Steven Briggs
Associate Professor
Faculty
Political Science and Public Policy
Dr. Briggs studies crime and public policy with a focus on policing in the United States. In his recent work, Dr. Briggs seeks to use clever approaches to advance research designs and develop improved measures. This work seeks to advance understanding of the effect of resource allocation to patrols and investigations on crime and case outcomes. Another line of research involves developing an improved measure of harms that can result from police-community interactions in order to better understand which policies and interventions might reduce such harms. He teaches courses in law, public policy and American Government where he incorporates the most recent research using the strongest research designs to develop student understanding of research processes and the current state of the field.
Courses Taught
American Government
Law and Society
Crime and Public Policy
Constitutional Law-Criminal Justice
Awards & Honors
Clouston Faculty Fellow
Education
- Ph.D., University of Nebraska, Omaha 2007
- M.A., University of Nebraska, Omaha 2003
- B.A., University of North Dakota, 2001
Publications
Briggs, Steven, and Sarah Boonstoppel. 2025. Revisiting the Effect of Rapid Response on the Frequency of Reported Crimes using an Instrumental Variable Approach. Justice Quarterly, 42(2), 236-262.
Briggs, Steven. 2018. The Selection of Police Pursuits of Fleeing Motorists for Coverage in Newspapers. Journal of Crime and Justice, 41(3), 310-321.
Briggs, Steven and Andrew J. Myer. 2017. A Longitudinal Examination of the Influence of a Smoke-free Law on the Crime-Bar Relationship. Journal of Crime and Justice, 40(4), 528-541.
Rhineberger-Dunn, Gayle, Steven Briggs, and Nicole Rader. 2016. Clearing Crime in Prime-Time: The Disjuncture between Fiction and Reality. American Journal of Criminal Justice, 41, 255-278.
Briggs, Steven and B. Keith Crew. 2013. The Impact of Population Selection on Examinations of Discretionary Searches in Traffic Stops. Journal of Ethnicity in Criminal Justice, 11, 133-149.
Briggs, Steven and Tara Opsal. 2012. The Influence of Victim Ethnicity on Arrest in Violent Crimes. Criminal Justice Studies: A Critical Journal of Crime, Law and Society, 23, 1087-1111.