News

We are pleased to announce Dr. Jeffrey Bumgarner as Professor and Director of the School of Criminal Justice and Criminology, effective January 2, 2023.
 
Dr. Bumgarner joins Texas State from North Dakota State University where he has been since 2014, including five years as chair of the Department of Criminal Justice and Public Administration and two years as interim chair of the Department of Sociology and Anthropology. Dr. Bumgarner earned a Ph.D. from the University of Minnesota and previously held faculty positions at Minnesota State University, Texas Christian University, and Minot State University. Dr. Bumgarner has over a decade of full-time experience in law enforcement. He has served as a small town police chief, deputy sheriff, and federal agent with the U.S. Department of Homeland Security, U.S. Department of Agriculture, and U.S. General Services Administration.
 
Dr. Bumgarner’s scholarly interests focus on criminal justice institutions, especially federal law enforcement and police organizational culture. He has authored, co-authored, or edited nine books, including Federal Agents: The Growth of Federal Law Enforcement in America, Immigration: Law, Politics, and Crime, Criminal Justice in America: The Encyclopedia of Crime, Law Enforcement, Courts, and Corrections, and Extremism in the Police (forthcoming), as well as multiple journal articles and book chapters. He regularly teaches courses on law enforcement, criminal procedure, the courts, and homeland security.

 

Dr. Kathleen Padilla has been hired as an Assistant Professor in the School of Criminal Justice and Criminology and will begin in Fall 2022. She is currently working as a postdoctoral researcher in the School of Criminology and Criminal Justice at Arizona State University, where she received her PhD in Summer 2021. Kathleen’s research interests include police officer stress and mental health, police-community relationships, youth perceptions of the police, police officer perceptions, and qualitative methodology. Her work has appeared in the Journal of Experimental Criminology; Journal of Developmental and Life-Course Criminology; Psychology, Public Policy, and Law; Policing: A Journal of Policy and Practice; and Occupational Medicine.

 

Dr. Lidia Nuño has been hired as an Associate Professor by the School of Criminal Justice and Criminology, and will begin fall 2022. Dr. Nuño holds undergraduate and graduate degrees in psychology, criminology and criminal justice, and justice studies from Arizona State University. Dr. Nuño’s research and teaching interests include immigration, gangs, and policing. She has collaborated with several law enforcement agencies throughout the United States, and has worked with active and incarcerated offenders, including gang members and juveniles, and at-risk youth in the United States, Central America, and the Caribbean.

She has also served as project manager, project director, and lead analyst for United States Agency for International Development (USAID), United States Department of Homeland Security (DHS), and National Institute of Justice (NIJ) funded research projects. Dr. Nuño is currently the Principal Investigator in a National Institute of Justice (NIJ) funded project that examines immigration status and its relation to the likelihood of engaging in crime, gang membership, and experiencing violent victimization.

She plans on bringing her Social Equity Research and Policy lab to Texas State when she begins this fall!

 

Melanie Palacios Soderstrom has been hired as an Assistant Professor by the School of Criminal Justice and Criminology, and will begin fall 2022. She is a former criminal defense attorney with a commitment to engaging in impactful applied research evaluating criminal/juvenile justice programs and policies. Her dissertation takes advantage of a Florida school district’s decision to integrate and expand their school resource officer (SRO) program in the 2016-17 school year. The study uses a convergent parallel mixed methods design to explore the roles, training, and perceptions of the SROs, while simultaneously analyzing their impact on student outcomes.

Melanie was recently awarded a grant from the National Council for Mental Wellbeing to study the effectiveness of Youth Mental Health First Aid training for law enforcement officers and explore the instructors’ experiences implementing the training within their agencies. She has also worked on multiple evaluations of the Mental Health First Aid training program and is currently serving as co-principal investigator and project coordinator of the CPASS project, funded by SAMHSA. Her research has been published in School Mental Health and Youth Violence and Juvenile Justice.

 

The Law Enforcement Advancing Data and Science (LEADS) Academics program (currently in pilot) offers a unique opportunity for early-career academics to engage with NIJ LEADS Scholars, all of whom are mid-career police officers dedicated to advancing the police profession through science. NIJ started piloting the LEADS Academics to the Scholars program in 2019, with the goal of advancing practitioner-led research and promoting sustainable researcher/practitioner partnerships.

LEADS Academics, coordinating with the LEADS “implementation and development team” (RAND, PERF, and IACP) will provide additional guidance and information to LEADS Scholars regarding research methodology and ethical concerns associated with conducting research. The LEADS Scholars will help the LEADS Academics improve their understanding and skills related to working with law enforcement agencies and practitioners.

Dr. Brimbal was one of only three academics selected as part of the LEADS Class of 2021. 

 

Our colleague and friend, Dr. Mitch Chamlin, passed away June 3, 2021 in Toledo, Ohio. He was born in Queens, New York to the late David and Betty Chamlin. He is survived by his wife of 24 years Beth Sanders; as well as his brother, Rick (Theresa) Chamlin; nieces, Michelle Chamlin and Alex (Shane) Gronemeyer; nephew, Nick Chamlin and great nieces and nephews.

Dr. Chamlin graduated from Forest Hills High School in Queens, New York and earned his undergraduate degree in History and PhD in Sociology from the University at Albany, SUNY. He began his professorial career at the University of Oklahoma in 1985 and was a Professor in our School of Criminal Justice and Criminology at the time of his death.

Dr. Chamlin authored numerous research articles addressing the relationship of social structure to crime rates. His research appeared in various academic venues including Criminology, Homicide Studies, and the American Journal of Public Health. Mitch also enjoyed teaching and mentoring students. Before his diagnosis of scleroderma, Mitch was an avid runner, finishing the Flying Pig Marathon and several half marathons.

In lieu of flowers, memorials can be made to the Scleroderma Research Foundation srfcure.org  or Texas State University’s Kevin Shimek Criminal Justice Scholarship.

 

We are proud to announce that Texas State University's  Spring 2021 Engaging Research Newsletter features a Faculty Research Spotlight on our own Dr. Laure Brimbal. Prior to joining the faculty in 2020, Dr. Brimbal was a Postdoctoral Research Associate at Iowa State University.

In partnership with Iowa State University researchers, Dr. Brimbal is currently being funded by the FBI to develop a framework to understand suspect resistance and how to overcome it within an ethically-minded interview framework. They are collaborating with law enforcement agencies to inform this framework with both practitioner and interview subject perspectives.

Full profile of Dr. Brimbal in the Engaging Research Newsletter

The Department of Justice’s Office of Community Oriented Policing Services (COPS Office) announced a new $8.5 million award under the Preparing for Active Shooter Situations (PASS) program to the Advanced Law Enforcement Rapid Response Training (ALERRT) Center at Texas State University to provide multi-disciplinary, scenario-based active shooter training to first responders. Read the press release

The School of Criminal Justice and Criminology is now on Twitter! ( @TXST_CJC). Please follow us for updates on the many accomplishments of the School's students, faculty, and staff.

Statement of the American Society of Criminology Executive Board regarding the deaths of George Floyd, Breonna Taylor, and Ahmaud Arbery

 

The Academy of Criminal Justice Sciences (ACJS) and the American Society of Criminology (ASC) are the two primary national professional organizations in our field. Both have released statements on the horrifying violence against George Floyd, Breonna Taylor, and Ahmaud Arbery, and the systematic and disparate impact of the criminal justice system on communities of color in the United States. We support these statements, and would like to share them.

ACJS Statement on Injustices Against Communities of Color: A Call to Action

Statement of the American Society of Criminology Executive Board regarding the deaths of George Floyd, Breonna Taylor, and Ahmaud Arbery

We are proud to announce that MSCJ student Nicole Kinbarovsky has won the Outstanding Student Paper Award for the Academy of Criminal Justice Sciences (ACJS) Restorative and Community Justice (RCJ) Section. Her paper is entitled, "Exploring the Support Networks of Those Caring for Loved Ones on Texas Death Row.

To view a video presentation of Nicole's award-winning paper, please click here.

We are proud to note that Nicole recently won Honorable Mention for her submission: "A Brother's Fight to #FreeRodneyReed" in the Graduate College's Visualizing Research competition. This campus-wide competition asks graduate students to produce an image directly related to their current research or creative activity, accompanied by a title for the work and a brief narrative explaining the relationship of the image to the scholastic work.

Dr. Lucia Summers is working closely with Nicole.

The Graduate College at Texas State University hosted the 11th Annual International Research Conference for Graduate Students on November 5-6, 2019. More than 130 graduate students from various disciplines at Texas State and from other institutions, including Texas Tech University and the University of Texas at Austin, presented original research findings during poster and panel sessions.

Three graduate students from the School of Criminal Justice — Katlyn Casagrande, Ashley Blinkhorn, and Kimberly Wong —participated in the conference. We are proud to note that doctoral student Kimberly Wong's study, titled “Trial by Tabloid: Can Debiasing Training Remedy Pretrial Publicity Effects?” won in the Top Doctoral Poster category. Dr. Angela Jones is working closely with both Ashley and Kimberly.

The School of Criminal Justice welcomes two visiting scholars from Brazil this semester, Dr. Ludmila Ribeiro and Dr. Alexandre Diniz. During recent Study Abroad trips, several Criminal Justice faculty and 16 undergraduate and graduate students have built alliances with professors and researchers in Belo Horizonte, including Drs. Ribeiro and Diniz.

Ludmila Ribeiro was recently awarded a Brazilian Ministry of Education Scholarship, allowing her to visit Texas State. In Brazil, she is a Professor in the Department of Sociology and a researcher in the Center for Studies on Criminality and Public Safety, both at the Federal University of Minas Gerais. Before joining the University in 2012, she was the Coordinator of the School of Social Science at the Getulio Vargas Foundation and visiting scholar at the University of Groningen. She has a Ph.D. in Sociology, a Bachelor’s and Master’s degree in Public Administration, and a Bachelor’s degree in Law. During her career, she has coordinated several research projects about how the criminal justice system operates in Brazil. Her current research interests are focused on the factors influencing the length of time of homicide trials, efficacy of custody hearings, and management of the prison system. While at Texas State, she is studying plea bargaining in the U.S., which will soon be introduced into Brazil courts.

Alexandre Diniz holds a Bachelor’s degree in Advertisement from the Pontifical Catholic University of Minas Gerais (PUCMinas), a Master´s in Geography from Kansas State University (K-State), a Ph.D. in Geography from Arizona State University (ASU) and a Pos-Doc in Geography from McGill. He has held academic positions at the Federal University of Roraima (UFRR) and Federal University of Minas Gerais (UFMG). He was a visiting researcher at the Université de Lille (France) and Curtin University (Australia). Presently, he is a professor in the Geography Department of the Catholic University of Minas Gerais (PUCMinas), where he has developed several research projects on the geography of crime.

On Friday, April 26th, 2019, undergraduate students D’Mornaquah Fontenot and Courtney Meyers presented research conducted as part of an independent study. Under the supervision of Dr. Angela Jones, D’Mornaquah and Courtney examined the use of immersive environments to study eyewitness memory. Eyewitness misidentification is a leading contributing factor to wrongful convictions. In the current study, student participants were randomly assigned to view a crime with a head-mounted display in 360 or on a computer screen in 2D. This experimental design allowed for a test of whether an immersive environment results in a more realistic eyewitness experience relative to the more commonly employed 2D mock crime, and consequently whether there are differences in stress or memory accuracy. Student participants who viewed a crime in 360 thought the experience was more realistic and stressful, and they were less accurate than those who viewed the 2D crime. These findings suggest artificial witnessing conditions may overestimate a witness’s ability to make an accurate decision relative to more realistic witnessing conditions.

Dr. Kim Rossmo received the Paul Tappan Award at the 2019 Western Society of Criminology Conference in Honolulu, Hawai’i. The Tappan Award honors individuals who have made outstanding contributions to the field of criminology. Dr. Rossmo is the University Endowed Chair in Criminology and the Director of the Center for Geospatial Intelligence and Investigation in the School of Criminal Justice at Texas State University.