The Police Research Lab (PRL) is a working group of doctoral students and faculty in the School of Criminal Justice (SCJ) at Michigan State University (MSU) that conducts research related to policing and police officers. The PRL is directed by Drs. Scott Wolfe and Jeff Rojek from the SCJ. The purpose of the PRL is to provide a mechanism for Drs. Wolfe and Rojek and their doctoral students to work collaboratively on police and policing-related research projects. Lab members routinely engaged in practitioner-researcher partnerships with police departments around the United States and federal law enforcement agencies. These projects result policy-oriented reports for these agencies and peer-reviewed publications. The lab also conducts research on existing datasets to address timely publications and presentations with practical and theoretical significance.
Scott Wolfe is an Associate Professor in the School of Criminal Justice (SCJ) at Michigan State University (MSU) and is co-director of the Police Research Lab (PRL). He received his PhD in criminology and criminal justice from Arizona State University. Scott’s research focuses on policing, organizational justice, legitimacy, and criminological theory and routinely involves research partnerships with local and federal law enforcement agencies. Currently, he is principal investigator on a Bureau of Justice Assistance (BJA) Strategies in Policing Innovation (SPI) grant with the Saginaw (MI) Police Department (SPD). This project focuses on improving police-community relations and engagement through front-porch roll calls in Saginaw neighborhoods. He is principal investigator on a BJA Project Safe Neighborhoods grant that involves a partnership with SPD, other local and federal law enforcement agencies, and community service providers to develop focused deterrence strategies to combat gang-related and other violent crimes in Saginaw. Scott is co-principal investigator on a National Science Foundation grant that involves a partnership with the Grand Rapids (MI) Police Department and examines the factors that contribute to favorable officer decision making and officers’ physiological responses to stressful citizen encounters. Scott recently completed a National Institute of Justice grant evaluating a police officer social interaction and de-escalation training program. His other recent work has examined issues such as the predictors of police officer seatbelt use, police managers’ support for organizational justice, officers’ experience with negative publicity and the Ferguson Effect, officers’ willingness to use procedural justice, and the legal socialization process.
Jeff Rojek is an Associate Professor in the School of Criminal Justice and Director of the Center Anti-Counterfeiting and Product Protection at Michigan State University. He received his Ph.D. in criminology and criminal justice from the University of Missouri-St. Louis. Jeff’s research focuses on policing and anti-counterfeiting. He has received more than $3 million in research funding from federal (National Institute of Justice, Bureau of Justice Assistance, Centers for Disease Control and Prevention-National Institute of Occupational Safety and Health), state and local agencies as a principal and co-principal investigator to examine topics that include police practitioner-researcher partnerships, intelligence led-policing, violent crime, law enforcement response to disasters, officer decision-making, officer safety and police training.