Faculty Research Grants and Creative Activity - 2000 - 2005
Cote, Sue
California State University, Sacramento
Research & Creative Activity Award (2004-2005 award period)
Received internal grant to study same-sex domestic violence and sexual assault and assess the
needs of the LGBT community in Sacramento region. Study will officially begin in September
2004 upon receipt of funding and will include data collection through a survey and focus group
interviews; data analysis; development of manuscript for presentation at a conference and
submission to peer reviewed journal.
California State University, Sacramento
Research Assistant (June 2000- June 2003)
Most recent project involved conducting an evaluation study of the Office of Criminal Justice
Planning’s (OCJP) Multi-Jurisdictional Task Force activities during three year grant periods.
Duties include reviewing grant summaries and coding relevant information on code sheets for
data entry.
Another project involved an audit of 7k training sign-in sheets and personnel records in a study
commissioned by the California State Legislature and the Commission on Correctional Peace
Officers Standards and Training. Duties included travel to correctional institutions throughout
California, reviewing training and personnel records, interviewing Training Officers and
Institutional Personnel Officers, and report writing. Past projects have involved researching the
broad spectrum of In-service/7k Training and on-the-job training for correctional peace officers in
adult and juvenile correctional institutions, camps, and parole regions throughout the state of
California. Duties have included survey development, primarily report writing.
Principle Investigator/ Supervisor: Miki Vohryzek-Bolden, Ph.D.
UC Davis Department of Psychiatry- Forensic Division
Consultant/Co-Principle Investigator (May 2001- December 2001)
Currently providing consultation on criminology/sociology theories, findings, and approaches to
data collection for on the Clinical Demonstration Project at Napa State Hospital. Additional
duties will include participation as a co-principle investigator on the research component of this
project.
Main Contact: Daniel W. Edwards, Ph.D., MPH
University of California, Davis- Office of the Vice Chancellor for Research, Office of
Human Research Protection
Completed Office of Research Protection (OHRP) approved on-line educational tutorials:
(1) National Institutes of Health- Human Participants Protection Education for Research
Teams, ttp://ohsr.od.nih.gov/cbt; (2) UC Irvine Educational Tutorial, http://tutorials.rgs.uci.edu
(December 2001).
Dixon, Donald
Dixon, Donald R. Computers and Information Systems in Criminal Justice. Manuscript being prepared for
Prentiss-Hall Publishers.
Capital University News
May 01, 2003
Prof maps potential for criminal activity
In a less ominous version of Minority Report, a CSUS professor has found a way to help police officers predict who might commit what sort of crimes and where.Criminal justice professor Donald Dixon, a former crime analyst for the Dallas Police Department, studied five years of arrest data for violent juvenile crime in Dallas . He found that when he combined modern crime mapping techniques and with low-tech, readily accessible census data, he was able to pinpoint not only where criminal activity was occurring but possible underlying causes. He studied areas where the offenses were happening, where the offenders live and where the victims live.
“I wanted to identify neighborhoods where violent juvenile crime was likely to occur but I was most interested in what it is about an area that may contribute to behavior,” Dixon says. “Working with the police department, I constantly got inquiries from people who wanted information about crime rates by zip code. But that information is meaningless because zip codes are arbitrarily configured and have no relationship to any idea of ‘community.'
“When juveniles live in an area long enough they're influenced by the neighborhood – the same schools, the same peers. They're not influenced by artificial boundaries like zip codes.”
Dixon mapped five years worth of juvenile arrests for violent crime in the city of Dallas and identified “hot spots” where the worst concentrations of this type of crime were found. Of the 3,600 arrests within those five years, one-sixth of the arrests were in just four neighborhoods which comprised less than two percent of the city's geographic size. “They were that concentrated,” Dixon says.
He then compared the hot spots with data from the most recent census – number of households, number of people in the family, males vs. females, race, etc. Among the findings was that the two biggest hot spots differed in their racial makeup and the types of violent crimes that the juvenile offenders were committing. Both of these issues have implications for police officers working in the area.
“If I'm a good community-oriented policing police officer, I would want to know what it is about these kids that makes them likely to commit the offenses they are committing. From there I know what to do to plan an intervention,” he says.
Dixon found elements that emerged – such as income, number of two-parent households and education level – seemed to confirm what criminal justice professionals have long believed to be potential predictors of criminal activity. In the hot spots he found, for example, 49 percent of the residents had stopped their education at high school.
“That's not a surprise but this is a new way of looking at it. I was able to pinpoint these areas with precision,” Dixon says. ”I now have a lot more confidence in previous findings.”
Crime mapping has become increasingly common nationwide. The Sacramento Police Department, for example, has a mapping program on its website that allows citizens see the location and type of crimes committed in a neighborhood such as Campus Commons or Midtown over a three-month period.
Other characteristics of the Dallas neighborhoods that also seemed to play a role were the presence, or absence, of parks, churches, liquor stores and bars. Hot spots tended to be near liquor stores and bars, Dixon says, which in Dallas are highly concentrated. They tended to not be near parks and churches.
Dixon plans to do follow-up work on adult crime and expects some of the same topics to arise. “Home ownership, education level, income are issues these kids are facing,” he says. “When I look at the adults, I will probably see an overlap.”
He is also interested in replicating this research in the Sacramento-Northern California area.
Hernandez, Jim
Related to Court
2003:
• Development of presentation on “The Five Percenters” for City of New York in
Barns v. NYC, Superior Court, State of New York
• Development of presentation on “Outlaw Motorcycle Clubs” for People v. Wendt,
Superior Court, State of California, Kings County.
• Issue: Do the Hells Angles constitute a Street Gang under California Penal Code:
186.22. Kings County.CA.
• Issue: “What Constitutes a gang activity”, Sacramento CA.
2002:
• Evaluation of evidence and research related to Nortenio gang involvement in
Napa County CA.
• Evaluation of evidence regarding the effects of music on violent gang behavior.
Contra Costa County, CA.
• Evaluation of Jail procedures in relation to prisoner treatment and search
procedures in Napa County CA.
• Evaluation of police procedures in relation to identifying gang membership.
in Madera Co. CA.
• Evaluation of School/Police procedures in identifying gang members, Yolo
County. CA.
• Evaluation of evidence and research related to conflict between Crips and Bloods,
Sacramento CA.
2001:
• Evaluation of evidence and research related to expansion of San Francesco area
Gangs into Sacramento CA. for purposes of drug sales
• Evaluation of evidence and research related to a homicide, resulting from conflict
between Asian gang groups, Sacramento Co. CA.
• Evaluation of evidence and research related to conflict between Nortenios and
Surenios, related to homicide in Yolo County. CA.
• Evaluation of evidence and research related to conflict between Gangsters
Disciples, Latin Kings, resulting in a homicide, for The Circuit Court of
The Fourteenth Judicial Circuit, Whiteside County, Illinois.
• Evaluation of evidence and research related to conflict between Laotian and
Vietnamese gangs. (Solano County, CA.)
• Evaluation of evidence and research regarding Hispanic gangs, conflict between
North and south, and the role of the Fresno Bulldogs .related to a homicide
(Fresno County, CA.)
• Evaluation of Evidence, and research regarding the development of conflict
between Nortenio and Surenio based Hispanic gangs. (Napa County, CA.)
2000:
• Evaluation of evidence and research regarding Hmong gangs, and their reflection
Of Hmong, culture in and American setting. . related to multiple rape with
fourteen defendants. (Fresno County, CA.)
• Evaluation of evidence and research relating to gang behavior, and the
Incidence of drive-by shootings. (Homicide) (Napa County, CA.)
• Evaluation of evidence and research regarding police use of criteria to determine
Gang involvement. (Solano County, CA.)
Loper, Kall
May 4, 2001
Public Affairs Announcement
Hanging with Hackers Puts
Computer Crime in Focus
What makes a hacker tick? While other law enforcement professionals theorize about these sneaky technopros who can't resist poking around in other people's computers, Kall Loper went to the source - the hackers themselves.
"Up until now there's been a lot of hand-wringing among criminal justice experts about 'how little we know.' And they don't know," says Loper, a CSUS criminal justice professor, because they didn't have access to hackers. "Previous research focused on college students, assuming the motivations of students mirrored the motivations of hackers. No one had talked to hackers."
So Loper did just that, hanging out with hackers through e-mail lists and attending hacker gatherings.
Loper's interest in computer crime grew out of a college job as a computer system administrator. "I enjoyed it and thought it was a shame I couldn't do both corrections and technology," he says. Then he hit on the idea to study hacker behavior, which became the basis for his dissertation.
That computer expertise is one reason Loper thinks he's gotten farther into the workings of the hacker mind than his contemporaries. "Having the technical background helps," he says. "There is a technological limit you can get to with hackers. They get a sense of how much a person knows, and once they get a sense that a person is over their head, hackers just stop responding.
"I take a different approach than others in criminal justice. I can 'talk the talk' while still being a social scientist. I actually share their appreciation of hacking and the joy of discovery, too."
Since moving to Sacramento in the fall Loper has met with members of both the law enforcement and hacker communities. "One night I went right from meeting with local high-tech crime specialists to having pizza with hackers," he says.
When he meets with the hackers he makes no secret of what he's up to and even hands out his business card. "I feel privileged to be accepted. I belong in the group," Loper says. "But I'm not shy about telling them who I am and what I do. I give out my business card. I have to - for research ethics."
It's something he learned in a previous job at a correctional facility. "I picked it up in my prison work. When they knew where I stood, they had no problem with me," he says.
And what has Loper discovered? For one thing there isn't a typical hacker. "If you are going to examine hackers you can't expect to identify them by color, age or background," he says. That's why he analyzes them by observing their online interactions.
"Their behavior is very easily predictable," he says. "There are things they talk about over and over. Certain hackers would start fighting among themselves and then cooler heads would prevail."
Loper distinguishes hacking from computer crime with a subset in-between that he calls criminal hacking, which would include network intrusion. "If they fall into the hacker mold, they probably won't cause trouble. If not, they are probably a computer criminal. Hackers typically don't commit crime," he says.
Hackers also have a social network. Computer criminals don't hang out like hackers. And, Loper says, there's more to learn about hackers. The literature is much better on computer criminals, he notes.
Loper's interactions with hackers have been a boon to his research. A hacker even helped him create the program to analyze the data for his dissertation. But it's a two-way street. The first hackers he met wanted information from him. Worried friends of notorious hacker Kevin Mitnick, who was in jail at the time, tapped into Loper's corrections expertise to find out about the prison and what Mitnick might be going through.
Uwazie, Ernest
Fall 2003 / Capital News Journal
 |
Grassroots Justice Africa is about as far from Sacramento as you can get, but it's close to the heart of Ernest Uwazie, professor of criminal justice and director of Sac State's Center for African Peace & Conflict Resolution. |
“It's apparent now that the systems in place have some severe deficiencies and that some of the principles involved may not be culturally adaptable,” Uwazie said. “As a result, the formal legal system is found by average Africans to be too complex, too costly, too time-consuming, alien, ineffective, unresponsive and somewhat corrupt.”
Over the last several years, Uwazie has helped develop experimental pilot programs in Nigeria and Ghana that use more culturally indigenous concepts of justice.
“The courts need to be there but there should also be mechanisms in place that provide alternative means to resolve disputes,” Uwazie said. “This is in everyone's best interest, the people and the courts. It helps create a much more manageable system.”
Uwazie is involved in a number of other related projects, including grant-sponsored conferences, workshops and U.S.-Africa tour programs for educators at the high school and university levels. His center also hosts an annual conflict resolution workshop on campus.
