David M. Bierie

United States Department of Justice · U.S. Marshals Service

Research on campus sexual assault (CSA) has almost exclusively drawn on self-report data, examined undergraduates (i.e., students aged 18-24), and focused on female victimization. The few studies which included male CSA victims generally had fewer than 100 male subjects, which makes important statistical analyses difficult. To build upon prior lite...

This article describes the emergence and evolution of analytic research at the United States Marshals Service. In doing so, we illustrate the value of producing useful information, solving problems, and integration of quantitative researchers alongside applied workers (i.e., on teams alongside law enforcement officers).

Increasing the efficiency of warrant investigations would return substantial benefits to taxpayers. It could increase voluntary surrender among wanted persons, expedite the ability of citizens to offer tips, and address such high-cost problems as risk of false arrests due to errors in warrant databases. The author discusses the feasibility and adva...

The assault of law enforcement officers is an important but understudied topic. To better understand this form of violence, this study drew on the National Incident–Based Reporting System—the nation's largest data set tracking assaults against police alongside detailed information on situations surrounding attacks. Risk factors were examined within...

Arrest warrants are an important and pervasive aspect of crime and justice in the United States. There are nearly three million arrest warrants active on any given day, of which several hundred thousand were issued for serious violent crimes (SVCs) such as aggravated assault, robbery, forcible sexual assault, and homicide. In more than a third of t...

A key goal of sex offender registration is to assist law enforcement in sexual assault investigations; to identify potential suspects when the perpetrator's identity is unknown. To date, however, no research has assessed the utility of sex offender registries in closing cases of sexual assault when the incident involved stranger perpetrators. Addre...

This study examines sexual offending behaviour of juvenile females and juvenile males who come to the attention of the police. Using victim age as an analytical tool and more than 20 years of incident-level crime data, perpetrator, victim, and offense characteristics are compared to assess if the offending behaviours of juvenile females and juvenil...

In the United States, certain laws restrict those convicted of sexually offending from accessing social spaces where youth congregate such as parks and playgrounds. However, empirical work to date has rarely described sexual assaults in these locations or tested the assumptions of these laws explicitly. To address these gaps in the literature, we d...

Prisons are the quintessential government institution, with almost complete control over the lives of the people compelled to spend time in them. Depending on how they are run and what services they provide, they have the potential to change people’s paths in life for the better or the worse, or indeed to leave people untouched. Furthermore, an eno...

Despite the importance of studying sexual assaults perpetrated by women, the field knows very little about female sexual offenders’ (FSOs) use of violence or physical injury resulting from these assaults. This study draws more than 20 years of National Incident-Based Reporting System (NIBRS) data reported to police (1992-2014) to identify factors t...

Research on campus sexual assault (CSA) has almost exclusively drawn on self-report data, examined undergraduates (i.e., students aged 18-24), and focused on female victimization. The few studies which included male CSA victims generally had fewer than 100 male subjects, which makes important statistical analyses difficult. To build upon prior lite...

Statutory rape is an important yet understudied topic. There is broad public support for the prosecution of older adults who engage in sexual relationships with minors regardless of perceptions of consent by either party. However, some scholars worry that expansive definitions within these laws have led to the widespread involvement of the justice...

Sex offender registries are one of the more hotly debated and polarising topics in criminology. Registries are generally perceived as valuable by the public, legislators, and law enforcement. However, academics and treatment providers have largely remained critical, arguing registries are costly and ineffective. Continued support despite these clai...

Very little is known about co-offending by female sexual offenders (FSOs), especially in terms of diverse forms of offender groupings. To address this gap in the literature, this study uses 21 years (1992-2012) of National Incident-Based Reporting System data to analyze incidents of sexual offending committed by four female groupings: solo FSOs (n...

Identifying the ways in which male and female sex offenders differ is an important but understudied topic. Studies that do exist have been challenged by a reliance on small and select samples. Improving on these limitations, we use the National Incident-Based Reporting System (NIBRS) to compare male and female sex offenders among all 802,150 incide...

Current research on secondary traumatic stress (STS) has been drawn from cross-sectional data. To determine how STS manifests over time, we conducted a three-year, longitudinal panel survey of investigators at a federal law enforcement agency. We measured STS scores, coping styles, perceptions of the work environment, and subject demographics. We f...

Empirical research on the collateral consequences of sex offender registries on offenders' lives has provided researchers, practitioners, and policymakers with evidence that registries are associated with unintended harm to sexual offenders such as harassment, loss of employment, difficulty finding housing, and personal distress. The methodologies...

The Adam Walsh Child Protection and Safety Act (AWA) established the U.S. Marshals Service (USMS) as the nation’s lead agency in the pursuit of sex offenders who violate a sex offender registry and cross state, tribal, or national borders. This study examines the flight behavior of 195 AWA violators investigated by the USMS during 2011 and focuses...

The National Incident-Based Reporting System (NIBRS) is an important data set serving social scientists, policy makers, the business community, and the press. However, it is hampered by low participation rates among the nation's police agencies. This article outlines a strategy for enhancing NIBRS by (a) providing police agencies free and supported...

National statistics on the incidence of rape play an important role in the work of policymakers and academics. The Uniform Crime Reports (UCR) have provided some of the most widely used and influential statistics on the incidence of rape across the United States over the past 80 years. The definition of rape used by UCR changed in 2012 to include s...

Firearm violence directed at law enforcement officers has become an increasingly prominent topic among policy makers, the press, and academics. This prominence is driven in part by recent growth in the number of officers killed or injured by gunfire. Although researchers have studied less serious forms of resisting arrest, little is known about ris...

This article investigates perceived danger among the nation’s confined youth. Although a number of studies have examined etiology of danger in prison, few have examined juvenile residents or focused on decomposing facility-level from individual-level effects. Addressing these limitations, this study draws on survey data at 48 juvenile institutions...

Correctional researchers have increasingly focused on social bonding as a key pathway by which parolees desist from crime after release. Most work to date has focused on levels of bonds, either at reentry or as a function of events occurring in the community. However, few have assessed whether the magnitude of change in bonds during incarceration h...

Prisons in the United States generally contain an internal administrative system for processing and responding to inmate complaints. The Federal Bureau of Prisons (BOP) launched a formal grievance system in 1975 with explicit goals of monitoring prison performance and alleviating inmate tension by resolving problems in a timely and just manner. The...

Violence directed at law enforcement has remained a critical issue for police, the public, and policing scholars. Recent years have witnessed a growth in lethal violence directed at officers. While several studies have examined noncompliance or resisting arrest, limited individual-level research exists on firearm use during fugitive apprehensions....

Security designation tools are a key feature of all prisons in the United States, intended as objective measures of risk that funnel inmates into security levels-to prison environments varying in degree of intrusiveness, restriction, dangerousness, and cost. These tools are mostly (if not all) validated by measuring inmates on a set of characterist...

Criminal justice literature often suggests female social control agents (e.g., police, prison staff, and others) use force less often than male colleagues facing similar situations. Most explain this with reference to personal or social factors which are gendered, arguing role-pressures or differences in skill sets between men and women lead to dif...

Physical conditions of prisons have been at the center of long-standing debates in correctional policy and research. Many argue prisons should be unpleasant to deter future offending and motivate prosocial change among inmates. Others believe harsh conditions inhibit effective treatment and, perhaps, make offenders worse. Little progress in these d...

Prison conditions have been at the center of long-standing debates among corrections scholars. Interestingly, this debate has focused on inmates alone while paying little attention to the potential impact of prison conditions on staff. Addressing this limitation, the study draws on survey data collected from a stratified random sample of prison sta...

Research examining prisoner reentry has demonstrated negative impacts of incarceration on social bonds. However, this research is limited in two ways. First, it generally examines outcomes after release, paying less attention to processes occurring in prison. Second, this work tends to examine "incarceration" as a whole, regarding prisons as homoge...

Research Summary To extend research on legitimacy to the correctional system, we study a sample of 202 adult inmates randomly assigned to serve their 6-month sentence at one of two institutions—a traditional prison or a military-style correctional boot camp. Findings show that perceptions of justice system legitimacy changed during the course of in...

This study drew on a cost–benefit method to compare recidivism between two groups of inmates. Subjects were randomly assigned to serve a 6-month ‘early release’ term in one of two prisons which diverged dramatically in terms of structure, freedom, and staff–inmate interaction style (boot camp versus traditional prison). The study was motivated, in...

Two hundred thirty four adult male inmates entering prison were randomly assigned to an early release program in either a correctional boot camp or a large, traditional prison in the Maryland state correctional system. Boot camp releasees had marginally lower recidivism compared to those released from the traditional prison. A pre-test, post-test s...

Prior research suggests that educational opportunities during incarceration can help prepare one for reentry into the community and are effective in reducing recidivism. This article evaluates the differences between education programs offered at two Maryland State Correctional Facilities. Inmates serving a “six and out” sentence were randomly assi...

This project develops and applies a cost-benefit analytic framework to evaluate a specific policy option facing the state of Maryland: To operate an early release program for adult inmates within a therapeutic boot camp facility, or a traditional prison that also emphasizes treatment. Drawing on a randomized experiment in which inmates were assigne...

Much has been written in recent years about advances in assessment technologies designed to aid decision making in the juvenile justice system. Adoption and implementation of this latest generation of actuarial tools, however, have lagged behind their development. Assessment in juvenile justice exemplifies the “science-practice gap” that has spurre...

Prosecutorial discretion is a key area of focus for criminologists and legal scholars. Although a great deal of research has shown legal and extra-legal factors impact prosecutorial decision making, little work to date has tested whether press coverage is relevant to decision making. This study addresses a key prosecutorial decision draws on the un...

Thesis research directed by Dept. of Criminology and Criminal Justice. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 80-85). Thesis (M.A.) -- University of Maryland, College Park, 2003.