Jessica Huff

University of Nebraska at Omaha | UN Omaha · School of Criminology and Criminal Justice

Objectives: This study examined the effects of crime severity and relational distance on bystanders’ willingness to report crime and provide a statement to police. Methods: A sample of 1,438 adults in the U.S. completed a factorial vignette survey. Participants read three crime scenarios and indicated their willingness to report and provide a sta...

Traditional literature on stress in policing focuses on patrol officers and generalizes findings to other sections and ranks within the department. This fails to take into consideration that different sections may experience and manage stress in various ways. Following Dabney and colleagues (2013) examination of homicide investigators, the current...

Purpose This study returns to one of the first operational aspects of policing ever studied – response time. After years of technological and analytical advancements, we examine the effect of response time on arrest and consider whether the influence of response time varies across precincts and crime types to inform operational strategies. Methods...

Objectives Evaluate the impact of body-worn cameras (BWCs) on officer-initiated activity, arrests, use of force, and complaints. Methods We use instrumental variable analysis to examine the impact of BWC assignment and BWC activation on the outcomes of individual incidents through a randomized controlled trial of 436 officers in the Phoenix Police...

A Correction to this paper has been published: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11292-021-09482-x

Research Summary The adoption of body‐worn cameras (BWCs) is often promoted in response to contentious police use of force incidents involving minority civilians. BWCs are expected to improve policing outcomes by enhancing accountability, although researchers have yet to determine whether BWCs can reduce racial/ethnic disparities. I examine whether...

Despite decades of calls to diversify policing, women continue to be underrepresented in the field, and this problem compounds when looking up the ranks. One explanation is that police organizations are “gendered” in that their structures, processes, and cultures support men’s career advancement over women’s. To investigate this possibility, we ana...

While body-worn cameras (BWCs) are increasingly becoming commonplace in police organizations, researchers and policymakers still know little about their implementation in the field and the factors related to their actual use. Using data collected from 146,601 incidents in Phoenix, Arizona, the present study examines the prevalence and correlates of...

Purpose Much of the current criminological research regarding police and the autistic community focuses on police training for interacting with autistic individuals or the experiences, fears and perceptions of parents or caregivers. Largely absent from the criminological research are the opinions and perceptions of autistic adults. The purpose of t...

Limited research attention has focused on homicides involving foreign-born victims. Using data from the National Violent Death Reporting System, we examined 9,428 homicides that occurred in 2017 in the United States across 32 states and D.C. Approximately 8% of homicide victims were foreign-born. Homicide victimization rates were substantially lowe...

Purpose Promote the use of multilevel modeling to refine theories of police discretion. Specifically, examine the simultaneous influence of situational factors, responding officers, and neighborhood context on arrests guided by a social-ecological framework. Methods Cross-classified models were used to assess the outcomes of 835,381 incidents resp...

The current study evaluates the impact of defendant race/ethnicity and police body-worn cameras (BWCs) on dismissals and guilty pleas in traffic violations. Despite the frequency of traffic violations and the potential for racial/ethnic bias in these incidents, researchers have yet to examine the outcomes of these violations in court. Research is a...

National victimization data suggest less than 50% of violent crime incidents are reported to the police. Official reports of crime to police, however, are often the only type of data used for the analysis of violence problems, the identification of geographic concentrations of violent crime, and the selection of targets for police and prevention re...

Little is known about officer perceptions of body-worn cameras (BWCs), and whether perceptions change following implementation within their agencies. BWC deployment varies, with some agencies mandating officers to wear BWCs and others using volunteers. Researchers have yet to assess attitudinal differences between volunteers and mandated officers....

Prostitution has been a topic of study for decades, yet many questions remain about where prostitution occurs. Difficulty in identifying prostitution activity is often attributed to the hidden and seemingly victimless nature of the crime. Despite numerous challenges associated with policing street prostitution, these encounters become more difficul...

Although massage parlors have been associated with illicit activities including prostitution, less is known about their association with neighborhood crime. Employing the Computer Automated Dispatch/Record Management System (CAD/RMS), online user review, licensing, Census, and zoning data, we examine the impact of massage parlors on crime in their...

Purpose Body-worn cameras (BWCs) have been adopted in police agencies across the USA in efforts to increase police transparency and accountability. This widespread implementation has occurred despite some notable resistance to BWCs from police officers in some jurisdictions. This resistance poses a threat to the appropriate implementation of this t...

Purpose – Many examinations of police misconduct involve case study methodologies applied to a single agency, or a handful of agencies. Consequently, there is little evidence regarding the types of misconduct across agencies, or the impact of department-level characteristics on the nature and prevalence of officer deviance. The purpose of this pape...

Many have suggested police diversity will improve police-community relations, but research testing this hypothesis is inconclusive. We investigated perceptions of police race, ethnicity, and diversity in a heterogeneous sample of prospective police officers. Data are drawn from interviews with 42 criminal justice college students in the Southwester...