Ojmarrh Mitchell

• Ph.D. Criminology and Criminal Justice
• Professor at University of California, Irvine

Throughout much of the United States, progressive chief prosecutors (PCPs) have campaigned for office by pledging to end mass incarceration and reduce disparities therein. In this review, we summarize the progressive prosecution movement and the evidence base concerning PCPs. We attribute the rising number of PCPs to a disjuncture between the crimi...

Research summary In recent years, there has been a rise in so-called “progressive prosecutors” focused on criminal justice reforms. Although there has been considerable debate about the relationship between progressive prosecution policies and crime rates, there has been surprisingly little empirical research on the topic. Building on the limited e...

An evidence-based approach to crime and justice policy can go a long way toward ensuring that the best available research is considered in decisions that bear on the public good. However, the term “evidence-based” is characterized by a great deal of rhetoric. Indeed, there remains a marked disjuncture between calls for evidence-based policy and an...

For decades, research has revealed a gender disparity in criminal case outcomes. This phenomenon was traditionally explained as a product of male court actors’ protectiveness of women and the minimization of female threat. In the current study, we capitalize on the increasing gender diversity of courts to examine if the gender gap in punishment is...

Drug-involved offenders have been long overrepresented in prisons. Intensified drug law enforcement in many countries increased both incarceration rates, especially for drug offenses, and numbers of drug-involved prisoners. This is attributable to four features of drugs and drug markets. Drug use disorders typically are not the only problems facing...

Objectives The U.S. prison population has fallen 15% overall, 28% for Blacks, and 21% for Hispanics since the Great Recession began. These trends occurred despite rising defendant criminal histories and the continued presence of the punitive policies that drove “mass incarceration.” We test the central hypothesis that court actors employed several...

Research Summary Progressive chief prosecutors, campaigning on platforms calling for reducing prison populations and racial/ethnic disparities, have been elected in numerous jurisdictions across the United States in recent years. Yet, there is no empirical research that compares case outcomes between jurisdictions headed by progressive and traditio...

Importance: The continued harm of Black individuals in the US by law enforcement officers calls for reform of both law enforcement officers and structural racism embedded in communities. Objective: To examine the association between county characteristics and racial and ethnic disparities in legal intervention injuries. Design, setting, and par...

Considerable research assesses how marginalized groups experience disparate outcomes in courts and sentencing processes. One group that largely has been left out of this research is individuals experiencing homelessness. Little to no research focuses specifically on how the unhoused fare relative to domiciled individuals in felony court settings. Y...

In this article, I argue that criminology and criminal justice programs exhibit racial “tokenism,” in that the majority of such programs employ no more than one Black tenured/tenure track professor. This tokenism creates a plethora of problems that undermine the contributions of Black faculty and prevent them from achieving their full potential. I...

Understanding how misconduct spreads among people in positions of public trust is an essential first step for tackling the problem. A new study of London’s Metropolitan Police finds that transferring police officers with a history of misconduct into a new work group increases the likelihood that the new peers will also engage in misconduct.

This research investigates the fairness and effectiveness of making a large number of bicycle stops as a proactive policing strategy designed to reduce unsafe riding and crime in Tampa, Florida. Public concern about the fairness and effectiveness of this tactic was magnified by a 2015 newspaper article that noted racial disparities in bicycle stops...

Background: The purpose of this study is to utilize unique qualitative data to determine the effects of sporadic international drug interdictions on drug trafficking, and to assess whether the responses of drug traffickers align with rational choice theory. Methods: Qualitative data obtained from 23 high-level United States Drug Enforcement Admi...

The central issue in the design of crime and violence prevention research is internal (causal) validity. High internal validity provides great confidence that an empirical relationship between the variables of interest is in fact causal and not due to other variables. Randomized experimental designs provide the highest levels of causal validity. Ye...

Correctional boot camps are programs modeled after military basic training. The hallmark of boot camps is their emphasis on physical training, military drill and ceremony, and pseudo-military atmosphere. Participants in boot camps are typically young, nonviolent offenders; often, but clearly not always, boot camp participants agree to participate i...

Increasingly, student assessments of courses are being conducted online as opposed to administered in class. A growing body of research compares response rates and course ratings of courses evaluated online versus on paper. The present study extends this research by comparing student course assessments before and after the University of South Flori...

A growing body of research assesses the relationship between fatherhood and desistance. Qualitative studies typically find fatherhood reduces offending, especially substance use; yet, quantitative studies have produced mixed findings. Guided by life-course theory, this study hypothesizes that fatherhood affects certain kinds of offending and father...

This commentary is a reaction to Professor Franklin's review of the race and sentencing research. Franklin's review summarizes many key findings from five generations of race and sentencing research. The most central of which is that this body of research relatively consistently finds evidence of racial/ethnic disparities, disadvantaging African Am...

Objectives An enduring legacy of the 1980s “war on drugs” is the increased use of imprisonment for drug offenders. Advocates anticipated, in part, that prison is more effective than community sanctions in reducing recidivism. Despite the contribution of drug offender incarceration to prison growth nationally, and debates about whether this approach...

The “get-tough” era of punishment led to exponential growth in the rate of incarceration in the United States. Recent reviews of the literature indicate, however, that limited rigorous research exists examining the effect of imprisonment on the likelihood of future offending. As a result, scholars have called for assessment of this relationship, wh...

These data are part of NACJD's Fast Track Release and are distributed as they were received from the data depositor. The files have been zipped by NACJD for release, but not checked or processed except for the removal of direct identifiers. Users should refer to the accompanying readme file for a brief description of the files available with this c...

These data are part of NACJD's Fast Track Release and are distributed as they were received from the data depositor. The files have been zipped by NACJD for release, but not checked or processed except for the removal of direct identifiers. Users should refer to the accompanying readme file for a brief description of the files available with this c...

Despite numerous tests of routine activities theory, attempts to explain the relationship between Hispanic immigration and victimization are quite minimal. As such, this study seeks to determine whether differences in violent victimization between native-born Hispanic and foreign-born Hispanic youth are attributable to variations in target suitabil...

Experimental research design is centrally concerned with constructing research that is high in causal (internal) validity. Randomized experimental designs provide the highest levels of causal validity. Quasi-experimental designs have a number of potential threats to their causal validity. Yet, new quasi-experimental designs adopted from fields outs...

An enduring legacy of the war on drugs is a law enforcement emphasis on arresting low-level drug offenders. Policymakers assert that drug arrests reduce subsequent drug offending; yet, scant research assesses the specific deterrent effects of drug arrest. Likewise, little research examines the collateral consequences of drug arrest on measures of s...

The War on Drugs’ emphasis on apprehending low-level drug offenders dramatically increased the number of arrests for drug distribution and exacerbated racial and ethnic disparities in such arrests. Although these disparities have been the topic of much discussion, they rarely have been the subject of multivariate empirical scrutiny. This research e...

The present study examines whether fatherhood, generally, and residential fatherhood, specifically, predicts desistance from criminal behavior and reduced contact with the criminal justice system among delinquent teens. Using multiple waves of data from the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth 1997, two models were estimated and analyzed via fixed...

The War on Drugs popularized a set of policies and practices that dramatically increased the number of drug arrests, particularly for low-level drug offenses. The War’s tactics have affected Americans of every race; however, minorities have been most dramatically affected. There are several explanations for the observed racial disparity in drug arr...

This updated Campbell systematic review examines the effectiveness incarceration‐based drug treatment interventions in reducing postrelease recidivism and drug use. The review summarises findings from 74 studies, 65 of which were conducted in the United States, four in Canada, three in Australia, one in Taiwan and one in the United Kingdom. The mai...

PurposeThe objective of this research was to systematically review quasi-experimental and experimental evaluations of the effectiveness of drug courts in reducing offending.Methods Our search identified 154 independent evaluations: 92 evaluations of adult drug courts, 34 of juvenile drug courts, and 28 of DWI drug courts. The findings of these stud...

This Campbell systematic review assesses the effectiveness of drug courts in reducing criminal or drug‐use behaviour recidivism. The review summarises findings from 154 studies, all of which report evidence from adult drug courts, drunk driving (DWI) drug courts, and juvenile courts. All but eight of the studies are of drug courts in the USA. There...

This research reassessed the psychometric properties and predictive validity of the Self-Appraisal Questionnaire (SAQ) in response to published criticism of the authors' earlier work. The current research used a much longer recidivism tracking-period, a different measure of recidivism, a larger sample, and more advanced analytic techniques than the...

Alarming disparities in population health and wellness in the United States have led to multidisciplinary research efforts to create health equity. Identifying disparities, elucidating the etiological bases of disparities, and implementing solutions to eliminate disparities are part of the U.S. national health agenda. Racial and ethnic disparities...

This article presents an overview of drug and other specialty courts. Section I defines specialty courts and traces their growth in number and types. It also explores the factors that sparked the specialty court movement. Section II examines drug courts, the most popular and prominent type of specialty court. It outlines key features of the drug co...

Over the past 40 years enormous changes have occurred in the philosophy and management of corrections and these changes had a dramatic impact correctional practice. The “War on Drugs” focused on the philosophies of incapacitation and deterrence. As a result the number of drug involved offenders entering correctional facilities greatly increased. Po...

This article serves as an introduction to the special issue of the Journal of Crime & Justice on the legacy of the War on Drugs. In it, I argue that the War on Drugs is a major shift in U.S. drug control strategy, one that significantly expanded U.S. drug control efforts and the use of punitive criminal justice sanctions in those efforts. Further,...

The War on Drugs (WoD) popularized aggressive law enforcement tactics and punitive sanctions aimed at low-level drug offenders. These punitive practices have affected Americans of all races; however, African-Americans, in particular, have been affected. This article examines whether racial disparities in arrest and incarceration can be explained by...

This research synthesized results from 66 published and unpublished evaluations of incarceration-based drug treatment programs using meta-analysis. Incarceration-based drug treatment programs fell into five types: therapeutic communities (TCs), residential substance abuse treatment (RSAT), group counseling, boot camps specifically for drug offender...

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...

America’s continuing “war on drugs” has flooded the criminal justice system with substance abusers (Lipton, 1995; 1998). A 1997 Bureau of Justice Statistics survey of incarcerated offenders found that 57% of state inmates and 45% of federal inmates reported drug use in the month prior to their offense. These rates are increases of 14% and 40%, resp...

This research presents the results of the evaluation of the Breaking the Cycle (BTC) demonstration project in Jacksonville, FL and Tacoma, WA. The BTC demonstration project tested the feasibility and impact of system-wide intervention designed to reduce drug use among offenders. Specifically, the BTC model was designed to identify drug using felony...

This Campbell Review evaluates the effects of four different approaches to drug abuse treatment for incarcerated offenders in relation to criminal behaviour and relapse into drug abuse. It also examines what characterises the effective programmes. The findings of this research review are based on a meta‐analysis of 66 independent assessments. These...

The psychometric properties of the Self-Appraisal Questionnaire (SAQ) are assessed in a sample of drug dealing offenders. Findings indicate the SAQ demonstrated adequate concurrent validity; however, the SAQ fails to predict recidivism. Furthermore, SAQ total scores exhibit high levels of reliability, yet half of the SAQ subscales exhibit substanda...

A basic assumption underlying current public policy and crime-control efforts is that sex offenders are highly specialized and persistent. Using national data on about 10,000 sex offenders released from prison in 1994, this study explored this assumption by comparing the arrest patterns and cycles of sex offenders and other offenders. As a group an...

The central tenet of Gottfredson and Hirschi's self-control theory is that antisocial behavior is caused by stable between-individual differences in self-control. They also argue that after early childhood, interventions aimed at reducing antisocial behavior will be unsuccessful, as one's level of self-control is resilient to such efforts. This res...

Drug courts have been proposed as a solution to the increasing numbers of drug involved offenders entering our criminal justice system, and they have become widespread since their introduction in 1989. Evaluations of these programs have led to mixed results. Using meta-analytic methods, we systematically reviewed the extant evidence on the effectiv...

This research addresses the question: Does the military atmosphere of a treatment-oriented boot camp lead to greater reductions in antisocial attitudes and cognitions than a standard correctional facility that is also treatment-oriented? A self-report measure of antisocial attitudes and cognitions was collected from 118 inmates randomly assigned to...

Numerous studies have addressed the question: Are African-Americans treated more harshly than similarly situated whites? This research employs meta-analysis to synthesize this body of research. One-hundred-sixteen statistically independent contrasts were coded from 71 published and unpublished studies. Coded study and contextual features are used t...

Research Summary: We compared 137 felony defendants arrested before the implementation of Breaking the Cycle, a pretrial intervention with felony defendants that included drug testing, supervision, and drug treatment as needed, to 245 BTC participants. We found Significant lower rates of arrest and self‐reported drug use and crime among BTC partici...

This study examined whether the individual characteristics of race, sex, and education affect juvenile correctional staff's perceptions of their work environments. Prior to 1970, correctional staff were minimally educated and predominantly comprised of White males. Correctional reformers believed that employing more female, minority, and highly edu...

Changes in juvenile law and juvenile court procedure are slowly dis- mantling the jurisdictional border between juvenile and criminal jus- tice. Juvenile courts across the United States are increasingly similar to criminal courts in their method as well as in their general atmos- phere. State and Federal laws are being changed to send a growing num...

In a national study of juvenile correctional facilities, the perceived environment of 22 juvenile boot camps was compared to the perceived environment of 22 traditional facilities. Self-report surveys completed by 4,121 juveniles recorded information on demographics, risk factors, and perceptions of the facility's environment. Compared to juveniles...

In this study we assessed the impact of individual employee characteristics, organizational attributes, and quality of the correctional environment on the turnover intentions of juvenile correctional staff members. Both individual characteristics and organizational attributes were significant predictors of turnover intentions. The individual charac...

This national study of juvenile correctional facilities compared the correctional environments of 25 juvenile boot camps to those of 22 traditional juvenile facilities. Data on perceived environmental conditions for juveniles and work climate for staff, as well as demographic characteristics, were collected from 1,233 juvenile correctional facility...