James J . Nolan
James Nolan, Ph.D. is a professor in the Department of Sociology and Anthropology at West Virginia University where he teaches courses related to institutional reform, structured inequality, and social control. His research focuses on police reform, hate crime, crime measurement, and institutional reform in higher education. He has received funding in recent years from the National Science Foundation, the U.S. Department of Justice, and the American Statistical Association. In 2014 he was appointed to the National Academy of Science Panel on Modernizing the Nation’s Crime Statistics.
Dr. Nolan’s recent publications include three books: Policing in an Age of Reform: An Agenda for Research and Practice (Palgrave/MacMillan), The Violence of Hate: Understanding Harmful Forms of Bias and Bigotry, 4th edition (Rowman & Littlefield), and Engaging Faculty in Group-Level Change for Institutional Transformation: Disrupting Inequity and Building Inclusive Academic Departments (Routledge).
In addition, he has published nearly 70 book chapters and professional journal articles appearing in outlets such as Policing & Society, American Behavioral Scientist; British Journal of Criminology, Journal of Quantitative Criminology; Violence Against Women, Journal of Contemporary Criminal Justice; Justice, Information Sciences; The Scientific World Journal, Victims & Offenders, Criminal Justice Studies; Violence & Gender, Homicide Studies; Journal of Criminal Justice, Journal of Aggression, Maltreatment, & Trauma, and The American Sociologist.
Dr. Nolan’s professional career began as a police officer in Wilmington, Delaware. In 13 years with that department, he rose to the rank of lieutenant and worked in a variety of divisions, including patrol, community policing, and drug, organized crime and vice. He is a 1992 graduate of the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) National Academy. Just prior to joining the faculty at West Virginia University, Dr. Nolan served as chief of the FBI’s Crime Analysis, Research and Development Unit that provided management oversight for the national crime data collection programs. Dr. Nolan earned a Ph.D. from Temple University. His graduate work focused on the study of group and social processes.
Links to papers, journal articles, books, book chapters, and public talks are available at this website under the research tab.
Dr. Nolan’s recent publications include three books: Policing in an Age of Reform: An Agenda for Research and Practice (Palgrave/MacMillan), The Violence of Hate: Understanding Harmful Forms of Bias and Bigotry, 4th edition (Rowman & Littlefield), and Engaging Faculty in Group-Level Change for Institutional Transformation: Disrupting Inequity and Building Inclusive Academic Departments (Routledge).
In addition, he has published nearly 70 book chapters and professional journal articles appearing in outlets such as Policing & Society, American Behavioral Scientist; British Journal of Criminology, Journal of Quantitative Criminology; Violence Against Women, Journal of Contemporary Criminal Justice; Justice, Information Sciences; The Scientific World Journal, Victims & Offenders, Criminal Justice Studies; Violence & Gender, Homicide Studies; Journal of Criminal Justice, Journal of Aggression, Maltreatment, & Trauma, and The American Sociologist.
Dr. Nolan’s professional career began as a police officer in Wilmington, Delaware. In 13 years with that department, he rose to the rank of lieutenant and worked in a variety of divisions, including patrol, community policing, and drug, organized crime and vice. He is a 1992 graduate of the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) National Academy. Just prior to joining the faculty at West Virginia University, Dr. Nolan served as chief of the FBI’s Crime Analysis, Research and Development Unit that provided management oversight for the national crime data collection programs. Dr. Nolan earned a Ph.D. from Temple University. His graduate work focused on the study of group and social processes.
Links to papers, journal articles, books, book chapters, and public talks are available at this website under the research tab.
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Papers by James J . Nolan
Therefore, it is important to consider the current events in the feld of policing and how they bear on the efficacy and ethics of forensic investigators.
Therefore, it is important to consider the current events in the feld of policing and how they bear on the efficacy and ethics of forensic investigators.
critical information is uncovered about overall trends, related intermittent
spikes, and less common sharp inflectional shifts in aggression. These shifts impact social cohesion and grievously harm specific sub-groups when aggression escalates and is redirected or mainstreamed. These data, so critical to public policy formation, show that we are in such a historic inflection period now. Moreover, analysis of the latest, though partial Federal Bureau of Investigation hate crime data release, when overlaid with available data from excluded large jurisdictions, reveals hate crimes hit a record high in 2021 in the United States that previously went unreported. This Essay analyzes the most recent national data as well as various numerical and policy milestones that accompanied the historic, yet incomplete, implementation of hate crime data collection and related statutes over recent decades. This analysis of emerging trends in the United States is undertaken in the context of bigoted aggression broken down over time.
Former Wilmington police lieutenant and current professor of sociology at WVU James Nolan joins Rob in the bunker to talk about his recent op-ed about police reform in Wilmington and how we need to redefine the relationship between police, law enforcement, and public safety.
Efforts at institutional transformation continue to center individual actors. This is evident in the proliferation of programs that train individuals on implicit bias, search strategies, and other diversity and inclusion-based content as solutions for inequities in academia. Acknowledging the value of these approaches, this book adds a new focus: group-level processes. It unifies research on gender and racial inequity with concepts from social psychological theories of group dynamics to present a model of change centered on professional adult learners, including faculty and academic staff. The book details the implementation of group-level processes based on insights from the learning sciences, higher education leadership, communication studies, and group facilitation to instill norms for a more equitable and inclusive institution. Drawing on quantitative and qualitative data to illustrate the impact of group-level initiatives, the book offers recommendations to enable the application of this model in higher education contexts.
This book will be of interest to researchers and graduate students studying institutional transformation, academic social justice leadership, and faculty professional development and to those interested in integrating justice and equity into team science, translational research, and other trans-, inter-, and multi-disciplinary fields.
Table of Contents
This mixed-methods study uses a Participatory Action Research (PAR) approach, which is isomorphic to situational policing. PAR democratizes the research process by including the stakeholders (e.g., local residents, business people, police officers) as co-researchers. The sampling frame includes neighborhoods in four police districts. The PIs select two neighborhoods in each district based on high risk for crime and poor police-community relationships. In each police district, one neighborhood will be identified as a control and the other for the PACE treatment. Pre- and post-treatment surveys will be conducted by the PAR teams with graduate students. The four neighborhoods identified for the PACE treatment will participate in structured conversations designed to foster understanding about the challenges between and among the police and residents. The conversation will include a broad spectrum of stakeholder participants leading to informed and collaborative action. All eight neighborhoods will be surveyed at times pre and post treatment. In addition, semi-structured, open-ended focus groups will be conducted in the treatment neighborhoods by the PAR research team. The goal of both the quantitative and qualitative components of the study is to reveal latent psychodynamic processes that create a neighborhood atmosphere. The study measures the effect of the neighborhood atmosphere on crime, violence, drug abuse, and other social problems and the impact of PACE in a reimagined policing with a safe, strong community focus.
This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.