Texas Department Of Criminal Research Articles

Show and Tell: An Examination of Experiential Learning Opportunities in Criminal Justice Courses

There has been debate over the years between the academic process and classroom success through practitioner “real-life” enhanced learning. These beliefs have been demonstrated through different instructor teaching techniques and support for experiential learning opportunities (ELOs). Using mixed-methods survey data, this study explores 349 undergraduate criminal justice students’ support, perceptions, and preferences on six ELOs with responses indicating internships as most preferred. Findings provide policy implications for criminal justice departments on ELO opportunities.

Naïve Bayes Emotion Classification of Final Statements from Death Row Youths before Execution

The behaviours of most Death Row inmates in pre-prison era typically involve neurological insult, developmental histories of trauma, family disruption, and substance abuse. These behaviours lead them to commit crimes that finally land them into death row in prison. Rates of psychological disorder among death row inmates are high, where environments and conditions of confinement appear to aggravate such disorders. The last statements of Death row inmates can be deeply emotional. Several Machine Learning (ML) algorithms can be used to classify these emotions. Although simple, the Naïve Bayes algorithm is a popular algorithm that has proven to be robust in text mining. In this study, the Naïve Bayes and benchmark data available from the Texas Department of Criminal Justice to detect and classify emotions from the lasts statements of youth executed on death row. Friedman’s test with Bonferroni Adjustment was employed to examine whether the executed inmate’s ethnic race has an effect on the emotion of their final statement. Findings from the study indicated that despite ‘anger’ having both highest minimum and maximum values compared to other emotions, it did not achieve the highest mean score and it came second to the emotion ‘joy’. Joy has 0.31 mean score followed by anger with 0.30, sad with 0.26, love with 0.06, fear with 0.05, and surprise with 0.02. Using the Friedman’s test with Bonferroni adjustment, this study discovered that there was no significant difference between the different ethnic races of executed inmates and emotions from their last statements.

Tokenism in Criminology and Criminal Justice Departments: Problems and Solutions

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 use my own experiences to illustrate these issues. I conclude with potential solutions to the problems identified.

Qualitative exploration of the medical learner\u2019s journey into correctional health care at an academic medical center and its implications for medical education

Correctional systems in several U.S. states have entered into partnerships with academic medical centers (AMCs) to provide healthcare for persons who are incarcerated. One AMC specializing in the care of incarcerated patients is the University of Texas Medical Branch at Galveston (UTMB), which hosts the only dedicated prison hospital in the U.S. and supplies 80% of the medical care for the entire Texas Department of Criminal Justice (TDCJ). Nearly all medical students and residents at UTMB take part in the care of the incarcerated. This research, through qualitative exploration using focus group discussions, sets out to characterize the correctional care learning environment medical trainees enter. Participants outlined an institutional culture of low prioritization and neglect that dominated the learning environment in the prison hospital, resulting in treatment of the incarcerated as second-class patients. Medical learners pointed to delays in care, both within the prison hospital and within the TDCJ system, where diagnostic, laboratory, and medical procedures were delivered to incarcerated patients at a lower priority compared to free-world patients. Medical learners elaborated further on ethical issues that included the moral judgment of those who are incarcerated, bias in clinical decision making, and concerns for patient autonomy. Medical learners were left to grapple with complex challenges like the problem of dual loyalties without opportunities to critically reflect upon what they experienced. This study finds that, without specific vulnerable populations training for both trainees and correctional care faculty to address these institutional dynamics, AMCs risk replicating a system of exploitation and neglect of incarcerated patients and thereby exacerbating health inequities.

Exposure to Urbanized Poverty and Attitude Change: A Longitudinal Case Study on Service-Learning with Rural Undergraduate Criminal Justice Students

Criminal justice departments recognize the value of connecting students to real-world problems through service-learning activities. Yet, challenges exist in exposing students to diverse populations. The current study stepped outside the classroom, involving an extra-curricular group of criminal justice students, in a unique service-learning project. Students from a rurally located university traveled to the most poverty-stricken area in Los Angeles, California, known as Skid Row. Students partnered with The Burrito Project, making and serving 950 burritos to people living on the streets. To assess the impact on exposure to poverty, students completed a pre and post-test utilizing the Undergraduate Perceptions of Poverty Tracking Survey. Four years later, follow-up interviews were conducted. Survey results suggest no significant changes pre/post project completion while longitudinal interviews yielded rich data on the project impact. Future directions including criminal justice students within service-learning projects are discussed, especially considering inclusion of students early within their academic careers.

Revolving Doors: Examining the Effect of Race and Ethnicity on Discretionary Decision-Making in Parole Revocations

Approximately 20% of offenders under community supervision in the United States are currently on parole. While parole board members possess a wide range of discretionary power, the factors influencing this decision-making process have yet to be fully explored. Previous research has generally examined factors that influence time to release on parole or parole disposition (i.e. granted or denied) as the primary discretionary decision outcomes for parole boards. In contrast, few studies have examined the parole revocation process. Using data from the Texas Department of Criminal Justice, the current study addresses this limitation by examining the legal and extralegal factors that influence the decision to revoke parole status. Special attention is given to the role of race/ethnicity in the decision to terminate parole agreements. Findings suggest that race/ethnicity significantly influences parole revocation outcomes.

Religious Rights in the Criminal Justice System

In Brown v. Collier , 929 F.3d 218 (5th Cir. 2019), the United States Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit reversed a district court decision that had denied a claim from the Texas Department of Criminal Justice (TDCJ) seeking to terminate a 1977 consent decree. The decree had protected Muslim

Cultural Resource Investigations for the Praxair Phillips 66 H2 Pipeline in Brazoria County, Texas

Gray & Pape, Inc. was contracted to conduct a cultural resources survey for a proposed pipeline project. The project is a 14-inch pipeline from Praxair Freeport Plant to the Phillips 66 Clemens Storage Cavern located near Freeport, Texas. The project route measures approximately 28.0 kilometers (17.4 miles). The project’s Area of Potential Effect is the entire alignment route within a survey corridor of 91.4 meters (300 feet). This amounts to approximately 252 hectares (622 acres). Subsequent workspace revisions resulted in an additional 25.7 hectares (63.4 acres) or 2.6 kilometers (1.6 miles) of workspace, documented in Appendix C of this final report. The pipeline will be collocated with several existing pipelines in a well-maintained corridor for the entire length. The Project is part of a Nationwide 12 permit for which the Lead Federal Agency is the United States Army Corps of Engineers, Galveston District. The procedures to be followed by the United States Army Corps of Engineers to fulfill the requirements set forth in the National Historic Preservation Act, other applicable historic preservation laws, and Presidential directives as they relate to the regulatory program of the United States Army Corps of Engineers (33 CFR Parts 320-334) are articulated in the Regulatory Program of the United States Army Corps of Engineers, Part 325 -Processing of Department of the Army Permits, Appendix C -Procedures for the Protection of Historic Properties. Approximately 3.6 kilometers (2.25 miles) of the project length is located within property owned by the Texas Department of Criminal Justice, Clemens Prison Unit, which necessitated the procurement of a permit subject to the Antiquities Code of Texas. Permit Number 8666 was assigned to the project on December 4, 2018. As required under the provisions of Texas Antiquities Code Permit, all project records are housed at the Center for Archaeological Studies at Texas State University, San Marcos, Texas. The goals of this study were to assist the client, the Texas Historical Commission, and other relevant agencies in determining whether intact cultural resources were present within areas planned for construction, and if so to provide management recommendations for these resources. All work conducted by Gray & Pape, Inc. followed accepted guidelines and standards set forth by the Texas Historical Commission and the Council of Texas Archeologists. Prior to field investigation, site file research was used to develop a cultural context for the study. This research resulted in a listing of all archaeological sites and National Register properties within 1.6 kilometers (1 mile) of the project area, as well as a discussion of archaeological potential within the tract. Previous surveys conducted by HRA Gray & Pape, LLC and other firms overlap approximately 6.1 kilometers (3.8 miles) / 55.4 hectares (137 acres) of the current project’s corridor. These surveys were undertaken from between 2012 to 2013. These areas along with an additional 2.8 kilometers (2 miles) / 28.9 hectares (71.3 acres) of highly disturbed pipeline corridor were subjected to visual reconnaissance survey only. Another 3.0 kilometers (1.9 miles) / 27.5 hectares (68 acres) of the project is located within highly industrial areas of DOW property and was subjected to desktop assessment and determined to be of low potential for containing intact cultural materials. No further work is recommended for these areas. No new cultural resources were discovered during the survey. Gray & Pape, Inc. recommends no survey within these portions due to the highly disturbed conditions. Intensive pedestrian survey was completed on those portions of the current project that fall outside of the previous survey coverage or that have potential to impact previously unidentified sites. This amounts to 15.6 kilometers (9.7 miles) / 140 hectares (346 acres). As a result of survey efforts, one previously unrecorded archaeological site was identified during survey efforts. As currently mapped, the site is overlapped by an existing pipeline corridor and does not retain integrity within the project right-of-way. Gray & Pape, Inc. recommends that no further investigation be necessary within the surveyed portions of the project.

A Phase I Cultural Resources Survey of the Orbit Pipeline Project Jefferson, Liberty, and Chambers Counties, Texas

A Phase I Cultural Resources Survey of the Orbit Pipeline Project Jefferson, Liberty, and Chambers Counties, Texas

We Are Not Slaves: State Violence, Coerced Labor, and Prisoners' Rights in Postwar America by Robert T. Chase

Reviewed by: We Are Not Slaves: State Violence, Coerced Labor, and Prisoners' Rights in Postwar America by Robert T. Chase Paul M. Lucko We Are Not Slaves: State Violence, Coerced Labor, and Prisoners' Rights in Postwar America. By Robert T. Chase. (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2020. Pp. 544. Illustrations, notes, bibliography, index.) A rich body of scholarship has emerged in recent years that examines the historical roots of mass incarceration in this country. Robert Chase's We Are Not Slaves joins Robert Perkinson's Texas Tough (Metropolitan, 2010) and Ethan Blue's Doing Time in the Depression (New York University Press, 2012) as the latest in a genre of critical works that focus on Texas prisons that evolved from post-bellum slave plantations to modern military style disciplinary units. Different from other Texas prison studies, We Are Not Slaves considers the issue of sexuality within a total institution. Partly as a result of widespread negative publicity surrounding homosexual "perversion" (49) among state prisoners during the 1940s, the institution's governing board [End Page 240] hired a new director, O. B. Ellis, who, with increased legislative appropriations, constructed cells in place of crude dormitories, or "tanks," on the vast prison agricultural lands. Ellis also embarked upon an ambitious reform program that transformed the long-neglected penal plantations into one of the state's premier agribusiness entities. Ellis and his successor, George Beto, proved especially adept at promoting Texas prisons as symbols of a modern South. Ironically, however, instead of preventing homosexual behavior, the cell blocks increasingly fell under the control of primarily White trusty prisoners, known as "building tenders," who were permitted to supervise and physically punish other prisoners and engage in a "sex trade [that] provided building tenders the unofficial . . . power to rape other prisoners and buy and sell other prisoners' bodies" (125) through human trafficking. Much of the prisoners' rights litigation that culminated in the Ruiz v. Estelle case, which declared that the Texas prison system violated inmates' constitutional rights, sought to curb the power of the male building tenders and a lesser number of female key girls and row tenders. While other studies have attributed the success of Ruiz anda national prisoners' rights movement to the willingness of federal judges to abandon a long-standing "hands-off" approach to such lawsuits, Chase places the prisoners, who courageously challenged brutal and vindictive administrators, at the forefront of the prison reform movement. Inspired by nationwide social movements both inside and outside of prison walls beginning in the 1960s, ethnically diverse coalitions persisted until Federal Judge William Wayne Justice ruled in 1980 that the total conditions of confinement in Texas correctional facilities constituted cruel and unusual punishment. Although We Are Not Slaves devotes considerable space to David Ruiz and Fred Cruz, Chase also elevates lesser known prisoners, such as Martha Quinlan, Allen Lamar, Johnny Swift, Salvador Gonzales, Frank Leahy, Eddie Ward, Lee Otis John-son, Ray Hill, Al Slaton, and Lawrence Pope, to a heroic status for their contributions to the movement that toppled the system of "modern day slavery" (299). The book includes copious endnotes and a deep bibliography containing an extensive list of interviews that Chase and other researchers conducted with participants in the Texas prisoners' movement. While the author's title and principle thesis accentuate "plantation slavery discourse" (327), he does not directly confront the Thirteenth Amendment's paradoxical clause that permits slavery as punishment for crime. Acknowledging that Judge Justice "did not take up the language of the prisoners' slave discourse and never once referred to Texas prisoners as slaves nor the prison system as a plantation" (328), Chase concludes that the prisoners' movement ended penal slavery but failed to avert "a massive [End Page 241] prison building program that advanced Texas as the nation's largest carceral state" (12). All in all, this is an outstanding work that will provoke discussion and undoubtedly inspire other studies as this country seeks solutions to problems that stem from the nation's experience with incarceration. [End Page 242] Paul M. Lucko Murray State University Copyright © 2020 The Texas State Historical Association

Sex Reassignment Surgery for Inmates with Gender Dysphoria

In Gibson v. Collier , 920 F.3d 212 (5th Cir. 2019), the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals affirmed the district court's decision to grant summary judgment for the director of the Texas Department of Criminal Justice, Bryan Collier, who had refused sex reassignment surgery (SRS) for Scott Gibson (also

Deepening the Guard-Inmate Divide: An Exploratory Analysis of the Relationship between Staff-Inmate Boundary Violations and Officer Attitudes regarding the Mistreatment of Prisoners

ABSTRACT Some correctional officers end their careers in disgrace when they engage in acts of cruelty against the very inmates they are paid to protect. In the present study, we administered 501 questionnaires to prison guards within the Texas Department of Criminal Justice in order to identify characteristics of officers who may possess attitudes favorable to the mistreatment of inmates. We found that younger, male officers, who reported being dissatisfied with their jobs, were at a higher risk of ignoring wrongful acts against prisoners. Officers who lacked family support at home, as well as those who lacked supervisory support at work, were also more likely to tolerate acts of abuse or incivility toward offenders. Finally, officers who perceived their coworkers were engaging in staff-inmate boundary violations were more likely to accept the maltreatment of inmates than their peers. We posit these prison guards, who sensed their coworkers were crossing over to the offenders’ side, may have turned a blind eye toward acts of officer-on-inmate maltreatment in an attempt to demarcate a line between the keeper and the kept.

Decision Support Systems, Social Justice and Algorithmic Accountability in Social Work: A New Challenge

Social work, health, education, income support and criminal justice departments have, through the adoption of electronic information systems, amassed an enormous amount of data about citizens in the developed world. Using relatively new techniques for data extraction and analysis, referred to as big data, these data are now being used to develop algorithmic decision support systems (DSS). These developments have occurred mainly in child welfare services across the world but there are also developments in criminal justice. DSS may, in certain circumstances, make incorrect recommendations to decision-makers, or recommendations which perpetuate the social prejudices that disadvantage service users. Clearly this is antithetical to social justice and it follows that there will be an increasing role for social workers as advocates, as more DSS are implemented. There is, however, a dearth of literature that would inform social workers about how, why and when the recommendations of DSS should be challenged. The aims of this article are therefore to provide some insights into current examples of DSS, propose principles to be applied to try to avoid DSS from perpetuating social injustice and to describe how social workers might apply these principles to challenge recommendations.

Social Scientists on Crime After World War II

This paper addresses the history of social scientific work on crime after World War II. We argue that the mid-1960s marked a turning point that profoundly transformed the way in which the public discourse, policy programs, and social scientific work addressed crime. Up to the mid-1960s, crime was not a central concern for the average American and the Federal government had a very limited role in fighting it. Within social science, sociological studies dominated the analysis of crime. The mainstream of research mixed the influence of Robert Merton’s theory of anomie with the Chicago-school ecological approach, relegating biological and psychological explanations to a backstage status. It located the origins of delinquent behavior in relative deprivation and dysfunctional neighborhoods. This broad outlook framed the way in which various social scientific notions infused the study of crime and eventually made their way to Washington, making the idea of relative deprivation central to Lyndon Johnson’s War on Poverty. From then on, crime fell under the prerogatives of the Federal government and gradually gained prominence. At the same time, the social turmoil of the 1960s challenged the consensus about the so-called “rootcauses” of crime and their treatment though welfare programs and community empowerment. By the end of the decade, crime rates had skyrocketed and riots erupted throughout the country. The fear of crime nurtured the rise of a conservative view that emphasized the significance of law enforcement and punishment. The figure of the criminal as a responsible decision-maker became increasingly popular. Social scientists involved in the public attack on crime also shared increasing doubts about social-deprivation explanations. Even though they did not go as far as James Q. Wilson in urging criminologists to become “policy analysts” and relinquish the socioeconomic rootcauses of crime, the social scientific study of crime increasingly emphasized a “control” approach to crime. That approach brought together insights from economics, operations research, political science, sociology and psychology so as to address cost-effective law enforcement and deterrence. In effect, criminology became increasingly dependent on policy concerns. Public support from urban development or health agencies was progressively replaced by funds from criminal justice and law enforcement agencies, further illustrating the changing orientation in public policy. Within a number of universities, the creation of criminal justice departments also provided a new institutional setting to further this multi-disciplinary outlook and respond to the ever-increasing public demands for professional training in crime combat. By the end of the 1970s, control theories of crime represented a sizable chunk of the literature, though they were not influential enough to define a new consensus. On top of the unresolved debates on how policy-oriented research should handle crime, a number of social scientists rejected criminology’s dependence on the State and the development of policy analysis. Emerging from the counterculture of the 1960s, another approach brought together radical economists, historians, sociologists and psychologists, in analyzing lawmaking and the criminal justice system as tools used by those in power to enforce their own interests. Instead of taking the legal definition of crime for granted, they urged social scientists to analyze crime with their own tools. These were not the only theories to push for a thorough redefinition of crime in disciplinary terms. Neoliberal economic analysis of law, championed by Richard Posner and Gary Becker, also offered to redefine crime as “market bypassing” in order to promote wealth maximization. Very influential in the expansion of the boundaries of economics into the law, the movement did not stand in stark opposition to control theory if only because it also focused on deterrence. As a result of the important transformations of American society, politics and social sciences during the 1960s, knowledge about crime became specialized and increasingly discipline-oriented, even under the broad umbrellas of control theories and critical criminology. In the process, the boundaries between the social sciences shifted. The socioeconomic causes of crime used in sociology to understand individual trajectories toward criminal behavior gave increasingly way to a broader focus on crime and law enforcement, grounded on rational choice and cost benefit analysis.

Death Drugs - A Compounding Pharmacist’s Dilemma

Dr. Garrett Johnson received a call from the Texas Department of Criminal Justice asking if he would be interested in filling prescriptions for pentobarbital. Suddenly he faced a controversial issue - providing a drug used for the lethal injection of convicted criminals. Apparently big pharma was discontinuing the manufacture and sale of drugs used for human executions - primarily due to mounting pressure from death penalty activists and shareholders, legal appeals by inmates, media reports of botched lethal injections, etc. Texas saw the solution by using small local compounding pharmacies that were less visible to the public. Should Garrett fill this lucrative order knowing how the State would use the drugs? The case presents the ethical and strategic issues that Garrett faces - having just graduated and started his own compounding pharmacy - in making this decision.

I Can’t Get No Satisfaction! An Examination of Correctional Officers’ Perceptions of Staff–Inmate Boundary Violations and Willingness to Follow Institutional Rules within the Texas Department of Criminal Justice

ABSTRACTMost correctional officers adhere to strong organizational norms that emphasize the importance of following rules. Some, however, break the custodial frame and behave inappropriately with inmates. Guided by Robert K. Merton’s social structure and anomie theory, we examined 501 questionnaires collected from correctional officers within the Texas Department of Criminal Justice. When correctional officers perceive that their coworkers engage in boundary violations with inmates, job satisfaction is significantly lower. Our novel application of Merton’s framework makes a contribution to the correctional job satisfaction literature and has important implications for the contemporary development and significance of social structure and anomie theory.

The changing social organization of prison protection markets: when prisoners choose to organize horizontally rather than vertically

This article revisits the framework which Buentello et al. (Prison J 71(2): 3–14, 1991) created to describe the development of inmate solidarity groups into prison gangs in the Texas Department of Corrections. Interviews with current and former prison gang members in Texas, Arizona, and Illinois augment the current published literature on prison gangs in California. This article argues that the responses which prison administrations make to prisoners’ social orders are not static and have, in some cases, caused vertically configured groups to evolve into horizontally configured groups. These structural changes in prison gangs affect the gangs’ ability to affect control in the criminal underworld outside prison. Accordingly, although the challenges which prison administrations present to vertically developed social orders within prison may improve the administrations’ control within the prison walls, they may effectively decrease criminal-led social control on the street, leading to an increase in street-level violence.

Adventures in Advising: Strategies, Solutions, and Situations to Student Problems in the Criminology and Criminal Justice Field

Teaching and research are often the most focused upon aspects of working within academia in criminology and criminal justice (Sitren & Applegate, 2012; Jonson & Moon, 2014; Pratt, 2014), but an overlooked and underappreciated part of an undergraduate’s overall higher education success is academic advising (Light, 2001). There has been scant research on advising within criminology and criminal justice, and this paper seeks to fill this gap by detailing reflections on the advising process within a successful and growing criminology and criminal justice program. Strategies for advising overall will be presented as will particular situations and student needs. Lastly, a case study of how advising works for a criminology and criminal justice department from a large, public institution located in the Southeastern United States will be discussed and demonstrate how the strategies, situations, and student needs apply.

The effects of perceptions of staff–inmate boundary violations and willingness to follow rules upon work stress

While most correctional officers are professional in their interactions with inmates, some employees cross the line and engage in boundary violations, which potentially put everyone at risk. Using questionnaires collected from 501 correctional officers employed by the Texas Department of Criminal Justice, this study examined the relationship between correctional officers’ perceptions of boundary violations and work stress. Ordinary Least Squares regression results indicated that higher levels of work stress were reported by respondents who perceived that coworkers behaved inappropriately with inmates, who reported higher role strain, who feared victimization, and who reported closely following organizational rules. Female officers and officers who viewed inmates as amiable rather than manageable were also found to experience high levels of work stress. The findings suggest that correctional supervisors are likely to be more effective than line staff in developing and sustaining a culture of professionalism and civility, which can lessen the stressors for those working behind prison walls.

Fentanyl and the Evolving Opioid Epidemic: What Strategies Should Policy Makers Consider?

Major policy efforts are being aimed at combating the epidemic of opioid addiction and overdose deaths. In response to the epidemic, the medical community and policy makers have attempted to intervene; to date, these varied approaches have done little to reverse the increase in mortality related to opioid overdose. One factor that has complicated efforts to control overdose deaths has been the emergence of a public health crisis related to illicit fentanyl. The rise in fentanyl-related overdose deaths means that new approaches are needed to combat the opioid epidemic, including adoption of harm reduction strategies. Specific strategies that should be considered as part of efforts to combat the opioid crisis include safe drug consumption sites, anonymous drug-checking services, updated naloxone distribution policies, harm reduction-oriented policing, expansion of evidence-based pharmacological treatments in criminal justice and emergency department settings, and stigma-reduction messaging emphasizing the risks of fentanyl.