Fear of violence is a significant area of research that has garnered considerable academic attention. However, the impact of mass shootings on the fear of violence among Latinx individuals remains understudied. This study examines how the 2019 El Paso shooting affected fear of violence among Latinx individuals and whether assimilation played a role. Survey data from 974 members of a Hispanic-serving university near the El Paso shooting revealed that emotional distress caused by the mass shooting targeting Hispanics significantly heightened Latinx individuals’ fear of violence on and off campus. In addition, assimilation functioned as a protective factor for both types of fear. These findings contribute to the literature on mass shooting-related emotional distress among immigrant communities and how cultural integration influences perceptions of safety.

This study presents survey data on perceptions of the police collected from a convenience sample of 208 Hispanic college students residing in a predominantly Hispanic community situated near the U.S.-Mexico border. Regression analyses underscore the complexity of the relationship between socioeconomic status and attitudes toward the police among young Hispanic adults. Whereas household income did not significantly impact satisfaction with the police, paternal educational attainment had a positive impact on perceptions of the police, while maternal educational attainment had the opposite effect. Additionally, the students' genders and preferences for punitive crime control measures were significantly correlated with their confidence in the police, but (contrary to prior research) the students' political preferences were not. The implications of these findings are discussed.

Gun control remains a central issue in the U.S., yet studies on support for gun control among Hispanics and police officers are limited. This study examines Hispanic police officers' support for gun control in a department near the US-Mexico border, with a focus on the impact of political affiliation and other instrumental factors. Data from 241 officers were collected via face-to-face and online surveys. Structural equation modeling results revealed that political affiliation is a significant predictor of police officers' support for gun control. Compared to respondents who identified as Democrats, officers who self-identified as Republicans were significantly less likely to support gun control. A variety of other factors such as generation status, punitiveness, and right-wing authoritarianism have been found to be associated with police officers' attitudes toward gun control. The study highlights policy implications based on these findings.

As law enforcement agencies face ongoing recruitment challenges, understanding the factors influencing university students’ career interests is critical for developing effective hiring strategies. This study examines factors influencing students’ interest in law enforcement careers, focusing on diverse populations in Texas and California. Using survey data from 802 students across various majors, we analyze how attitudes toward police, procedural justice, media exposure, punitive attitudes, and recruitment event attendance shape career aspirations. Findings show that criminal justice majors, males, and Hispanic students express greater interest in law enforcement, while concerns about political issues, procedural justice, negative media coverage, and job dangers discourage others from pursuing this career path. These insights can inform recruitment strategies tailored to diverse demographic and academic groups.

PurposeThis study examines the organizational determinants of generative AI adoption in US law enforcement, addressing a gap in systematic evidence on factors driving AI innovation within police agencies.Design/methodology/approachA total of 140 valid responses to an online survey of Texas police chiefs were analyzed. Generative AI engagement (from planning to extensive use) and four hypothesized drivers-transformational leadership style, prior body-worn camera deployment, presence of a formal AI policy, and agency capacity-were measured, with chiefs' demographic characteristics included as controls. Logistic and probit regression models were employed for data analysis.FindingsTransformational leadership, larger budgets, and chiefs' advanced educational attainment each show significant positive associations with generative AI engagement. In contrast, prior BWC deployment and the mere presence of a formal AI policy do not predict AI adoption.Practical implicationsTo foster responsible AI integration, agencies should invest in leadership development that cultivates transformational competencies, secure adequate funding, and support advanced education. Policymakers and grantors should prioritize capacity-building over standalone policy directives.Originality/valueThis study is among the first large-n quantitative analyses of generative AI adoption in policing, underscoring the primacy of visionary leadership and institutional capacity-rather than historical technology experience or policy frameworks alone-in driving AI innovation.

The study examined three main questions (a) how victimization in childhood was linked to later victimization in intimate relationships, (b) how childhood victimization and intimate partner violence (IPV) were related to psychological functioning as measured through emotional dysregulation, depression, anxiety, and PTSD, (c) how cultural variables (i.e. Anglo orientation, Mexican orientation, marianismo, machismo, and caballerismo) influenced the likelihood of experiencing childhood victimization and IPV. Data were collected from 402 undergraduate students. Structural Equation Modeling was used. Childhood victimization was associated with IPV (ss = .16). Childhood victimization was associated with emotional dysregulation, PTSD, anxiety, and depression. IPV was associated with emotional dysregulation, depression, and anxiety. Emotional dysregulation was associated with PTSD, anxiety, and depression. Cultural variables influenced childhood victimization and IPV. It is important to foster Mexican and Anglo orientations and challenge traditional male ideology. Emotional dysregulation appears to be an important intervention point to mitigate the mental health effects of victimization.

Background: The United States has the highest number of immigrants in the world, with over 46 million foreign-born residents as of 2022. A growing number of migrants originate from Latin America, driven by factors such as economic instability, food insecurity, and crime. This study explores their experiences and perceptions regarding trust in the criminal justice system (CJS) in both their home countries and the United States. Methods: This study surveyed 500 migrants at a transitional institution in a U.S.–Mexico border city in the summer of 2023. The survey assessed confidence in law enforcement, immigration officers, courts, and government institutions using a 5-point Likert scale. Results: Migrants reported significantly higher confidence in the U.S. CJS compared to that of their home countries. Multivariate analysis revealed that satisfaction with border officials, documentation status, English proficiency, and health were positively associated with confidence in the U.S. CJS, while employment status, traveling with family, and fear of crime correlated with lower confidence. Conclusions: This study highlights the stark contrast in migrants’ confidence levels between their home countries and the U.S. criminal justice system. While migrants view the U.S. system as more legitimate, challenges such as fear of crime and legal uncertainties persist.

Purpose While a substantial amount of research has been conducted in western societies exploring public attitudes toward police (ATP) among immigrants in recent decades, the question of how recently arrived immigrants view the police in Asian societies has been largely overlooked. This study aims to explore Southeast Asian immigrants' ATP in Taiwan and how assimilation, discrimination, affirmation, procedural justice, bifocal lenses and contact experiences – viewed simultaneously – impact their perceptions. Design/methodology/approach Using a combination of convenience and snowball sampling methods, a total of 579 completed survey responses were collected in Taiwan with a response rate of 89%. Structural Equation Modeling (SEM) was used to examine key factors that impact immigrants' attitudes toward the Taiwanese police. Findings The findings suggest that procedural justice and assimilation are two robust and direct predictors of immigrants' attitudes toward Taiwanese police. Immigrants from Southeast Asian countries who perceive that they have been treated fairly by Taiwan police tended to report more positive ATP. Likewise, higher levels of assimilation boosted confidence in the police. In addition, both nationality and marital status had a significant impact on perceptions of the police. Originality/value This pioneering study examines immigrants' ATP among four groups of Southeast Asians in Taiwan —namely, immigrants from Indonesia, Vietnam, Thailand and the Philippines. The use of SEM strengthens the robustness of the findings derived from this study.

The prison environment is stressful, and suicidal behavior remains a significant issue. Recent studies on Taiwanese prisons have focused on factors associated with suicidal ideation among incarcerated persons. Using data from 1,362 respondents in 25 prisons, this study found a relatively low prevalence of suicidal ideation (<10%). Structural Equation Modeling (SEM) analysis revealed that depression, vicarious victimization, and victimization experiences increase suicidal tendencies, while family support and good staff relations reduce them. Recommendations include evidence-based suicide prevention interventions such as staff training, regular risk screening, restricted access to lethal tools, quality mental health care, and multidisciplinary management for high-risk individuals.

High-profile cases of police use of force against civilians have increased public scrutiny of police. The increased media attention and resulting public criticism toward police have led to a claim of a “war on police” being ongoing in the United States. Perceptions of such a war have negatively affected police officers’ behaviors and attitudes, but research studying this concept has been limited. Further, the alleged “war on police” is not race-neutral but defined in relation to Blackness, and it is thus unclear whether officers would still perceive a war on police in places lacking traditional Black–White racial tensions. This study surveyed 240 officers at a police department in a US–Mexico border city to examine their perceptions of a war on police and how personal politics and acculturation impacted those perceptions. Findings were that 78

Using compassion is an important public communication strategy associated with many positive outcomes. While research on compassion has grown in many fields, few studies have explored the role of compassion in crisis communication. This study fills the gap in the research to examine if public sectors and nonprofit organizations used compassion on their social media content and how it impacts public emotion in a winter freeze crisis in Texas. Facebook posts from four local agencies were analyzed to investigate the role of compassion in crisis communication during this emergency. The results highlight the value of using compassion on social media in crisis communication. Facebook posts containing compassion components significantly increased online public engagement. Furthermore, compassion functioned to decrease negative emotions and bolster positive emotions among the public. Media richness did not exert any significant impact on public reactions. Policy implications for government agencies and non-profit organizations are discussed.

Police misconduct erodes police-citizen relations, which in turn, discourages people from cooperating with police. While a substantial volume of research has focused on how citizens’ demographics, media trust, and neighborhood context can exert an influence on perceptions of police misconduct, very little research has explored the impact of procedural justice in this regard. To fill in the gaps in this literature, the present study utilizes Structural Equation Modeling (SEM) to examine factors affecting citizens’ perceptions of police misconduct in Taiwan. Data were obtained from a CATI telephone survey of 1,806 residents in Metropolitan Taipei in 2014. It was found that citizens’ primary concerns of police misconduct include the covering-up of misconduct on the part of powerful suspects/celebrities, followed by the abuse of power by legal authorities, and the discriminatory enforcement of regulations, respectively. The results revealed importantly that procedural justice, perceptions of crime prevalence, and gender had significant direct influences, whereas media trust, victimization, and involuntary contact with police only had indirect effects on citizens’ perceptions of police misconduct. Procedural justice was the most robust variable in predicting citizens’ perceptions of police misconduct.

The publicized deaths of individuals such as Sandra Bland raise questions about whether, and how, the American criminal justice system should handle individuals who display symptoms of mental illnesses. The current study seeks to establish whether there is a stage in the criminal justice process at which the presence of an indicator of a mental illness represents a particularly high risk of death in custody. Using multilevel logistic regression and data on 10,667 civilian deaths that occurred in the custody of criminal justice agencies across the state of Texas, from January 1st, 2005, through October 30th, 2020, results suggest that indicators of mental illness represent the highest risk of death when an individual is in the custody of police. At later stages in the criminal justice system process, particularly jail and prison, indicators of a mental illness reduce the chances that someone will die in custody. Policy implications are discussed.

This study investigates the job preferences of criminal justice (CJ) students and potential factors that may impact their application for law enforcement positions. Existing research has shown that factors like gender, race, and class standing influence career choices among CJ majors. To contribute to this body of knowledge, this study focuses on CJ students' attitudes toward the police and willingness to engage in community policing programs. The research examined 231 CJ students in a Hispanic serving university situated along the US-Mexican border. Research findings indicate that CJ students are less likely to pursue law enforcement careers if they hold less favorable attitudes toward the police or are unwilling to participate in ride-along programs. The study concludes with policy implications.

Purpose Building on Lambert's (2001) work on turnover intent in law enforcement, this study examines how organizational characteristics and job attitudes along with job satisfaction, and organizational commitment affect turnover intent among Taiwanese police officers.Design/methodology/approach Data were collected from the New Taipei City Police Department (NTCPD) in the summer of 2012 via stratified random sampling (N = 1,035). Structural equation modeling was employed to examine factors affecting turnover intent.Findings Job satisfaction and organizational commitment reduced the risk of turnover, while job stressors and training effectiveness directly increased the risk. Worthy of note, officers with a Central Police University degree and who were married had a lower risk of turnover.Originality/value This study applies Lambert's (2001) turnover intent model in law enforcement agencies developed in the West to a non-western policing setting. The use of SEM assures the robustness of the findings. Some noteworthy contrasts in findings from Western and non-Western settings are presented.

The largest protests in U.S. history occurred during summer 2020. Despite being overwhelmingly peaceful, some property damage, looting, and violence transpired. This study used Wave 68 of the American Trends Panel, collected by the Pew Research Center 10 days after Minneapolis police murdered George Floyd, to test whether: (1) Black people are less likely than white people to oppose Black Lives Matter (BLM); (2) compared to white people, Black people perceive individuals who use protests as a pretext for committing crime to comprise a smaller proportion of the overall protest movement; and (3) opposition to BLM mediates some or all of the relationship between race and perceptions of the degree to which people who use protests as a pretext to commit crime comprise the overall protest movement. Results from generalized ordered logistic regression analyses confirmed that, compared to white people, Black people were less likely to oppose BLM and perceived the summer 2020 protest movement to have contained fewer opportunistic individuals looking to commit crime. Pathway analysis results showed that BLM opposition fully mediated the relationship between race and how much of the overall protest movement participants thought consisted of individuals using protests to commit crime.

Recent discussions on confidence in the police by race/ethnicity call for shifting the research focus from whether race/ethnicity matters to why and how it matters. The purpose of this article is to decipher the mediating role of the quality of police treatment in a nuanced study of racial impact on confidence in the police. Data were collected from a two-wave random-sample telephone survey of approximately 2400 residents in Houston, TX. The results confirm the expected effect of race/ethnicity on confidence in the police, net of neighborhood contexts and respondents’ demographics. More importantly, we found that the three measures tapping into the quality of police treatment during police–resident encounters partially mediate the race/ethnicity effect on views of police. Perceived equal treatment emerged as having the strongest effect. When the combined race/ethnicity sample was divided into three racial/ethnic subsamples, perceived equal treatment exerted the largest effects on confidence in the police both within and across the groups. Its effect is most pronounced for the Black subsample. Implications for future research and policy are discussed.

A cornerstone of broken windows theory concerns public perceptions of disorder and crime, and the citizens’ “panic response” with the onset of disorder in their neighborhoods. Naturally, assuming this dynamic to exist lends support for a significant expansion of police operations from traditional crime control to order maintenance. More specifically, the advocates of the theory presume that citizens view disorder and crime as two distinctive constructs, and further that the former triggers the latter. Broken windows theory was quite popular during the 1990s and early 2000s, a period in which order maintenance or quality of life policing reached its apex of popularity. Findings from recent studies on public perceptions of disorder and crime, however, have called into serious question: the cognitive distinction between crime and disorder. Using data collected from a random telephone survey of residents residing in the Houston metropolitan area, we follow this line of research and test the hypothesized dynamics underlying broken windows theory. Our principal findings suggest that neither a one-factor model (convergent) nor a two-factor model (discriminant) fit the empirical data when an appropriate concept validation process is carried out. Implications are drawn for broken windows theory and some specific recommendations are made for future research at the end of the study.

The current research examines the support for the police during a political crisis. Relying on a random sample collected from the Taipei metropolitan area a month after the Sunflower Movement in 2014, we have found that perceived police legitimacy functioned well, whereas the political party preference, a proxy measure of powerholder legitimacy, exerts the strongest positive impact on the support for the police during the crisis. We conclude that political orientation structures perceived legitimacy and sustains the support for the police during the social movement. In addition, policing by virtue, an alternative model of democratic policing is discussed within the context of Taiwan. The study leads us to believe that the Confucian culture is not destined to be authoritarian and violent, but is capable of regenerating itself as an alternative form of democratic policing, and possibly more broadly, governance.

Since melanin levels cannot cause anything, this study hypothesized that Latines' skin color would initially predict perceptions of anti-Black police and CJ system bias. Once Latines' personal experiences with discrimination were considered, however, discrimination was hypothesized to fully mediate the relationship between skin color and perceptions of anti-Black police and CJ system bias. Data consisted of 1,338 Latines from the American Trends Panel. Logistic regression results showed skin color was unrelated to perceptions of anti-Black police or CJ system bias. Pathway analyses including Latines' personal experiences with discrimination demonstrated skin color was directly negatively associated with perceptions of anti-Black police bias, although not directly related to perceptions of anti-Black CJ system bias. Darker-skinned Latines expressed greater belief they had been unfairly stopped by police due to race. In turn, Latines who felt they had been unfairly stopped by police due to race were more likely to report having been treated as suspicious by someone due to race, which increased perceptions of anti-Black police and CJ system bias. Moreover, darker-skinned Latines were more likely to feel they had been treated as suspicious by someone due to race in the anti-Black police bias model, but not the anti-Black CJ system bias model.