Experience

Publications

• Variation in Criminal Justice Policy Making: An Exploratory Study Using Sex Offender Registration and Community Notification Laws

  Criminal Justice Policy Review

  Variation in Sex Offender Registration and Community Notification (SORCN) policies may suggest differences in public fears of sexual crimes as well as differences in state-level policy-making. This study explored the standardization of SORCN policies across a sample of five midwestern states. A thematic content analysis showed that states varied in how registrants were defined, what information was selected for public notification, and how sex offender laws are maintained. A typology of revisions emerged, which may inform our understanding about policy-making. Ultimately, existing research provides limited explanations for these results, serving as an impetus for future research on context and process of criminal justice policy change

• Variation in Criminal Justice Policy Making: An Exploratory Study Using Sex Offender Registration and Community Notification Laws

  Criminal Justice Policy Review

  Variation in Sex Offender Registration and Community Notification (SORCN) policies may suggest differences in public fears of sexual crimes as well as differences in state-level policy-making. This study explored the standardization of SORCN policies across a sample of five midwestern states. A thematic content analysis showed that states varied in how registrants were defined, what information was selected for public notification, and how sex offender laws are maintained. A typology of revisions emerged, which may inform our understanding about policy-making. Ultimately, existing research provides limited explanations for these results, serving as an impetus for future research on context and process of criminal justice policy change

• Are self-identified Christian fundamentalists really more supportive of capital punishment? Exploring the relationship between fundamentalism and death penalty attitudes

  Criminal Justice Studies

  Christian fundamentalism has often been linked to death penalty support, despite mixed results across more than a decade of empirical studies. More recently, a line of research has emerged that has called for a reconceptualization of fundamentalism as harsh and rigid, instead of being more a multifaceted concept. In the spirit of this call, we investigated the relative importance of Christian fundamentalism on death penalty attitudes when compared with non-religious social attitudes. Using 1,560 respondents from the 2008 General Social Survey data, we found self-identified Christian fundamentalism, though not biblical literalism or religious denomination, remained a significant predictor of death penalty attitudes when attitudes toward LGBT marriage equality were included in the model. Unexpectedly, white women who endorsed LGBT marriage equality were also more likely to support the death penalty. Based on our findings, we discuss implications and areas for future research.

• Variation in Criminal Justice Policy Making: An Exploratory Study Using Sex Offender Registration and Community Notification Laws

  Criminal Justice Policy Review

  Variation in Sex Offender Registration and Community Notification (SORCN) policies may suggest differences in public fears of sexual crimes as well as differences in state-level policy-making. This study explored the standardization of SORCN policies across a sample of five midwestern states. A thematic content analysis showed that states varied in how registrants were defined, what information was selected for public notification, and how sex offender laws are maintained. A typology of revisions emerged, which may inform our understanding about policy-making. Ultimately, existing research provides limited explanations for these results, serving as an impetus for future research on context and process of criminal justice policy change

• Are self-identified Christian fundamentalists really more supportive of capital punishment? Exploring the relationship between fundamentalism and death penalty attitudes

  Criminal Justice Studies

  Christian fundamentalism has often been linked to death penalty support, despite mixed results across more than a decade of empirical studies. More recently, a line of research has emerged that has called for a reconceptualization of fundamentalism as harsh and rigid, instead of being more a multifaceted concept. In the spirit of this call, we investigated the relative importance of Christian fundamentalism on death penalty attitudes when compared with non-religious social attitudes. Using 1,560 respondents from the 2008 General Social Survey data, we found self-identified Christian fundamentalism, though not biblical literalism or religious denomination, remained a significant predictor of death penalty attitudes when attitudes toward LGBT marriage equality were included in the model. Unexpectedly, white women who endorsed LGBT marriage equality were also more likely to support the death penalty. Based on our findings, we discuss implications and areas for future research.

• Public Interest in Sex Offenders: A Perpetual Panic?

  Journal of Criminology, Criminal Justice, Law and Society

  All 50 states have laws that require sex offenders to register with law enforcement and for that information to be made publicly available. The rapid passage of sex offender policy, coupled with increased media attention and sensationalized cases, suggests a moral panic. However, if it is a moral panic, we would expect it to expire as quickly as it appeared. But this does not seem to be the case. Political and media interest seem persistent, though the role of public interest is unclear. We use Google Trends data for the U.S, employing multi-level models to analyze public interest in sex offenders, before and after passage of the Adam Walsh Act in 2006. We found that such interest is fairly stable over time, in contrast to Google searches for “crime” and “terrorism” which have decreased over the same eight-year period. Our results have implications for how we understand sex offenders, how we understand moral panics, and the ways in which laws are derived from them.

• Variation in Criminal Justice Policy Making: An Exploratory Study Using Sex Offender Registration and Community Notification Laws

  Criminal Justice Policy Review

  Variation in Sex Offender Registration and Community Notification (SORCN) policies may suggest differences in public fears of sexual crimes as well as differences in state-level policy-making. This study explored the standardization of SORCN policies across a sample of five midwestern states. A thematic content analysis showed that states varied in how registrants were defined, what information was selected for public notification, and how sex offender laws are maintained. A typology of revisions emerged, which may inform our understanding about policy-making. Ultimately, existing research provides limited explanations for these results, serving as an impetus for future research on context and process of criminal justice policy change

• Are self-identified Christian fundamentalists really more supportive of capital punishment? Exploring the relationship between fundamentalism and death penalty attitudes

  Criminal Justice Studies

  Christian fundamentalism has often been linked to death penalty support, despite mixed results across more than a decade of empirical studies. More recently, a line of research has emerged that has called for a reconceptualization of fundamentalism as harsh and rigid, instead of being more a multifaceted concept. In the spirit of this call, we investigated the relative importance of Christian fundamentalism on death penalty attitudes when compared with non-religious social attitudes. Using 1,560 respondents from the 2008 General Social Survey data, we found self-identified Christian fundamentalism, though not biblical literalism or religious denomination, remained a significant predictor of death penalty attitudes when attitudes toward LGBT marriage equality were included in the model. Unexpectedly, white women who endorsed LGBT marriage equality were also more likely to support the death penalty. Based on our findings, we discuss implications and areas for future research.

• Public Interest in Sex Offenders: A Perpetual Panic?

  Journal of Criminology, Criminal Justice, Law and Society

  All 50 states have laws that require sex offenders to register with law enforcement and for that information to be made publicly available. The rapid passage of sex offender policy, coupled with increased media attention and sensationalized cases, suggests a moral panic. However, if it is a moral panic, we would expect it to expire as quickly as it appeared. But this does not seem to be the case. Political and media interest seem persistent, though the role of public interest is unclear. We use Google Trends data for the U.S, employing multi-level models to analyze public interest in sex offenders, before and after passage of the Adam Walsh Act in 2006. We found that such interest is fairly stable over time, in contrast to Google searches for “crime” and “terrorism” which have decreased over the same eight-year period. Our results have implications for how we understand sex offenders, how we understand moral panics, and the ways in which laws are derived from them.

• A Propensity Score Approach towards Assessing Neighborhood Risk of Parole Revocation

  American Journal of Criminal Justice

  Previous research pertaining to parole has primarily concentrated on individual level characteristics as predictors of parole success, holding offender residency as a constant. Recently, there has been a growing realization that we need to understand how neighborhood contexts impact successful reintegration. It is difficult to evaluate the increased risk associated with neighborhood characteristics on parole revocation because residency after prison is not randomly assigned. Consequently, methodological adaptations must be made to account for selection into disadvantaged neighborhoods. To reduce overt bias, we used two propensity score strategies, matching and inverse probability of treatment weighting, to determine the impact of parolee residence on parole outcome. Our analytic strategies indicated a weaker effect for neighborhood context when compared to traditional models. In essence, we found that both techniques were effective at decreasing the threat to internal validity allowing for greater confidence in reporting an average treatment effect. The implications of our findings are discussed as well as the utility of these analyses in criminal justice research

• Variation in Criminal Justice Policy Making: An Exploratory Study Using Sex Offender Registration and Community Notification Laws

  Criminal Justice Policy Review

  Variation in Sex Offender Registration and Community Notification (SORCN) policies may suggest differences in public fears of sexual crimes as well as differences in state-level policy-making. This study explored the standardization of SORCN policies across a sample of five midwestern states. A thematic content analysis showed that states varied in how registrants were defined, what information was selected for public notification, and how sex offender laws are maintained. A typology of revisions emerged, which may inform our understanding about policy-making. Ultimately, existing research provides limited explanations for these results, serving as an impetus for future research on context and process of criminal justice policy change

• Are self-identified Christian fundamentalists really more supportive of capital punishment? Exploring the relationship between fundamentalism and death penalty attitudes

  Criminal Justice Studies

  Christian fundamentalism has often been linked to death penalty support, despite mixed results across more than a decade of empirical studies. More recently, a line of research has emerged that has called for a reconceptualization of fundamentalism as harsh and rigid, instead of being more a multifaceted concept. In the spirit of this call, we investigated the relative importance of Christian fundamentalism on death penalty attitudes when compared with non-religious social attitudes. Using 1,560 respondents from the 2008 General Social Survey data, we found self-identified Christian fundamentalism, though not biblical literalism or religious denomination, remained a significant predictor of death penalty attitudes when attitudes toward LGBT marriage equality were included in the model. Unexpectedly, white women who endorsed LGBT marriage equality were also more likely to support the death penalty. Based on our findings, we discuss implications and areas for future research.

• Public Interest in Sex Offenders: A Perpetual Panic?

  Journal of Criminology, Criminal Justice, Law and Society

  All 50 states have laws that require sex offenders to register with law enforcement and for that information to be made publicly available. The rapid passage of sex offender policy, coupled with increased media attention and sensationalized cases, suggests a moral panic. However, if it is a moral panic, we would expect it to expire as quickly as it appeared. But this does not seem to be the case. Political and media interest seem persistent, though the role of public interest is unclear. We use Google Trends data for the U.S, employing multi-level models to analyze public interest in sex offenders, before and after passage of the Adam Walsh Act in 2006. We found that such interest is fairly stable over time, in contrast to Google searches for “crime” and “terrorism” which have decreased over the same eight-year period. Our results have implications for how we understand sex offenders, how we understand moral panics, and the ways in which laws are derived from them.

• A Propensity Score Approach towards Assessing Neighborhood Risk of Parole Revocation

  American Journal of Criminal Justice

  Previous research pertaining to parole has primarily concentrated on individual level characteristics as predictors of parole success, holding offender residency as a constant. Recently, there has been a growing realization that we need to understand how neighborhood contexts impact successful reintegration. It is difficult to evaluate the increased risk associated with neighborhood characteristics on parole revocation because residency after prison is not randomly assigned. Consequently, methodological adaptations must be made to account for selection into disadvantaged neighborhoods. To reduce overt bias, we used two propensity score strategies, matching and inverse probability of treatment weighting, to determine the impact of parolee residence on parole outcome. Our analytic strategies indicated a weaker effect for neighborhood context when compared to traditional models. In essence, we found that both techniques were effective at decreasing the threat to internal validity allowing for greater confidence in reporting an average treatment effect. The implications of our findings are discussed as well as the utility of these analyses in criminal justice research

• Beyond Panic: Variation in the Legislative Activity for Sex Offender Registration and Notification Laws Across States Over Time

  Criminal Justice Policy Review

  Nationwide moral panic has long served as a primary explanation for sex offense laws. These laws, however, remain primarily left to state legislatures, which implies potential variation in their content over time. Variation in legislative content, to the degree that it represents implementation, not only suggests differential consequences for registrants and communities, but also it would raise questions to the sufficiency of moral panic as a sole explanation for sex offense policy change. I build upon earlier work by exploring variation in the content and timing of sex offender registration and notification (SORN) reform in all 50 states over time. After documenting variation in these laws, I present the ways in which SORN legislative content has evolved differently across states. In addition, the timing of legislative reforms differed not only across states but also within states over time. These findings have implications for existing theoretical assertions regarding criminal justice policy.