Holly Ventura Miller

• Ph.D. (Sociology)
• Professor & MSCJ Graduate Program Director at University of North Florida

Marijuana enforcement remains a major point of entry to the criminal justice system despite broad state level reforms. The knowledge base on marijuana enforcement, however, is small and predates the current national decriminalization-legalization movement and is comprised almost entirely of survey data on officer attitudes regarding drug law, polic...

Online drug dealing to date largely has transpired through darknet crypto-markets inaccessible to outsiders without remote site access or knowledge of trade jargon, processes, and transaction steps. Surface web search engines are increasingly driving the marijuana market, however, and apt to minimize darknet activity. This study relates covert part...

Studies of Latino/a/x crime and victimization have proliferated in recent years confirming three main empirical realities: race and ethnicity remain consistently linked to criminological outcomes, the foreign-born are significantly less likely to report either crime or victimization, and nativity status (i.e., foreign-born or native-born) is associ...

The U.S. immigration system has not escaped the challenges presented by the COVID-19 pandemic. Concerns have been raised about policy changes, enforcement actions, immigrant detention, and deportation practices during the outbreak. In response, dozens of lawsuits have been brought against the government on behalf of undocumented immigrants and deta...

The U.S. immigration system has not escaped the challenges presented by the COVID-19 pandemic. Concerns have been raised about policy changes, enforcement actions, immigrant detention, and deportation practices during the outbreak. In response, dozens of lawsuits have been brought against the government on behalf of undocumented immigrants and deta...

VALUE STATEMENT This commentary suggests how current and emergent treatment court issues can be better addressed through a national or theoretical research program. Encouraging the field to think in this direction, we provide an overview of the functions of a theoretical research program and identify three interrelated areas of inquiry including ev...

Restorative justice is an alternative philosophy of social control in which the administration of justice is removed from centralized bureaucratic control by the state to local communities. Restorative approaches are rooted in several values and assumptions that distinguish them from criminal justice, the primary of which is that crime is best resp...

Although exit interviews are common in business and educational contexts, they are utilized less frequently in the criminal justice system. This is unfortunate, however, as exit interviews can alert program staff to issues or areas for improvement, further contextualize and enrich qualitative data collected during program evaluations, and serve as...

Widespread implementation of offender reentry programming has increased justice program evaluations but few have featured research designs sufficiently rigorous to optimally inform policy. Program evaluations typically neglect program fidelity concerns to focus on outcome analysis that seldom feature optimal spuriousness reduction. The current stud...

Novel and emerging psychoactive drugs (NEPDs), a research-based classification referencing a wide range of natural plant-derived substances and synthetic compounds, have garnered considerable academic attention in recent years. Most of the scientific literature on NEPDs presents definitional overviews of specific substances in terms of their chemic...

Developmental theories of crime and delinquency view human development across the life course with a particular focus on individuals' progress within social roles and transitions that are age graded. Developmental perspectives study within-person changes over time as opposed to between-group variations (e.g., between race or class) more common to s...

Federal funding efforts have increased the number of reentry programs over the past decade with corresponding evaluations of these initiatives. Reentry programming targets a wide range of offenders though most have focused on medium and high-risk individuals with substance abuse and/or mental health disorders. This research note provides a profile...

Purpose: This study examined the effectiveness of Second Chance Act Grant funded reentry program for dually diagnosed female offenders involved in opioid and opiate use. Methods: A mixed methods design utilizing qualitative interviews and a quasi-experimental design was used to both determine program effectiveness and explore women's narratives reg...

There has been a proliferation of offender reentry programs since the passage of the Second Chance Act in 2008, including an unprecedented expansion of treatment services into underserved rural areas. Review of Second Chance Act programming and observation of unmet mental health and substance abuse needs in justice settings contextualizes descripti...

Mentoring is a popular and widespread intervention for at-risk youth that can positively influence this population’s adaptation to stressors and increase overall resilience. Yet there is a lack of attention to how mentoring relationships work or the attributes of mentoring that contribute to successful outcomes. In this study, we employ qualitative...

Reentry programming for offenders has increased considerably since the passage of the Second Chance Act in 2008. This study presents findings from the implementation and process phases of a multi-stage program evaluation of two Second Chance Act funded initiatives in Delaware County, Ohio. Two distinct programs, one for offenders diagnosed with co-...

In the United States, the practice referred to as “dabbing” has seen an apparent upswing in popularity in the last eighteen months. “Dabbing” refers to the use of butane extracted marijuana products that typically offer users a much higher THC content than flower cannabis. Users place a small amount of product on the exposed surface of a “nail” tha...

Offender reentry programs have proliferated since the passage of the Second Chance Act in 2008. This study examines the effectiveness of one such jail-based reentry program for male inmates diagnosed with substance dependency and who have minor children, the Delaware County (OH) Jail Substance Abuse Treatment program. This program served 34 offende...

Hyperfocused on outcome design sophistication (e.g., propensity score matching and regression discontinuity modeling), criminal justice program evaluation has largely failed to understand either the singular value of process research or the methodological interdependence between process and outcome phases. Consequently, most extant process evaluati...

Prisoner reentry remains a significant challenge for the criminal justice system with millions of offenders returning to society each year from the nation’s prisons and jails. Employment, housing, and access to substance abuse and mental health treatment are common, often unmet, challenges for the returning offender. In response, state and local ju...

Of the more than two million persons incarcerated in U.S. prisons, the majority are also parents to children under the age of 18. A growing body of research has explored the impact of parental incarceration on these children and has consistently found a link between this experience and negative life outcomes. Fewer studies, however, examined the lo...

Research on the growing U.S. Hispanic population has increased in recent years, although much of this work has examined differences between the foreign- and native-born or between Hispanics and non-Hispanics. Fewer studies have explored within-group differences (Mexican vs. Puerto Rican vs. Cuban, etc.) and none have assessed variability in the pre...

A growing body of research has identified a negative relationship between generational status and criminological outcomes such that foreign-born Latinos are significantly less likely to report offending, victimization, and drug use compared to their native-born counterparts. What has been explored to a lesser degree is the extent to which generatio...

Parental incarceration has been linked to a wide range of negative intergenerational consequences, including involvement in the criminal justice system. Prior research indicates that those who experience episodes of parental incarceration during childhood are significantly more likely to report contact with the police, arrest, conviction, and incar...

The significance of peers during adolescence is well established in the social sci-ence literature. However, relatively few studies have devoted attention to susceptibility to peer influence with regard to both its causes and consequences. The current study aims to add to this literature in two ways. First, it investigates the role of self-control...

Though mentoring has emerged as a promising and low-cost intervention for at-risk youth in recent years, the scientific knowledge base on the topic remains under-developed. The current study augments the knowledge base on youth mentoring by analyzing programmatic elements of mentoring programs situated in or adjacent to the juvenile justice system...

A new study supported by the Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention (OJJDP), U.S. Department of Justice, identifies effective practices and strategies to improve the mentoring experience for at-risk and high-risk youth who are involved in the juvenile justice system. Researching the Referral Stage of Youth Mentoring in Six Juvenile J...

Research on Hispanic crime and victimization in the United States has lagged behind the demographic changes of the last four decades. Very little is known about the etiology of Hispanic offending and few studies have examined the correlation between crime and victimization within this group. This study attempts to remedy this gap in the literature...

Although evaluation has become a common component of substance abuse treatment programs in correctional settings, few evaluation designs use a mixed-methodological approach and even fewer incorporate participant interviews in the data collection process. This oversight is problematic for a number of reasons, one of which is the uniquely disadvantag...

Academic involvement in juvenile and criminal justice initiatives is largely limited to program design and evaluation. Typically, there is discontinuity of academic involvement over the life of a program and minimal, if any, participation in program delivery. This description of the Southern Region Violence and Substance Abuse Prevention Center ill...

This study examines the relationship between ethnicity, acculturation, and crime among a sample of Hispanic adolescents drawn from the Project on Human Development in Chicago Neighborhoods (PHDCN) dataset. Prior research has shown that Hispanics who are more acculturated are more likely to engage in crime, but there is a lack of empirical evidence...

Previous qualitative research has suggested that Hispanic gang membership is linked to the process of acculturation. Specifically, studies have indicated that those who are less assimilated into mainstream American or “Anglo” society are at greater risk for joining gangs. Building on these observations, this study examines the relationship between...

Hispanics represent the fastest growing demographic in the United States and will constitute the majority of the population by 2050. Despite this considerable growth, criminology has largely ignored these groups and research in this area lags behind. This article is an attempt to address these oversights by offering recommendations for a theoretica...

Criminologists have largely neglected the influence of acculturation in the etiology of Hispanic drug use and delinquency. This is somewhat surprising since a long line of research from several disciplines has consistently linked higher levels of acculturation to greater incidence of negative social, health, and behavioral outcomes. A major shortco...

Through funding from the national Residential Substance Abuse Treatment Program, the South Carolina Department of Corrections implemented the Correctional Recovery Academy in the Turbeville Medium Security Institution to treat drug‐dependent offenders. The program features a cognitive–behavioral change modality delivered in a modified therapeutic c...

To explore the link between low self-control during adolescence and health problems in early adulthood. Using data from the National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent Health, we examined the relationship between varying levels of self-control and the likelihood of being diagnosed with a variety of physical and brain-based health conditions. Results...

Offenders face a number of significant challenges upon reentry into the community, including securing employment, locating housing, and accessing adequate substance abuse and mental health treatment. These and related issues, if neglected, only bolster rising recidivism rates which have prompted renewed interest in rehabilitation initiatives such a...

The present study examines the relative contributions of various theoretical constructs to violent victimization by operationalizing multiple measures of exposure to motivated offenders, guardianship, and target characteristics. Using a nationally representative sample of American adolescents, we conducted principal components factor analysis and l...

Although the Sixth Amendment of the constitution guarantees assistance of counsel to indigent criminal defendants, questions exist about the quality of this representation. Critics assert that 'you get what you pay for' and that public defenders are less effective than privately retained counsel regarding criminal justice outcomes. Some research, h...

Association with delinquent peer groups is one of the most salient predictors of delinquent behavior. Despite the widespread documentation of these effects, little is known about whether the delinquent peer effect is conditioned by individual‐level characteristics. Using data from a multi‐wave survey of Mexican‐American adolescents, this study expl...

Since 2001, the federal Project Safe Neighborhoods initiative has instituted a comprehensive effort to reduce gun crimes in local communities across the United States. In South Carolina, the United States Attorney's Office for the District of South Carolina established Project CeaseFire, a localized response to reduce the prevalence of gun crime th...

Purpose – Treatment for alcohol and drug addiction in correctional settings has become commonplace throughout much of the United States. The delivery of treatment services in prisons is a promising approach and has certain advantages relative to outpatient and voluntary treatment, including (i) certainty of program enrollment and participation by i...

Since first appearing in the late 1980s, drug courts have quickly become one of the leading intervention strategies for offenders exhibiting problems with drug abuse. Popular with policy makers for their innovative approach to breaking the drugs-crime nexus, drug courts are now considered one of the hallmarks of both the adult and juvenile justice...

Gottfredson and Hirschi's general theory of crime has received considerable empirical attention since its publication in 1990. Implicitly embedded in self-control theory is its cross-cultural applicability, though this is seldom examined. In this study, self-control theory was tested in a novel cultural setting (San Juan, Puerto Rico) and in relati...

The typical point of departure for understanding crime is to investigate differences between individuals to discern what characteristics distinguish offenders from nonoffenders, high-rate from low-rate offenders, and persistent from less persistent offenders. It is often the case that psychological, family, biological, social, and environmental fac...

This study examines the cross-cultural efficacy of social learning theory as it relates to substance use among Puerto Rican adolescents. Using data from a self-report survey of high school students attending private and public schools in San Juan, Puerto Rico, we compare the relative effects of personal and peer definitions (differential associatio...

This study reexamines the relationship between acculturation and illicit drug use among a sample of Mexican-American adolescents in South Texas (n=3, 186). Logistic regression was used to test the relationship between marijuana and cocaine use and two acculturation scales while controlling for structural properties and social dynamics characterizin...

The influence of demeanor in criminal justice research has predominantly centered on arrest and sanctioning outcomes. This study examines demeanor at the juncture of juvenile drug court admission by attributing behavior perceived to be favorable or unfavorable to program compliance and success to either juveniles or their parents/guardians. Analysi...

This study presents findings from the South Carolina Youth Court Initiative, a statewide community corrections approach to delinquency prevention. The national youth court movement, its restorative justice theoretical underpinnings, and a brief history of youth courts in South Carolina are reviewed as a context for the present study. A mixed-method...

Other than through its ties to scholarship on the sociology of higher education, the topic of female scholar productivity appears to be timely in light of the gender transformation underway in criminology and criminal justice (e.g., the majority of CCJ graduate students are female, and the CCJ professorate will be majority female if admission patte...

Research on suspect and defendant demeanor in the juvenile and criminal justice systems has concentrated on arrest and the severity of sanctioning outcomes. This article examines demeanor at an earlier juncture in the system: juvenile drug court admission. Regression analysis of 76 juvenile drug court case files suggests that program admittance (i....

The American South witnessed an increase in church burnings during the mid-1990s that was characterized by the national media as a function of resurgent racism. Despite the scope of attention and resources allocated to the burnings, no systematic empirical analysis of the phenomenon has been conducted. This study examines the relationship between h...

This study reexamined the Charlotte School Safety Program, a school resource officer-delivered fear of crime reduction initiative. Initial evaluation of the program (Kenney & Watson, 1998) found increased perceptions of safety and reduced fear of crime for school youth, although structural properties of the study setting were not considered. Reanal...

Policy makers often bemoan the shortcomings and inefficiency of youth development and similar social work programs whose effectiveness cannot be demonstrated by quantifiable performance indicators. This study argues, through illustration of the Odyssey Learning Center’s Discovery Program (an alternative school serving rural Southern youth in an abj...

Social control capabilities have increased significantly over the past several decades, particularly because of an increased utilization of technologically advanced surveillance methods. Following the tragic events of September 11,2001, U.S. Congress and the present Administration have granted law enforcement considerable new powers in the enforcem...

While youth courts experience. tremendous growth nationwide; their utility is largely unproven, particularly in state-level contexts. This study conducted a cost-benefit analysis of South Carolina's youth;courts. The study found that while youth courts and family courts produced comparable recidivism rates, youth courts were substantially less expe...

This chapter reviews the leading theories of causation of binge drinking and policies that address binge drinking. The most dangerous and destructive form of alcohol abuse is commonly referred to as “binge drinking,” a phenomenon characterized by heavy episodic consumption. Binge drinking is identified as primary public health crises throughout the...

The delivery of substance abuse treatment within correctional settings marks one of the criminal justice system's primary opportunities to disrupt the drugs-crime nexus. Federally funded residential substance abuse treatment programs were rapidly introduced across the nation, although implementation problems increased their operational variability....

Typescript. Thesis (master's)--University of South Carolina, 2002. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 67-70).