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Research SummaryAlthough the amount of research evidence on the effectiveness of developmental crime prevention has grown considerably in recent decades, the translation of this scientific knowledge into policy and practice has lagged behind. In this article, we consider the challenges as well as the opportunities associated with scaling up evidence‐based programs and we offer an approach for considering the potential effects of deviations in implementation protocols during replications. We use results from the series of studies on the Nurse‐Family Partnership (NFP) to develop a computer simulation model. Based on a large number of simulations, we systematically adjusted key inputs (e.g., target population and fidelity) to mimic a range of possible implementation conditions and to observe the impacts on the estimated intervention effects. As the process progresses from the baseline condition, which reflects the initial implementation conditions specified in the NFP model, to alternative experimental scenarios reflecting problematic deviations in implementation, the number of arrests accumulated by treatment participants begins to increase. This indicates that these implementation challenges have a negative impact on program effects and that we can go some way toward predicting what might occur in implementation as they emerge and interact.Policy ImplicationsThe challenges facing program dissemination and their impact on program results have not been enumerated all that precisely in the literature, which has resulted in the assignment of arbitrary penalties when evaluating the prospects for taking programs to scale. Establishing efficacious interventions is only one part of the process of moving research to practice, and further consideration of the scaling‐up process is integral to translational criminology. Informed computer simulation may be one tool to help guide this program implementation process.

During these times of escalating tensions between the police and the communities they serve, the news and social media have been full of images of police officers wearing military gear, armed with military weapons, and driving military vehicles. This study examined whether the blurred lines between police officers and soldiers have caused the public to begin to see police officers who work in urban areas as equivalent to soldiers in war zones. Using a sample of undergraduate college students in criminal justice classes at a Midwestern university, this study asks whether perceiving police officers to be equivalent to soldiers is related to negative attitudes towards the residents of disadvantaged neighborhoods, weaker support for policies that seek to increase police accountability, an opposition to groups which seek to increase police accountability, and an opposition to convicting a local police officer for the shooting death of an unarmed African American man.The results of the study indicate that a belief in an equivalency between police officers and soldiers is not common in the sample, but it can be predicted by being white, holding more conservative values, and having more negative attitudes toward the residents of disadvantaged neighborhoods. When used as an explanatory variable, a belief in the police-military equivalency does predict lower levels of support for independent prosecutions of police officers who shoot civilians, more negative attitudes toward the Black Lives Matter movement, and a lack of support for convicting a former campus police officer who was charged with murder for the shooting death of an unarmed African American man. The equivalency did not predict lower levels of support for independent investigations of police officers who shoot civilians. This would suggest that there is credibility to the idea that people who view the police as military may be more forgiving or permissive of police misconduct. In addition, the most consistent predictor ii of police accountability in the study was negative attitudes toward residents of disadvantaged neighborhoods.Overall, support for police accountability policies (independent investigations and prosecutions) was high, especially compared to support for Black Lives Matter and convicting the former campus police officer. The significance of race in predicting attitudes toward Black Lives Matter and support for convicting the former campus police officer suggests that white respondents are more likely to be opposed to or ambivalent towards these social justice causes.This could mean that the white respondents in the study supported the idea of police accountability in theory more than they support ways of accomplishing the goal of increasing police accountability and police accountability in action.iii Copyright Notice © Omeed S. Ilchi iv ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS For a while, it seemed like I was never going to finish this dissertation. The fact that I made it this far is due in large part to my support network.First of all, I would like to thank my disse...

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