Publication Type: Conference Paper/Unpublished Manuscript
Abstract: In the State of Texas, there are essentially two types of parole officers: The first type consists of traditional officers who follow techniques of close supervision and surveillance of formerly incarcerated offenders, often operating with the goal of reincarceration in mind. The second category include those officers assigned exclusively to what are termed District Resource Centers (DRCs), and their jobs are functionally different. In addition to the more usual surveillance techniques, parole officers assigned to the DRCs are also responsible for developing a curriculum for different types of counseling based groups such as cognitive development, drug and alcohol counseling, and moral recognition therapy and participation in restorative justice processes. Taking on a role more traditionally held by a certified counselor or licensed social worker is a departure from customary practices for the state of Texas and other places in the country. This project evaluates whether one category or the other is more effective as indicated by two key measures: discernable differences in recidivism, including technical violations of parole, and differences in job satisfaction by the officers.

Publication Type: Roundtable
Abstract: The relationship between police organizational culture and police performance has received much attention in criminal justice literature. More specifically, extensive research has been done in the developed economies such as the U.S. and Western European countries. However, very little is written about the police organizational cultures in emerging markets of Europe. Turkey is one example. The aim of this study is to develop a broad understanding of police culture in Turkey. More specifically, we examine organizational support as perceived by line officers and its relationship to job satisfaction. Data for the study will be obtained through a survey questionnaire distributed to a sample of police officers (line officers) in Istanbul in Turkey.

Publication Type: Conference Paper/Unpublished Manuscript
Abstract: This paper argues that sitting politicians are more likely to take run for higher office when their private market opportunities are better. The intuition behind this prediction is that politicians should be more willing to take that risk when they have an attractive fallback option. I test this prediction by using a fixed-effects (a.k.a. condition) logistic regression to analyze the decision of U.S. House members to run for a seat in the U.S. Senate. The results show that House members are more likely to run for a Senate seat when their expected income from working in the private sphere is higher. This result holds through the several robustness checks that are preformed. Implications of the results for the nature of competition in American politics are discussed.

Publication Type: Conference Paper/Unpublished Manuscript
Review Method: Peer Reviewed
Abstract: Recent research on corollaries of female office holding at the local level is lacking and there is almost no research on correlates of female candidacy at this level. Furthermore, of the studies conducted on female office holding, discrepant results leave several important hypotheses inconclusive. In this study, I look at cross-sectional data from a larger longitudinal investigation assessing the office-holding and political candidacy of women in California cities. Specifically, a random sample of 105 cities in California is analyzed. Focusing on the offices of council member and mayor, a number of descriptive and inferential statistics are used to address several hypotheses regarding correlates of female office holding. Moreover, this study uniquely extends these hypotheses to an evaluation of female candidacy at this level. The hypotheses explored include the desirability hypothesis, the competition hypothesis and the diversity hypothesis as well as other competing political, socioeconomic and demographic explanations of female office-holding.

Publication Type: Conference Paper/Unpublished Manuscript
Abstract: Each year hundreds of police officers are arrested throughout the United States for committing crimes, although no official data or statistics are kept on this hidden phenomenon. In this study, data were collected from newspapers across the country regarding police officers who were arrested during 2005 and 2006. Preliminary content analysis and findings indicate that the prevalence of police officers arrested is significant, as is the range and type of offenses committed by those officers. This presentation will address the issues of prevalence and categories of criminal offenses committed by police officers, as well as correlates to agency size and other variables.