Emily M. Wright

• Ph.D., Criminology & Criminal Justice
• Senior Research Fellow at Urban Institute

Using funds from a National Institute of Justice award (Grant No. 2019-MU-MU-0095), the present project employed a variety of methods to evaluate the activities undertaken by stakeholders involved in the MN SAKI project: 1) Eliminate untested SAKs, 2) Build capacity for criminal justice agencies to test SAKs, pursue all investigatory leads, provide...

The role of victimization in criminal behavior has been researched previously, particularly in justice-involved youth and prison samples. The contribution of such adversity in jail samples is less articulated. The current study examines the effect of physical abuse, sexual abuse, and polyvictimization (physical and sexual abuse) on behavioral healt...

The effect of abuse victimization in correctional samples has been researched previously, particularly with an eye toward these experiences on justice-involved youth and prison samples’ offending and recidivism behavior. The role of this type of victimization, including physical abuse, sexual abuse, and polyvictimization, is less studied in jail po...

Limited research has focused on the prevalence and context of adverse childhood experiences (ACEs) among Native Americans. At the same time, as Native Americans have experienced significant historical trauma and oppression spanning generations, there is reason to believe that childhood adversity is differentially concentrated among Native persons....

This study explored the potential role of victim advocacy in Native American missing person cases. Interviews with 25 tribal and non-tribal victim/social service providers were conducted to assess their perspectives on the factors which make Native Americans vulnerable to going missing, the barriers and challenges regarding reporting and investigat...

Prior research that is grounded in social disorganization theory has found that community characteristics impact victimization. Despite the robust literature using social disorganization theory, very few studies have used this theory to examine violence and victimization in Indigenous communities. The following study examined counties in 14 states...

Despite widespread support for coordinated responses to child maltreatment, little research examines the successes and barriers faced by child advocacy centers (CACs). The current study examines perspectives on program operations within a large CAC in the Midwest across 14 focus groups, including both internal CAC staff (N = 32) and external agency...

Mental illnesses, substance use, and their co-occurrence are significant predictors of maladaptive outcomes such as aggression, criminal behavior, and recidivism. These problems are theorized to be more prevalent and problematic among female inmates than male inmates and may be more relevant in jail settings. However, few studies have examined the...

This project proposed a new partnership between the Nebraska Commission on Indian Affairs, the four tribes of Nebraska: Omaha Tribe, Ponca Tribe, Santee Sioux Tribe, and Winnebago Tribe; and researchers at the University of Nebraska, Omaha. It was responsive to NIJ funding opportunity 2019-15203 titled Tribal-Researcher Capacity Building Grant, und...

Recent legislation in multiple states has called for studies on the scope of missing Native American persons. Here we report on one such study from Nebraska by first describing the practical and methodological issues for researchers to consider when examining data on missing Native persons. Then, using data from four point-in-time-counts in 2020, r...

Objectives Traumatic brain injury (TBI) is differentially concentrated within incarcerated populations. Despite the consistency of this observation, the timing of within-individual changes in criminal justice contact in relation to TBI remains under-investigated. For example, previous studies have primarily considered TBI as a causal influence of l...

The Violence Against Women Act (VAWA) was hallmark legislation aimed at combating violence against women. While violence against women is a national issue that affects women of all race/ethnicities, it affects Native American women the most, as Native women experience the highest rates of violence. Violence against Native women is rooted in coloniz...

Before conducting research in an Indigenous community, a researcher, especially a non-Indigenous researcher, must recognize and acknowledge not only the historical impact research has had on Indigenous communities but the current impacts that arise when research is conducted in Indigenous communities. Specifically, one must consider settler colonia...

Background Although adverse childhood experiences (ACEs) have negative effects on subsequent wellbeing, questions remain regarding how and why they do so. Sex, environmental effects, and genetic influences may play a role in both one’s exposure to ACEs as well as one’s reactions to ACEs. Objective To understand the combined genetic and environment...

Objectives: Traumatic brain injury (TBI) is differentially concentrated within incarcerated populations. Despite the consistency of this observation, the timing of within-individual changes in criminal justice contact in relation to TBI remains under-investigated. For example, previous studies have primarily considered TBI as a causal influence of...

School resource officer (SRO) behavior varies across schools, but little is known about what shapes their behavior. Social ecological theories state that features of communities shapes individual behavior, including police officers. This may similarly apply to SROs. This study uses the 2015 to 2016 School Survey on Crime and Safety to test the exte...

We consider the broad developments that have occurred over the past decade regarding our knowledge of how neighborhood context impacts intimate partner violence (IPV). Research has broadened the concept of “context” beyond structural features such as economic disadvantage, and extended into relationships among residents, collective “action” behavio...

Background: Existing research using nationally representative samples has provided valuable information regarding the prevalence and context of childhood adversity, but Native American persons have largely been absent from these studies. Objective: We examined adverse childhood experiences (ACEs) among persons identifying as White, Black, Asian, Hi...

The authors examine both main effects and cross-level effects of prior criminal justice contact on delinquency and violence. Using multilevel longitudinal data from the Project on Human Development on Chicago Neighborhoods (1994–2001), they addresses a lack of clarity on the effect of police contact on delinquency and violence. The authors found th...

Background Social disorganization theory posits that both structural and social features of a particular geographic unit are associated with criminal behavior. Despite many tests of social disorganization theory, few studies have assessed its relevance to child abuse. Objective This study seeks to explain neighborhood variation in child maltreatme...

Crossover youth are involved in both child welfare and juvenile justice systems. The Crossover Youth Practice Model (CYPM) promotes collaboration between these systems to inform decision making between the two agencies and better serve these youth. Yet, few outcome evaluations of the CYPM exist, especially those that assess outcomes beyond recidivi...

It is widely believed among police officers that domestic incidents are among the most dangerous incidents to which they respond. However, most research in this area suffers from the “denominator problem,” where prior studies have focused on incidents resulting in harm to police officers and failed to account for incidents not resulting in harm. Su...

Previous research has acknowledged that there is a relationship between victimization and later delinquency, but the specific attributes of this relationship are unclear because measures of both direct and indirect victimization are rarely explored in a single study. We included both indirect and direct victimization to examine which form of victim...

This study involved an assessment of the relevance of women’s background characteristics for predicting their offending in prison. Data were collected from over 650 women confined in a large prison for women in a Midwestern state, and the relative effects of these factors were examined. Findings revealed that background characteristics reflecting s...

Traffic stops are the most common reason for face-to-face encounters between police officers and citizens. Contact with police can affect citizens’ behaviour toward the police, particularly when citizens perceive unfair treatment by officers during these encounters. Yet, few studies have examined how experiencing a traffic stop affects citizens’ de...

This study examines the predictors of sexual assault case clearance, with a focus on arrest and two types of exceptional clearance: victim refusal to cooperate and prosecutorial declination to prosecute. Using National Incident Based Reporting System (NIBRS) data on crime incidents that contain a sexual offense (N = 21,977), we estimated a multinom...

Background: Adverse childhood experiences (ACEs) are a potent risk factor. Despite these findings, studies have also recognized the importance of considering additional sources of genetic and environmental influence that cluster within families. Objective: To properly control for latent sources of genetic and within-family environmental influenc...

This paper examines the association between adverse childhood experiences (ACEs) and six adverse outcomes in adulthood (physical health, depressive symptoms, educational attainment, income attainment, alcohol problems, and antisocial behavior). Sibling comparison models were used to control for latent sources of genetic and within-family environmen...

This study involves an examination of the individual- and jail-level predictors of violent victimization during short-term incarceration using data from the most recent Survey of Inmates in Local Jails and the corresponding National Jail Census. Findings suggest that individuals whose attributes make them appear more vulnerable or whose attributes...

Neighborhood parks and playgrounds are thought to reduce the stressors of disorganized urban environments by adding greenspace and fostering community cohesion, and, in doing so, may reduce crime and delinquency. Yet, they may also foster criminal behaviors, including substance use, as they can provide areas for would-be offenders to gather without...

Few studies have examined the role of city police officer racial/ethnic representation on violent crime in immigrant neighborhoods. Yet police officer race/ethnicity might play a significant role in bolstering or weakening the relationship between immigration and violent crime rates. Researchers have posited that increasing the representation of mi...

This project evaluated the Moral Reconation Therapy (MRT) program that is used in the Nebraska Department of Correctional Services (NDCS). The goals of the project were to provide feedback to NDCS regarding: 1. The NDCS facilities that successfully provide MRT services to inmates; 2. Whether MRT participation reduces institutional misconducts and r...

Feminist scholars have long argued that patriarchy affects the structure and organization of society as well as the lived experiences of men and women. Although often referenced in discussions of gender differences in crime and justice, few have articulated more specifically the link between patriarchy and gender differences in the experiences of m...

This essay provides some of the general profiles of female inmates across the United States and how they differ from those for male inmates. The unique problems faced by women in prisons that can interfere with their adaptation to confinement (e.g., pregnancies, recent births, separation from children) are described. How histories of physical and s...

Purpose The purpose of this paper is to examine factors impacting college and non-college women reporting sexual assault to police. The goal is to increase knowledge regarding differences in the rates of reporting and reasons for reporting across these two groups. Design/methodology/approach Participants were drawn from a national telephone survey...

Patricia Van Voorhis is an American criminologist, most notably known for her work on evidence‐based practices within corrections, female offenders, and risk assessments. She, along with other scholars, worked to infuse the knowledge of “what works” in corrections into correctional agencies around the world. Van Voorhis's work has greatly impacted...

This study examines the impact of several indicators of neighborhood social ties (e.g., residents’ interactions with each other; residents’ ability to recognize outsiders) on intimate partner violence (IPV) against women as well as whether neighborhood collective efficacy’s impact on IPV is contingent upon such ties. This study used data from 4,151...

Using data from Wave 4 of the National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent to Adult Health, this study examined the independent relationship of childhood maltreatment type (emotional, sexual, physical) on IPV victimization and perpetration; then mutually exclusive categories of IPV involvement (victimization, perpetration, and victimization/perpetrati...

Crossover or dually involved youth are youth enmeshed in the child welfare system (CWS) and juvenile justice system (JJS). Given their dual status and high needs, attention has recently focused on how to best respond to them in an integrated, interagency fashion. The Crossover Youth Practice Model (CYPM) is designed to facilitate interagency collab...

Scholars have hypothesized that victimization elicits distinctive effects on women’s pathways to prison and subsequent prison maladjustment, but few researchers have investigated gender differences in this relationship. Using nationally representative samples of men and women housed in state prisons, we examine gender differences in the effects of...

This study examined the mediating and moderating impact of fear of victimization on the relationships between forcible and vicarious rape on depression and post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) among college women. Forcible and vicarious rape positively affected PTSD and depression symptomology, but fear did not mediate these relationships. Fear mo...

This essay reviews the evidence regarding the impact of childhood abuse (e.g., physical, sexual, psychological, maltreatment, and neglect) on long-term outcomes, such as violence, criminality, abuse, mental health problems, and physical health problems, in adolescence and adulthood. Overall, childhood abuse is highly detrimental to these outcomes,...

This study examines the direct effects of neighborhood supportive mechanisms (e.g., collective efficacy, social cohesion, social networks) on depressive symptoms among females as well as their moderating effects on the impact of IPV on subsequent depressive symptoms. A multilevel, multivariate Rasch model was used with data from the Project on Huma...

In this study, we used data from life histories of 424 non-incarcerated (n = 266) and incarcerated (n = 158) women to examine the extent to which women are exposed to multiple forms of victimization, including child abuse, intimate partner violence, sexual assault, and traumatic life events. We assessed the effects of polyvictimization (e.g., multi...

The majority of batterer intervention program (BIP) evaluations have indicated they are marginally effective in reducing domestic violence recidivism. Meanwhile, correctional programs used to treat a variety of offenders (e.g., substance users, violent offenders, and so forth) that adhere to the "principles of effective intervention" (PEI) have rep...

Individual-level attitudes about drugs are strong predictors of substance use among adolescents, and aggregate-level community norms regarding deviancy and drug use may influence youth attitudes as well as their drug use. This study examined the direct effects of neighborhood norms about deviance, disadvantage, immigrant concentration, and resident...

General strain theory (GST) hypothesizes that youth are more likely to engage in delinquency when they experience vicarious victimization, defined as knowing about or witnessing violence perpetrated against others, but that this relationship may be attenuated for those who receive social support from significant others. Based on prospective data fr...

Objectives Examine the prevalence and correlates of intimate partner violence (IPV) victimization and offending, as well as the overlap of these experiences. Method Data from wave 4 of the National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent Health were analyzed to examine IPV among adults ages 24 to 33. A multinomial logistic regression model was estimated...

Research has demonstrated that exposure to violence can result in many negative consequences for youth, but the degree to which neighborhood conditions may foster resiliency among victims is not well understood. This study tests the hypothesis that neighborhood collective efficacy attenuates the relationship between adolescent exposure to violence,...

Evidence indicates an association between victimization and adolescent substance use, but the exact nature of this relationship remains unclear. Some research focuses solely on the consequences of experiencing indirect victimization (e.g., witnessing violence), others examine direct victimization (e.g., being personally victimized), and still other...

This study uses longitudinal data from the Project on Human Development in Chicago Neighborhoods (PHDCN) to examine the effects of exposure to school violence, community violence, child abuse, and parental intimate partner violence (IPV) on youths' subsequent alcohol and marijuana use. We also examine the cumulative effects of being exposed to viol...

Introduction: Adolescents are at great risk for exposure to violence in their communities (Finkelhor et al. 2009), and victimization has been associated with multiple negative outcomes including impaired social relationships, poor school performance, substance use, and violent delinquency (Macmillan, 2001; Sullivan et al., 2004). Yet, not all chi...

Although the cycle of violence theory has received empirical support (Widom, 1989a, 1989b), in reality, not all victims of child physical abuse become involved in violence. Therefore, little is known regarding factors that may moderate the relationship between abuse and subsequent violence, particularly contextual circumstances. The current investi...

To date, research exploring gender differences in the relationship between exposure to community violence and substance use has been limited. This study employs longitudinal data from the Project on Human Development in Chicago Neighborhoods (PHDCN) to assess the exposure to violence-substance use relationship and explore whether this relationship...

A considerable amount of research focuses on the detrimental influence that relationships pose for women offenders while relatively little attention has been given to the potential positive impact of relationships in their lives. This study investigates how women offenders’ positive relationships work as ‘buffers’ against their criminal involvement...

Although social disorganization theory hypothesizes that neighborhood characteristics influence youth delinquency, the impact of neighborhood disadvantage on adolescent substance use and racial/ethnic differences in this relationship have not been widely investigated. The present study examines these issues using longitudinal data from 1,856 Africa...

In much feminist literature, patriarchy has often been studied as a predictive variable for attitudes toward or acts of violence against women. However, rarely has patriarchy been examined as an outcome across studies. The current study works toward filling this gap by examining several individual-and neighborhood-level factors that might influence...

The authors review evidence of gender-responsive factors for women in prisons. Some gender-responsive needs function as risk factors in prison settings and contribute to women’s maladjustment to prison; guided by these findings, the authors outline ways in which prison management, staff members, and programming can better serve female prisoners by...

Social support has been recognized as a protective factor associated with reduced intimate partner violence (IPV). A question that few studies have examined, however, is whether the effectiveness of social support on IPV is conditioned by the neighborhood in which it occurs. This study investigated whether the separate effects of support from frien...

Research on intimate partner violence (IPV) and victimization is widespread across disciplines. To date, the majority of research underscores the importance of individual-level factors to explain IPV, thereby neglecting the significance of macro-level elements. Nevertheless, research suggests that the characteristics of the neighborhood where an in...

Research on exposure to intimate partner violence (IPV) among children and adolescents has rarely examined whether the gender of the perpetrator (e. g., mother-perpetrated vs. father-perpetrated IPV) elicits differential effects on male and female adolescents' mental health outcomes. This study examined whether exposure to severe IPV affected male...

This study examined the effects of neighborhood structural and social characteristics on offending among girls and boys aged 8–17 residing in 80 Chicago neighborhoods. The results demonstrated gender differences in contextual effects, although not in ways predicted by social disorganization theory. Collective efficacy and concentrated disadvantage...

Research on neighborhood-level effects on intimate partner violence (IPV) has expanded significantly in the past two decades. However, to date, studies have been unable to disentangle compositional and contextual effects on IPV and have rarely considered the social mechanisms that might link neighborhood conditions to IPV. Using data from the Proje...

This study investigated the long-term effects of exposure to intimate partner violence in the home on adolescent violence and drug use and gender differences in these relationships. Although the general relationship between exposure to IPV and negative outcomes for youth has been demonstrated in past research, gender differences in the effects of I...

This study explores the effects of romantic relational aggression on intimate partner violence. The concept of relational aggression denotes a type of nonphysical aggression that is specific to relationships and that has only recently been recognized in the psychological literature. Using responses to the Conflict Tactics Scale from adults particip...

Recent evidence indicates that contrary to some criminological theories, immigrants are less violent than native-born Americans. The relationship between immigrant status and reduced violence appears to hold at both the individual and neighborhood levels of analysis. This phenomenon has been referred to as the immigrant or Latino paradox. It has be...

Domestic violence offenders who are court mandated to attend a batterer treatment program are more likely to complete treatment than offenders who voluntarily attend. However, few studies have examined the amount or severity of referral source supervision and its effect on treatment completion. This study uses data from three referral sources in So...

A growing body of scholarship faults existing risk/needs assessment models for neglecting the risk factors most relevant to women offenders. In response, a series of gender-responsive assessment models were tested for their contributions to widely used gender-neutral risk needs assessments. In six of eight samples studied, subsets of the gender-res...

This article extends the debate over personality disorders as dimensional or taxonic phenomena to the study of psychopathy and relates this issue to questions surrounding whether behaviors or personality traits best represent psychopathy. Proponents of dimensional measurements of psychopathy consider personality traits to be important constructs of...

The needs of women offenders may be qualitatively different than the needs of male offenders. The “pathways” and “gender-responsive” perspectives of female offending have recently garnered attention in both practitioner and scholarly arenas. The pathways perspective focuses attention on the co-occurrence and effects of trauma, substance abuse, dysf...

Juvenile waiver, or transfer, laws allow certain young offenders to be removed from juvenile court jurisdiction and prosecuted in criminal court, where the range of sanctions is presumably greater. In the past several decades, many states have modified their existing transfer statutes in order to streamline the waiver process and make it easier to...