Vivian B. Lord

Characteristics of Violence in State Government

This study examines workplace victimization of state government employees. The scope of the violence, demographic and job-related characteristics of victims, levels of violence, and the relationships between victims and perpetrators are explored. Findings indicate that violence is widespread, although it is primarily verbal in nature. Significant relationships are found between the victims job classification and violence, as well as the association between the victim and perpetrator and the level of violence. Results support studies citing managerial and public safety job categories as high risk for violence but do not find significant workplace violence among domestic partners.

The police stress inventory: Does it measure stress?

Research on stress among law enforcement personnel has not kept pace with the interest in this subject. This study had two primary objectives: to extend the psychometric evaluation of a modified version of Lawrences Police Stress Inventory (PSI) and to evaluate empirically its concurrent convergent and discriminant validity. Data were collected from 259 certified North Carolina law enforcement officers. Factor analysis and various psychometric analyses raised some concerns about the structural integrity of the PSI. Further analyses revealed that the PSI correlated more highly with a job satisfaction measure than with another measure of stress and, thus, failed to exhibit discriminant validity. These findings suggest that the PSI is not a valid measure of stress. It is argued that research findings about stress have serious implications for policy and practice and that considerable care must be taken in developing and selecting instruments that purport to measure stress among law enforcement officers.

An Examination of the Ethical and Value Orientation of Criminal Justice Students

The purpose of this research was to compare the values, likelihood of engaging in ethical violations, and perceptions of the seriousness of a variety of ethical violations of criminal justice students with students in other disciplines while controlling for their gender and interest in law enforcement. Few differences were found between criminal justice students and other students in terms of their value orientations. Although criminal justice students were found to be less likely to believe they would engage in ethical violations and more likely to view such violations as serious, these relationships were found to be insignificant. The variable found to have the most effect in all models was the gender of the student. Women were less likely to commit ethical violations and more likely to view them as more serious. Overall, the research lends more credence to the socialization or occupational opportunity theories for explaining the existence of the police subculture.

Law Enforcement-Assisted Suicide

This study describes historical, personality, behavioral, and situational factors of law enforcement-assisted suicides, which are also known as suicide-by-cop (SbC) subjects. These factors were then used to compare differences between SbC subjects who successfully forced officers to shoot them and those subjects who were unsuccessful. SbC subjects appear to share several risk factors with other suicide victims. This study detected some differences in the characteristics of the SbC subjects who were successful in forcing the officers to intervene with lethal force and those who were not. Substance abuse, previous suicide attempts, stressful life events, length of residency in the location of the incident, and homicidal conversation during the SbC incident did have weak relationships with the outcome of the incident.

What Really Influences Officer Attitudes Toward COP? The Importance of Context

This research examines the extent to which actual implementation influenced how officers felt and the reasons for their feelings particularly about community-oriented policing (COP)-related activities, procedures, and COP philosophy in general. A pre- and post-implementation survey was conducted and followed up by a set of focus groups. The primary areas of difference between the pre- and post-COP expectations and experience were in the following areas: (a) less communication with other officers; (b) belief that they have less independence and discretion; (c) less participation in departmental decision making; and (d) more meetings with agencies and businesses, but less informal contacts with citizens. In addition, problem-oriented policing projects are considered too formal and time-consuming, given all their other responsibilities. These findings suggest that the local context of policing is an important element in the success of COP implementation.

Stance-shifting in language used by sex offenders: Five case studies

Abstract Attempts to classify sex offenders for the purpose of investigating sexual assaults or formulating treatment strategies often use evidence left at crime scenes, victims’ statements, and case studies to organize sex offenders’ personality characteristics into categories. Typologies of offenders may vary in the degree to which they are empirical or incorporate offender language. In the treatment of sex offenders, some focus has been placed on the offenders spoken attribution of responsibility. The current study uses multidimensional analysis of shifts in stance to outline a framework that overlays the basic motivations of sex offenders as classified by MTC:R3 and the offenders’ process of attributing blame. Applied to five cases of sexual assault, markers of stance successfully signal diminution or reassignment of personal agency in aggressor and victim pre-trial oral statements, suggesting how rapists push personal responsibility aside in order to justify the ‘reasonableness’ of their actions.

Swedish police selection and training: issues from a comparative perspective

Compares the relationship of selection and training of police officers in Sweden and the USA. The ability to identify stable, effective police officers continues to baffle police administrators. The selection of US police officers has become a complex procedure that often requires six months to complete, consuming a great deal of the department’s recruiting resources. In spite of such intricate investigations, rates of dropouts in recruit training and termination for misconduct is high. In Sweden, law enforcement is considered one of the highest regarded professions. More than 8,000 individuals compete for the approximately 400 law enforcement positions filled annually. In comparison to most US police departments, Sweden’s selection process appears simplistic; however, a minute number of officers have been lost through terminations or drop out from training. The current study compares the relationship between the Swedish community’s perception of the police, the ability to select from a large pool of applicants, and an elaborate three‐year education/ socialization period with the US public perception of the police, an intricate selection process, and relatively short training period. Implications of the potential changes in Sweden’s selection and training process are also discussed.

Small city community policing and citizen satisfaction

Purpose – This paper aims to examine the impact of the implementation of community‐oriented policing and problem solving in a small city.Design/methodology/approach – Citizen surveys that measure perceptions and activities of the police are completed before and three years after broader implementation of community policing. Because the existing literature supports the influence of a number of individual, neighborhood, and situational characteristics, several variables are included and controlled.Findings – The results show that although the police invest a great deal of time building partnerships with and problem solving in neighborhoods, there are no significant differences over time in citizen satisfaction with police or in fear of crime. Personal contact with police mediates the influence of individual and neighborhood characteristics on citizen satisfaction. Police presence remains a common significant predictor of citizen satisfaction.Research limitations/implications – Ensuring anonymity of subjects...

Identifying Factors that Influence the Successful Transition of Criminal Justice Transfer Students

Higher educational institutions place a priority on the retention and timely graduation of students. Previous literature has identified transfer students to have unique concerns and that these concerns vary by major. While previous retention research has reported factors that influence students’ decision to remain in college, many of these studies treated transfer status as a homogenous group. The university in this study enrolls a high percentage of transfer students, and a large percentage of these transfers students enroll in Criminal Justice classes and become Criminal Justice majors. To determine if there are unique risk factors among Criminal Justice transfer students, this study uses multiple measures of transfer status to identify factors that might impact a students’ (1) university involvement, (2) GPA, (3) satisfaction with and sense of belonging to their university and (4) thereby influence their decision to remain in school. The proposition that transfer students as compared to native (nontransfer) students differ on how they face university challenges was also examined. While several variables were found to be important to students’ adjustment to the University, transfer status does not appear to be significant risk factor. Implications of the results are discussed.

Factors Influencing Subjects’ Observed Level of Suicide by Cop Intent:

The term suicide by cop (SbC) is used commonly for police-involved shootings that could be considered suicides because of the subject’s precipitated actions that demonstrate suicidal intent. The intent of the subject’s actions is often complicated and rarely understood. Using Lord and Sloop’s revised SbC decision model, the current study used a legal intervention incidents subset within the National Violent Death Reporting System data established by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention to examine the intent of subjects who were reported to have died violently through the involvement of law enforcement. The study’s results support the importance of multiple points of data to make decisions of SbC. Based on the current model, certain personal characteristics, history of suicide attempts, a domestic dispute in progress, and refusal to surrender significantly contributed to the strength of association. Factors considered indicators of irrational thought were not found to be significant predictors.