School of Criminal Justice students to bring research to the American Society of Criminology meeting
ALBANY, N.Y. (Oct. 28, 2025) — More than a dozen School of Criminal Justice (SCJ) students will present research at the American Society of Criminology’s annual meeting in November.
Their research represents a diverse range of topics, including how crime coverage shapes attitudes toward immigrants, public support for quality-of-life reforms in American correctional institutions, and attrition from the police hiring process in the post-Floyd era, among others.
It also represents the mentorship that these students, who span from first-year doctoral students to undergraduates, have found with SCJ faculty.
“The School of Criminal Justice continues to provide its students with training in an environment where ideas are challenged, examined with a critical eye, and explored through the most rigorous methods,” said John McCluskey, senior executive director of SCJ. “The papers our students are presenting at ASC reflect the enduring commitment to quality, innovation, and the diversity of ideas that have defined the School of Criminal Justice since its inception nearly 60 years ago.”
Here’s a look at the work SCJ students will bring to ASC’s November meeting:
Note: Coauthors are UAlbany faculty members unless otherwise stated.
Nana Adwoa Agyapong
Title: The Effects of Adverse Childhood Experiences, Delinquency Involvement, And Child Welfare Interventions On Adult Criminal Behavior: A Latent Class Analysis, coauthored by Michael D. Reisig (Arizona State University)
Abstract: This study examines the differential impact of childhood pathways, characterized by varying levels of trauma (e.g., physical abuse and neglect), delinquency involvement, and child welfare interventions, on adult criminal behavior. Using existing data from a prospective cohort study and latent class analysis (LCA), four unique latent classes (Safe and Compliant, Neglected and Delinquent, Harmed and Harming, and Harmed and Helped) were identified. The results from the bivariate analyses showed that individuals in the Harmed and Harming and Neglected and Delinquent groups exhibited higher rates of both violent and nonviolent crime in adulthood. In contrast, those in the Harmed and Helped and Safe and Compliant groups had lower rates of adult criminal involvement. By linking specific pathways to adult criminal outcomes, this research contributes to a broader literature on evidence-based strategies for childhood protection strategies.
Linda Balcarova Dietz
Title: Racialized Anger and Support for Policing Reforms: A General Strain Theory Perspective, coauthored by Justin Pickett, Amanda Graham (Texas State University) and Francis Cullen (University of Cincinnati)
Abstract: Consistent with general strain theory, experiences with police mistreatment are associated with increased anger and legitimate coping. Black Americans are angrier about police misbehavior because they experience it at higher rates than other racial/ethnic groups. Group differences in experienced mistreatment and anger help explain the racial gap in support for policing reform.
Manuela Brunner
Title: Guilty Plea Decision Making with Incarcerated Individuals in New York Jail, coauthored by Teddy Wilson and Christi Metcalfe (University of South Carolina)
Abstract: The overwhelming majority of convictions result from guilty pleas, with roughly 97% of all convictions arising from guilty pleas (Peterson & Redlich, 2022). As systematic data is lacking on plea offers and what leads to offers being accepted or declined by the criminal justice experienced, questions remain as to why those with experience persist in foregoing their right to trial. To address this gap, we successfully administered surveys containing hypothetical plea scenarios to more than 250 inmates in several jails across New York State. Our study was focused on establishing a proof of concept for surveys of this kind with incarcerated populations while also testing three key manipulations: (1) assigned innocence/guilt, (2) plea sentence for 90 days in jail or 3 years of probation, and (3) the deal framed as a gain, neutrally, or as a loss. Of the three tested manipulations, the clearest variation was present for assigned guilt or innocence, with nearly two times as many respondents assigned to the guilty condition taking a plea deal as compared with those assigned to the innocent condition, although innocent plea rates were still higher than 40%. Implications for plea research and defendant decision-making of the criminally experienced are discussed.
Lilly Chapman
Title: Paying for justice? Financial punishments in New York's justice courts, coauthored by Alissa Pollitz Worden, Rosanna Deiulio, Ananya Sharma and Victoria Pincus
Abstract: As is the case in over twenty states, much of the state’s population is served by Town Courts that are not part of the state’s Unified Court System (UCS). These courts are funded by local governments, not by state appropriations, and unlike UCS City and County Courts, a portion of the revenue generated by financial penalties stays in the Towns’ revenue stream. This study addresses questions surrounding the use of fines by Town Court judges to produce revenue for their jurisdictions, such as what the community needs of jurisdictions are, what kinds of revenue fines and fees are, and how judges utilize fines in relation to other forms of punishment. This study aims to assess the incentives New York’s Town Courts face when sentencing defendants in misdemeanor cases. The findings help inform our understanding of the functioning of courts operating in rural and suburban jurisdictions that incorporate fines into sentencing decisions that may benefit local government finances, at the expense of equity and effectiveness for defendants.
Li-Chen Chu
Title: Human Dignity Behind Bars: Public Support for Quality-of-Life Reforms in American Correctional Institutions
Abstract: The U.S. prison system faces challenges in upholding the human dignity of incarcerated persons. It imposes extralegal punishments on incarcerated people through harsh management practices, such as depriving them of basic daily necessities (e.g., toilet paper), restricting access to information sources (e.g., books, television, or the internet), paying low wages for prison labor, limiting conjugal visits, and enforcing solitary confinement. A critical re-examination of current prison management and ongoing quality-of-life reform efforts is necessary. Based on a YouGov survey (N = 800) conducted in July 2023, this study measures and examines public support for various quality-of-life prison reforms, including, but not limited to, expanding library selections, ensuring adequate access to toilet paper, allowing sexual contact during conjugal visits, and eliminating solitary confinement. Our findings indicate that while support for individual reforms varies, racial resentment and conservative political ideology consistently and significantly predict opposition to such reforms. Respondents with stronger conservative views or higher racial resentment tend to be less supportive of quality-of-life improvements for prisoners. These findings provide critical insights into public opinion on prison reform and highlight the political and racial ideological divisions that shape public attitudes toward prison policy.
Title: Human Dignity Behind Bars: Public Support for Consensual Sex and Transgender Rights in American Correctional Institutions
Abstract: The current U.S. correctional system imposes severe restrictions on sexual and intimate behaviors behind bars, including kissing, hugging, consensual sex, and even masturbation in private cells. Because sex is not allowed, many prisons do not provide condoms for protection, despite the prevalence of consensual sexual activity among inmates. This lack of preventive measures contributes to high rates of sexually transmitted infections in prison populations. In addition, inmates with nonbinary gender identities are frequently housed according to their biological sex, encounter obstacles in accessing necessary gender-affirming treatments and supplements and are often misgendered or treated disrespectfully. Drawing from a YouGov survey (N = 800) conducted in July 2023, this study examines public attitudes toward prison reforms that uphold incarcerated people’s rights to sexual and intimate relationships, as well as recognition of nonbinary gender identities. The findings reveal that gender ideology, religiosity, and political affiliation significantly impact public opinions on such prison reforms. These insights highlight the political, religious, and gender-ideological divisions that shape public attitudes toward prison policy.
Hannah Cochran
Title: Factors Associated with Prosecutorial Outcomes of Gun Crime Cases, coauthored by Robert E. Worden
Abstract: While research on the investigation and successful apprehension of violent offenders has modestly grown in the past decade, research on prosecutorial follow-through with these cases has been outpaced by the proliferation of guns and incidence of gun violence in this country.
Much of the extant research on prosecutorial decision making has been theoretical, and research on prosecutorial case attrition has largely been confined to sex offenses and intimate partner violence. Moreover, limited access to and gaps in prosecutorial data has stymied even descriptive research on charging patterns, let alone the estimation of causal models. In this paper, we use prosecutorial data from an upstate New York District Attorney’s office to examine the disposition patterns for defendants in gun crime cases, analyzing types and predictors of outcomes. For a subset of cases, we supplement these data with data on the police investigations, including victim and witness cooperation and other forms of evidence, to further account for the variation in outcomes.
Sara Fiegl
Title: Streetcorner Politicians in the Making: Cynicism and the Use of Coercive Authority among Police Recruits, coauthored by Robert E. Worden
Abstract: Muir’s well-known study of police as streetcorner politicians posited that deeply rooted outlooks on human nature shape officers’ understanding of situational dynamics and their predispositions for the use of coercive authority. Officers with a “unitary” perspective on mankind, according to Muir’s analysis, have greater insight into the motives and perceptions of the people with whom they interact, which affords them a wider range of non-coercive options to resolve situations. By contrast, officers with a “dualistic,” cynical outlook are prone to judge people as either victims or victimizers and apply coercive measures to the latter. We test propositions derived from Muir’s framework by drawing on panel survey data on police recruits, including their projected responses to three hypothetical scenarios.
Title: Patterns of Informal Mentorship in Policing: A Case Study, coauthored by Robert E. Worden and Sarah McClean (The John F. Finn Institute)
Abstract: Mentorship plays a vital role in many public and private organizational contexts by facilitating the occupational development of its members. Mentors can provide guidance and support to their protégés in performing their organizational roles, navigating bureaucratic labyrinths, balancing work and personal lives, encouraging them to advance in the organization and their careers and developing the skills needed to do so. In agencies without formal mentorship programs, mentorship is organic, emerging from the unstructured choices of mentors and protégés. We draw on survey and interview data in one large police agency to examine mentorship in a context of only informal mentoring. We analyze the forms of mentoring that its members receive, the types of mentoring relationships in which mentoring is provided, and the distribution of mentoring across officers by gender, race, ethnicity, rank, and length of service. We also examine the extent to which protégés believed that mentoring facilitated their careers, and we explore the implications of mentorship for protégés’ organizational commitment and judgments about organizational justice.
Yichao Gao
Title: Concentration or Coincidence? Rethinking the Random Effect on Crime Concentration at Place through a Target-Based Approach
Abstract: Studies of crime and place have long sought to estimate the role of randomness in crime concentration at place. Traditionally, simulations assume that crime incidents occur randomly across microgeographic units, such as block groups, street segments, and parcels, treating crime as a random selection of geographic units with replacement. This paper takes a different approach, modeling crime as a random selection of potential targets with replacement. Under this assumption, the resulting simulated patterns become pure reflections of the spatial distribution of potential targets. Using burglary data from San Antonio, TX, from 2017 to 2019, this study estimates the effects of randomness and target availability on crime concentration at place. By refining how randomness is conceptualized, this research contributes to a more precise understanding of the role of randomness in crime concentration and the influence of target availability on observed patterns. The result suggests that randomness and target availability account for more than half of the observed crime concentration at place. These findings have implications for crime prevention policies and suggest new directions for future research on crime and place.
Beau P. Holladay
Title: Patterns of Police Recruit Separations, co-authored by Robert E. Worden, Sarah J. McLean (The John F. Finn Institute) and Kenan M. Worden (The John F. Finn Institute)
Abstract: Police departments across the U.S. face the ongoing challenge of sustaining a qualified workforce, for which effective pre-service training is a critical and costly component. Nationally, 14-15% of recruits separated from a police training academy in 2022; prior research has found separation rates between 8% and 25%. We analyze patterns of recruit separation from the New York State Police (NYSP) academy. We conduct survival analyses of separations from 2002 to 2024 based on archival data, which frames a deeper analysis of five recent cohorts of recruits, with data on whom we conduct logistic regression and Cox proportional hazard regression. The implications of the findings for both police agencies and future research are discussed.
Title: Attrition from the Police Hiring Process in the Post-Floyd Era, co-authored by Robert E. Worden (University at Albany/The John F. Finn Institute) and Sarah J. McLean (The John F. Finn Institute)
Abstract: Police agencies have confronted challenges in recruitment for decades, challenges that have burgeoned in the years since the murder of George Floyd and the tarnished image of police that prevailed in its aftermath. Some approaches to bolstering recruitment efforts might be found in a better understanding of the factors that contribute to attrition among those who engaged in the hiring process. We examine attrition among more than 6,000 applicants who passed one agency’s entrance examination in 2023-2024, less than 400 of whom were appointed to a recruit class in 2024. We analyze agency data to trace the points at which applicants dropped out or were removed from the process. We also analyze data collected through a survey of applicants who chose to discontinue their engagement in the hiring process.
Stefan Ivanov
Title: Welfare States and Imprisonment Rates: Revisiting Public Assistance and Punishment in the United States
Abstract: This paper explores the theoretical and empirical connections between welfare and punishment using annual data from all fifty states from 1980 to 2019. A long line of social science scholarship emphasizes that these two major social institutions—the welfare state and the carceral state—must be considered complementary and alternative methods of managing marginalized groups. Quantitative research often confirms these claims, finding a durable inverse relationship between welfare generosity and imprisonment rates. However, measurement inconsistencies, methodological concerns (e.g., nonstationarity), limited time series, and a lack of clarity about mechanisms may limit the relevance of this research. In this study, I improve on and update this literature by 1) comparing the predictive ability of several competing operationalizations of welfare generosity, giving specific attention to their congruence with existing theoretical accounts; 2) accounting for the time series properties of the data; 3) extending the period of observation to include the recent decline in imprisonment rates; and 4) exploring whether crime mediates the often-observed association between welfare and imprisonment.
Stefana LoTempio
Title: Exploring the Impact of School Shooting Memorials (Poster presentation)
Abstract: Following a tragic event like a school shooting, physical memorials are common ways of remembering and honoring those who were lost. However, while some of these memorials are temporary outlets for the affected community, some memorials are made into permanent fixtures that serve as constant reminders of what occurred. While these memorials may be initially helpful for those directly connected to a school shooting, over time they serve as permanent reminders of what occurred and it is unclear what effect these reminders will have on later cohorts of students who did not experience the event. As with the rest of the school shooting literature, research on the practices, decision-making, and positive and negative consequences around memorials is limited. Interviews with individuals involved in the recovery of several school shootings, including teachers, principals, counselors, and superintendents, revealed the decision-making around memorials and the resulting effects these school leaders perceived. Relevant findings regarding the impact of K-12 school shooting memorials and how decisions regarding these memorials should be reached will be discussed.
Oona Newman
Title: Breaking Bad Habits with the Good Book: Religion and Desistance from Crime
Abstract: Prior research indicates that religious involvement may uniquely affect offending patterns. Religious beliefs and commitment can influence individuals’ willingness to engage in criminal behavior and may also impact long-term desistance from crime. However, much of the existing research on this topic is cross-sectional. This study aims to explore the role of religion in the desistance process using a mixed-methods analysis of a 7-wave longitudinal contemporary sample of mixed-race and gender record holders. Policy implications and directions for future research will be discussed.
Taylor Oathout
Title: Prevalence of Adult Sexual Interest in Children Among the General Population
Abstract: The current study seeks to estimate the prevalence of adults’ sexual interest in children, observe associated demographic characteristics, and find any aggregate differences between those sexually interested in prepubescent versus pubescent children. Attraction, fantasy, proclivity to offend, and actual offending behavior concerning children are used as indicators of sexual interest in children, a latent variable. Respondents were randomly assigned to an indicator and a treatment group (child age). The administered questionnaire included a double list experiment to circumvent social desirability bias associated with sensitive items, as well as a direct-ask item. A standard difference-in-means test is used to deduce the mean responses to the sexual interest measure in the double list experiment. These estimates are compared to the direct-ask item response for validity. The indicator estimates are then combined into a composite estimate. Descriptive statistics are presented.
Lili Rao
Title: Immigrant Labeling and Crime Proximity: How Crime Coverage Shapes Attitudes Toward Immigrants
Abstract: Media coverage of crime influences attitudes toward immigrants, yet the roles of exposure, immigrant labeling, and crime proximity remain under explored. This study tests three hypotheses among U.S. residents: (1) exposure to crime reports increases negative attitudes toward immigrants, even if the crime is not committed by immigrants, (2) immigrant crime coverage heightens negative attitudes more than unspecified crime coverage, which exceeds those from non-immigrant crime coverage, and (3) among crime coverage, incidents in one’s home state have a stronger effect than those in another state, which in turn exceed those abroad. Participants are randomly assigned to ten groups: one control group receives no crime exposure (neutral news), while nine experimental groups form a 3?3 design based on the origin of the criminal (immigrant, American citizen, unspecified) and the location of the crime (home state, another U.S. state, abroad), presented as newspaper articles. Post-exposure surveys measure threat perception, trust, and policy preferences. The study predicts a gradient in negative attitudes toward immigrants: strongest for crimes by immigrants in one’s home state, weakest for crimes committed abroad by American citizens. Findings reveal how criminal origin and proximity interact to shape media-driven attitudes toward immigrants.
Caitlin Udas
Title: Victimized and Criminalized: The Intertwined Narratives of Trauma and Offending
Abstract: How do pathways between childhood victimization, drug use, and offending behavior vary for recordholders of different races and genders?
Prior literature indicates that there are distinct processes that can link childhood victimization to drug use and offending behavior. These processes are rooted at least partially in experiences of racism/discrimination, placement relative to sociocultural power structures, and norms established over one’s childhood through peer and familial influences. However, less is known how these differ by race, gender, and the intersection thereof. Using mixed methods to analyze interview data from a 7-wave longitudinal study, this paper examines intersectional differences in narrative pathways that link childhood victimization, drug use, and offending behavior.