COVID-19: Examining the Impact of the Global Pandemic on Violent Crime Rates in the Central Valley of California

This study focuses on how a global pandemic like COVID-19 affects violent crimes in the city of Stockton, California. The violent crimes that we will be examining are homicide, robbery, rape, simple assault, and aggravated assault. We obtained crime data from the LexisNexis Community Crime Map and obtained COVID-19 data from the San Joaquin County Health Department regarding the city of Stockton. We developed the results of this research by using time-series plots and interrupted time-series analysis. Our results demonstrate that COVID-19 caused a statistically significant change in the slope for rape, robbery, and simple assault violent crimes. Finally, we discuss in our policy implications section that the Stockton Police Department should establish more community outreach programs that could help prevent these types of violent crimes

Pain, Injury, Mortality: Police Confront Critical Incidents

Previous research has shown that the law enforcement occupation is a dangerous profession that has the highest violent victimization rate in the United States (Fridell, Faggiani, Taylor, Brito, & Kubu, 2009). This descriptive study aims to add to the growing body of literature on victimization of police officers by answering the central research question: What are the characteristics of victimization incidents of on-duty law enforcement officers? Specific demographics of interest include; sex of the officer, method of harm used against the officer, incident location, and responding call type. A content analysis was performed on news articles reporting incidents of on-duty law enforcement fatalities and injuries (n=50), in which characters gathered from the articles were recoded to numbers for quantitative analysis. Analysis of data suggests that male officers are more likely to be victimized while on-duty. Gunfire is the method of harm most likely used to victimize officers. A roadway is the location where an incident of victimization will most likely occur, during other types of calls beyond warrant services, traffic stops, domestic disturbances, and suspicious persons. This research can lead to future more detailed research and causal analysis

Citizen Opinion Survey: How a Mid-Sized California Community Perceives their Police Department

Successful community policing is, in part, dependent on the community’s perception of their police officers. The police department of a mid-sized community in California’s Central Valley conducted a survey to gain some measure of the citizen’s perception of their police. The survey was conducted in conjunction with a nearby California State University. The results of the survey are being used to make revisions in the policies and procedures of the police department. It also proved to be an interesting activity for the professors and students of the university

MODELING A DECADE OF ORGANIZATIONAL CHANGE IN MUNICIPAL POLICE DEPARTMENTS A LONGITUDINAL ANALYSIS OF TECHNICAL, ADMINISTRATIVE, AND PROGRAMMATIC INNOVATIONS

In efforts to facilitate reforms in American Law Enforcement agencies, there has been an increasing interest among practitioners and scholars alike to better understand the causes and conditions of police organization innovation and change. There are a number of gaps in the organizational innovation research literature and existing studies have produced inconsistent and mixed findings. Most studies of police organizational change are limited due to their cross-sectional designs, and longitudinal analysis of change is lacking.This study endeavors to contribute to our understanding of police organizational change using a panel of data compiled from several principle data sources which include the 1997, 2000, 2003, and 2007 Law Enforcement Management and Administrative Statistics surveys, the Federal Bureau of Investigation's (FBI) 1996, 1999, 2002, and 2006 Uniform Crime reports, and the RAND Center for Population Health and Health Disparities (CPHHD) Data Core Series.These principal data sources are used in a longitudinal research design (panel-data analysis) to test how well a variety of hypothesized factors explain three important dimensions of police organization change: technical, administrative, and programmatic innovations. These data sources are also used to test two competing perspectives of police organization innovation and change; contingency theory and organizational design theory. Contingency theory predicts that the external environment is the principal driving force behind organizational change, whereas organizational design theory predicts that police organization change and innovation is principally influenced by organizational structures and administrative processes that are largely independent of the external environment

Institutionalizing the Culture of Control: Modeling the Changing Dynamics of U.S. Supreme Court Death Penalty Decisions

The turn away from “penal welfarism” and toward a more punitive approach to crime control policy that began in the late 1960s has been the product of a deeply rooted social and political transformation, one giving rise to what Garland (2001) has termed a “culture of control.” Perhaps the most emblematic manifestation of this culture has been the reemergence of the death penalty as a crime control tool, a reemergence facilitated by a Supreme Court that has generally acted to limit or remove constitutional and legal obstacles to carrying out death sentences. This article analyzes the Court’s role in deregulating the death penalty from a “political regimes” perspective. Using a data set of all of the votes cast in every death penalty case decided by the Court since 1969, it demonstrates the importance of regime cohort in understanding death penalty jurisprudence. Specifically, it demonstrates that the construction of the “New Right” political regime, which spearheaded the punitive trend in crime control policy, represents the critical turning point in terms of justices’ attitudes toward the death penalty. Justices appointed after 1968, even when controlling for background, ideology, partisanship, public opinion, and a variety of legal factors, were significantly more likely to vote to affirm death sentences than justices appointed prior to 1968. Moreover, this turning point also marked a reversal in the relationship between partisanship and death penalty jurisprudence. While post-1968 Republican appointees were more supportive of the death penalty than post-1968 Democratic appointees, this pattern was notably reversed among pre-1968 appointees