Ivan Y Sun - University of Delaware
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Ivan Y Sun
University of Delaware
Sociology and Criminal Justice
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Ivan Y. Sun is Professor in the Department of Sociology and Criminal Justice and faculty of Asian Studies at the University of Delaware.  He received his Ph.D. in criminal justice from the State University of New York, University at Albany.  His research interests include police attitudes and behavior, public assessments of legal authorities, and crime and justice in Asian societies.  Dr. Sun has published three books and more than 140 refereed journal articles since 2002, including more than 90 pieces on mainland China, Taiwan and Hong Kong.  He is one of the editors of Routledge Handbook of Chinese Criminology (2014) and co-authored the book Policing in Taiwan: From Authoritarianism to Democracy (2014) and Race, Immigration and Social Control: Immigrants' Views on the Police (2018).  He has been rated as one of the top 50 most prolific sole and lead authors in eight elite criminology and criminal justice journals.  His recent publications on policing have appeared in Justice Quarterly, Journal of Research in Crime and Delinquency, British Journal of Criminology, and Crime and Delinquency.  Before joining the academia, Dr. Sun was a law enforcement officer in Taiwan for 13 years and has conducted more than 200-hour direct observation of patrol officers at work in several U.S. police departments.  Dr. Sun served as President of the Association of Chinese Criminology and Criminal Justice (ACCCJ) in the U.S. between 2016 and 2018.
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Papers by Ivan Y Sun
Contextual determinants of police attitudes toward AIassisted policing: a vignette experiment
Journal of Experimental Criminology
, 2026
Objectives: This study examines whether police officers’ evaluations of AI-assisted models vary a...
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Objectives: This study examines whether police officers’ evaluations of AI-assisted models vary across different enforcement contexts. We assess how situational contexts are associated with officers’ attitudes toward AI policing models.
Methods: A 2 × 2 × 2 vignette design was employed to investigate how situational contexts (i.e., hot spot, traffic violation, and criminal activity) are related to police officers’ perceptions of the AI-assisted model. Chinese sworn officers (N = 1,194) were randomly assigned to different versions of descriptive narratives. The relationships between varying vignette conditions and their attitudes toward AI instrumental legitimacy, ethical concerns, and social surveillance are assessed through regression analysis.
Results: Officers’ evaluations of AI were context dependent. Detection of criminal activity is associated with increased instrumental legitimacy and marginally greater support for AI social surveillance. Hotspot contexts are accompanied by enhanced support for instrumental legitimacy.
Conclusions: Officers’ attitudes toward AI policing are not uniform but vary with enforcement contexts. Effective implementation of AI within police departments requires careful attention to the critical role of situational factors related to how technologies are perceived and used in practice.
Trust in Police Scale
PsycTESTS Dataset
, 2014
Who is Best Suited for Handling Domestic Violence: A Comparison of Female and Male Officers Perspectives in Taiwan
Hypotheses
The Blackwell Encyclopedia of Sociology
, Feb 15, 2007
Official reaction to crime in Taiwan
Gini Coefficient
The Blackwell Encyclopedia of Sociology
, Feb 15, 2007
Meta-Analysis of Gender Differences in Police Officers' Behavior
A Qualitative Study of the Impacts of Work-family Conflict on Police Officer Stress
Routledge eBooks
, Nov 23, 2022
Urban Resilience Against Crimes Upon Pandemic
Zenodo (CERN European Organization for Nuclear Research)
, Apr 2, 2022
Since early 2020, urban areas across the world had been affected by the COVID-19 pandemic, when s...
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Since early 2020, urban areas across the world had been affected by the COVID-19 pandemic, when social distancing and lockdowns measures had been widely deployed to restrict citizens' mobility, which induced dramatic changes on urban crimes and delinquency among cities. Drawing on crime data of London and New York in 2019, 2020 and 2021, this study attempts the two-year "look back" on the impact of massive lockdowns on crime trends and corresponding resilience, to evaluate the crime "vulnerability" and "recovery" capability against pandemic incurred lockdowns. In the assistance of criminological theories, routine activity, and general strain; and cutting-edge machine learning techniques on relating the community-level "preparedness" on geodemographics, socio-economic profiles (SES indicators) and "recovery" indicator for mobility changes, this research had proposed PROP-C model to evaluate urban crime resilience capability in comparing the crime changes pre-para the lockdown (2019 vs. 2020) and para-post lockdown (2020 vs.2021). The research findings suggest a general crime reduction upon mobility changes during lockdowns in 2020 among the metropolitan cities, but sharp "recovery" in 2021 since the measures had been lifted with regional resilience features. In general, the holistic mobility change had been found the most crime-influential factor rather than any fine-scaled SES characteristics, echoing with the commonly off-site criminal behaviors rather than committing crimes locally; the data-driven evidence could be further utilized for city-wide crime prediction and prevention strategies towards a promising post-pandemic recovery.
Work-family conflict among female police officers in three Chinese societies
Excellent human capital or institution? Evidence from judicial reform of the judge quota system in China
The recent major judicial reforms in China involve implementing a judge quota and personnel manag...
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The recent major judicial reforms in China involve implementing a judge quota and personnel management system. To date, little is known about the impact of the reforms. Using over 14 million Chinese court judgments data from 2014 to 2018, this article evaluates the connections between qualified judges and labor specialization and judicial efficiency and quality. This study found that the judge quota reform in China has improved judicial efficiency and quality due mainly to the personnel classification management system rather than the reappointed judges. By introducing task-specific returns to specialization in the judicial system, the personnel classification management system has allowed judges to concentrate on their adjudicative tasks instead of administrative and secretarial duties and thereby improving judicial performance. Institution design plays an important role in optimizing resource allocation and improving efficiency. Implications for policy and future research are discussed.
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Judge quota reform significantly reduces trial length by 0.323, enhancing judicial efficiency and decreasing appeal rates.
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The Intersectionality of Asian Americans' Violent and Non-Violent Victimization Before and During the Pandemic
While a spike in victimization against Asian Americans has been noticed during the pandemic, the ...
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While a spike in victimization against Asian Americans has been noticed during the pandemic, the intersectionality of key sociodemographic traits among Asian American victims has received limited research attention, especially when comparing before and during the pandemic patterns. This study explores the role of intersecting identities, including gender, age, and immigrant status, in violent and non-violent crime victimization among Asian Americans. We used data from the National Crime Victimization Survey (2017-2023) and employed negative binomial regression with a three-way interaction. We found that, before the pandemic, non-violent incidents were more likely to occur in private locations but less likely to occur at night, involving stranger offenders, or farther from home. During the pandemic, while private locations and distance from home continued to shape the rate of non-violent incident as during pre-pandemic, having a college degree decreased the rate of non-violent victimization. For violent victimization, none of the incident and individual characteristics were significant predictors before the pandemic, whereas nighttime and being female, immigrant, and elderly increased the rate of violent incident victimization. Interaction terms
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The elderly-immigrant interaction reduced non-violent incidents, suggesting that age may mitigate risks associated with immigrant status.
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Asian Americans' Reporting of Violent Crime Victimization to the Police
This study examines the association between the characteristics of violent crime incidents and th...
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This study examines the association between the characteristics of violent crime incidents and the reporting of victimization to the police among Asian Americans. While numerous studies have demonstrated the gap between reported and unreported violent crime victimization to the police, the role of race has received relatively recent attention in understanding and addressing why certain racial minority groups are less likely to report victimization. Specifically, the literature suggests that stereotypes, such as the model minority myth, and cultural values associated with Asian American communities may be linked to how their reporting behaviors are understood. This study utilizes a sample of Asian Americans from the National Crime Victimization Survey spanning from 2003 to 2022 and employs multivariate logistic regression to investigate the factors associated with violent crime reporting to the police among Asian Americans. The findings reveal that the seriousness of the incidents is a robust factor that increases the likelihood of reporting violent victimization across all models. Additionally, it is found that incidents occurring in private locations are linked to increased victim reporting of violent victimization, and incidents involving third parties increase the likelihood of third-party reporting of violent victimization. Limitations and suggestions for future research are discussed.
Uncovering crime and criminology in Taiwan
The Chinese conception of rights: a latent class analysis of Chinese college students
Chinese Sociological Review
, 2021
Elizabeth Perry and other theorists argued that a strong centralized government, as well as limit...
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Elizabeth Perry and other theorists argued that a strong centralized government, as well as limited individual freedoms in China, had historically been legitimated by the state’s effective provision of economic security and prosperity to the people and that this moral economy still informed the Chinese conception of rights. This study empirically examined Perry’s notion of the Chinese conception of rights by analyzing survey data collected from over 1,100 college students across three provinces in China. The results of the Latent Class Analysis and the posterior regression analyses lent moderate support to Perry’s argument while revealing increasingly diversifying conceptions of rights among Chinese college students, including a stronger endorsement of civil and political liberties among those from certain demographic and socioeconomic backgrounds. These findings caution hasty characterizations of political development in China: while the traditional Chinese conception of rights rem...
Police misconduct and corruption: déjà vu experience?
Can individualism/collectivism paradigm explain disparate roles for intermediaries in an organizational justice model of police compliance with agency rules?
Policing
, Aug 26, 2022
PurposeThis paper examines whether dissimilarities in societal cultures impact the path by which ...
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PurposeThis paper examines whether dissimilarities in societal cultures impact the path by which a key component of organizational culture—supervisory procedural justice (SPJ)—influences police officer compliance with police agency rules.Design/methodology/approachThe study utilized structural equation modeling across a data set of 1,189 Croatian and Taiwan police officers to test whether a societal value (individualism/collectivism) impacts the role of three intermediary variables (trust in the public, job satisfaction and pro-organization initiative) in a procedural justice model of officer compliance with the rules.FindingsThe study found that, despite a strong statistical similarity in the individual attitudes of Croatian and Taiwan police officers, the intermediary variables in the model significantly differed between the two countries. Most notably, the role of trust in the public and pro-organization initiative supported past research suggesting that collectivist versus individualistic societal cultures lead to divergent organizational attitudes and policing outcomes.Originality/valueThis is the first empirical study to compare the impact of societal values on a model of SPJ on officer compliance with agency rules.
Police Officers’ Preferences for Enforcing COVID-19 Regulatory Violations: The Impact of Organizational Support, Psychological Conditions, and Public Compliance
Crime & Delinquency
, Feb 20, 2023
The coronavirus has stirred a wave of studies on policing the pandemic. Nonetheless, officers’ in...
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The coronavirus has stirred a wave of studies on policing the pandemic. Nonetheless, officers’ intentions to enforce COVID-related rules and regulations remain under-researched. Drawing upon survey data from 600 police officers in a major Chinese city, this study explores the associations between organizational support, behavioral and psychological conditions, and perceived public compliance and officers’ willingness to intervene in rule violations. Organizational support in providing supervisory instructions, training, and PPE increased the likelihood of officers issuing tickets, whereas minimizing COVID-19 risks to officers reduced the probability of officers not taking any action against rule violations. Officers who perceive community residents as compliant with pandemic regulations are less likely to take no action or use more punitive sanctions of ticket/fine and detention/arrest.
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Officers who rate agency efforts positively are less inclined not to act on COVID-19 violations, supporting the theory of organizational impact.
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Telecommunication and cyber fraud victimization among Chinese college students: An application of routine activity theory
Criminology & Criminal Justice
, Jan 4, 2023
From Invisibility to Unwanted Spotlight: Arab Americans’ Perceptions of the Police
The terrorist attacks of 2001 have made almost all groups of immigrants living in the U.S., espec...
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The terrorist attacks of 2001 have made almost all groups of immigrants living in the U.S., especially people who have an Arab ethnic, cultural and linguistic heritage, more visible groups for law enforcement attention. This chapter summarizes the existing limited but growing literature on Arab Americans’ perceptions of the police in the U.S., and equally importantly discusses police-Arab American community relations in their broader historical, political, cultural and social context. Existing evidence encouragingly shows a stability of high levels of confidence in the local police among Arab Americans. Preliminary data also suggest that factors that affect Arab Americans’ perceptions of the police are not so distinct from those that affect the rest of American population. Age, education, victimization, social trust, and traditional values are some example variables that shape Arab American confidence in the police. Police performances in both effective crime control and procedurally just treatment are also key promoters of Arab American perceptions of police legitimacy and willingness to cooperate with the police.
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