Criminal Justice and Public Health

Hayden Smith

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2017
• eBook ISBN:
  9781317401568
• Topic: Medicine
• Subtopic: Criminology

The criminal justice system now serves as the chief provider of health care services to a significant portion of society. This includes the provision of physical and mental health care for offender populations who require substantial health care resources. To date, little is known or understood with regard to how these services and programs are being delivered.

This book addresses the gaps in our knowledge by presenting a range of studies detailing the daily practices that occur in places where criminal justice and public health systems intersect. This includes an assessment of sheriff agency emergency communication systems, a study of problem behaviours and health using a juvenile sample, the challenge of treating mentally ill prison inmates with note of important gender differences, the impact of case management on justice systems, and a review of substance abuse cessation programs among pregnant women currently serving probation and parole sentences. Also included is a policy piece in which the authors call for an integrated model that is neither criminological nor public health specific. These readings provide a range of empirical examples that highlight important successes and challenges facing the criminal justice and public health systems. They suggest that integration and partnerships represent the most efficacious means to reduce critical social problems such as violence, poor health, and criminality. This book was originally published as a special issue of Criminal Justice Studies.

Assessing sheriff’s office emergency and disaster website communications

Philip Matthew Stinson Sr., John Liederbach, L. Fleming Fallon Jr. and Hans Schmalzried

Criminal Justice Program, Bowling Green State University, Bowling Green, OH, USA

Sheriff’s offices are an integral component of the public health emergency preparedness and response system in the USA. During a public health emergency or disaster, sheriff’s offices need to communicate with people affected by the event. Sheriff’s office websites are logical sources for information about disaster preparedness and response efforts. No prior research evaluates emergency preparedness and response resources available through sheriff’s office websites. The current research is a national study of sheriff’s office websites to assess the availability of information relating to emergency preparedness and response. A content analysis of 2590 sheriff’s office website homepages was conducted to determine the presence or absence of nine communications elements important to people seeking information during an emergency or disaster. We found that 71.9% of sheriff’s office website homepages include links to agency services and programs, but only 6.5% provide links to emergency preparedness information. The findings of the study are useful to assess emergency preparedness and the amount of response information available, as well as to identify opportunities to improve sheriff’s office website homepages.

Responses to emergencies and disasters require the dissemination of specific and reliable information to the public, including communication on what to do, where to go, and what help is available. The Internet has increasingly become the prime vehicle to inform individuals and society, as well as victims, about preparing and coping during and after emergencies and disasters (Hobbs, Kittler, Fox, Middleton, & Bates, 2004). In the USA, more than three out of four households (76.7%) have a computer with access to the Internet (US Census Bureau, 2012). Nearly half of all American adults (46%) own a smartphone that provides Internet connectivity and web browsing capability (Smith, 2012). Although traditional media outlets remain an important source of information, the Internet provides news and content that is more easily and quickly accessible for many citizens – so much so that websites and their content can directly affect the overall quality of emergency responses and determine how well victims and the public are served during and in the aftermath of emergencies and disasters.

Emergency communications in the form of web-based content involve a network of public and private entities that includes the office of the sheriff. The sheriff has been identified as a key player within the domains of public health emergency response (McCabe, Barnett, Taylor, & Links, 2010; McKing, 2008), emergency preparedness (Drake, 2009; Giblin, Schafer, & Burruss, 2009; Wholey, Gregg, & Moscovice, 2009), homeland security (Oliver, 2009; Pelfrey, 2009), dissemination of information to increase citizen preparedness (Burch, 2012), and the prevention of terrorism (Pelfrey, 2007). Dating from 900 years of tradition that traces its roots to medieval England, sheriff’s offices in the USA employ over 353,000 personnel, including 182,000 sworn officers (Reaves, 2011). The importance of this popularly elected office within the American policing institution and the realm of emergency preparedness stems from the sheriff’s unique historical and organizational character, particularly the office’s broad scope of legal authority and county-level jurisdiction (Falcone & Wells, 1995; Liederbach & Frank, 2006). The sheriff has evolved into a ‘multi-purpose office’ with a broader range of responsibilities than those performed by municipal police agencies (Falcone & Wells, 1995, p. 130). The sheriff’s prime responsibility is that of conservator of the peace as the chief law enforcement officer in the county. This function includes the role of public safety director and the promotion of public safety at the county level (Struckhoff & Scott, 2003). Most sheriff’s offices are responsible for serving civil process and providing court security, and in many states the county sheriff’s office operates the county jail and/or provides general law enforcement patrols of the unincorporated areas (Hickman & Reaves, 2006). Half of all sheriff’s offices employ full-time school resource officers (Burch, 2012). The public can reach most sheriffs’ offices by dialing enhanced 9–1–1 systems capable of displaying a caller’s name, location, and special needs (Burch, 2012).

During an emergency or disaster, sheriff’s offices need to communicate with citizens affected by the event, and sheriff’s websites are logical sources for information about disaster preparedness and response efforts. We are aware of no published research, however, that evaluate emergency preparedness resources available through sheriff’s websites. These data are integral to an overall assessment of the content and quality of information available to the public during emergencies and disasters given the sheriff’s role as the county-level public safety director and the fact that websites have become an important informational resource during these scenarios. The current research is a national study of sheriff’s websites and information relative to emergency preparedness. We analyzed the content of website homepages for 2590 sheriff’s offices for the presence or absence of nine communication elements important to citizens seeking information during and in the immediate aftermath of a disaster or emergency. These data can be used to assess informational communications available to citizens on sheriff’s websites as well as identify opportunities to improve these websites and the provision of information and emergency services to the public.

Literature review

No published studies assessing sheriff’s websites for effectiveness of communications during an emergency or disaster could be found in the literature; however, there are two areas that provide a relevant context for the current study including: (a) literature on the role and function of the sheriff during emergencies and disasters, and (b) research on the identification of key elements of effective websites, particularly those studies focused on the evaluation of emergency preparedness resources available on the Internet.

The sheriff and emergency response

The sheriff has been largely overlooked as a subject of study by scholars (Helms, 2008; LaFrance & Placide, 2010). Policing scholars have ignored sheriffs and instead portrayed the large urban municipal police department as the dominant mode of policing in the USA (Falcone & Wells, 1995; Liederbach & Frank, 2006). This gap in the literature is no small consideration given the vast organizational and functional differences between these offices and the more-often studied urban municipal agency. First, the sheriff derives authority directly through public election rather than administrative appointment. The political nature of the position supports open communication between the office and the public, as well as coordination between the sheriff and other social service agencies (Falcone & Wells, 1995). Second, sheriffs and their deputy officers typically patrol within a much larger geographic area than municipal police officers, including unincorporated rural areas and/or those having overlapping jurisdiction within local municipalities. Third, the sheriff has historically been entrusted with a broader range of responsibilities than those performed by municipal agencies. Similar to the historical shire-reeve, the modern office of sheriff typically performs several functions in addition to traditional law enforcement, including court services, civil process and writs, correctional administration, and the collection of taxes and fees (Brown, 1989). Struckhoff and Scott (2003) emphasize the degree of variation across these offices nationwide, and the fact that sheriff’s operating in smaller nonmetropolitan or rural counties differ from those who ‘report to an office in a skyscraper and manage an office whose budget exceeds that of many corporations or cities’ (p. 68).

Despite these variations, the office of sheriff typically operates as a county-wide law enforcement agency that holds the potential for coordinating efforts designed to mitigate and respond to emergencies and disasters, such as the maintenance of county and civil law enforcement operations, search and rescue, perimeter security, and victim assistance (Hickman & Reaves, 2006). These traditional roles have expanded in the aftermath of the 2001 terrorist attacks and federal strategies designed to improve emergency preparedness and mitigate threats posed by terrorism (Murray, 2005; Pelfrey, 2007). Many agencies have recently developed sheriff’s emergency response teams to deal with emergencies that occur both inside and outside the jail system, including those that involve hazardous materials and natural disasters (Strandberg, 2004). Likewise, the National Sheriff’s Association’s (NSA) Institute for Homeland Security provides training in homeland protection to emergency responders including sheriff’s deputies to become Certified Homeland Protection Professionals who specialize in the prevention and mitigation of all types of emergencies and disasters (NSA, 2012).

Evaluation of emergency preparedness resources on the Internet

Studies on websites operated within the retail industry provide a basis for understanding how website design and content influences the user experience. For example, website content that is current and maintained by experts appears to contribute to success (Yen, 2007); but, poor website design can frustrate users and cause them to leave without making a purchase (Tan & Wei, 2006; Yeung & Lu, 2004). Although many features of retail websites are not immediately applicable to sheriff’s websites, there is an emerging line of research focused on the evaluation of emergency preparedness resources on the Internet. These studies can be used to identify key elements critical for effective communications during emergencies and disasters and points of comparison between websites operated by sheriffs and those operated by other types of agencies, including local health departments (LHD) (Fallon, Schmalzried, & Hasan, 2011), local emergency management agencies (EMA) (Schmalzried, Fallon, Keller, & McHugh, 2011), and local chapters of the American Red Cross (ARC) (Schmalzried, Fleming Fallon, & Harper, 2012).

These studies identified key elements for effective online communications during emergencies and disasters that were adapted from the criteria used by Kim, Eng, Deering, and Maxfield (1999) to assess health-related websites. Fallon, Schmalzried, and Hasan (2011) analyzed the content of websites operated by LHD based on the presence or absence of nine elements deemed to be critical for effective communications during emergencies or disasters. They found that four of five (80.5%) of LHD website homepages included the agency phone number, half (49.4%) provided links to emergency information, and one in five (19.6%) listed an agency email address. Less than one in 20 (4.3%) of the LHD homepages allowed visitors to sign up for automatic alerts or notifications. Schmalzried et al. (2011) analyzed websites operated by local EMA and found that the content of these websites were similar to those operated by LHDs in terms of the inclusion of agency phone number (82.3%) and links to emergency information (52%). Homepages operated by EMAs, however, were much more likely to list an agency email address (38.3%) and/or allow users to sign up for alerts or notifications (21.1%). Schmalzried et al. (2012) analyzed websites operated by local chapters of the ARC. ARC homepages were more likely to include an organizational logo (95.7%) and/or allow users to sign up for alerts or notifications (23%) than either LHDs or EMAs. ARC homepages provided links to other disaster relief/emergency preparedness organizations or information (32%) less commonly than LHDs (49.4%) or EMAs (52%).

Method

A ...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Table of Contents
• Citation Information
• Notes on Contributors
• Dedication
• Introduction: Public Health & Criminal Justice
• 1. Assessing sheriff’s office emergency and disaster website communications
• 2. Exploring gender differences in constellations of problem behaviors and associated health-related factors during adolescence
• 3. The effects of treatment exposure on prison misconduct for female prisoners with substance use, mental health, and co-occurring disorders
• 4. Correctional outcomes of offenders with mental disorders
• 5. Service utilization in a cohort of criminal justice-involved men: implications for case management and justice systems
• 6. Influences on substance use cessation during pregnancy: an exploratory study of women on probation and parole
• 7. Moving prison health promotion along: towards an integrative framework for action to develop health promotion and tackle the social determinants of health
• Index