Dale Willits
Datos Biográficos
| ID | 288175 |
|---|---|
| NOMBRE | Dale Willits |
| NOMBRES | Dale |
| APELLIDO | Willits |
| FIRMA | WILLITS D |
| AFILIACIONES | Washington State University |
| ORCID | 0000-0001-5252-906X |
| VERIFICADO | Sí |
| TOTAL DE OBRAS | 23 |
| TOTAL DE CITAS | 80 |
| TOTAL COMO AUTOR | 23 |
| TOTAL COMO EDITOR | 0 |
| PRIMER AÑO DE PUBLICACIÓN | 2013 |
| AÑO MÁS RECIENTE DE PUBLICACIÓN | 2025 |
| ÍNDICE H | 5 |
Racial Disparities in the Wake of Cannabis Legalization
One of the arguments in support of the legalization of cannabis is that it would help alleviate racial disparities in the criminal justice system. Using UCR data from Colorado and Washington, we explore trends in cannabis arrests disaggregated by rates using interrupted time-series analysis, linear mixed models, and data visualizations. The results demonstrate a general decline in cannabis arrests for nearly all racial groups, yet these declines …
The Intersection of Gender, Race, and Arrest in the Era of Cannabis Legalization
The War on Drugs resulted in increased arrest rates for women. Most of these arrests have been for low-level offenses, often involving cannabis. As states legalize cannabis, it is important to examine trends in arrests for women in a setting of early cannabis law reform. We examine National Incident-Based Reporting System (NIBRS) monthly cannabis arrest rates in Colorado, one of the first two states to legalize cannabis for recreational purposes,…
The ‘civilizing effect’ and ‘deterrence spectrum’ revisited
Body-worn cameras have, since their rapid emergence from 2014 onward, long been touted as an important part of police reform efforts, given their hypothesised effects. The two most prominent mechanisms through which they reduce police force are the ‘civilizing effect’, whereby citizens self-monitor their behaviour when they are aware of being recorded, and the ‘deterrence effect’, whereby law enforcement officers are deterred from misusing coerci…
Lethal use of force surveillance
Currently, there remains no reliable and timely government tracking in the USA of deaths caused by law enforcement. Federal efforts to track these events are insufficient, generally missing as many as half of community deaths that occur annually because of law enforcement’s lethal use of force. The dearth of accurate data on these events limits the ability to accurately quantify their burden and effectively identify opportunities for intervention…
Rural decline and policing of cannabis legalisation in Washington
Cannabis legalisation was viewed with great concern by law enforcement personnel. Here we show that police perceptions of the societal effects of legalisation are shaped to a considerable degree by officers’ geographic context. Urban communities tend to be relatively prosperous and hold political and social views characterised as progressive. In contrast, rural areas tend to be much less affluent, and their residents tend to share relatively cons…
Law Enforcement Perceptions of Cannabis Legalization Effects on Policing
This paper presents qualitative findings associated with the experiences of those tasked with enforcing laws within a novel environment of cannabis legalization. Research partner agencies and participants included local, state, and tribal law enforcement agencies in Washington and bordering areas of Idaho. Semi-structured interviews explored the pre- and post-legalization experiences of 92 police professionals (ranging from first-line officers to…
Asking about the Worst First
Contextual effects refer to the process by which responses given to survey questions can be affected by question order. Generally, contextual effects harm data measurement validity by introducing bias and increasing measurement error; the risk is that responses to a survey’s later questions are partly affected not only by the substance of the question but also by the preceding questions. Two opposite effects are possible: a carryover effect refer…
A Longitudinal Study of Fan Aggression
This paper employs panel data on Iranian soccer fan hooliganism (i.e., verbal and physical aggression against rivals) to provide a longitudinal test of Agnew’s general strain theory. Structural equation models reveal that the experience of strain, a latent variable comprised of negative life events, victimization, bullying, and economic pressures, is positively associated with fan aggression. Moreover, the effects of these strains are both direct…
Camera Point-of-View Exacerbates Racial Bias in Viewers of Police Use of Force Videos
The implementation of body-worn cameras (BWC) by policing agencies has received widespread support from many individuals, including citizens and police officers. Despite their increasing prevalence, little is known about how the point-of-view (POV) of these cameras affects perceptions of viewers. In this research, we investigate how POV interacts with skin color of citizens in police use of force videos to affect perceptions of procedural justice…
Fatal outcomes of militarization
Rhetoric without reality’ or effective policing strategy? An analysis of the relationship between community policing and police fatal force
The adverse effects of policing on population health
The Effect of Marijuana Legalization on Jail Populations in Washington State
In 2012, Washington State legalized the production, sale, and possession of marijuana through Initiative 502. Advocates of legalization argued that it would decrease the jail population and reduce the disproportionate incarceration of minorities, reasoning that the police would refocus their resources on other matters. In order to evaluate this assumption, we examined jail booking data using a set of interrupted time-series regression models. Our…
Systematic social event modeling
The growth of multimedia and increasing archival of this footage by public safety agencies presents as a watershed moment in converting this footage into actionable data that can inform and improve public safety practice. However, despite the considerable volume of archival footage, there remains a profound lack of research leveraging this data. While data access will always remain an issue to researchers, this article argues that a lack of tools…
The impact of recreational marijuana sales on calls for service
Research has begun to explore to what extent I-502, the initiative authorising the retail distribution of recreational marijuana in Washington State, influenced a range of public safety outcomes. However, despite a growing body of research exploring potential impacts on crime, absent from this research has been a more nuanced analysis of officer workload. Specifically, an analysis into calls for service received and initiated by police. To docume…
Children of Mixed-Ethnic Heritage and Adverse Life Outcomes
The number of mixed-ethnic adolescents from multicultural families in South Korea has rapidly increased over the last several years. Although traditionally ethnically homogeneous, Korea has recently shifted toward multiculturalism, yet little research has compared mixed and single-ethnic youth on adverse outcomes in Korea and, to date, no research has done so using a quasi-experimental design. This study uses propensity score weighting with a sam…
When no one is watching
Outcomes associated with police body-worn cameras (BWCs) and their influence on use of force is chiefly known from large-scale implementation studies and randomised controlled trials. While these studies provide valuable insight, there is concern that these studies are susceptible to the Hawthorne effect. Using an interrupted time series analysis, this study examines whether the implementation of BWCs had an effect on use of force incidents withi…
Violent propensity, strain, and violent intentions
General Strain Theory's (GST) mediating and conditioning hypotheses suggest that emotions mediate the strain-crime relationship and that personality traits condition the effects of strain. Individual-level research provides weak-to-mixed support for these hypotheses, leading to calls to revise GST. Yet, the mediating and conditioning hypotheses provide situational predictions which are largely untested at the situational-level. Further, Agnew (20…
Impossibility of a “Reverse Racism” Effect
Lois James, Stephen James, and Bryan Vila in their article “The Reverse Racism Effect: Are Cops More Hesitant to Shoot Black Than White Suspects?” from the May 2016 issue of Criminology & Public Policysuggested that a fear of adverse “legal and social consequences” leads police officers to be more cautious in shooting decisions when dealing with Blacks than with Whites, resulting in fewer errors and slower response times in a shooting simulation …
Adoption of body cameras by United States police agencies
In the wake of recent high-profile lethal force incidents in the United States, police agencies have felt pressure to mandate that officers wear cameras to video record encounters with citizens. In this article, we examine how organisational characteristics influence the adoption of body-worn camera (BWC) technology in American police agencies. Using data from the 2013 Law Enforcement Management and Administrative Survey (LEMAS), we conduct logis…
Schools and Drug Markets
Research on drug markets indicates that they are not randomly distributed. Instead they are concentrated around specific types of places. Theoretical and empirical literature implicates routine activities and social disorganization processes in this distribution. In the current study, we examine whether, consistent with these theories, drug markets are particularly likely to form near schools. This research contributes to our understanding of ado…
Situational predictors of violent intentions
Though many sociological and criminological theories of violence provide a role for both situational and individual-level factors, research largely focuses on individual-level characteristics. The current research, drawing on the psychological and sociological aggression literatures, utilizes a factorial survey approach to identify important situational risk factors. Multi-level regression results indicate that provocation, aggressive cues, and t…
Police organisation and deadly force
The use of deadly force is the most extreme form of coercive behaviour available to police officers. In this study, we examine organisational and structural predictors of police use of deadly force for large and small cities in the USA. Using data from the Supplementary Homicide Reports, the 2000 American Census and Law Enforcement Management and Administrative Statistics Survey, we use regression models to evaluate the relationship between deadl…
Police organisation and deadly force
The use of deadly force is the most extreme form of coercive behaviour available to police officers. In this study, we examine organisational and structural predictors of police use of deadly force for large and small cities in the USA. Using data from the Supplementary Homicide Reports, the 2000 American Census and Law Enforcement Management and Administrative Statistics Survey, we use regression models to evaluate the relationship between deadl…
Adoption of body cameras by United States police agencies
In the wake of recent high-profile lethal force incidents in the United States, police agencies have felt pressure to mandate that officers wear cameras to video record encounters with citizens. In this article, we examine how organisational characteristics influence the adoption of body-worn camera (BWC) technology in American police agencies. Using data from the 2013 Law Enforcement Management and Administrative Survey (LEMAS), we conduct logis…
The adverse effects of policing on population health
Impossibility of a “Reverse Racism” Effect
Lois James, Stephen James, and Bryan Vila in their article “The Reverse Racism Effect: Are Cops More Hesitant to Shoot Black Than White Suspects?” from the May 2016 issue of Criminology & Public Policysuggested that a fear of adverse “legal and social consequences” leads police officers to be more cautious in shooting decisions when dealing with Blacks than with Whites, resulting in fewer errors and slower response times in a shooting simulation …
Violent propensity, strain, and violent intentions
General Strain Theory's (GST) mediating and conditioning hypotheses suggest that emotions mediate the strain-crime relationship and that personality traits condition the effects of strain. Individual-level research provides weak-to-mixed support for these hypotheses, leading to calls to revise GST. Yet, the mediating and conditioning hypotheses provide situational predictions which are largely untested at the situational-level. Further, Agnew (20…
Systematic social event modeling
The growth of multimedia and increasing archival of this footage by public safety agencies presents as a watershed moment in converting this footage into actionable data that can inform and improve public safety practice. However, despite the considerable volume of archival footage, there remains a profound lack of research leveraging this data. While data access will always remain an issue to researchers, this article argues that a lack of tools…
Schools and Drug Markets
Research on drug markets indicates that they are not randomly distributed. Instead they are concentrated around specific types of places. Theoretical and empirical literature implicates routine activities and social disorganization processes in this distribution. In the current study, we examine whether, consistent with these theories, drug markets are particularly likely to form near schools. This research contributes to our understanding of ado…
Situational predictors of violent intentions
Though many sociological and criminological theories of violence provide a role for both situational and individual-level factors, research largely focuses on individual-level characteristics. The current research, drawing on the psychological and sociological aggression literatures, utilizes a factorial survey approach to identify important situational risk factors. Multi-level regression results indicate that provocation, aggressive cues, and t…
The ‘civilizing effect’ and ‘deterrence spectrum’ revisited
Body-worn cameras have, since their rapid emergence from 2014 onward, long been touted as an important part of police reform efforts, given their hypothesised effects. The two most prominent mechanisms through which they reduce police force are the ‘civilizing effect’, whereby citizens self-monitor their behaviour when they are aware of being recorded, and the ‘deterrence effect’, whereby law enforcement officers are deterred from misusing coerci…
Rhetoric without reality’ or effective policing strategy? An analysis of the relationship between community policing and police fatal force
The impact of recreational marijuana sales on calls for service
Research has begun to explore to what extent I-502, the initiative authorising the retail distribution of recreational marijuana in Washington State, influenced a range of public safety outcomes. However, despite a growing body of research exploring potential impacts on crime, absent from this research has been a more nuanced analysis of officer workload. Specifically, an analysis into calls for service received and initiated by police. To docume…
When no one is watching
Outcomes associated with police body-worn cameras (BWCs) and their influence on use of force is chiefly known from large-scale implementation studies and randomised controlled trials. While these studies provide valuable insight, there is concern that these studies are susceptible to the Hawthorne effect. Using an interrupted time series analysis, this study examines whether the implementation of BWCs had an effect on use of force incidents withi…
Lethal use of force surveillance
Currently, there remains no reliable and timely government tracking in the USA of deaths caused by law enforcement. Federal efforts to track these events are insufficient, generally missing as many as half of community deaths that occur annually because of law enforcement’s lethal use of force. The dearth of accurate data on these events limits the ability to accurately quantify their burden and effectively identify opportunities for intervention…
Law Enforcement Perceptions of Cannabis Legalization Effects on Policing
This paper presents qualitative findings associated with the experiences of those tasked with enforcing laws within a novel environment of cannabis legalization. Research partner agencies and participants included local, state, and tribal law enforcement agencies in Washington and bordering areas of Idaho. Semi-structured interviews explored the pre- and post-legalization experiences of 92 police professionals (ranging from first-line officers to…
A Longitudinal Study of Fan Aggression
This paper employs panel data on Iranian soccer fan hooliganism (i.e., verbal and physical aggression against rivals) to provide a longitudinal test of Agnew’s general strain theory. Structural equation models reveal that the experience of strain, a latent variable comprised of negative life events, victimization, bullying, and economic pressures, is positively associated with fan aggression. Moreover, the effects of these strains are both direct…
Fatal outcomes of militarization
Police organisation and deadly force
The use of deadly force is the most extreme form of coercive behaviour available to police officers. In this study, we examine organisational and structural predictors of police use of deadly force for large and small cities in the USA. Using data from the Supplementary Homicide Reports, the 2000 American Census and Law Enforcement Management and Administrative Statistics Survey, we use regression models to evaluate the relationship between deadl…
Situational predictors of violent intentions
Though many sociological and criminological theories of violence provide a role for both situational and individual-level factors, research largely focuses on individual-level characteristics. The current research, drawing on the psychological and sociological aggression literatures, utilizes a factorial survey approach to identify important situational risk factors. Multi-level regression results indicate that provocation, aggressive cues, and t…
Schools and Drug Markets
Research on drug markets indicates that they are not randomly distributed. Instead they are concentrated around specific types of places. Theoretical and empirical literature implicates routine activities and social disorganization processes in this distribution. In the current study, we examine whether, consistent with these theories, drug markets are particularly likely to form near schools. This research contributes to our understanding of ado…
Adoption of body cameras by United States police agencies
In the wake of recent high-profile lethal force incidents in the United States, police agencies have felt pressure to mandate that officers wear cameras to video record encounters with citizens. In this article, we examine how organisational characteristics influence the adoption of body-worn camera (BWC) technology in American police agencies. Using data from the 2013 Law Enforcement Management and Administrative Survey (LEMAS), we conduct logis…
Impossibility of a “Reverse Racism” Effect
Lois James, Stephen James, and Bryan Vila in their article “The Reverse Racism Effect: Are Cops More Hesitant to Shoot Black Than White Suspects?” from the May 2016 issue of Criminology & Public Policysuggested that a fear of adverse “legal and social consequences” leads police officers to be more cautious in shooting decisions when dealing with Blacks than with Whites, resulting in fewer errors and slower response times in a shooting simulation …
When no one is watching
Outcomes associated with police body-worn cameras (BWCs) and their influence on use of force is chiefly known from large-scale implementation studies and randomised controlled trials. While these studies provide valuable insight, there is concern that these studies are susceptible to the Hawthorne effect. Using an interrupted time series analysis, this study examines whether the implementation of BWCs had an effect on use of force incidents withi…
Violent propensity, strain, and violent intentions
General Strain Theory's (GST) mediating and conditioning hypotheses suggest that emotions mediate the strain-crime relationship and that personality traits condition the effects of strain. Individual-level research provides weak-to-mixed support for these hypotheses, leading to calls to revise GST. Yet, the mediating and conditioning hypotheses provide situational predictions which are largely untested at the situational-level. Further, Agnew (20…
The Effect of Marijuana Legalization on Jail Populations in Washington State
In 2012, Washington State legalized the production, sale, and possession of marijuana through Initiative 502. Advocates of legalization argued that it would decrease the jail population and reduce the disproportionate incarceration of minorities, reasoning that the police would refocus their resources on other matters. In order to evaluate this assumption, we examined jail booking data using a set of interrupted time-series regression models. Our…
Systematic social event modeling
The growth of multimedia and increasing archival of this footage by public safety agencies presents as a watershed moment in converting this footage into actionable data that can inform and improve public safety practice. However, despite the considerable volume of archival footage, there remains a profound lack of research leveraging this data. While data access will always remain an issue to researchers, this article argues that a lack of tools…
The impact of recreational marijuana sales on calls for service
Research has begun to explore to what extent I-502, the initiative authorising the retail distribution of recreational marijuana in Washington State, influenced a range of public safety outcomes. However, despite a growing body of research exploring potential impacts on crime, absent from this research has been a more nuanced analysis of officer workload. Specifically, an analysis into calls for service received and initiated by police. To docume…
Children of Mixed-Ethnic Heritage and Adverse Life Outcomes
The number of mixed-ethnic adolescents from multicultural families in South Korea has rapidly increased over the last several years. Although traditionally ethnically homogeneous, Korea has recently shifted toward multiculturalism, yet little research has compared mixed and single-ethnic youth on adverse outcomes in Korea and, to date, no research has done so using a quasi-experimental design. This study uses propensity score weighting with a sam…
Camera Point-of-View Exacerbates Racial Bias in Viewers of Police Use of Force Videos
The implementation of body-worn cameras (BWC) by policing agencies has received widespread support from many individuals, including citizens and police officers. Despite their increasing prevalence, little is known about how the point-of-view (POV) of these cameras affects perceptions of viewers. In this research, we investigate how POV interacts with skin color of citizens in police use of force videos to affect perceptions of procedural justice…
Fatal outcomes of militarization
Rhetoric without reality’ or effective policing strategy? An analysis of the relationship between community policing and police fatal force
The adverse effects of policing on population health
Rural decline and policing of cannabis legalisation in Washington
Cannabis legalisation was viewed with great concern by law enforcement personnel. Here we show that police perceptions of the societal effects of legalisation are shaped to a considerable degree by officers’ geographic context. Urban communities tend to be relatively prosperous and hold political and social views characterised as progressive. In contrast, rural areas tend to be much less affluent, and their residents tend to share relatively cons…
Law Enforcement Perceptions of Cannabis Legalization Effects on Policing
This paper presents qualitative findings associated with the experiences of those tasked with enforcing laws within a novel environment of cannabis legalization. Research partner agencies and participants included local, state, and tribal law enforcement agencies in Washington and bordering areas of Idaho. Semi-structured interviews explored the pre- and post-legalization experiences of 92 police professionals (ranging from first-line officers to…
Asking about the Worst First
Contextual effects refer to the process by which responses given to survey questions can be affected by question order. Generally, contextual effects harm data measurement validity by introducing bias and increasing measurement error; the risk is that responses to a survey’s later questions are partly affected not only by the substance of the question but also by the preceding questions. Two opposite effects are possible: a carryover effect refer…
A Longitudinal Study of Fan Aggression
This paper employs panel data on Iranian soccer fan hooliganism (i.e., verbal and physical aggression against rivals) to provide a longitudinal test of Agnew’s general strain theory. Structural equation models reveal that the experience of strain, a latent variable comprised of negative life events, victimization, bullying, and economic pressures, is positively associated with fan aggression. Moreover, the effects of these strains are both direct…
The ‘civilizing effect’ and ‘deterrence spectrum’ revisited
Body-worn cameras have, since their rapid emergence from 2014 onward, long been touted as an important part of police reform efforts, given their hypothesised effects. The two most prominent mechanisms through which they reduce police force are the ‘civilizing effect’, whereby citizens self-monitor their behaviour when they are aware of being recorded, and the ‘deterrence effect’, whereby law enforcement officers are deterred from misusing coerci…
Lethal use of force surveillance
Currently, there remains no reliable and timely government tracking in the USA of deaths caused by law enforcement. Federal efforts to track these events are insufficient, generally missing as many as half of community deaths that occur annually because of law enforcement’s lethal use of force. The dearth of accurate data on these events limits the ability to accurately quantify their burden and effectively identify opportunities for intervention…
The Intersection of Gender, Race, and Arrest in the Era of Cannabis Legalization
The War on Drugs resulted in increased arrest rates for women. Most of these arrests have been for low-level offenses, often involving cannabis. As states legalize cannabis, it is important to examine trends in arrests for women in a setting of early cannabis law reform. We examine National Incident-Based Reporting System (NIBRS) monthly cannabis arrest rates in Colorado, one of the first two states to legalize cannabis for recreational purposes,…
Racial Disparities in the Wake of Cannabis Legalization
One of the arguments in support of the legalization of cannabis is that it would help alleviate racial disparities in the criminal justice system. Using UCR data from Colorado and Washington, we explore trends in cannabis arrests disaggregated by rates using interrupted time-series analysis, linear mixed models, and data visualizations. The results demonstrate a general decline in cannabis arrests for nearly all racial groups, yet these declines …
Political science (17 obras) · Psychology (17 obras) · Crime Patterns and Interventions (15 obras) · Law (14 obras) · Criminology (13 obras) · Sociology (13 obras) · Law (9 obras) · Policing Practices and Perceptions (9 obras) · Medicine (8 obras) · Social Psychology (7 obras)