LAW ENFORCEMENT AND JUSTICE ADMINISTRATION BLOG

The Illinois Legislative Black Caucus Foundation (ILBCF) and the University of Illinois Springfield (UIS) will convene its second speaker series session focused on Pillar I: Criminal Justice Reform and Violence and Police Accountability (101st General Assembly HB 3653). As co-chairs and champions of this pillar, we will be joined by Senator Sims, Senator Peters and Representative Slaughter to discuss the legislative intent and desired outcomes of Pillar I, along with the political landscape and ongoing policy implementation focus. Our panelists will discuss tangible examples in their roles and working realms and practical experiences. This session will critically examine the public act and spur critical thinking about the reform to advance change, inform attendees and enable civic engagement.   Professor Bitner of WIU's School of Law Enforcement and Justice Administration served as a panelist during this event.   Watch here

 Read the latest informative manuscript by Professor Dean Alexander of WIU's School of Law Enforcement and Justice Administration.  Follow the link to the online Security Magazine it is published in. https://www.securitymagazine.com/articles/94660-family-affiliated-extremism-and-the-siege-at-the-us-capitol    

Professor Alexander of Western Illinois University's School of Law Enforcement and Justice Administration is an internationally recognized expert who studies, lectures and writes about terrorism and extremism.  He has authored multiple books, research manuscripts and professional magazine articles on these topics.  He has been extensively interviewed by the media on terrorism and extremism too.   Please read one of his latest articles through the link provided. Police Countermeasures to Extremism    

Another great study on a timely topic from LEJA Professors Alexander and Ekici. We invite you to read the study here. https://www.securitymagazine.com/blogs/14-security-blog/post/92938-covid-19s-effects-on-policing

WIU LEJA professors Bitner, Ekici, & Sergevnin collaborated with LEJA graduate student Chloe Layne and University of Cincinnati professor Ozer to study how members of Generation Z view service of police officers. The research and findings were recently published internationally through a Russian journal in both English and Russian. The English version is available here. Russian publication

Faculty and a graduate student from the School of Law Enforcement and Justice Administration at Western Illinois University collaborated to study Generation Z's perception of the use of deadly force by police. Their research was recently accepted for publication in Roll Call: A Leadership and Ethics Publication produced by The Center for American and International Law's Institute for Law Enforcement Administration. You can find the article titled Surveying Generation Z’s Paradigms on the Use of Deadly Force by Police through the link below and starting on page 4. https://www.cailaw.org/media/files/ILEA/Publications/RollCall/2020/ethics-roll-call-spring-2020.pdf

Faculty from WIU's School of Law Enforcement and Justice Administration collaborated with Independent Researchers from Turkey to study kidnapping and extortion as tools for funding terrorism. The article is published in the Journal of Behavioral Sciences of Terrorism and Political Aggression; which is a highly recognized tier one journal published on behalf of the Society for Terrorism Research. Please use this link to read their pioneering research: https://www.tandfonline.com/eprint/TI5AKIJQIGCCBACMXYHI/full?target=10.1080/19434472.2020.1745257

This post was written by Martin Braun. He is currently a junior at WIU in the School of Law Enforcement and Justice Administration and minoring in pre-law. Martin reports he has always wanted to work in service to the community and hopes to advocate for people who have been impacted by serious crimes. He hopes to fulfill this through a career with the FBI. The following information is a synopsis from a larger manuscript Martin wrote for his Research Methods course at WIU . When asking how we reduce prison recidivism, we first must find out the who contributes to recidivism the most and how we can change their actions. Recidivism is defined as an arrest and conviction for an offense committed within two years after release from a previous conviction. Studies have found that the person most likely to contribute to the recidivism rate is an African American male, age 18-25 that has had prior prison convictions, is or was under government surveillance, has or has had a high use of nar...

This post was written by Darius Billingsley who is a Law Enforcement and Justice Administration student at WIU currently enrolled in Research Methods. This piece is a synopsis of a research manuscript he produced for the course. In National Needs Assessment Conducted to Determine Juvenile Justice Training and Service Needs, a manuscript written for the Journal of Correctional Education by Dianne Carter, she identifies the following information concerning juvenile justice.   First, The National Institute of Corrections (NIC), and the Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency and Prevention (OJJDP) entered into an agreement to initiate training for juvenile justice professionals through the National Academy of Corrections. The main goal was to described “current and emerging training service needs for the juvenile justice community.” In this process, over 200 issues and needs were identified; which include, Leadership/Management, Strategic Planning, Programs, Human Resources,...

Gabby Bandovich is currently a LEJA Graduate Assistant and student in the Law Enforcement and Justice Administration Department. She graduated from WIU in May 2019 as a double major in Law Enforcement and Justice Administration and Foreign Languages and Cultures. Gabby will graduate from the LEJA Master’s Program in May 2020 and is looking forward to pursuing a career in federal Law Enforcement. In a book entitled Law Enforcement Ethics: Classic and Contemporary Issues , author Brian Fitch claims “the patchy, haphazard implementation of ethics training remains little more than a knee-jerk reaction to police abuse or corruption” (Fitch, 2014).  Ethics training fails primarily due to its lecture based methods and lack of practical application during training.  Utilizing The Ethics Primer , by James Svara, an evaluation of Fitch’s ideology can be made through Svara’s ethical triangle. Svara claimed that the three concepts within the ethical triangle, virtue, principle, and conseq...

Chloe Layne is currently a Graduate Assistant and student in the Law Enforcement and Justice Administration Department. She graduated the undergraduate portion of the integrated program with a major in law enforcement and justice administration and minors in Spanish and psychology.   Chloe is also an active researcher working with multiple faculty to produce peer-reviewed articles and conference presentations. Deoxyribonucleic acid (DNA) first made its introduction into the American court system in 1986. Since then, not only has DNA aided in the conviction of a multitude of offenders, but it has also led to the exonerations of those who are innocent but were found guilty. DNA has proven other forensic sciences that were largely accepted in the courtroom as proof of identification, to be faulty. More recently, DNA has been used for another purpose within the criminal justice field. In recent cases, DNA has been used through genealogy websites to identify suspects of unsolved cases where...

Kelsey Maldonado is a current Graduate Assistant and graduate student with the Law Enforcement and Justice Administration Department. Kelsey spent the first four years of schooling as an undergraduate student here at Western Illinois University. She majored in Law Enforcement and Justice Administration, and minored in Spanish and Forensic Science. Currently, she is working on a thesis on the topic of detecting deception. With the completion of this work she will graduate from the university in the summer of 2019. Kelsey is looking toward the future considering both municipal Law Enforcement positions as well as Federal positions. Rise of the Warrior Cop by Radley Balko examines the militarization of police forces. At the start of the book the author illustrates our beginnings. In colonial times the faction that did the policing of the people were the British soldiers. Balko expresses the impact the military force had on the public and for its part it contributed to the Revolutionary W...

Law enforcement officers are frequently called to intervene in situations that involve juveniles, and many times it's discovered that the circumstances which brought police into contact with a juvenile may have grown out of parent-child relationships.  It's important for law enforcement workers to know how family dynamics can impact juvenile behavior; such as a parent who abuses drugs or alcohol, is too busy pursuing personal or work goals, or a parent who hasn't developed proper parenting skills.  Hopefully, through knowing the family dynamics, a law enforcement officer can effectively intervene and steer the family to productive resources for the benefit of the child and family. Dallas Trone is a WIU LEJA student currently enrolled in Research Methods.  Through the course of developing her research project, she discovered important parenting traits and monitoring skills that show a relationship between attachment and delinquency.  Dallas has taken this information and put...

It is not uncommon for police to respond to calls for service regarding out-of-control juveniles.  Good officers take the time to learn about behavior disorders so they can help a family begin appropriate interventions for the health of the juvenile and the family.  MRAI is a law enforcement term used in Illinois to describe a juvenile who is not in the process of committing a criminal offense, but needs emotional health services instead. This post was written  by Alyssa Dawson.  Alyssa is an LEJA student at Western Illinois University, and this post is part of a presentation she made in her Juvenile Justice class. MINOR REQUIRING AUTHORITATIVE INTERVENTION (MRAI)             Where I grew up as a child, there were a handful of children that had behavioral issues. Those children were typically kicked out of that school and sent to an alternative school in another town. They would often act out and disrupt class multiple times a day, and it was usually a day-to-day occurrence. Some of th...

This post was written by Elizabeth Conner.  Elizabeth is an LEJA student at WIU, and this post is a summary of a project she presented to her Juvenile Justice class. There are many different situations police respond to for juveniles.  The big one that police respond to are abuse and neglect of a child in a home.  The police response to a call of neglect or abuse is to access the situation and take the child into temporary custody without a warrant if they feel the child is in danger.  This is to protect the child from any other harm that could come to them in the current situation they were in. When interviewing the child there can be some challenges that arise that investigators should be aware of; many children do not want to tell the investigator anything out of fear of being taken away from their parents or guardian, they also are frightened by places they do not know with someone they are unfamiliar with so put them in a comfortable area and make it child friendly. Police also wo...

Anecdotally, through my experiences, I have witnessed numerous times where a departmental  Chief or shift administrator will establish new expectations or measures of performance for employees.  Generally, performance expectations are set to assuage a new demand from external sources or to address a potentially dangerous emerging trend.  Even if the evidence for the new expectation is compelling and thoughtful, many times, employees view the new standard for performance as suspect at best.  Employees often discount it as temporary, arbitrary, or misguided.  Many times, employees will judge a performance expectation against their own internal emotional beliefs of how a thing should or should not operate; instead of a rational weighing of the evidence while being mindful that they are the employee, not the boss.  As an employee, they were hired to do the work of the organization.  The people who run the organization get to set performance standards and it is the responsibility of the emp...

One of the easiest actions for increasing worker performance and creating a pleasant work environment is clarity.  Workers, supervisors, and administrators want clarity.  Clarity of message.  Clarity of rules. Clarity of expectations. People by nature are creatures of habit.  We perform best in environments that are predictable and stable.  Humans like the comfort of knowing what to expect and being able to predict likely outcomes.  Think about your own small habits and the comfort these bring.  Do you like to shop at the same grocery store?  Do you tend to park in the same space at work?  Do you sit in the same chair for shift briefings or meetings?  Do you keep items at work or home arranged in a consistent way?  More specifically, do you wear your work uniform and gear the same way, in the same place, all the time?  More likely than not, most of us can probably identify with habitual patterns of behavior, and would almost certainly admit that we have these habits because they make u...

What does trust look like to you? Is it a a cliché? Does it sound old, tired, and worn out? What images or meanings does the word trust invoke and hold for you? In Lying (1993), Sissela Bok tells us “ Whatever matters to human beings, trust is the atmosphere in which it thrives”; meaning trust must be the underpinning for whatever you’re looking to accomplish. Bok’s notion on trust is especially true in the field of law enforcement.  The actions taken by law enforcement officials have a profound ability to impact the emotional, financial, and stability of families and individual lives for a long time. Research tells us working in an organization built on trust and respect creates high performing, ethical, and fair-minded employees.  Therefore, it’s crucial for law enforcement employees to work in a climate built on trust since their authority can have a weighty influence over others. Unfortunately, there are times law enforcement administrators and co-workers alike treat the word and ...