Security and Justice Policy

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recent research in justice and security policy

Click here for a list of recent publications, conference papers, and policy briefs by faculty and graduate students.

Bjerregaard, B. E., Dwayne Smith, M., Cochran, J. K., & Fogel, S. J. (2017). A Further Examination of the Liberation Hypothesis in Capital Murder Trials. Crime & Delinquency, 63(8), 1017–1038. https://doi.org/10.1177/0011128715574454

Christopher J. Marier, John K. Cochran, M. Dwayne Smith, Sondra J. Fogel & Beth Bjerregaard(2018) Victim age and capital sentencing outcomes in North Carolina (1977–2009), Criminal Justice Studies, 31:1, 62-79, DOI: 10.1080/1478601X.2017.1404464

Bruce Arrigo and Heather Berson (eds). 2014. The Routledge Handbook of International Crime and Justice Studies 1st. edition, Routledge Press.

Shelley J. Listwan, Christopher J. Sullivan, Robert Agnew, Francis T. Cullen, Mark Colvin 2013. “The pains of imprisonment revisited: The impact of strain on inmate recidivism” Justice Quarterly 30(1): 144-168.

violent non-state rivalry and organizational behavior

Dr. Justin Conrad and collaborator William Spaniel’s National Science Foundation funded project examines how competition between violent non-state actors – including insurgent groups, terrorist organizations and pro-government militias – influences their behavior.

Dr. Justin Conrad and collaborator William Spaniel’s National Science Foundation funded project examines how competition between violent non-state actors – including insurgent groups, terrorist organizations and pro-government militias – influences their behavior. Despite a wealth of literature on competition in psychology, economics and political science, relatively little attention has been paid to the role of competition between such organizations. We expect that sustained rivalries between groups can, in turn, lead to more general forms of violence against the larger population. These expectations are counter-intuitive given the amount of work (both academic and policy) that has suggested competition among non-state organizations can reduce violence. Such conclusions have led to policies like supporting one group in the hopes that it will destroy or distract its rival.

The project addresses two outstanding issues with existing analysis of these competitive dynamics. First, there is currently no large-scale dataset that provides detailed information on the competitive relationships between specific organizations. To address this issue, we develop a typology of rivalry and a dyadic dataset that captures detailed information about the nature and intensity of intergroup rivalries over time. Second, existing research overlooks the impact of multiple intergroup relationships on group behavior. As such, we apply both dyadic and social network analysis techniques to identify the impact of multiple simultaneous relationships. This approach also allows us to examine to the “co-evolution” of violent behavior and the formation of rivalries.

Conrad and Spaniel won the Midwest Political Science Association’s Best Paper in International Relations award for “Competition, Government Enforcement, and Political Violence.” Here is a recent blog post based on some of the insights from the project

resource and conflict project – new evidence of civil war dynamics

Public Policy faculty Dr. James Igoe Walsh, Dr. Justin Conrad, Dr. Jean-Claude Thill, and Dr. Beth Elise Whitaker and graduate student Katelin Hudak along with colloaborators at other universities examine critical linkages between the natural environment and conflict. The Resources and Conflict Project, funded in part by the U.S. Army Research Laboratory, the U.S. Army Research Office, analyzes combatants’ strategic and military choices during civil war. It develops new research designed to improve understanding of the dynamics of conflict and contribute to the development of policies that resolve conflicts.

Public Policy faculty Dr. James Igoe Walsh, Dr. Justin Conrad, Dr. Jean-Claude Thill, and Dr. Beth Elise Whitaker and graduate student Katelin Hudak along with colloaborators at other universities examine critical linkages between the natural environment and conflict. The Resources and Conflict Project, funded in part by the U.S. Army Research Laboratory, the U.S. Army Research Office, analyzes combatants’ strategic and military choices during civil war. It develops new research designed to improve understanding of the dynamics of conflict and contribute to the development of policies that resolve conflicts. The project also creates new data sources at the organizational, micro-, and geographic levels that can be used by researchers and the policy community to address a wide range of issues about conflict dynamics. Themes addressed by the project include:

Financing Rebellion: Non-state violent actors need resources—some combination of people, money, weapons, and territory—to sustain their activities. This theme develops new data on how such actors finance their violence from natural resources and crime to analyze how variation in the source and scale of such finance influences their strategic choices and violent behavior.

Natural Resources and Conflict: The project develops a new, comprehensive dataset identifying the locations and output of natural resource sites across the developing world. This data is used to determine how natural resource wealth influences the location, scale, and consequences of political violence.

Territorial Control in Civil Conflicts: This theme introduces a new methodology and set of software tools to measure territorial control by warring parties. The data produced by this theme identifies the locations controlled by warring parties at the micro-level, which is then used to analyze the consequences for conflict dynamics.

Learn more about this exciting project and recent publications at the website http://civilwardynamics.org/