Research Communities

This research experience for undergraduates aims to provide in-depth practical training for students who have an interest in crime analytics. To make the 10-week period more impactful for attendees, students will focus on one of three research areas that will form a “research community.” These research communities include: Terrorism and Homeland Security, Hate Crimes and Hate Speech, and Health and Justice Inequities. These communities were chosen given their prominent attention in news media, public policy debates, and political discourse at local, regional, and national levels, as well as because they involve a variety of interdisciplinary stakeholders. Our research community topics also reflect prominent criminological themes and involve unique data– some of which are housed only at the University of Arkansas. Therefore, students working on these projects will gain exposure to large social issues in ways that highlight the importance of data-driven decision-making.

Each research community will have a different research focus and primary mentor. Research communities will also be supported through other University of Arkansas and external mentors. Our mentors can be found on our personnel page.

Students grouped into the same research community will interact daily on projects in their area but will engage with participants in other research communities for many activities throughout the summer, as well. Each research community is described briefly below:

Research applying crime and criminal justice perspectives to the study of terrorism and domestic violent extremism have grown exponentially in the 21st century (LaFree, Dugan, and Miller, 2015). Criminologists and other social researchers are increasingly utilizing alternative, open-source data collection approaches to overcome obstacles (Gruenewald, 2022), and many of these novel data sources are housed in our own Terrorism Research Center. Yet, research on grievance-based violence is still in its infancy, and more efforts must be made to create opportunities for students in undergraduate programs around the country to be trained to ethically use these data for their own research.

Students participating in this research will have state-of-the art training in crime analytics and exclusive access to unique open-source databases housed within the Terrorism Research Center (TRC). Projects can include examinations of offenders, victims, locations, and incidents of terrorism and hate crime as captured in the American Terrorism Study (ATS), U.S. Extremist Crime Database (ECDB), and the Bias Homicide Database (BHDB).

Hate crimes/hate speech foster climates of discrimination and violence (Jacobs & Potter, 2000). The language in harassing messages is often crafted to demean, intimidate, and isolate, with words that invoke fear, reinforce power imbalances, and perpetuate systemic discrimination (Allport, 1954). Qualitative methods, such as interviews and discourse analysis, complement quantitative data by uncovering the emotional, psychological, and social harms often hidden in numbers, providing a richer understanding of these issues.

Students participating in this research community will focus on the impact of hate crimes/hate speech on marginalized communities. Projects can include examinations of the language employed in targeted violence manifestos, death threats, and grievance-based humor. As part of this research community, participants will be trained in qualitative methods such as thematic analysis, narrative inquiry, discourse analysis, and grounded theory approaches. Furthermore, participants will learn techniques for coding and interpreting qualitative data using software tools like NVivo or MAXQDA to ensure systematic and rigorous analysis.

The U.S. criminal justice system has rapidly expanded over the last four decades, with unprecedented increases in police contact and mass penal control. Each year, almost 10 million people are arrested, while 2.3 million are incarcerated (Sawyer & Wagner, 2020) and another 4.3 million are under some form of community supervision (Kaeble & Alper, 2020). The consequences of such punishment are far-reaching, affecting the educational attainment, earnings, family stability, and even health of both those contacted by the justice system and their family (Nino et al., 2023). In particular, more research is needed that examines the many ways that exposure to crime and the justice system shapes physical and mental health, especially for specific populations in the United States.

Students participating in this research community will have the opportunity to work with newly collected survey data, as well as prominent national databases like Fragile Families and the National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent to Adult Health. Studies will focus on crime and justice-related processes that might deteriorate health, including criminal victimization, incarceration, probation, and other justice contacts. Students will also have the opportunity to participate in original survey research design and implementation as part of the emerging Arkansas Health Survey and related criminological health projects.

Allport, G. W. (1954). The nature of prejudice. Reading/Addison-Wesley.

Gruenewald, J. (2022). Studying Violent Extremism and Hate Crime Using Open Source Data. The Criminologist. Retrieved on September 1, 2022 from https://asc41.com/publications/the-criminologist/the-criminologist-online/

Jacobs, J. B. & Potter, K. (2000). Hate Crimes: Criminal Law & Identity Politics. Oxford University Press.

Kaeble, D., Glaze, L., Tsoutis, A., & Minton, T. (2016). Correctional populations in the United States, 2016. Bureau of Justice Statistics, 1-19.

LaFree, G., Dugan, L., & Miller, E. (2015). Putting terrorism in context: Lessons from the Global Terrorism Database. New York, NY: Routledge.

Levin, A., Rosenfeld, R., & Deckard, M. (2017). The Law of Crime Concentration: An Application and Recommendations for Future Research. Journal of Quantitative Research, 33, 635-647.

Sawyer, W., & Wagner, P. (2020). Mass incarceration: The whole pie 2020 (Vol. 24). Northampton, MA: Prison Policy Initiative.

Steffensmeier, D., Ulmer, J. T., Feldmeyer, B., & Harris, C. T. (2010). Scope and conceptual issues in testing the race–crime invariance thesis: Black, White, and Hispanic comparisons. Criminology, 48, 1133-1169.