinnati Police Department ...
Published: Oct 15, 2024
Too little is known about the effectiveness of efforts to prevent firearm violence. We evaluated California’s Armed and Prohibited Persons System (APPS), which identifies legal purchasers of firearms who have become prohibited persons and seeks to recover all firearms and ...
Published: Oct 10, 2024
Correctional officers work a tough beat in law enforcement. Their job—keeping incarcerated persons and the public safe—involves working in a highly challenging environment with daily threats of physical, emotional, and mental harm. Suicide rates among correctional officers ...
Published: Oct 03, 2024
Assault weapon and large-capacity magazine bans are potential tools for policy makers to prevent public mass shootings. However, the efficacy of these bans is a continual source of debate. In an earlier study, we estimated the impact of the Federal Assault Weapons Ban (FAWB) ...
Published: Sep 23, 2024
The overarching goal was to conduct process, impact, and cost-effectiveness evaluations for the joint Massachusetts Department of Correction (MA DOC) and Hampden County Sheriff’s Office (HCSO) step-down reentry program. The research team seeks to provide policy guidance to ...
Published: Aug 22, 2024
The paper employs Situational Action Theory (SAT) to examine juvenile delinquency in rural and urban Slovenia, an area previously unexplored to analyze rural/urban differences. Utilizing data from the Slovenian International Self-Report Delinquency (ISRD4) study, responses ...
Published: Aug 15, 2024
A sample of 1,247 adults from two Ukrainian cities was analyzed to understand how exposure to the Donbas war in 2017 influenced decision-making related to violent behaviors among civilians. The study seeks to: (a) evaluate perceived rewards and costs as mediators between war ...
Published: Jul 16, 2024
Past research has linked peer and teacher discrimination to risk factors for school discipline, but few studies have examined whether peer and teacher discrimination have a direct impact on school discipline. This study examines the effects of general peer and teacher ...
Published: Jul 08, 2024
This study explores the level to which Gunshot Detection Technology (GDT) leads to increased arrests and stops as compared to shots fired calls for service (CFS) in Chicago, Illinois. A two-process Knox test and point process test are applied to measure the level to which GDT ...
Published: Jun 20, 2024
A study was conducted to test the impact of Gunshot Detection Technology (GDT) in several areas of Chicago. The GDT coverage area in Chicago expanded from approximately 3 squaremiles to over 136 square-miles between 2012 and 2018. ...
Published: Jun 13, 2024
We explore how concerned Americans are about the risk of violence faced by Black Americans. Using a 2022 American National Election Studies (ANES) survey, we compare concern for Black Americans as the victims of crime versus the police. We find White Americans to be the least ...
Published: Jun 07, 2024
Maritime crime refers to conduct which is perpetrated wholly or partly at sea and is prohibited under applicable national and international law. It also represents an understudied sector of crime and security. Crimes including maritime piracy and armed robbery; illegal, ...
Published: May 21, 2024
Some criminologists of place have argued that property owners and place managers are the key actors exerting guardianship over crime and driving differences in crime across places, giving rise to the “Neighborhoods Out of Places Explanation” (NOPE) theory of crime. However, ...
Published: May 13, 2024
Suicide rates vary across occupational groups, with protective service occupations at elevated risk for suicide. Yet, research on correctional officer suicide remains sparse, as does research linking the broader social context to police officer suicides and correctional ...
Published: May 09, 2024
Broken windows theory suggests that police can prevent serious crime by addressing social and physical disorder in neighborhoods. In many U.S. cities, recent increases in disorder, fear, and crime have initiated calls for an intensification of disorder policing efforts. ...
Published: Apr 19, 2024
The exploitation of children who are working in the United States is a critical social issue. While recent public attention has been directed toward labor abuses of migrant children, there is strong evidence that labor trafficking impacts a wide range of children who ...
Published: Apr 18, 2024
This paper reports on an updated systematic review and meta-analysis of the effects of street lighting interventions on crime in public places. Following Campbell Collaboration guidelines, it uses robust criteria for inclusion of studies, comprehensive search strategies to ...
Published: Apr 08, 2024
Research indicates that crime-first language (“criminal”) increases stigma, but there is limited evidence comparing person-first language (“person with a conviction”) to other non-deviant terminology. Using two survey experiments, we test whether using person-first ...
Published: Mar 25, 2024
We examine the potential effects of gunshot detection technology longitudinally in Chicago through a synthetic control quasi-experiment. ... Gunshot detection technology had no effect on fatal shootings, non-fatal shootings, general part I gun crimes, or shots fired calls for ...
Published: Mar 20, 2024
The present state of calls for and efforts to implement evidence-based policy provide a powerful foundation for propelling a movement toward bringing about rational, cost-efficient, and humane policies for reducing aggression, crime, and violence. The main aim of this article ...
Published: Mar 18, 2024
Juvenile and family law uniquely require interdisciplinary education and experience to balance children's and families' legal rights with their best interests. Clinical legal education provides third-year law students with advanced and applied experience in a specific area of ...
Published: Mar 17, 2024
This study examines the salience of social context for opioid overdoses in Boston from 2014–2019. Longitudinal negative binomial models with random effects indicated that higher levels of concentrated disadvantage, residential instability, and illicit drug activity increased ...
Published: Mar 11, 2024
In most states for most kinds of sentenced individuals, parole boards decide the ultimate amountof time served. Parole exists as an agency within a larger system of criminal justice. Its early 19thcentury roots were embedded in the same rehabilitative ideal that led to the ...
Published: Mar 08, 2024
This paper presents AI-SNIPS (AI Support for Network Intelligence-based Pharmaceutical Security), a production-ready platform that enables stakeholder decision-making, secure data sharing, and interdisciplinary research in the fight against Illicit, Substandard, and Falsified ...
Published: Mar 08, 2024
It is widely held that providing postsecondary education programs to incarcerated individuals will improve postrelease labor market outcomes. Little research evidence exists, however, to support this view. To test the effect of postsecondary carceral education credentials on ...
Published: Mar 05, 2024
The exploitation of people in forced labor is a significant human rights violation and a threat to community safety. Despite enhanced efforts to identify and prosecute labor trafficking perpetrators in the U.S. relatively few traffickers have been held accountable. Legal ...
Published: Mar 01, 2024
Decision makers such as employers and state occupational licensing officials are often encouraged or required to incorporate evidence of rehabilitation into hiring decisions when applicants have criminal records. Current policy movements at the local, state, and federal ...
Published: Feb 22, 2024
Research shows the technology doesn’t reduce shootings or increase clearance rates, but it may have other benefits.
Published: Feb 14, 2024
Prior research indicates that positive credentials, or documentation of prosocial accomplishments, can vary in strength and perceived value in mitigating aversions to hiring individuals with criminal records. In the current study, we examine why certain types of positive ...
Published: Feb 14, 2024
Many people have decried the rising partisanship on the United States Supreme Court. One particular lament concerns the Court’s departure from precedent, a shift that has eroded longstanding doctrines such as the right to abortion and affirmative action in higher education. ...
Published: Feb 09, 2024
Migration scholars and policymakers continue to question why international migration corridors develop. In the current project, I argue that there is value in applying a social network approach to disentangle the processes that drive international migration. Using data on ...
Published: Feb 09, 2024
Crime is highly concentrated at places that lack capable place managers (i.e., landlords and their delegates). In response, numerous cities have instituted problem property interventions that pressure landowners to better manage properties suffering from decay, nuisance, or ...
Published: Feb 07, 2024
Research indicates that the burden of violent death in the United States is disproportionate across racial and ethnic groups. Yet documented disparities in rates of violent death do not capture the full extent of this inequity. Recent studies examining race-specific rates of ...
Video Data Analysis of Body-Worn Camera Footage: A Practical Methodology in Support of Police Reform
Published: Jan 17, 2024
Policing in the United States has been in a state of perpetual crisis for much of the current decade, largely owing to high-profile police use-of-force events, typically against Black men in racialized communities. This has generated mass calls for substantive changes to ...
Published: Dec 15, 2023
Founded in 1935, the Cambridge-Somerville Youth Study (CSYS) is a randomized controlled experiment of a delinquency prevention intervention, with an embedded prospective longitudinal survey, involving 506 underprivileged boys, ages 5 to 13 years (median = 10.5 years), from ...
Published: Nov 22, 2023
This study tests whether (1) shots fired calls for service in the gunshot detection technology (GDT) target area are more likely to be classified as unfounded; (2) police responses to shootings in the GDT target area are more likely to recover ballistic evidence or firearms; ...
Published: Nov 21, 2023
We apply the microsynthetic control method to evaluate the gun violence prevention effect of gunshot detection technology (GDT) in Kansas City, MO. We measure the influence of GDT on process measures (ballistic evidence collection and gun recoveries) and outcome measures ...
Published: Nov 13, 2023
Closed-Circuit Television (CCTV) video surveillance cameras have become a popular crimecontrol tool around the world. While the diffusion of CCTV initially occurred absent a scientificknowledge base, the technology has since become well researched. A body of literature ...
Published: Nov 03, 2023
Pair-matching in randomized controlled trials (RCTs) has received increased attention in criminology, the social sciences more generally, and medicine and public health, with a growing body of research demonstrating the design's benefits over “simple” RCTs. We carry out a ...
Published: Oct 23, 2023
While major crimes capture the headlines, minor offenses (and even more minor norm violations that fall short of legal offenses) are much more common. And despite being minor, the experience of them can be uncomfortable, annoying, offensive, or even scary. This set of facts ...
Published: Oct 16, 2023
The College of Social Sciences and Humanities and its nine tenure units are the home of the Experiential Liberal Arts. Through its research, teaching, and engagement missions, the college collaborates across the university, the Northeastern network, and partners around the ...
Reducing Correction Officer Stress by Improving Prison Climate: The Importance of Support and Safety
Published: Sep 30, 2023
Prior research has identified the importance of social climate in psychiatric and correctional facilities. In studies of correctional officer stress, organizational measures are typically the strongest correlates. This article combines these research areas, examining the ...
Published: Aug 15, 2023
Purpose. This study examines the relationship between social support and victimization of Latino youth over time, utilizing the stress prevention and support deterioration models. Methods. To address the research questions we utilized data from Waves 1 and 2 (n = 574) of ...
Published: Jun 24, 2023
Objectives. Pair-matching with random allocation in prospective controlled trials represents a novel and highly rigorous design. First use of the design can be traced to medicine (in 1926) and criminology and the social sciences more generally (in 1935). Beginning with these ...
Published: Jun 15, 2023
Evaluate the effects that Prudential Center events had on crime in downtown Newark from 2007 to 2015 in terms of incident counts and spatial characteristics. We evaluate the effects of events held at the Prudential Center on crime counts via negative binomial regression. ...
Published: Jun 08, 2023
Correction officers work in an occupational context where they are often exposed to violence; however, prior research assessing the relationship between violence exposure and officers’ mental health has been limited. The current study sought to better understand the impact of ...
Published: Jun 06, 2023
Agricultural workers are essential to the supply chain for our daily food and yet, many face harmful work conditions, including garnished wages, and other labor violations. Workers on H-2A visas are particularly vulnerable due to the precarity of their immigration status ...
Published: May 08, 2023
Most judicial, regulatory, and administrative systems, at least formally, are concerned with the fairness and transparency of their decisions concerning the public. Fairness and transparency of criminal justice operations are critical to creating trust in the legal system and ...
Published: May 04, 2023
Background: Research on police discretion indicates a host of legal and extra-legal factors can impact officer decision making. The emergence of video surveillance technologies has made certain police interactions with the public more remote in nature. Decisions to enforce ...
Published: Apr 03, 2023
Gunshot Detection Technology (GDT) is expected to impact gun violence by accelerating the discovery and response to gunfire. GDT should further collect more accurate spatial data, as gunfire is assigned to coordinates measured by acoustic sensors rather than addresses ...
Published: Mar 27, 2023
Despite prior negative experiences with the law and licensure barriers, individuals with conviction histories are increasingly seeking entry into the legal profession. To understand their unique educational journeys from a joint stigma and legal consciousness perspective, we ...
Published: Mar 24, 2023
As evaluations of CCTV camera systems have increased and improved methodologically over the years (see Piza et al. 2019), one striking development has been a focus on the use of microunits of analysis (see Chapter 2, Topic 2.3 in the current volume). Crucial to the evaluation ...
Published: Mar 15, 2023
Suicide rates vary across occupational groups, with protective service occupations at elevated risk for suicide. Yet, research on correctional officer suicide remains sparse, as does research linking the broader social context to police officer suicides and correctional ...
Published: Mar 13, 2023
Prior research indicates that correctional treatment programmes can be highly effective in reducing reoffending. Less studied, however, is whether such programmes are economically efficient.
Published: Mar 13, 2023
Children and youth who are at risk of becoming early-onset life-course-persistent offenders often slip through the cracks of other systems in society (e.g., health, education, child welfare, substance use and mental health). When they do, they impose an enormous economic ...
Published: Mar 06, 2023
Commercial sex policies are often at the core of many anti-trafficking efforts, yet rigorous empirical evidence about the effectiveness of these policies in preventing sex trafficking is lacking. In response to ongoing debates about which commercial sex laws and policies ...
Published: Mar 06, 2023
Law enforcement interventions continue to be the primary mechanism used to identify offenders and illicit businesses involved in human trafficking, yet trafficking continues to be a thriving international operation. We explore alternative mechanisms to disrupt illicit ...
Published: Mar 05, 2023
There are many possible methods of reducing crime (see e.g. Tonry & Farrington, 1995). There is criminal justice or correctional prevention, which involves deterrence, incapacitation and rehabilitation. There is community prevention, which involves targeting community risk ...
Published: Jan 15, 2023
Hate crimes, often referred to as bias-motivated crimes, have garnered greater public attention and concern as political rhetoric in the United States and internationally has promoted the exclusion of people based on their group identity. This review examines what we know ...
Published: Jan 01, 2023
Much research has analyzed the spatial patterns of drug overdose events and identified features of the environment associated with heightened overdose levels. Generally absent from the literature are studies that analyze how unique trajectories of overdoses vary over time. We ...
Published: Jan 01, 2023
In January 2023, the School of Criminology and Criminal Justice officially launched the Center onCrime, Race, and Justice (CRJ), which aims to make the criminal justice system more equitable andjust for all. The five labs of CRJ, the Violence and Justice Research Lab (VJRL) ...
Published: Dec 17, 2022
How can public opinion research help achieve badly needed criminal justice reforms? Unfortunately, public opinion has frequently been used in ways that help construct barriers to reform. Understanding the reasons—such as sources of public opinion about crime and justice, the ...
Published: Dec 01, 2022
In the spring and summer of 2020, a remarkable number of Americans participated in a remarkable number of protests in support of Black Lives Matter. How did the general public understand these protests, and where does support for the movement stand overall? We answer this ...
Published: Oct 26, 2022
The current study analyzes police use of force as a series of time-bound transactions between officers, civilians, and bystanders. The research begins with a systematic social observation of use of force events recorded on police body-worn cameras in Newark, NJ. Researchers ...
Published: Oct 17, 2022
In a quasi-experiment, we examine whether changing schools during the transition from 8th to 9th grade influences adolescent delinquency, using a sample of more than 14,000 students in 26 public school districts (PROSPER study). The dataset follows students for eight waves ...
Published: Sep 07, 2022
Objectives Police use of excessive—even fatal—force is a significant social issue, one at the symbolic heart of the Black Lives Matter civil rights movement. However, a substantial number of Americans—disproportionately White—tend to minimize the prevalence of this issue. We ...
Published: Aug 14, 2022
Out of 6,512 homicides from 1976 through 2014, we review the outcomes of 1,822 capitally-charged homicide cases across eight judicial districts in Louisiana. In most cases, capital charges were reduced; but in 385 cases, the state sought death to the final stage of the ...
Published: Aug 05, 2022
The current study applies Systematic Social observation (SSO) to body-worn camera (BWC) footage of use of physical force events in Newark, NJ. The analysis tests the effect of suspect resistance and police officer interpersonal and informational justice tactics on time until ...
Published: Jul 07, 2022
Objective: Black people compose 13% of the U.S. population but 23% of fatal police shootings (McLeod et al., 2020). Numerous studies have documented the negative mental health consequences experienced by communities of color due to negative experiences with law enforcement ...
Published: Jun 25, 2022
Crime & Delinquency (2022)
Published: Jun 19, 2022
Certain places generate inordinate amounts of crime and disorder. We examine how places differ in their nature of crime and disorder, with three objectives: (1) identifying a typology of profiles of crime and disorder; (2) assessing whether different forms of crime and ...
Published: Jun 10, 2022
Dating abuse (DA) is prevalent and consequential, but no brief DA screening tools are available for use in pediatric or other settings. This study was designed to determine the sensitivity, specificity, and predictive values of the MARSHA-C, which is a three-item DA ...
Published: Jun 01, 2022
The Maine Statistical Analysis Center (SAC) worked with several criminal justice stakeholders across the state to determine arrest rates and outcomes for hate and bias crimes in Maine that were reported by law enforcement to the Federal Bureau of Investigation’s (FBI) Uniform ...
Published: May 24, 2022
Research Question: In the context of important advances as well as global reach, what more is needed for evidence-based policing to bridge the divide between academic research and police practice? Data: We draw on 18 case studies reported in The Globalization of ...
Published: May 20, 2022
While most social network research focuses on positive relational ties, such as friendship and information exchange, scholars are beginning to examine the dark side of human interaction, where negative connections represent different forms of interpersonal conflict, ...
Published: May 09, 2022
The current study investigates the association between physical child maltreatment and juvenile delinquent behavior in the context of the Situational Action Theory (SAT) (Wikström, 2006, 2017, 2020). Self-control, morality and exposure to criminogenic settings are proposed as ...
Published: Apr 19, 2022
It matters how people view the police—and that there is a substantial racial gap in these views. Research has primarily focused on police experiences to explain generally less-positive views among Black Americans. We recommend a subtle but vital shift in focus, seeking ...
Published: Apr 15, 2022
Traditional police tactics such as rapid response and reactive enforcement continue to dominate the police response against human trafficking despite knowledge about the challenges and potential harm of using these tactics. Through the case of illicit massage businesses ...
Published: Mar 18, 2022
Guns are highly visible in the news, in politics, and in American culture more broadly. While most Americans support some gun control, a significant and vocal minority of Americans are firmly opposed. Drawing on work from the recently developing sociology of modern gun ...
Published: Feb 14, 2022
Purpose. Adolescent dating abuse (ADA) is a public health issue. Adolescents may experience victimization, engage in perpetration, or both. This study explores the co-occurrences of ADA victimization and perpetration, specifically examining which experiences and behaviors ...
Published: Jan 03, 2022
The Globalization of Evidence-Based Policing. Innovations in Bridging the Research-Practice Divide (2022)
Published: Dec 01, 2021
Premature mortality represents an important outcome for crime and violence prevention and related social interventions, but little is known about premature mortality in relation to these interventions. This article assesses the impact of interventions for at-risk and ...
Published: Nov 11, 2021
We present a transdisciplinary approach to create ISE tools that are built by including perspectives from a diverseteam composed of ISE researchers, social scientists, a human trafficking investigative task force and a survivor-centered advisory group. Each group brings a ...
Published: Nov 05, 2021
Objectives The article reflects on some pioneers in experimental criminology, including those who contributed to the development and longevity of the Cambridge-Somerville Youth Study (CSYS), and reports on a new program of research on the CSYS, extending the study to 85 years ...
Published: Sep 22, 2021
Objectives: Disqualifying conviction lists (DCLs) bar applicants with certain convictions within specified timeframes from employment. Using proposed federal legislative changes in the aviation sector as a case study, we examine whether convictions under the existing policy ...
Published: Sep 09, 2021
This study provides critical information about the least researched group of labor trafficking victims in the country. This study attempts to answer fundamental questions about U.S. citizen victims of labor trafficking, including their characteristics and the nature of their ...
Published: Aug 08, 2021
This study answers the research questions outlined below. Answering these questions will contribute to scholarship and inform policymaking around Latinx victimization in important ways, capitalizing on longitudinal data on victimization of Latinx adults and qualitative data ...
Published: Aug 06, 2021
Despite public attention to the problem of human trafficking, it has proven difficult to measure the problem. Improving the quality of information about human trafficking is critical to developing sound anti-trafficking policy. In support of this effort, in 2013 the Federal ...
Published: Jun 26, 2021
While a long history of scholarship has explored fear as an affective reaction to the prospect of crime, a much smaller number of studies have suggested that anger may be both more common and more predictive of punitive policy views (e.g. Ditton et al. 1999a; Johnson 2009; ...
Published: May 27, 2021
White Americans, on average, do not support Black Lives Matter, while Black Americans generally express strong support. The lack of support among white Americans is striking, and we argue that it matters why this racial gap exists. Using a nationally-representative survey ...
Published: Apr 25, 2021
In 1935, Richard Cabot began designing the Cambridge-Somerville Youth Study (CSYS) to evaluate the impact of a social intervention of “directed friendship” on youth delinquency. By the commencement of the study in 1937, hundreds of boys had been “matched” into pairs based on ...
Published: Apr 25, 2021
As described in Part 1 (Welsh et al 2021), Richard Cabot's 1937 Cambridge-Somerville Youth Study (CSYS) of the impact of a social intervention of "directed friendship" on youth delinquency represented the first trial in the social or behavioral sciences to use alternate or ...
Published: Mar 30, 2021
Despite debates about the “material militarization” of the police, relatively little information on mass public opinion about police weapons, equipment, and gear currently exists. We analyze data from a national, opt-in panel of survey participants to assess public opinion ...
Published: Mar 19, 2021
This article's objective is to test the cumulative disadvantage hypothesis—that system-level racial and ethnic disparities accumulate from intake to final disposition—by investigating relative and absolute disparities across different pathways through the juvenile justice ...
Published: Mar 11, 2021
International Journal of Comparative and Applied Criminal Justice (2021)
