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New WSU study: Even tired cops are more hesitant to shoot black suspects

The most explosive crisis law enforcement faces today is the allegation that rampant racial bias drives officers’ shooting decisions.

Bryan Vila
Bryan Vila

Yet a new study by Bryan Vila, professor of criminal justice and criminology, and two of his associates in the WSU Sleep and Performance research Center concludes that officers tend not to be biased against black suspects in resorting to deadly force, even when fatigued and thus potentially more vulnerable to making angry, irrational, and impulsive decisions.  » More …

Collaborative criminology

While Sociology 336, Comparative Criminal Justice Systems, might sound like a normal college course, the class actually brings together students from the University of Idaho and Washington State University for an educational experience abroad.

Melanie-Angela Neuilly
Melanie-Angela Neuilly

Melanie Neuilly, a professor of comparative criminal justice at WSU, thought the course was a great opportunity to take students to study criminal justice in another country. This year’s program traveled to the Netherlands for its third year at WSU and second at UI. She said in previous years the program has also traveled to London.

“The purpose of the program is to expose students to a variety of dimensions of criminal justice,” Neuilly said. » More …

It’s Time To Recognize What Many Mass Murderers Share In Common

Among researchers who work on predicting violence, domestic abuse is recognized as an important clue that a person may be a future risk to society.

Hamilton
Zachary Hamilton

“When you are trying to predict violent recidivism, you tend to find that domestic violence is one of the strongest predictors,” said Zachary Hamilton, a WSU assistant professor of criminal justice and criminology who studies risk assessment as director of the Washington State Institute for Criminal Justice.

He cited an analysis of criminal offenders in Washington state, which found that a felony domestic violence conviction was the single greatest predictor of future violent crime. » More …

Officers’ outside work linked to fatigue

Asking police officers if they’ve had enough sleep to safely perform their jobs is akin to asking drunks if they are capable of driving.

Bryan Vila
Bryan Vila

“People are lousy at self-assessing themselves,” said Bryan Vila, a professor with the Department of Criminal Justice and Criminology and the Sleep Performance Research Center at WSU Spokane. “It turns out that the part of the brain affected by fatigue is also the self-assessment part.”

Vila tells officers who are chronically sleep-deprived and don’t get seven to eight hours of sleep each night, “you may be driving your patrol car while just as impaired as the last person you arrested for DUI.”

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Knoxville News Sentinel

Shift-work fatigue negatively impacts police officers’ tactical social interaction

Fatigue related to shift work affects the interactions that police officers have with the public, according to findings presented by WSU researchers in criminal justice and criminology at the SLEEP 2016 annual meeting.

Bryan Vila
Bryan Vila

These interactions can, in turn, influence the public’s trust in police, the researchers reported.

“Our results indicate that officers who work biologically normal day shifts perform much better than those on other shifts,” said professor Bryan Vila. “This suggests that better fatigue management might improve officers’ ability to deftly manage encounters with the public in ways that win cooperation and reduce the need for use of force.”

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