Jim Nolan is an assistant professor in the Division of Sociology and Anthropology at West Virginia University where he teaches courses on crime, criminality, and social control, including the course on hate crimes. His research currently focuses on police procedures, crime measurement, hate crimes and homicide.
Dr. Nolan’s professional career began as a police officer in Wilmington, Delaware, where he served that community for 13 years. During that time, he worked in a variety of divisions, including patrol, community policing, organized crime and vice, and planning and research. In 1993 Dr. Nolan was the project director of the community-policing component of the Weed & Seed Program in Wilmington, Delaware, which was one of the first 16 sites for this program in the United States. He is a graduate of the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) National Academy, and went on to serve as the Chief of the Crime Analysis, Research, and Development Unit of the FBI’s Criminal Justice Information Services (CJIS) Division. His unit provided management oversight for the National Hate Crime Data Collection Program in the United States.
Following his departure from the FBI, Jim moved to the staff of the West Virginia University, where he currently serves as an assistant professor. In recent years he has published several articles in professional sociological journals on the topic of hate crime data collection, including the following:
“The Impact of State UCR Policy and Procedures on Hate Crime Reporting” Criminal Justice Studies. (with Cynthia Barnett)
“Learning to See Hate Crimes: A Framework for Understanding and Clarifying Ambiguities in Bias Crime Classification,” in Criminal Justice Studies, 17 (1). (with Jack McDevitt, Shea Cronin, and Amy Farrell)
“The Hate Crime Statistics Act of 1990: Developing a Method for Measuring the Occurrence of Hate Violence,” in American Behavioral Scientist, 46(1) (with Yoshio Akiyama)
“Assessing the Climate for Hate Crime Reporting in Law Enforcement: A Force Field Analysis,” in The Justice Professional, 15(2).
“Methods for Understanding and Analyzing NIBRS Data,” in the Journal of Quantitative Criminology (15) 2. (with Yoshio Akiyama)
“Establishing the Statistical Relationship Between Population Size and UCR Crime Rate: It’s Impact and Implications," in the Journal of Criminal Justice.
In addition, Dr. Nolan recently participated in a U.S. Department of Justice-funded study of hate crime reporting practices in the United States. A technical report was prepared entitled “Bridging the Information Disconnect in Bias Crime Reporting” (Jack McDevitt was the principal investigator in this study).
In 1998, Dr. Nolan was a member of the U.S. Attorney General’s Task Force on Hate Crime Training and the Task Force on Hate Crime Data Collection. He also participated that year in a White House Conference on Hate Crime. Dr. Nolan earned a Ph.D. in psychoeducational processes from Temple University. His graduate work focused on the study of group and social processes.