Angela Taylor Receives her Doctorate in Criminal Justice
We are pleased to announce that Angela P. Taylor has recently received her PhD in Criminal Justice at Rutgers University. Her dissertation, entitled, "A Situational Analysis of Violent and Non-violent Outcomes among Drug Business Disputes," used both qualitative and quantitative methods to study how drug dealers resolve conflicts related to their selling activity. Among the key findings: Violent and non-violent disputes can be distinguished by 1) the perceived severity of the infraction; 2) process elements of the conflict interaction, including the tenor of the relationship among the disputants, and flexibility of issue resolution; and 3) the perceived risk of committing violence. In addition, a comparison of the disputes as action sequences showed that both violent and non-violent conflicts follow a stage model (as per Luckenbill, 1977). That is, they evolve from less to more urgent actions, leading in the end to either a physical attack or some form of resolution attempt or compliance. The results reaffirm the importance of past research using situational perspectives to study violence, and extend it by studying non-violent conflicts in greater detail and highlighting the importance of dispute content in conflict decision-making overall.
Dr. Taylor, an NDRI researcher since 1997, is currently the Assistant Project Director in the Institute for Special Populations Research, working on two projects funded by the National Institute on Drug Abuse under the supervision of Senior Principal Investigator, Hilary James Liberty, PhD
- Understanding Self-Reports of Drug Use in Pregnant Women, R21DA017800
- Detecting Crack and Other Cocaine Use With FastPatches, 5R44DA013542-03
January, 2006