University of South Carolina System

OBJECTIVE: To test whether the Communities That Care (CTC) prevention system reduces adolescent alcohol, tobacco, and other drug use and delinquent behavior communitywide. DESIGN: The Community Youth Development Study is the first randomized trial of CTC. SETTING: In 2003, 24 small towns in 7 states, matched within state, were randomly assigned to control or CTC conditions. PARTICIPANTS: A panel of 4407 fifth-grade students was surveyed annually through eighth grade. Intervention A coalition of community stakeholders received training and technical assistance to install the CTC prevention system. They used epidemiological data to identify elevated risk factors and depressed protective factors in the community, and chose and implemented tested programs to address their community's specific profile from a menu of effective programs for families, schools, and youths aged 10 to 14 years. MAIN OUTCOME MEASURES: Incidence and prevalence of alcohol, tobacco, and other drug use and delinquent behavior by spring of grade 8. RESULTS: The incidences of alcohol, cigarette and smokeless tobacco initiation, and delinquent behavior were significantly lower in CTC than in control communities for students in grades 5 through 8. In grade 8, the prevalences of alcohol and smokeless tobacco use in the last 30 days, binge drinking in the last 2 weeks, and the number of different delinquent behaviors committed in the last year were significantly lower for students in CTC communities. CONCLUSION: Using the CTC system to reduce health-risking behaviors in adolescents can significantly reduce these behaviors communitywide.

In response to increasing violent crime rates in several U.S. cities over the past year, some have pointed the finger of blame at de-policing, a result of the so-called "Ferguson Effect." Although the Ferguson Effect on crime rates remains an open question, there may also be a Ferguson Effect on other aspects of police officers' jobs, such as willingness to partner with community members. This study used data from a cross-sectional survey of 567 deputies at an agency in the southeastern U.S. to accomplish 2 objectives: (a) to determine whether the Ferguson Effect is associated with de-policing in the form of decreased willingness to engage in community partnership, and (b) to determine whether such an effect persists upon accounting for perceived organizational justice and self-legitimacy. Ordinary least squares (OLS) regression equations revealed that the Ferguson Effect (as operationalized by reduced motivation stemming from recent negative publicity) was associated with less willingness to engage in community partnership (b = -.10; 95% CI = -.16, -.05). However, upon accounting for organizational justice and self-legitimacy, the Ferguson Effect was rendered insignificant (b = .01; 95% CI = -.05, .07). The findings suggest that officers who have confidence in their authority or perceive their agency as fair are more willing to partner with the community to solve problems, regardless of the effects of negative publicity.

BACKGROUND: Widespread replication of effective prevention programs is unlikely to affect the incidence of adolescent delinquency, violent crime, and substance use until the quality of implementation of these programs by community-based organizations can be assured. METHODS: This paper presents the results of a process evaluation employing qualitative and quantitative methods to assess the extent to which 432 schools in 105 sites implemented the LifeSkills Training (LST) drug prevention program with fidelity. Regression analysis was used to examine factors influencing four dimensions of fidelity: adherence, dosage, quality of delivery, and student responsiveness. RESULTS: Although most sites faced common barriers, such as finding room in the school schedule for the program, gaining full support from key participants (i.e., site coordinators, principals, and LST teachers), ensuring teacher participation in training workshops, and classroom management difficulties, most schools involved in the project implemented LST with very high levels of fidelity. Across sites, 86% of program objectives and activities required in the three-year curriculum were delivered to students. Moreover, teachers were observed using all four recommended teaching practices, and 71% of instructors taught all the required LST lessons. Multivariate analyses found that highly rated LST program characteristics and better student behavior were significantly related to a greater proportion of material taught by teachers (adherence). Instructors who rated the LST program characteristics as ideal were more likely to teach all lessons (dosage). Student behavior and use of interactive teaching techniques (quality of delivery) were positively related. No variables were related to student participation (student responsiveness). CONCLUSION: Although difficult, high implementation fidelity by community-based organizations can be achieved. This study suggests some important factors that organizations should consider to ensure fidelity, such as selecting programs with features that minimize complexity while maximizing flexibility. Time constraints in the classroom should be considered when choosing a program. Student behavior also influences program delivery, so schools should train teachers in the use of classroom management skills. This project involved comprehensive program monitoring and technical assistance that likely facilitated the identification and resolution of problems and contributed to the overall high quality of implementation. Schools should recognize the importance of training and technical assistance to ensure quality program delivery.

Abstract While policymakers have granted a substantial commitment of resources in order to reduce fear of crime among U.S. school students, the research literature on fear of crime at school is in its infancy. This study investigates whether school security techniques reduce or exacerbate fear of crime among students, net of community and school disorder and student characteristics. Ferraro's (1995) theory of incivilities suggests that students might perceive highly visible security as an incivility, which might increase their fear of crime. Using a nationally representative sample of American school children from the 1993 National Household Education Survey: School Safety and Discipline Component (NHES-SSD), we found that while school security efforts do not predict student fear as well as school disorder and individual student traits, many types of security correspond with a significantly greater likelihood that a student will be worried about crime while none reduce feelings of worry.

Research on race effects in police traffic stops is theoretically underdeveloped. In this study, we derive propositions from Donald Black's theory of law to explain the interaction effects of officer and driver race on searches in traffic stops in St. Louis, Missouri. Our citywide results and those for stops in predominantly White communities are generally consistent with the theory: Searches are more likely in stops of Black drivers than in those of White drivers, especially by White officers, controlling for other characteristics of the officer, driver, and stop. In predominantly Black communities, however, stops of White drivers by White officers are most likely to result in a search. We interpret both sets of results as manifestations of racial profiling in segregated communities and suggest that Black's theory of law remains a promising theoretical framework for future research on the continuing significance of race‐based policing in the United States.

Policing experts have suggested that shifting from a warrior mindset – officers viewing themselves as warriors fighting crime – to a guardian mindset – officers valuing working with the public to reduce crime – is a valuable method for improving police-community relations across the United States. However, little empirical evidence has been used to inform this debate. To address this gap, we examined survey data from two U.S. police departments to assess the validity of the Warrior/Guardian framework. Factor analyses suggested that the warrior and guardian mindsets are distinct, but related concepts. Furthermore, these mindsets are associated with different attitudinal outcomes (e.g. the guardian mindset was associated with greater prioritization of communication during citizen encounters). Thus, the Warrior/Guardian framework is supported empirically. Overlap between the Warrior/Guardian framework and existing police culture literature is discussed and police culture is offered as a potential explanation for variation in warrior and guardian orientations.

In recent years, sharp declines in violent crime rates have been recorded across major American cities. During this time period, many police departments have shifted from a traditional reactive form of policing to a community-oriented approach. It is unclear whether these changes have any causal relationship with the control or reduction in violent crime. To examine this issue, this study used the Law Enforcement Management and Administrative Statistics survey, the FBI's Uniform Crime Reports, and city-level census data to examine the economic and political determinants of robbery and homicide rates in 164 American cities. Findings indicate that community policing had little effect on the control or the decline in violent crime. Proactive policing strategies related to arrest had an inverse effect on violent crime measures and were related to reductions in violent crime over time. Implications of these findings for criminal justice policy are discussed.

A large body of research has consistently found that intensive employment during the school year is associated with heightened antisocial behavior. These findings have been influential in prompting policy recommendations to establish stricter limits on the number of hours that students can work during the school year. We reexamine the linkage between first‐time work at age 16 during the school year and problem behaviors. Our analysis uses group‐based trajectory modeling to stratify youths based on their developmental history of crime and substance abuse. This stratification serves to control for preexisting differences between workers and nonworkers and permits us to examine whether the effect of work on problem behaviors depends on the developmental history of those behaviors. Contrary to most prior research we find no overall effect of working on either criminal behavior or substance abuse. However, we do find some indication that work may have a salutary effect on these behaviors for some individuals who had followed trajectories of heightened criminal activity or substance abuse prior to their working for the first time.

Purpose The purpose of this paper is to examine the effect of police use of conducted energy devices (CEDs) on officer and suspect injuries while controlling for other types of force and resistance and other factors. Design/methodology/approach Data on 1,645 use‐of‐force incidents occurring between January 1, 2002 and July 2006 were obtained from two different law enforcement agencies. Logistic and generalized ordered logistic regressions are used to model the odds of injury and severity of injury. Findings The use of CEDs was associated with reduced odds of officer and suspect injury and the severity of suspect injury in one agency. In the other agency CED use was unrelated to the odds of injury; however, the use of pepper spray was associated with reduced odds of suspect injury. Among other findings, in both agencies the use of hands‐on tactics by police was associated with increased odds of officer and suspect injury, while the use of canines was associated with increased odds of suspect injury. Research limitations/implications Although this research was carried out in two distinctly different law enforcement agencies with different histories of CED adoption, the fact that CED use was associated with reductions in injuries in one agency but not the other indicates the need for additional research on the impact of CED use in other settings Practical implications The analysis suggests that relative to other forms of force, the use of CEDs and pepper spray can reduce the risk of injury to both suspects and law enforcement officers. This information should prove useful to law enforcement agencies considering adopting CEDs and suggests that agencies should consider the use of these less lethal alternatives in place of hands‐on tactics against actively resistant suspects. Originality/value At the time of this writing there was no published independent research on the risks of injury associated with CED use in field settings. The findings reported herein will help inform the public debate on the utility of CEDs for law enforcement.

Much of the research on criminal careers has concentrated on the dimensions of prevalence, frequency, specialization, and desistance. One dimension that has not been the focus of research is career length. Knowledge on the distribution of—and correlates associated with—career length is important for matters related to theory and policy. Using data from a sample of parolees from the California Youth Authority, the authors studied the career-length issue and provide important descriptive and etiological information. The authors also present some comparisons across race to determine if race differences emerge in career length and its correlates. Theoretical and empirical directions for future research are also addressed.

Translational research (Pentz, Jasuja, Rohrbach, Sussman, & Bardo, 2006; Woolf, 2008) is concerned with moving advances in prevention science into everyday practice in communities, yet there are few models for ensuring this transfer of knowledge. Communities That Care (CTC) provides a planned, structured, and data-driven system that trains community prevention coalitions to select evidence-based programs and replicate them with strong implementation fidelity. This paper describes the implementation of the CTC prevention system in 12 communities participating in the Community Youth Development Study.The results indicated that intervention communities enacted, on average, 90% of the core components of the CTC system, and achieved high rates of implementation fidelity when replicating school, afterschool, and parent training programs. These results held over time; communities successfully launched their prevention coalitions and programs and maintained the quality of their prevention services over five years. These results indicate that the CTC system can be used to foster translational research.

This study employs a sample of 7,700 women drawn from the Survey of Violence and Threats of Violence AgainstWomen and Men in the United States 1994 to 1996 to test hypotheses regarding the effects of violent victimization on women's mental and physical health. Violent victimization consisted of physical and sexual assaults, the lifecourse stage in which victimization first occurred, and the nature of the victimoffender relationship. Outcome variables were depressive symptomatology, concern for current safety, self-assessed health, and the occurrence of heavy episodic drinking. Findings suggested that physical and sexual-assault victimization had only modest effects on health outcomes, with the severity of physical assault having the most consistent association with poor health. The victim-offender relationship appeared most important for depressive symptomatology, with more symptoms being reported when the offender was someone known to the victim. No evidence was found that assaults first occurring in, say, childhood or adolescence, were more consequential for health than those first occurring in adulthood. The experience of child maltreatment appeared to be as important as other forms of victimization in presaging poor health outcomes.

A number of parolees are returning to the community with programming needs that may not have been addressed during their incarceration; these unmet needs may subsequently affect their successful reintegration into the community. Although there is an increasing female parole population, there has been a paucity of research concerning female parolees. The current study examines the types of needs identified at intake from a sample of 546 female parolees. The results revealed the following. First, if a parolee was employed, had stable living arrangements, and was assessed as needing and receiving some type of drug and/or alcohol program intervention, she was less likely to fail on parole. Second, many of these women were underassessed for having needs for drug and alcohol treatment as well as employment, housing, and other assistance. This underassessment may be because of an increasing emphasis on parole supervision (i.e., custody) rather than treatment in parole agencies.

Research consistently demonstrates a positive correlation between hours of employment and problem behavior for adolescents. In response, the National Research Council (1998) proposed limits on youth work involvement, and its recommendation forms the basis for proposed legislation to amend federal child labor provisions. An unanticipated consequence may be to increase the amount of time that youths spend in the informal labor market because child labor laws only govern youth employment in the formal labor market. In this article, the authors attempt to address this policy implication and fill a gap in the extant literature by examining the impact of both formal and informal employment on delinquency and substance use. Because work patterns tend to be very different by gender and race or ethnicity, the authors estimate separate models for these subgroups. The authors use longitudinal data to deal with the possibility that there are unobserved differences between those that work and those that do not.

OBJECTIVE: Report the distribution of scores from the Adult ADHD Self-Report Scale (ASRS) and estimate the prevalence of self-reported attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) symptoms as compared to clinical diagnoses. PARTICIPANTS: Participants were 1,080 college students, divided into 3 groups: (1) no ADHD diagnosis (n = 972), (2) diagnosed with ADHD but no current pharmacologic treatment (n = 54), and (3) diagnosed with ADHD with current pharmacologic treatment (n = 54). METHODS: The ASRS was administered during the fourth annual interview of an ongoing longitudinal cohort study. RESULTS: As expected, individuals who were never clinically diagnosed with ADHD had lower ASRS scores (M = 4.0, SD = 3.3) than individuals diagnosed with ADHD who were either under current pharmacologic treatment (M = 7.9, SD = 4.0) or not under treatment (M = 6.3, SD = 3.7). Overall, 10.3%wt of individuals without an existing clinical diagnosis of ADHD had high levels of ADHD symptoms. CONCLUSIONS: A substantial minority of undiagnosed individuals may benefit from a clinical assessment for ADHD.

As studies on racial profiling and biased policing have begun to proliferate, researchers are debating which benchmark is most appropriate for comparison with police traffic stop data. Existing benchmark populations, which include populations estimated from census figures, licensed drivers, arrestees, reported crime suspects, and observed drivers and traffic violators, all have significant limitations. This article offers a new, alternative benchmark for police traffic stops, a benchmark that has not been previously applied or tested in a racial profiling research setting. The analysis presented compares traffic observation data, gathered at selected, high volume intersections during an ongoing racial profiling study in Miami-Dade County, Florida, to not-at-fault driver demographic data from two-vehicle crashes at those same intersections. Findings indicate that non-responsible drivers in two-vehicle crashes appear to represent a reasonably accurate estimate of the racial composition of drivers on the roadways at selected intersections and within areas of varying racial composition. The implications of this finding for racial profiling research are discussed, and suggested areas for future inquiry are identified.

Purpose Artificial intelligence–enabled voice assistants (VAs), such as Amazon's Alexa, Google Assistant, and Apple's Siri, are available in smartphones, smart speakers, and other digital devices and channels. Use of these VAs is growing rapidly and are expected to significantly impact purchase intentions. This article focuses on how the communications enabled and provided by these VAs influence VA evaluations and usage intentions, contingent on the stage of the customer journey. Design/methodology/approach This paper builds from work on VAs, work on artificial intelligence (AI) and work on communications, to offer a comprehensive and up-to-date understanding of how VA evaluations and usage intentions may be impacted by the communications from VAs, contingent on the stage of the customer journey. Findings This paper proposes a model for VA enabled communications impact VA evaluations. It builds from work on VAs, AI, communications, and customer journey management. In the proposed model, VA evaluations are not only impacted by source, message and recipient characteristics (per prior communication models), but also by (1) VA/AI specific features, like perceptions of humanness and perceptions of artificiality, and (2) stage of the customer journey. Practical implications This paper provides guidance to firms, as regards how VA communications may influence VA evaluations and usage intentions. As an initial conjecture, (1) increasing perceptions of humanness, (2) decreasing perceptions of artificiality (3) a better fit between communications style (e.g. abstract vs concrete), and request type (e.g. transactional vs informational) (4) a better fit between VA communications (e.g. information vs banter), and consumer perceptions of the VA (servant vs partner) and (5) a better fit between VA communications and the stage of the customer journey may positively influence VA evaluations and VA usage intentions. Originality/value This paper provides a fresh look at the impact of VA communications, clarifying how such communications impact VA evaluations and usage intentions at various stages of the customer journey.

BACKGROUND: This systematic review summarises evidence on the HIV testing barriers and intervention strategies among Caribbean populations and provides pertinent implications for future research endeavours designed to increase rates of HIV testing in the region. METHODS: We used a systematic approach to survey all literature published between January 2008 and November 2018 using four electronic databases (MEDLINE/PubMed, Embase, Web of Science and Global Health). Only peer-reviewed articles published in English that examined HIV testing uptake and interventions in the Caribbean with men, men who have sex with men, female sex workers, transgender women and incarcerated individuals were included. RESULTS: Twenty-one studies met the inclusion criteria. Lack of confidentiality, access to testing sites, stigma, discrimination, poverty and low HIV risk perception were identified as key barriers to HIV testing. These barriers often contributed to late HIV testing and were associated with delayed treatment initiation and decreased survival rate. Intervention strategies to address these barriers included offering rapid HIV testing at clinics and HIV testing outreach by trained providers and peers. CONCLUSION: HIV testing rates remain unacceptably low across the Caribbean for several reasons, including stigma and discrimination. Future HIV testing interventions should target places where at-risk populations congregate, train laypersons to conduct rapid tests and consider using oral fluid HIV self-testing, which allows individuals to test at home.

To date, little research has systematically investigated perceptions of mental health professionals regarding motivations for self-injury among prison inmates. To help fill this gap, the authors used descriptive techniques to examine self-injurious behavior among inmates from the perspective of correctional mental health professionals. A quantitative survey assessed perceptions of mental health staff regarding etiology, motivations, and manifestations of self-injury. A qualitative interview component was used to explicate responses from the survey. Inmate cutting, scratching, opening old wounds, and inserting objects were the most commonly witnessed behaviors. Findings suggest that self-injury occurred regularly and that a subset of inmates are responsible for recurrent events. Mental health professionals perceived the motivation for inmate self-injury to be both manipulative and a coping mechanism. They described current management strategies and corresponding needs for training and resources.

Leading police scholars and practitioners were asked to reflect on the most urgent issues that need to be addressed on the topic of use of force. Four themes emerged from their contributions: use of force and de‐escalation training needs to improve and be evaluated; new ways of conceptualizing use of force encounters and better use of force response models need to be developed; the inequitable application of force, and how to remediate biases, needs to be more fully understood; and misconceptions about police use of force need to be identified and corrected. The highlighted topics serve as an agenda for future research. Such research should provide greater insight into when, where, and why force is used by police officers, and how it can be applied appropriately. If implemented, the practical recommendations included in the contributions should have a positive impact on police performance, public trust and confidence in the police, and citizen and officer safety.