Dr. Volkan Topalli
Associate Professor of Criminal Justice
Faculty Associate, Partnership for Urban Health Research
Education
- NSF Post-Doctoral Research Fellow (National Consortium on Violence Research), 1998-2000
- Ph.D., Experimental Social Psychology. Tulane University, 1998
- M.S., Experimental Psychology, Tulane University, 1994
- B.S., Psychology (Neuroscience). University of Massachusetts at Amherst, 1989
Research Interests
- Drug markets and urban violence
- Offender decision-making and the psychology of crime
- Experimental work with active, noninstitutionalized street offenders
- Community responses to neighborhood crime (drugs, violence, etc)
Selected Publications (in press or published)
- Taylor, T.J., Holleran, D., & Topalli, V. (2008). Racial bias in case processing: Does victim race affect police clearance of violent crime incidents? Justice Quarterly (forthcoming). [abstract]
- Baker, S., Vaughn, M.S., & Topalli, V. (2008). A review of the powers of bail bond agents and bounty hunters: Exploring legalities and illegalities of quasi-criminal justice officials. Aggressive and Violent Behavior, 13: 124-130. [abstract]
- Dabney, D., Green, L., and Topalli, V. (2006). Freshman learning communities in criminology and criminal justice: An effective tool for enhancing student recruitment and learning outcomes. Journal of Criminal Justice Education, 17: 44-68.
- Dabney, D., Dugan, L., Topalli, V., & Hollinger, D. (2006). The impact of implicit stereotyping on offender profiling: Unexpected results from an observational study of shoplifting. Criminal Justice and Behavior, 33: 646-674. [abstract]
- Topalli, V. (2006). The seductive nature of autotelic crime: How Neutralization Theory serves as a boundary condition for understanding hardcore offending. Sociological Inquiry, 76: 475-501. [abstract]
- Topalli, V. (2005). When being good is bad: An expansion of neutralization theory. Criminology 43: 797-836. [abstract].
- Topalli, V. (2005). Criminal expertise and offender decision-making: An experimental Analysis of how offenders and non-offenders differentially perceive social stimuli. The British Journal of Criminology , 45: 265-295. [abstract] [click here to view experimental stimuli]
- Topalli, V. & Wright, R. (2004). Dubs, dees, beats, and rims: Carjacking and urban violence, in D. Dabney (Ed.) Criminal Behaviors: A Text Reader. Belmont CA: Wadsworth Publishing.
- Jacobs, B. A., Topalli, V., & Wright, R. (2003). Carjacking, Streetlife, and Offender Motivation, British Journal of Criminology, 43, 673-688. [abstract]
- Topalli, V. & O'Neal, E.C. (2003). Retaliatory motivation enhances attributions of hostility when people process ambiguous social stimuli, Aggressive Behavior, 29, 155-172. [abstract]
- Topalli, V., Wright, R. & Fornango, R. (2002). Drug dealers, robbery, and retaliation: Vulnerability, deterrence, and the contagion of violence. The British Journal of Criminology, 42, 337-351. [abstract]
- Jacobs, B.A., Topalli, V., and Wright, R. (2000). Managing retaliation: Drug robbery and informal social control, Criminology, 38, 171-198. [abstract]
- Topalli, V. & O'Neal, E.C. (1995). The recognition of hostile behaviors from dynamic point light displays, in B. Bardy, R. Bootsma, & A. Guiard (Eds), Studies in Perception and Action III. Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates.
External Funding (selected)
- 2005 – 2007: (PI) An Interdisciplinary, Multi-Method Approach to the Study of Active Violent Street Offenders, National Science Foundation. Amount awarded, $127,348.
- 2005 – 2006: (Co-PI with TJ Taylor & David Holleran) Using the National Incident-Based Reporting System to Examine the Extent to Which Police Clearance Rates of Violent Offenses Vary by Victim Race, American Statistical Association, Amount awarded, $43,615.
- 2002 – 2004: (P.I.) Atlanta Arrestee Drug Abuse Monitoring (ADAM) program, National Institute of Justice. Amount awarded, $326,149.
- 2000: (Co-P.I. with Bruce Jacobs and Richard Wright) - The Carjacker’s Perspective: A Qualitative Study of Urban Violence, The Harry Frank Guggenheim Foundation. Amount awarded, $31,250.
Current Research Projects (in process)
- The carjacker's perspective: A qualitative study of urban violence (book, with Richard Wright)
- Drug dealing, offender/victims and revenge: Retaliation as an unmeasured mechanism for the spread of violence in drug market neighborhoods (paper).
- Examining minority trust and confidence in the police: A qualitative, retrospective study of minority-police interactions and perceptions in distressed neighborhoods of Atlanta (research project with Dean Dabney & Sue Carter-Collins).
- Bounty hunters, skip tracers, and bond recovery agents: The role of quasi-formal social control in law enforcement (research project with Dean Dabney & Sue Carter-Collins).
Courses Taught
- Global perspectives on Aggression and Violence [syllabus]
- Special Topics in Criminal Justice: Street Crime [syllabus]
- Statistics in Criminal Justice [syllabus] [assignments]
- Research Methods in Criminal Justice [syllabus]
- Criminology [syllabus]
- Epidemiology and Prevention of Violence (PH7265) [syllabus]
