Areas of Expertise

• Community corrections
• Institutional corrections
• Program evaluation
• Policy evaluation
• Sex offenders
• Juvenile and female offenders

Key Findings

• The therapeutic practice of motivational interviewing can be effective when utilized in a probation department setting, if supported by the right tools and officer training. MORE
• The self-reporting mechanism of CEMI (Client Evaluation of Motivational Interviewing) was found to be a useful tool in measuring the probation officer’s level of training in implementing motivational interviewing with their clients. MORE
• Correctional officers who perceived that their work resulted in arguments and increased irritability at home, experienced higher levels of job stress and lower levels of job satisfaction than those officers who did not perceive such conflicts at home. MORE
• Correctional officers who perceived that behaviors learned at work were detrimental to being a good parent, spouse, or friend were significantly more likely to have higher job stress and lower job satisfaction. MORE
• Legislation that requires certain classes of sex offenders to wear GPS trackers as a condition of their probation may not be as effective as anticipated, primarily due to technological limitations of GPS technology. MORE
• Probation officers’ time was disproportionately consumed by responding to faulty alerts that stemmed from a lack of the GPS units’ capacity to continuously and consistently monitor the offenders. MORE
• Young adults whose mothers had served time in prison were more than twice as likely to have an adult arrest, an adult conviction, and an adult incarceration during their lifetime. MORE
• Young adults whose mothers served time in person were three times more likely to report maternal absence and half as likely to graduate from college. MORE
• Geographic clustering of ex-offenders does not exacerbate employment barriers. MORE
• Older employers are less likely than younger employers to hire ex-offenders. MORE

Biography

Gaylene Armstrong, Professor of Criminology and Criminal Justice at the University of Nebraska at Omaha, is an expert in institutional and community corrections, program and policy evaluation as well as juvenile, female, and sex offenders.

Armstrong consulted with the National Institute of Corrections, the National Institute of Justice, the Texas Department of Criminal Justice, the Iowa Community Corrections Improvement Association and numerous schools, jails and specialty court programs throughout Texas. She was recognized as one of the Most Prolific Female Scholars in Elite Criminology and Criminal Justice Journals and Top 20 Female “Academic Stars” in Criminology by the Journal of Criminal Justice Education.

She has been published in numerous academic journals and is the author of Private vs. Public Operation: Juvenile Correctional Facilities.

Armstrong received her Ph.D. and M.A. in Criminology and Criminal Justice from the University of Maryland and B.A. in Psychology from the University of Manitoba, Winnipeg, Canada.