Rebecca Pfeffer

• Ph.D.
• Senior Research Criminologist at RTI International

Natural disasters have increased in frequency and severity in recent years. Emerging research also suggests that natural disasters increase the risk of human trafficking. This confluence of phenomena makes it critically important to better prepare communities for preventing and responding to human trafficking during and after a natural disaster. Ye...

Objectives People involved in commercial sex work during the COVID-19 pandemic, particularly those compelled to sell sex, faced multiple challenges to their safety and well-being. We explored, in real time, the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on people involved in commercial sex work and the broader commercial sex industry. Methods Using a partici...

Human trafficking victimization is harmful to individuals, families, institutions, communities, and nations. It is commonly understood that human trafficking is a widespread problem, yet the variation in global estimates is extreme, ranging from 12.3 million to 20.9 million to 45.8 million people worldwide. The wide variation in estimates has led s...

Natural disasters have increased in frequency and severity in recent years. Emerging research also suggests that natural disasters increase the risk of human trafficking. This confluence of phenomena makes it critically important to better prepare communities for preventing and responding to human trafficking during and after a natural disaster. Ye...

Human trafficking negatively affects individuals, families, public safety, the healthcare system, and the criminal legal system. A critical step towards mobilizing effective anti-trafficking efforts involves estimating the scope of the problem. As part of the Administration for Children and Families’ Human Trafficking Policy and Research Analyses P...

This chapter provides an overview of the findings from a study of students at a four-year university who were surveyed about their experiences learning in both online and face-to-face modalities. While some students reported perceived equitableness between their experiences in online and face-to-face classes, there were some findings that demonstra...

Despite new mandates to identify and respond to labor trafficking crimes, US law enforcement struggles to integrate labor trafficking enforcement with traditional policing routines and roles. As a result, human trafficking enforcement has primarily focused on sex trafficking and few labor trafficking cases have been identified and prosecuted. This...

In 2008, the William Wilberforce Trafficking Victims Protection Reauthorization Act authorized the Federal Bureau of Investigation to begin collecting offense and arrest data about human trafficking as part of the Uniform Crime Reporting (UCR) program. In 2013, the UCR program began collecting information in the Summary Reporting System and the Nat...

Laws addressing human trafficking have been passed in all 50 U.S. states as well as at the federal level. Although laws serve an important function in establishing social norms against a behavior, they can also create a belief that it is the responsibility of law enforcement to curb that behavior. Law enforcement and other actors in the criminal ju...

This study examines how sex and gender are measured and operationalized in studies on criminology and criminal justice (CCJ) through content analysis of peer-reviewed journals. Despite that they are distinct and not always parallel, the terms sex and gender are often used interchangeably in CCJ research. Moreover, despite increasing recognition tha...

Rebecca Pfeffer and Robert Sanborn interview former Houston Mayor Annise Parker.

This study analyzes the law enforcement response to prostitution in Houston, Texas, between 1977 and 2010 to examine whether the traditional approach to policing prostitution disproportionately penalizes women. Data included the disposition and sentencing information for 22,916 first-time prostitution arrests in Harris County. Using bivariate and m...

Issue editors Russell Wolff, M.S. and Rebecca Pfeffer, Ph.D. introduce volume 16, Issue 2: Organizational Partnerships: How Collaboration Strengthens Families and Communities.

University faculty define collaborative partnerships with the community and examine how collaborative partnerships engender community-based research and the learning process of students in the College of Public Service. Considerations include how students are acculturated, specific benefits to learning, unanticipated benefits, and the unexpected ch...

There are a number of hidden populations in the United States whose victimization goes undetected and unreported. This study aims to assess the victimization experiences of one such population: American children diagnosed with autism spectrum disorders (ASDs). Utilizing the Juvenile Victimization Questionnaire (JVQ), this study obtained past-year a...

Drs. Pfeffer and Sanborn (JFS) conducted interviews with Texas politicians Adrian Garcia, former Houston City Councilmember and Sheriff of Harris County, Texas, and Texas State Senator Eddie Lucio Jr., to discuss the role that Latino voters play in the electoral process on both the state and national scale. Interviews have been edited for clarity.

Female offender populations are growing at an unprecedented rate. The present study examines gender differences among a large sample of male and female offenders as related to seriousness of their offense and success on parole. Data analyzed were originally collected from a random sample of parole case files in California. Results revealed that alt...

High-impact educational practices are increasingly being recognized as powerful teaching strategies that can positively impact both student and faculty experiences in the classroom. Student persistence in college is correlated to campus integration, and one way this can be successfully facilitated is through student–faculty research partnerships. T...

This book provides a comprehensive, cutting-edge look at the problems that impact the way we conduct intervention and treatment for youth in crisis today―an indispensable resource for practitioners, students, researchers, policymakers, and faculty working in the area of juvenile justice. Understanding Juvenile Justice and Delinquency provides a con...

This is an excerpt from a 307-page report chronicling the experiences of labor trafficking victims from the point of recruitment for work, their forced labor victimization, their attempts to escape and get help, and their efforts to seek justice through civil or criminal cases. The excerpt is centered on a section from Chapter 3 dealing with labor...

This volume focuses on the importance of including understudied or underserved populations in empirical research.For many reasons, there are groups of people whose experiences are systematically excluded from contemporary research in many fields; including education, criminal justice, public health, medicine, and the social sciences, to name but a...

Although crimes motivated by bias or hate are not a new phenomenon, these acts are increasingly being recognized as exceptionally harmful to both individual victims and to communities. In response, legislation criminalizing acts of hate has been implemented in various countries. As Mark Austin Walters, author of Hate Crime and Restorative Justice,...

Although the US federal government and all 50 states have passed legislation that defines human trafficking as a crime and specifies stiff penalties for such offenses, little is known about how police perceptions of human trafficking influence investigation and response strategies. Previous research confirms that human trafficking definitions are a...

As of 2014, it is estimated that 1 in 68 children born in the United States will be diagnosed with an autism spectrum disorder (ASD). Previous research finds that children with ASDs are victimized at disproportionately high rates compared to their typically-developing peers. Utilizing survey data from a national sample of parents of children with A...

The nonprofit Urban Institute is dedicated to elevating the debate on social and economic policy. For nearly five decades, Urban scholars have conducted research and offered evidence-based solutions that improve lives and strengthen communities across a rapidly urbanizing world. Their objective research helps expand opportunities for all, reduce ha...

Since 2000, the federal government and all fifty states have passed laws that criminalize the trafficking of persons for labor and commercial sex. To date, relatively few human trafficking cases have been identified, investigated, and prosecuted by local criminal justice authorities. Using data from case records and qualitative interviews with poli...

Crime prevention has long figured prominently in the scholarly and applied traditions of criminology. Using a socio-historical approach, this article examines the developments of and influences on the concept of crime prevention in the USA over the last century. We argue that crime prevention is a unique social and environmental strategy for reduci...

For almost 20 years, the U.S. Department of Justice though the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) has been documenting the number and characteristics of known racial and ethnically motivated assault offenses in the United States. This entry will focus on crimes that are motivated entirely or in part by the race or ethnicity of the victim.

Perhaps one of the most severe consequences of global climate change is an increase in the intensity and frequency of extreme weather events. An unanticipated natural disaster can devastate an area with physical damages; in addition, it presents law enforcement with an unprecedented moral and organizational challenge. Ill-equipped criminal justice...