- University News Archive - ��Vlog��ý Little Rock

��Vlog��ý Little Rock awarded $453,000 contract from Arkansas Department of Corrections to study state’s prison culture and climate

John Hill — Wed, 23 Jun 2021 16:45:59 +0000

The Arkansas Department of Corrections has awarded the University of Arkansas at Little Rock a multi-year contract of more than $453,000 to study and assess prison culture and climate in Arkansas. “This multi-year project, funded by existing DOC revenues, will be the first of its kind done on the State’s adult corrections system,” said Solomon Graves, cabinet secretary of Arkansas Department of Corrections. “It will not only review operational issues within the Divisions of Correction and Community Correction, along with the Correctional School District, it will study issues related to staff recruitment, retention, and the efficacy of offender programs.” ��Vlog��ý Little Rock criminal justice professors Mary Parker, Robert Lytle, and Molly Smith will lead the four-year research project. “This is a project that I’ve been wanting to work on for a long time,” said Parker, the principal investigator. “I have more than 20 years of experience on the Board of Corrections. This research project is the next step in continuing my service to the state of Arkansas.” The study will be conducted from May 1, 2021, to April 30, 2025. The $453,805 award also provides funding for a graduate assistant, Cassidy Mitchell, who is a criminal justice doctoral student at ��Vlog��ý Little Rock. “Our faculty in the School of Criminal Justice and Criminology continues to raise the bar in community-engaged research,” said Dr. Tusty ten Bensel, director of the School of Criminal Justice and Criminology at ��Vlog��ý Little Rock. “This project is a great example of how our faculty and students engage with agency partners to improve our understanding of how the criminal justice system works, specifically in corrections.” Each individual correctional unit in the Arkansas Department of Corrections has a unique history, mission, and staffing as well as varied inmate, resident, and client makeup. Each unit in the state’s system will be studied individually before larger conclusions and recommendations are made for the Arkansas Department of Corrections as a whole.

Solomon Graves serves as cabinet secretary of Arkansas Department of Corrections.

The first phase will include studies on Cummins, Varner, East Arkansas, Tucker, and Tucker Max. Phase two will include Ouachita River, Wrightsville Complex, and Delta. Next, the third phase will include North Central, Grimes, McPherson, Pine Bluff units, and independent work release centers. The final phase of study will include Community Correction Centers and Probation and Parole Offices. “This has the potential to be a game-changer for the Department of Corrections. For the past decade, we have worked toward increasing our utilization of data-informed decision making,” Graves said. “Along with our newly created Quality Improvement and Program Evaluation unit, this ��Vlog��ý Little Rock partnership will give our Board and Leadership Team the type of actionable data we have only dreamed about.” The research project seeks to understand all aspects of prison life in Arkansas. To accomplish this, the research team will survey offenders, prison staff, family members of offenders, and volunteers. “We are one of the few large-scale projects that includes visitors and volunteers,” Parker said. “Families are a critical dynamic to incarceration and adding their perspective to the study gives us invaluable information on the impact of incarceration on friends and families of those incarcerated. Most people do not realize it but hundreds of volunteers work in prison providing religious programming, therapy groups, dog training, meditation, etc. for the inmate population. We will be surveying a sample of this population to gain their perspectives on what we can do better in our individual prison to improve multiple dynamics of the culture in prison.” The research team will also conduct focus groups with medical, educational programming, unit support, management, and training staff as well as probation and parole officers and staff members.

Dr. Bob Lytle

Dr. Molly Smith

“I am very excited about this project for several reasons,” Lytle said. “For example, I’m excited about the opportunity to learn more about and help inform practices related to correctional staffing. Corrections can be a challenging field to work in, but I believe it can be equally satisfying. Corrections staff have the ability to help people in need, protect the community, and provide a public service. My hope for this project is that, over the next several years, we will be able to support efforts to improve correctional work environments and inmate management.” At the end of the study, ��Vlog��ý Little Rock will provide a final report with conclusions and recommendations about each unit in the prison system, a review of the educational programming throughout the system, recommendations with corresponding best practices for DOC administration, and recommendations to improve the culture and climate throughout the system. “As far back as early 2019, the now Division of Correction began discussing the need for an external review of various elements of our prison operations,” Graves said. “With the passage of Act 910 of 2019, the benefits of this project to the entire adult corrections system began being discussed. ��Vlog��ý Little Rock immediately came to the forefront as a natural partner for this project. The Department of Corrections has utilized doctoral interns from the ��Vlog��ý Little Rock Department of Criminal Justice for several years. Additionally, multiple faculty members have conducted research projects involving our populations over the years and Dr. Mary Parker-Reed, a former Criminal Justice Department chairwoman, was a longtime member of the Board of Corrections who regularly advocated for a project of this scope during her tenure.” In the upper right photo, Dr. Mary Parker will lead the four-year research project along with fellow criminal justice professors Robert Lytle and Molly Smith.

��Vlog��ý Little Rock Receives Nearly $325,000 NSF Grant to Shine Light on Muslim Hate Crimes in Arkansas

John Hill — Wed, 05 May 2021 20:00:29 +0000

Two criminal justice professors at the University of Arkansas at Little Rock have been awarded a $324,987 grant from the National Science Foundation (NSF) to fund a three-year program to study anti-Muslim sentiment and Muslim hate crimes in Arkansas. Dr. Tusty ten Bensel, director of the School of Criminal Justice and Criminology, and Dr. Robert Lytle, the graduate coordinator for the school, will examine the context and incidence of anti-Muslim sentiment, ranging from prejudice to hate crimes. The study will focus on the perceptions of Muslims in Arkansas who have been the target of discrimination, harassment, or interpersonal crime, along with the impacts such behaviors have on victims. The NSF grant also includes funding for 30 undergraduate students to participate in the design, implementation, analysis, and reporting of this project. Students who are interested in criminal justice and graduate education will be selected from a nationwide pool of applicants to work with ��Vlog��ý Little Rock criminal justice faculty members on this project beginning in summer 2022. The program will run for three eight-week summer sessions. In the first year, students will learn how to conduct research and interview 15-30 Muslims in the community on their experiences of hate crimes in Arkansas. Interviewees must be 18 and older and a resident of the state for at least six months. In the second year, students will distribute surveys to a larger Muslim population in the state. In the final year, they will interview policy makers and law enforcement about hate crime legislation. “It’s important to understand the scope and contributing factors to a problem when coming up with strategies to address the problem. We hope that this project will help identify the manner in which bias-motivated crime emerges in Arkansas to help efforts by law enforcement and policymakers to protect the Muslim community,” Lytle said. “This is in addition to promoting community cohesion and improved relations between the Muslim and non-Muslim community in Arkansas.” The goal of this project is to help criminal justice students gain a deeper understanding of the scope and magnitude of anti-Muslim hate crimes in the state. “One of the purposes of this study is to understand the nature and extent of anti-Muslim sentiments and hate crimes in Arkansas, but it is also to help victims understand that their anti-Muslim experiences and victimization are important to report to the authorities and are not experiences that should be tolerated by any members of a group,” ten Bensel said. “The outcome of this project could have a number of practical and policy implications. It will raise awareness of anti-Muslim hate crimes and the obstacles to social integration, reporting, and seeking support after experiencing anti-Muslim hate crimes. The larger study will inform avenues for improving the relationship between the criminal justice system and Muslim community.” This project is funded by the National Science Foundation under award number 2050161. Any opinions, findings, and conclusions or recommendations expressed in this material are of those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the views of the National Science Foundation.

Criminal justice students, professors present research at American Society of Criminology

John Hill — Fri, 14 Feb 2020 14:58:45 +0000

University of Arkansas at Little Rock criminal justice students presented their research on criminology topics at the American Society of Criminology conference Nov. 13-16, 2019, in San Francisco, California. The American Society of Criminology is an international organization whose members pursue scholarly, scientific, and professional knowledge concerning the measurement, etiology, consequences, prevention, control, and treatment of crime and delinquency. The conference explored confronting injustice and inequality in the criminal justice system. ��Vlog��ý Little Rock students and faculty members presented research that explored police stress and job performance, how parole officers guide older offenders through the reentry process, and the barriers that sexual assault survivors in Arkansas face to seeking help. ��Vlog��ý Little Rock students and professors who presented at the conference and their presentations include: Criminal justice graduate students Madison Doyle and Trye Price presented the paper, “Police Stress and Job Performance in a Southern Police Agency.” Dr. Trisha Rhodes, criminal justice professor at ��Vlog��ý Little Rock, and Dr. Bryan Byers at Ball State University, are co-researchers on the study. The study examined the effects of organizational stress on police officer job satisfaction and performance within a metropolitan police department. Findings from this can inform police departments of the implications of organizational stress and could lead to the development of programs to reduce organizational stress within a department. Arsala Khan, a criminal justice doctoral student, and Dr. Robert Lytle, a professor of criminal justice at ��Vlog��ý Little Rock, presented the paper, “Closeness Makes the Hearth Grow Lenient? Closeness to Others and Support for Punitiveness.” In this study, Khan and Lytle surveyed 150 undergraduate students to explore two measures of closeness to others, social distance and empathy, to understand the relationship social relationships have on punitiveness, and the intention of inflicting punishment. Their findings indicate that undergraduate students who feel stronger empathy and closer social ties to others have diminished support for punitiveness. Mary Hannah Hughes, criminal justice doctoral student, and Dr. Tusty ten Bensel, criminal justice professor, presented their study, “Aging Beyond the Correctional Facility: Examining Parole Officers’ Perceptions on Guiding Older Offenders through the Reentry Process.” In 2016, older inmates made up approximately 10 percent of the U.S. prison population. With elderly offenders requiring unique resources with regard to health and housing, parole officers represent the initial contact for this population when providing the assistance. This study examined the perceptions of 25 parole officers assisting older parolees. Interviews consisted of parole officers’ primary role in the reintegration process to gain better understanding of demographics, management, and established goals when assisting older parolees. Price and Richard Lewis, criminal justice professor at ��Vlog��ý Little Rock, presented the paper, “Consequences of Trauma and Victimization: Exploring the Relationship between Trauma, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder, the Autonomic Nervous System, and Behavioral Outcomes.” Co-authors include Todd Armstrong at the University of Nebraska, Omaha, Danielle Boisvert at Sam Houston State University, and Jessica Wells at Boise State University. The factors of trauma/victimization, post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), and physiological reactivity have been shown to be related to and exacerbate the effects of each other. Additionally, the severity of trauma and the duration of negative consequences associated with the trauma can worsen behavioral outcomes. The researchers studied how the severity and duration of trauma, PTSD, and physiological reactions influence negative behavioral outcomes. Randi Latiolais, criminal justice graduate student, and Lytle presented the paper, “Do I Report This? Understanding Variation in the Content of State Mandatory Reporting Laws.” Co-authors include Dana Radatz of Niagara University and Lisa Sample at the University of Nebraska, Omaha. Variation in state laws allow state agencies to reinterpret aspects of laws requiring persons to report suspected child maltreatment, mandatory reporting laws. The researchers used a textual thematic content analysis to examine variation across state mandatory reporting statutes from all 50 states as of 2016. They identified three themes in variation across state mandatory reporting laws – definitions for reasonableness, immediacy of danger, and differences in the definition and exceptions of mandated reporters. The researchers found that the vague language and variation in the content of these laws might contribute to uncertainty in knowing when a report is necessary and who must report it. Brooke Cooley, a doctoral student in the criminal justice program, presented the paper, “Not All Factors are the Same: An Examination of Protective and Risk Factors for Contact Sex Offenders throughout the Life Course.” Cooley examined whether notable life events known as “turning points,” including marriage, parenthood, and employment, are factors that keep contact sex offenders from committing crimes again. Natalie Snow, a doctoral student, Doyle, ten Bensel, and Radatz presented the paper, “Arkansas Service Providers’ Perceptions of Barriers to Seeking Help after Sexual Assault.” Victims of sexual and domestic assault often face a number of challenges when seeking services, including access to a 24-hour crisis hotlines, individual and group counseling, and legal and medical advocacy. Through qualitative interviews, the researchers explored what community-based victim services exist for sexual violence survivors in Arkansas to gain a better understanding of the barriers that victims of sexual assault face in Arkansas when they seek help. Tabrina Batton, a criminal justice doctoral student, and Lytle presented the paper, “Compliance with Federal Law or Conformity Amongst States? State Registration and Notification Laws and the Adam Walsh Act.” The Adam Walsh Act (AWA) was adopted in 2006 to standardize Sex Offender Registration and Notification laws nationwide. This study compared the trajectories of states that ultimately complied with the AWA to those of resistant states using an interrupted time-series analysis of compliant components of the law between 1996 and 2016.

��Vlog��ý Little Rock researchers investigate if religion predicts attitudes toward LGBQ, marriage equality

John Hill — Wed, 29 Jan 2020 14:31:37 +0000

University of Arkansas at Little Rock researchers are investigating the attitudes of Muslims toward homosexuality and marriage equality. Drs. Robert Lytle and Tusty ten Bensel, professors of criminal justice at ��Vlog��ý Little Rock, and Tabrina Bratton, a criminal justice doctoral student, recently published their study, “Attitudes of Muslim Americans toward Homosexuality and Marriage Equality: Moving Beyond Simply Understanding Christian Public Opinions,” in the academic journal Sociological Inquiry. Much research has been done that shows a relationship between a person’s religious affiliation and attitude toward LGBQ (Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, and Questioning) individuals. Since these studies have largely focused on Christians, the researchers wanted to see if religiosity and fundamentalism were significant predictors of attitudes toward homosexuality and same-sex marriage in other major religious populations in the U.S. “Most people look at Christian attitudes toward the LGBTQ population, so we explored Christian attitudes in comparison to Muslims and Jews, two large religious groups that have largely been ignored in this area,” Bratton said. Like Christian religiosity and fundamentalism, religious salience (the relative importance of religion in an individual’s personal life) predicted less accepting attitudes toward homosexuality and opposition to same-sex marriage among Jewish and Muslim respondents. “One explanation for these findings might be that more conservative denominations are less accepting of outgroups and deviations from religious doctrine,” Bratton said. “Denominations that adhere to more rigid, traditional attitudes about sexuality may be more likely to identify homosexuality as deviant, event to the degree of being considered a sin.” The researchers found that Muslim and Protestant participants were the least accepting of homosexuality and least supportive of same-sex marriage compared with Roman Catholic and Jewish participants. This finding did not surprise the researchers. Islam is a conservative religion, and religious conservatism, along with fundamentalism and religiosity, were significant predictors of attitudes toward homosexuality and marriage equality for all respondents, regardless of religious affiliation. “When people aren’t heavily fundamentalist, it doesn’t matter what religion they are. They generally support same-sex marriage,” Lytle said. “When you get to people with higher levels of fundamentalism and religious conservatism, you see much less support for same-sex marriage and acceptance of homosexuality. While Catholics and Jews, for example, are very similar in their religious beliefs, more conservative Jews at higher levels of fundamentalism have similar beliefs as Muslims and Protestants on these issues. At low levels of fundamentalism, Jews were the most supportive denomination regarding acceptance of homosexuality and marriage equality” Catholics and Jews were different in their agreement that homosexuality should be accepted in society, yet statistically similar in support for marriage equality. Catholics are more likely to accept homosexuality, while Jews are more likely to support marriage equality. Catholics and Jews are still more tolerant of both subjects than Protestants and Muslims. Data for the study came from the 2014 Religious Landscape Study, a public opinion dataset that contained responses from 475 Jews and 135 Muslims. Attitudes were compared against responses from Catholics and Protestants. The researchers hope that this study will also call attention to the low number of Muslim respondents in public opinion datasets, which makes it difficult to research opinions in the Muslim community. “The article calls for public opinion datasets to include a larger population of Muslim responses,” Lytle said. “Islam is one of the fastest growing religious populations in the country. There is a growing need for us to understand the political and social attitudes of this population.”

- University News Archive - ����Vlog��ý Little Rock

����Vlog��ý Little Rock awarded $453,000 contract from Arkansas Department of Corrections to study state’s prison culture and climate

����Vlog��ý Little Rock Receives Nearly $325,000 NSF Grant to Shine Light on Muslim Hate Crimes in Arkansas

Criminal justice students, professors present research at American Society of Criminology

����Vlog��ý Little Rock researchers investigate if religion predicts attitudes toward LGBQ, marriage equality

- University News Archive - ��Vlog��ý Little Rock

��Vlog��ý Little Rock awarded $453,000 contract from Arkansas Department of Corrections to study state’s prison culture and climate

��Vlog��ý Little Rock Receives Nearly $325,000 NSF Grant to Shine Light on Muslim Hate Crimes in Arkansas

��Vlog��ý Little Rock researchers investigate if religion predicts attitudes toward LGBQ, marriage equality