Open Access Publications

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Open access publications by faculty, postdocs, and graduate students in the Department of Sociology and Criminal Justice.

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Trust, Traffic, and Contemporary Evacuation Barriers in Hurricane Ida
(Journal of Disaster Studies, 2025-02-05) Trivedi, Jennifer; DeYoung, Sarah; Anyidoho, Prosper; Porada, Maria; Wachtendorf, Tricia; Davidson, Rachel; Nozick, Linda
In hurricane evacuation decision-making research, it is critical to understand complex influences and larger processes at work in shaping the decisions and experiences of people and communities in affected areas and evacuation zones. Hurricane Ida made landfall in Louisiana in 2021, in the midst of the COVID-19 pandemic, ongoing economic problems, and disruptions to trust in political officials. Gulf Coast residents made decisions about if and when to evacuate in this context. We use a framework that emphasizes the social causes of evacuation decision making, including optimism bias, compounding disasters, and situational factors. Results show that during Ida residents were navigating the relative risks, varied perceptions, and previous experiences with other disasters, compounding disasters, traffic, work and school demands, and long-term systemic problems. Understanding this reality more deeply and with a more nuanced approach to the complexities of how such perceptions and experiences affect one another, rather than viewing evacuation as a "yes or no" decision, is essential to improving disaster policies and evacuation responses, as well as our knowledge of both. This article delves deeply into the barriers to evacuation still existing in the United States, despite efforts to improve these procedures over time, particularly after Hurricane Katrina.
Can visits to certain businesses help predict evacuation decisions in real time?
(Natural Hazards, 2025-01-06) Anyidoho, Prosper K.; Davidson, Rachel A.; Nozick, Linda K.; Trivedi, Jennifer; DeYoung, Sarah E.; Wachtendorf, Tricia
This study aims to help understand and predict evacuation behavior by examining the relationship between evacuation decisions and visits to certain businesses using smartphone location and point of interest (POI) data collected across three hurricanes—Dorian (2019), Ida (2021), and Ian (2022)—for residents in voluntary and mandatory evacuation zones. Results from these data suggest residents visit POIs as part of preparatory activities before a hurricane impacts land. Statistical tests suggest that POI visits can be used as precursor signals for predicting evacuations in real time. Specifically, people are more likely to evacuate if they visit a gas station and are more likely to stay if they visit a grocery store, hardware store, pet store, or a pharmacy prior to landfall. Additionally, they are even less likely to leave if they visit multiple places of interest. These results provide a foundation for using smartphone location data in real time to improve predictions of behavior as a hurricane approaches.
Organizational Justice, Technology Utilization, and Well-Beings Among Chinese Police Officers
(Police Quarterly, 2024-08-18) Chen, Yunan; Sun, Ivan Y.; Wu, Yuning; Ha, Stephanie V.; Zheng, Xi
The widespread use of digital technologies, such as big data, artificial intelligence, and the Internet, has led to significant changes in policing. Nonetheless, little research has examined how organizational factors are linked to police officers’ job satisfaction and occupational stress through the effectiveness and difficulty of applying digital technology in policing. Based on survey data collected from Chinese police officers, we assessed the direct correlations between organizational support and supervisor justice and job satisfaction and occupational stress, and the mediating role of technology efficacy and technology difficulty. We found that organizational support was positively related to police officers’ job satisfaction, and both technology efficacy and technology difficulty were negatively connected to occupational stress. Supervisor justice was positively related to job satisfaction and negatively associated with digital technology difficulty and occupational stress. The indirect relationships between organizational support and supervisor justice and job satisfaction and stress were mainly through technology difficulty.
Police legitimacy and procedural justice for children and youth: a scoping review of definitions, determinants, and consequences
(Frontiers in Sociology, 2024-09-24) Li, Jessica C. M.; Zhang, Serena Y.; Sun, Ivan Y.; Ho, Albert S. K.
Introduction: Understanding police legitimacy among children and youth is important for building a just and democratic society. Although the volume of studies on police legitimacy among underaged persons has grown in recent decades, the findings on the relationships between police legitimacy and procedural justice and their definitions, associated determinants, and consequences remain heterogeneous across studies and across political and legal contexts. Given these heterogeneities, the conclusions and implications generated by this research are far from comprehensive. Method: This scoping review offers readers a comprehensive and comparative understanding of this topic by answering the following questions. (1) How can we define police legitimacy and procedural justice for children and youth? (2) What are the determinants of police procedural justice and legitimacy for children and youth? (3) What are the consequences of police procedural (in)justice and (il)legitimacy for children and youth? (4) Among children and youth, who are the vulnerable groups receiving less legitimate and unjust treatment from the police? A scoping review of the literature published between January 1, 1990 and May 31, 2022 was conducted based on four databases: PubMed, Web of Science, Scopus, and ProQuest. Guided by the scoping review screening framework proposed by Arksey and O’Malley, that is, the Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic Reviews and Meta-Analysis guidelines, and the checklist provided by the Joanna Briggs Institute for quality assessment, 47 publications, consisting of 38 quantitative studies and 9 qualitative studies, were retained in the final sample. Results: The results synthesize the operational and subjective interpretations of police legitimacy offered by the respondents in the studies reviewed which is followed by the discussion of conceptual and measurement issues. The key correlates of police legitimacy identified in these studies were police procedural justice and behavior, followed by experience and contact with the police, relationships with other authority figures, and personal competence in moral reasoning and self-control. In addition to compliance and cooperation, cynicism, trust, and health were related to police (il)legitimacy. Discussion: We argue that in addition to building and maintaining police legitimacy, it is vital to remedy the negative consequences of injustice in police–youth encounters. Systematic Review Registration: https://inplasy.com/inplasy-2024-9-0064/, INPLASY202490064.
Firearms, policy, and intimate partner homicide: A structural and disaggregated examination of Black, Latina, and White female victimization
(Criminology, 2024-06-28) Gray, Andrew C.; Kafonek, Katherine; Parker, Karen F.
Intimate partner homicide (IPH) continues to be a form of violence disproportionately affecting women in the United States, and access to firearms can greatly increase the likelihood that intimate partner violence becomes lethal. In response to concerns about firearms violence and their prevalence in IPH incidents specifically, states have passed restrictive firearms laws and policies. In this study, we provide an analysis of female IPH victimization disaggregated by race/ethnicity that incorporates state-level firearms legislation. Our analytical approach is informed by intersectionality and accounts for other key intimate partner violence policies and structural predictors. We find that the relationship between firearms legislation and IPH varies in magnitude and direction across specific race/ethnicity female victimization groups. As such, our findings provide support for an intersectional framework in that restrictive firearms laws are not consistently associated with lower levels of IPH when incidents are disaggregated by gender and race/ethnicity.
Institutional Betrayal in the Criminal and Civil Legal Systems: Exploratory Factor Analysis with a Sample of Black and Hispanic Survivors of Intimate Partner Violence
(Journal of Interpersonal Violence, 2024-05-18) Freetly Porter, Emma; Mendoza, Maria Paula; Deng, Miaomiao; Kiss, Marissa; Mirance, Katie; Foltz, Katelyn; Hattery, Angela J.
Institutional betrayal (IB) is well-documented among survivors of gender-based violence seeking help and/or reporting incidents of violence in various settings, including college campuses and health care settings. Two of the most common institutions from which survivors seek help are the criminal and civil legal systems; however, less is known about the experiences of IB among survivors interfacing with those systems. Previous studies exploring IB have implemented the Institutional Betrayal Questionnaire (IBQ) and its various adaptations, but this scale has not yet been analyzed in the criminal or civil legal context, nor has it been analyzed among racially marginalized survivors. This paper explores the potential for utilizing the IBQ-Health among a sample of 199 Black and Hispanic survivors of intimate partner violence (IPV) who sought help from the criminal and/or civil legal system(s). An exploratory factor analysis was conducted to explore the fit of the measure to the data. Results suggest that the measure as it has previously been used does not demonstrate strong reliability or fit with this population or institution. Possible explanations and future directions are explored, including support for developing and piloting a new measure to assess IB among Black and Hispanic survivors of interpersonal violence who are seeking help from criminal and civil legal institutions.
Traditional social learning predicts cyber deviance? Exploring the offending versatility thesis in social learning theory
(Behavioral Sciences & the Law, 2024-05-20) Zhou, You; Liu, Weidi; Lee, Claire; Xu, Boyang; Sun, Ivan
Social learning theory has been widely implemented to understand cyber deviance. Nevertheless, the antecedent scholarship homogenously nested in the perspective of offending specification, leaving the offending versatility thesis unattained. The lack of such studies may undermine the capability of comprehensively understanding the social learning patterns of online offending. Using a sample of 3741 Chinese college students, this study estimated an array of binary logistic regressions to compare the effects of traditional and online social learning in four types of online offending (online sexual harassment, cyberbullying, hacking, and digital piracy). The results suggest that offending versatility and offending specification co-exist in the social learning process of cyber deviance, while offending specification explains a marginally greater variance. Besides, online learning variables act as potential mediators in the relationships between traditional learning and cyber deviance. Furthermore, traditional social learning shows greater predictive power in cyber-enabled crimes than in cyber-dependent crimes. Our study provides fresh empirical evidence for the non-exclusive association between offending versatility and offending specification in the social learning process of cyber deviance.
Working Within and Outside the System: Why and When Survivors Seek Help After Experiencing Intimate Partner Violence
(Feminist Criminology, 2024-04-10) Mendoza, Maria Paula; Rochford, Elle
This paper explores the experiences of survivors of intimate partner violence (IPV) who seek help or avoid help from both within and outside the criminal legal system (CLS). Data derived from 22 interviews reveal four types of help-seeking experiences: (1) addressing harm (2) increasing harm (3) mandating participation and (4) avoiding participation. These types reflect the interactions between the CLS and vulnerable populations who frequently mistrust the CLS but are compelled to interact with it. This typology uncovers the complex realities of survivors’ contact with the CLS and suggests less harmful alternatives as desired by the participants in our sample.
Building a home for the social and interdisciplinary sciences and public health at Science Advances
(Science Advances, 2024-04-24) Earl, Jennifer
The imperative for rigorous and ground-breaking social science and interdisciplinary research becomes clearer every day. COVID-19 made ever more manifest the importance of understanding the social processes and inequalities involved in health and disease, not just the technical capacity to create, test, and deliver treatments and vaccines. Deeply understanding the processes involved in the spread of disinformation and misinformation as well as scientifically vetted ways to counter these scourges is essential for maintaining at least shreds of a shared social and political reality. Identifying with precision the direct and collateral consequences of public policies and, more generally, better understanding issues of the day (e.g., abortion access) by rigorously analyzing the scope and consequences of different forms of inequality, from poverty to racial/ethnic inequalities, to gender inequalities (including inside of the academy), among other inequalities, are crucial to truly and deeply understanding, and improving, our world. See Box 1 for published papers related to these areas.
“The More Connection the Better”: Bounded Relationships and Uneasy Alignments in Prison Education
(Journal of Health Care Law & Policy, 2024-01-19) Leon, Chrysanthi; Perez, Graciela; Lowman, Jules; Schultz, Lawson; Babakhani, Atieh; Addison, Dylan; White, Barbara
This Article examines Inside-Out pedagogy with qualitative data from an evaluation at a women’s prison as a case study of uneasy alignments between opposing systems. The Article analyzes student data from pre and post course surveys and follow up interviews scheduled within the year after the course was completed. Hearing from people most impacted by how emotionality and rationality are circumscribed within the prison classroom leads to recognizing the conditional connections formed in Inside-Out classes as “bounded relationships.” This concept emphasizes the physical boundaries and interpersonal regulations associated with incarceration and situates their impact on education in prison within the broader context of alienation and constrained autonomy imposed by the criminal legal system. This boundedness shapes experiences in the class and afterwards and may undermine the radical intentions of Inside-Out, with lessons for other attempts at bridging or aligning disparate approaches or systems.
‘I’m Scared to Death to Try It on My Own’: I-Poems and the complexities of religious housing support for people on the US sex offender registry
(Anti-Trafficking Review, 2023-04-26) Leon, Chrysanthi S.; Buckridge, Maggie; Herdoíza, Michaela
In the US, street-based sex workers and people convicted of sex offences are both ‘special populations’, often with additional conditions of community supervision. People convicted of sex offences experience a complicated mix of assistance and surveillance as they re-enter society post-conviction, including numerous restrictions on housing and employment. As a result, they are especially likely to experience homelessness upon release. This article uses I-Poems drawn from interviews with volunteers and professionals who navigate the obstacles to re-entry that govern people on the sex offender registry. We focus on people with religious affiliations (n=38) who provide urgent support during the re-entry process. I-poems are a feminist technique for analysing qualitative data that forefronts the voices of people not often heard and distils complex experiences into accessible narratives. While few in our study overtly exploited re-entering persons on the registry, most support was problematic in subtler ways: we found that re-entering registrants are asked to accept constrained choices involving labour, religious participation, and romantic and other personal relationships in order to receive assistance. Given the secondary stigma attached to work with people convicted of sex offences, and the obscurity within in which many of these religiously-affiliated programmes operate, I-Poems both humanise and reveal the complexities of coercion, religious calling, and supportive housing.
Inter-Generational Transmission of Violence in Latino Families: The Role of Mothers in Navigating the Cycle of Abuse
(Sociology between the Gaps: Forgotten and Neglected Topics, 2023-09-26) Quiroga, Zarah Zurita
Latino children and youth are the fastest-growing ethnic minority in the United States. They are also unique in the sense that they experience mixed-status families in which one, or more, of their family members lack the proper authorization to live and work in the United States. Because of this mixed status, they face a distinctive form of family violence in which fear of deportation silences victims. This article explores the roles of mothers in experiencing and interrupting the inter-generational transmission of violence in Latino families in the United States. Based on interviews with eleven Latina women, the author discusses cases in which the roles of mothers either interrupt or contribute to the continuation of the inter-generational transmission of the cycle of violence. This piece explores the tensions between personal experiences with witnessing violence and the actions Latina mothers took in order to stop cycles of abuse and its outcomes for their own children. The author concludes with suggestions for future research that centers on the experiences of Latinos in order to reduce inter-generational trauma and transmission of violence in Latino communities.
Elevations in Blood Pressure Associated with Exposure to Violence are Mitigated by Pro-gun-Carrying Attitudes among Street-Identified Black Males and Females
(Journal of Urban Health, 2023-10-13) Payne, Yasser Arafat; Sadeh, Naomi; Hitchens, Brooklynn K.; Bounoua, Nadia
Living in neighborhoods with elevated rates of violent crime, such as in many poor Black American communities, is a risk factor for a range of physical and mental health challenges. However, the individual different factors that influence health outcomes in these stressful environments remain poorly understood. This study examined relations between exposure to violence, gun-carrying attitudes, and blood pressure in a community sample of street-identified Black American boys/men and girls/women. Survey data and blood pressure were collected from 329 participants (ages 16–54; 57.1% male) recruited from two small urban neighborhoods with high rates of violence using street participatory action research methodology. Results revealed that systolic blood pressure was elevated in the sample as was exposure to severe forms of direct and vicarious violence (e.g., shootings, assault). Attitudes about carrying guns moderated associations between the degree of violence exposure endorsed by participants and both systolic and diastolic blood pressure. Specifically, the positive association between exposure to violence and both systolic and diastolic blood pressure at low levels of pro-gun-carrying attitudes was no longer apparent at high levels of pro-gun attitudes. Furthermore, pro-gun attitudes appeared to moderate the association between exposure to violence and systolic pressure for older participants but not younger participants. Results suggest that positive attitudes about carrying guns (presumably indicative of pro-gun-carrying behavior) weakened the link between violence exposure and blood pressure. These novel findings suggest that carrying a gun may protect against the harmful effects of chronic stress from violence exposure on physical health outcomes (i.e., hypertension) among street-identified Black Americans.
Characterizing the impacts of public health control measures on domestic violence services: qualitative interviews with domestic violence coalition leaders
(BMC Public Health, 2023-09-05) Horney, Jennifer A.; Fleury‑Steiner, Ruth; Camphausen, Lauren C.; Wells, Sarah A.; Miller, Susan L.
Background Prior to the availability of pharmaceutical control measures, non-pharmaceutical control measures, including travel restrictions, physical distancing, isolation and quarantine, closure of schools and workplaces, and the use of personal protective equipment were the only tools available to public health authorities to control the spread of COVID-19. The implementation of these non-pharmaceutical control measures had unintended impacts on the ability of state and territorial domestic violence coalitions to provide services to victims. Methods A semi-structured interview guide to assess how the COVID-19 pandemic impacted service provision and advocacy generally, and how COVID-19 control measures specifically, created barriers to services and advocacy, was developed, pilot tested, and revised based on feedback. Interviews with state and territorial domestic violence coalition executive directors were conducted between November 2021 and March 2022. Transcripts were inductively and deductively coded using both hand-coding and qualitative software. Results Forty-five percent (25 of 56) of state and territorial domestic violence coalition executive directors representing all 8 National Network to End Domestic Violence (NNEDV) regions were interviewed. Five themes related to the use of non-pharmaceutical pandemic control measures with impacts on the provision of services and advocacy were identified. Conclusions The use of non-pharmaceutical control measures early in the COVID-19 pandemic had negative impacts on the health and safety of some vulnerable groups, including domestic violence victims. Organizations that provide services and advocacy to victims faced many unique challenges in carrying out their missions while adhering to required public health control measures. Policy and preparedness plan changes are needed to prevent unintended consequences of control measure implementation among vulnerable groups as well as to identify lessons learned that should be applied in future disasters and emergencies.
Politicization of COVID-19 and Conspiratorial Beliefs Among Emergency & Public Health Officials
(Journal of Homeland Security and Emergency Management, 2023-08-10) DeYoung, Sarah E.; Farmer, Ashley K.
In this research, we identified how political beliefs impact emergency manager’s perception of COVID-19 severity and risk. Specifically, we gathered data from people with a broad range of roles in emergency management including healthcare, mitigation, response, fire, rescue, and other areas. We asked respondents their beliefs about the severity of COVID-19, their belief in health conspiracy theories, and the public health measures associated with COVID-19 response. Quantitative results showed political affiliation was a predictor for belief in health conspiracies, as well as beliefs about social distancing as a proper mitigation measure for the spread of COVID-19, and that age and years in emergency management were not significant predictors for beliefs in health conspiracies. Qualitative results included several main themes, including frustration about the politicization of COVID-19 response and mitigation efforts, challenges in PPE (personal protective equipment) procurement, tension between public health and emergency management, misinformation about COVID-19, and lack of leadership at the federal level. These findings fill a gap in the literature regarding how political beliefs shape risk, trust, decision-making, and collaboration within emergency management.
Examining the Prevalence and Risk Factors of School Bullying Perpetration Among Chinese Children and Adolescents
(Frontiers in Psychology, 2022-03-14) Xue, Jia; Hu, Ran; Chai, Lei; Han, Ziqiang; Sun, Ivan Y.
Background and Objectives: School bullying threatens the health of children and adolescents, such as mental health disorders, social deviant behaviors, suicidal behaviors, and coping difficulties. The present study aims to address (1) prevalence rates of both traditional and cyber school bullying perpetration, and (2) the associations between self-control, parental involvement, experiencing conflicts with parents, experiencing interparental conflict, and risk behaviors, and school bullying perpetration among Chinese children and adolescents. Method: This study used data from a national representative school bullying survey (n = 3,675) among children and adolescents from all grades (primary school 4th grade to high school 12th grade) in seven cities in China. Negative binomial regression was used to estimate the effects of these predictive factors on traditional and cyber school bullying perpetration, respectively. Seven control variables were included, such as gender, boarding school, family socioeconomic status, and parents’ education levels. Results: The sample comprised 52% female, 18% at boarding school, 70% of the participants’ academic performance was average or above. Approximately 17.3% of the participants reported participating in traditional school bullying against their peers, and 7.8% perpetrated cyberbullying behaviors. Also, after controlling sociodemographic characteristics and high self-control, parental involvement reduced the likelihood of traditional and cyberbullying perpetrating. Experiencing interparental conflict and risk behavior was significantly associated with increased perpetration of traditional and cyber school bullying. We found that having a conflict with parents was significantly associated with cyberbullying perpetration. Implications: Findings have implications for practice. Anti-bullying intervention programs targeting this population should consider these factors. For example, school administrators may develop school programs involving parents in the efforts and interventions workshops improving children and adolescents’ levels of self-control. Limitations are also discussed.
Stigmatized Bereavement: A Qualitative Study on the Impacts of Stigma for Those Bereaved by a Drug-Related Death
(OMEGA - Journal of Death and Dying, 2023-09-19) Stout, Joshua H.; Fleury-Steiner, Benjamin
Research has given limited attention to family and friends bereaved by a drug-overdose death. To examine the ways in which stigma may uniquely impact the grieving processes of the bereaved, a thematic analysis of 35 semistructured in-depth interviews with family members and adult peers who lost a loved one to an overdose was conducted. Our findings demonstrate that the bereaved experience stigmatization after their loss. Specifically, respondents emphasized stigmatizing interactions with law enforcement, alienation from friends and family, a lack of social support, exchanges that enforced feeling rules, and being confronted by narratives of blame and individual choice as contributing to the degrees of stigmatization they experienced. Our findings highlight how bereavement becomes stigmatized to varying degrees through multiple interactions that have a compounding effect on mourners. We refer to this process as stigmatized bereavement, whereby the frequency of such interactions informs the degree of stigmatization the bereaved faces.
Social support, psychological strain, and suicidality: Evidence from Chinese universities
(Psychology in the Schools, 2023-08-12) Wang, Wei; Zhang, Jie
This study aimed to apply psychological strain theory to explore the relationship between psychological strain and suicidality among Chinese young adults with a moderating effect of perceived social support. A questionnaire was administered with the Multidimensional Scale of Perceived Social Support, Suicidal Behaviors Questionnaire-Revised, and Psychological Strain Scale among 13,250 college students across China. The main determinants of suicidal behavior were examined with multiple linear regression. Two steps of multiple regression were employed to define the moderating effect of social support. A positive relationship between psychological strain and suicidality was reported in the study, and social support was confirmed as a moderating factor between psychological strain and suicidal behavior. Practitioner points - Psychological strain is positively associated with suicidal behavior among Chinese young adults. - Social support is negatively related to both psychological strain and suicidal behavior among Chinese young adults. - Social support acts as a moderator of the adverse effect of psychological strain on suicidal behavior.
Strain, depression, and deviant behavior among left-behind and non-left-behind adolescents in China
(International Sociology, 2023-04-14) Xu, Xiaohua; Sun, Ivan Y.; Wu, Yuning
China’s massive rural to urban migration has created a vast number of left-behind children (LBC) whose parents moved to cities for work. Drawing upon data from LBC and non-left-behind children (NLBC) in three Chinese cities, this study tests the applicability of general strain theory in explaining deviant behavior among adolescents. The analysis results show that LBC status is directly related to lower involvement in deviant behavior, whereas it is also directly linked to academic difficulty and depression, leading to more deviant acts. Compared with NLBC, LBC have an overall lower risk of deviance. Male and middle school students and students experiencing parental abuse and family poverty are more inclined to express greater depression, subsequently promoting higher participation in deviance.
Police Officers’ Preferences for Enforcing COVID-19 Regulatory Violations: The Impact of Organizational Support, Psychological Conditions, and Public Compliance
(Crime and Delinquency, 2023-02-20) Sun, Ivan Y.; Wu, Yuning; Shen, Shan; Kutnjak Ivkovich, Sanja; Maskaly, Jon; Neyroud, Peter
The coronavirus has stirred a wave of studies on policing the pandemic. Nonetheless, officers’ intentions to enforce COVID-related rules and regulations remain under-researched. Drawing upon survey data from 600 police officers in a major Chinese city, this study explores the associations between organizational support, behavioral and psychological conditions, and perceived public compliance and officers’ willingness to intervene in rule violations. Organizational support in providing supervisory instructions, training, and PPE increased the likelihood of officers issuing tickets, whereas minimizing COVID-19 risks to officers reduced the probability of officers not taking any action against rule violations. Officers who perceive community residents as compliant with pandemic regulations are less likely to take no action or use more punitive sanctions of ticket/fine and detention/arrest.

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