Nathan Pino

Texas State University, Sociology, Faculty Member

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Address: San Marcos, Texas, United States

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Papers by Nathan Pino

Growth, density, and property crime: A longitudinal county-level study in the USA, 2001-2007

The Social Science Journal

We examine the criminogenic consequences of urban growth and density for counties in the contiguo... more We examine the criminogenic consequences of urban growth and density for counties in the contiguous USA with more than 100,000 residents (n = 522). In addition to conventional measures, we utilize the Internal Revenue Service's migration data to decompose population growth into migration and natural change, and, using satellite imagery from the National Land Cover Database, we calculate developed land area, which better represents changes in density compared to nondescript land area. Covering the years 2001-2007, in OLS and spatial error models with lagged first-differences, we regress change scores for the lagged vehicle theft rate on urban growth and density. Results from these models indicate that migration is the component of growth positively associated with the vehicle theft rate, and the use of nondescript land area for density not only underestimates the sprawling pattern of development in urban America but also exaggerates the significance of the negative association between density and crime.

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Crime and Governance in the Global South

Annual Review of Criminology, 2025

This article considers the relationship between crime and governance on the peripheries of the Gl... more This article considers the relationship between crime and governance on
the peripheries of the Global North. It draws on examples from across
the Global South to show how conceptualizations of crimes are impacted
by history, politics, and socio-economic contexts and how crime is influ-
enced by, and in turn influences, governance practices. The review centers
on four arguments: Western ideologies and epistemologies are inadequate
for conceptualizing the nexus between crime and governance in the Global
South; understandings of crime must be informed by knowledge of contex-
tual harmscapes; models of crime control and policing do not always capture the hybridity and plurality of everyday governing practices in the Global South; and crime dynamics intersect with governance structures to create complex challenges for state control. The review highlights the need for scholars and practitioners to adopt historically and contextually informed approaches to theorizing the governance of criminalized harms in the Global South.

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Navigating policing and work-life balance in the South Pacific

Police Practice and Research, 2025

Policing in the South Pacific is influenced by a myriad of factors including cultural norms, hist... more Policing in the South Pacific is influenced by a myriad of factors including
cultural norms, historical legacies, socio-economic disparities, and geopolitical
dynamics. Against this backdrop, law enforcement officers face
multifaceted challenges in reconciling the demands of their profession
with personal and familial obligations. This article discusses the challenges
faced by police officers as they attempt to balance their professional and
personal lives. Interviews were conducted with male (N = 50) and female
(N = 50) constables from the Royal Solomon Islands Police Force (RSIPF) to
gain insight into the challenges they face as RSIPF officers, the support
available to them and the further resources they see as necessary to
improve their work-life balance. Findings reveal a complex interplay of
factors shaping officers’ work-life dynamics, including shift work schedules,
high-pressure environments, community expectations, and the
emotional toll of policing in small, tight-knit societies. It also highlights
the significance of informal support networks, cultural values, and adaptive
coping mechanisms in mediating the impact of work-related stressors
on officers’ well-being. Notably, data suggest that RSIPF work-life balance,
wellness and workplace structures are highly gendered. These findings
offer insights that can inform the development of more effective support
mechanisms and policies aimed at enhancing the holistic wellbeing of
police officers. They further substantiate the need for greater formal
support systems within the RSIPF to assist employees with managing
their work-life balance.

Lead us not into temptation: Christian women's lifestyle books and the moralization of the body

Fat Studies, 2025

Religious teachings and their connection to gendered health and wellness rhetoric have received l... more Religious teachings and their connection to gendered health and wellness rhetoric have received limited scholarly attention. This study explores the portrayal of the relationship between health and religion in contemporary Christian women's lifestyle books utilizing a feminist perspective informed by Foucauldian analysis, and the work of Sabrina Strings and other feminist scholarly work in fat studies. The study employs a qualitative content analysis of fourteen popular books published within the last five years, aiming to identify patterns in their descriptions of health, accessibility of advice, treatment of weight and beauty standards, and the presence of direct or indirect connections between health and sin. Five major themes emerged: connections to Eve and original sin, the importance of individual responsibility, creation in God's image, authenticity and relatability, and the fight between good and evil. The self-help rhetoric and religious discourses depicted in the books often depoliticize women's concerns and reinforce patriarchal structures. These findings contribute to a better understanding of the implications and challenges posed by today's pervasive wellness culture, allowing for a more nuanced analysis of the connections between religion, women's experiences, and beliefs about how women's bodies should be maintained and presented.

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The persistent countervailing consequences of urbanization: A longitudinal study of homicide rates

European Journal of Criminology, 2023

Quantitative criminologists often use temporally lagged variables to estimate the structural forc... more Quantitative criminologists often use temporally lagged variables to estimate the structural forces contributing to variation in crime rates. We elucidate the relevance of temporal lags for crossnational research by looking specifically at the lagged longitudinal relationship between urbanization and homicide rates. Using cross-national time-series data for (n = 83) nations, we run a series of 10 separate panel models, in which we incrementally increase the time lag between the dependent variable homicide rate and two independent measures of urbanization, controlling for changes in GDP and age-structure as well as fixed effects for time and unit. Results from these panel models confirm that the two measures of urbanization are oppositely associated with homicide rates. Moreover, while the magnitudes of the associations for both predictors decline as lag time increases, they continue to be statistically significant. These results provide evidence that urbanization has countervailing and persistent consequences for homicide rates that ripple through time. These results also lead us to conclude that a more systematic approach to lag time in longitudinal research is needed.

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Police Officers' Fear of Crime: An Analysis of Interviews with Officers in Trinidad and Tobago

International Journal for Crime, Justice, and Social Democracy, 2019

Research on fear of crime usually examines perceptions of civilians. Little has been said about p... more Research on fear of crime usually examines perceptions of civilians. Little has been said about police officers' fear of crime, particularly in developing countries of the Global South, despite their occupational high risk of victimisation. The current study is an analysis of qualitative interview data collected from 12 male senior police officers in Trinidad and Tobago, with a focus on how they are affected by crime and navigate their roles as officers. The goal here is to contribute to Southern criminological dialogue about subjective appraisals of, and reactions to, crime by emphasising the experiences of civil servants mandated to address crime in the context of a postcolonial developing country. Analyses found that officers perceived that they and their family members were at high risk of criminal victimisation, were significantly worried or fearful about themselves or family members becoming victimised and often engaged in avoidance behavioural strategies to reduce risk of victimisation.

format_quoteNine officers (75%) reported being victims of crime, mainly violent; this reveals severe personal danger for officers in their roles.format_quote

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UNODC and the Crime Development Nexus: From ‘Drugs and Thugs’ to ‘Peaceful and Inclusive Societies

by Nathan Pino and Tom Chodor

British Journal of Criminology, 2020

Development has long featured on the United Nations (UN) crime policy agenda; however, crime was ... more Development has long featured on the United Nations (UN) crime policy agenda; however, crime was only officially recognized by the international community as a global development priority following the adoption of the Sustainable Development Goals in 2015. Adopting a sociological institutionalist perspective, this article sets out to account for how this recognition was achieved. We draw on interviews with senior UN crime policy insiders and documentary sources to analyse the efforts of the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC) to amplify awareness of the crime-development link following the omission of this issue from the Millenium Development Goals and amidst significant institutional and material pressures to strengthen its ties to the wider UN system. The article accounts for the political construction of the crime-development nexus and the important role that UNODC has historically played in facilitating global governance in this emergent and increasingly expansive sphere of policy and practice.

Police Perceptions of Residents in a High Crime Community in Trinidad & Tobago: Community Framing and Crime Wars.

by Nathan Pino and paula morgan

Criminology and Criminal Justice, 2021

This article examines police perceptions of residents of a marginalized community in Trinidad and... more This article examines police perceptions of residents of a marginalized community in Trinidad and Tobago. The discourses of 40 members of the Trinidad and Tobago Police Service are examined to determine how they define residents of the community and situate them within specific interactive contexts. Results show that the officers typically have extremely negative views of the community and its residents, which amplify their perceptions of policing as difficult and dangerous. The potential impact of these perceptions upon police practices, officer well-being and police–community relations are discussed. The study contributes to the emerging scholarly dialogue on policing in the global South and highlights the benefits of discourse analysis within country case studies to elucidate country-specific nuances in police–community relations.

Development as a Historical Component of International Crime Policy: From Social Defence to the Millennium Development Goals

by Nathan Pino and Tom Chodor

Criminology and Criminal Justice, 2021

This article presents a historical analysis of the intellectual and institutional origins of the ... more This article presents a historical analysis of the intellectual and institutional origins of the international community’s interest in the link between crime and development leading up to the adoption of the Millennium Development Goals in 2000. Drawing on a combination of documentary sources and interviews with long-time international crime policy insiders, it traces this interest back to the United Nations’ social defence agenda which emerged in the aftermath of the Second World War. We situate this agenda in relation to the Western aspiration to advance the Modernization project and reflect on how its shortcomings together with ideological, economic and geopolitical shifts at the international level contributed to the diversification of the United Nations’ crime policy agenda during the 1970s. These conditions collectively influenced the international community’s growing concern with crime as an existential threat to economic development during the 1980s. Our analysis highlights how this framing was reinforced by the rise of transnational organized crime as a threat to global capitalism following the collapse of the Soviet Union. It was against this historical backdrop that the United Nations Office for Drug Control and Crime Prevention was established to lead the international community’s fight against ‘uncivil society’. We conclude by reflecting on United Nations Office for Drug Control and Crime Prevention’s tumultuous early years along with the omission of ‘crime’ from the Millennium Development Goals and suggest that these conditions, along with the adoption of the United Nations Conventions Against Transnational Organized Crime and Corruption, set the stage for the organization’s future advocacy for the inclusion of crime in the Sustainable Development Goals.

Self-Evaluating Performance: An Analysis of Police Integrity, Professionalism and Service Provision from the South Pacific

Policing and Society, 2022

Studies on policing in the Global South rarely discuss police self-evaluation of performance. Fur... more Studies on policing in the Global South rarely discuss police self-evaluation of performance. Furthermore, internal performance assessments usually reflect the perspectives of senior management with little to no input from frontline officers. This paper seeks to present a more inclusive view of police performance as it presents the findings of a stakeholder perceptions survey commissioned by the Tuvalu Police Service (TPS) to examine police perceptions about their performance as service providers. We examine the survey responses of 100% of TPS officers on active duty (N=84) and 14 in-depth interviews to determine their views on the integrity, professionalism and service provision of TPS members. Findings indicate that police are able to provide useful assessments of the organisation and of their colleagues, but are less valid sources of information about personal performance. These findings are particularly relevant to discussions about improving police service provision in the developing world. The paper makes a contribution to policing scholarship by highlighting the potential of self-evaluation as an impetus for improved policing practices.

Non-Medical Prescription Drug Use Among Latino College Students: A Test of Strain, Social Learning, and Acculturation Theories

Journal of Latinos and Education, 2022

This study tests theories of social learning and strain to explain non-medical prescription drug ... more This study tests theories of social learning and strain to explain non-medical prescription drug use (NMPDU) among Latino college students at a Hispanic-Serving Institution (HSI). Logistic regression analyses indicate social learning and negative stressors help explain such usage, while refined models suggest that Latinos use of NMPD is primarily intended to improve academic performance. The study raises important questions about the unique challenges facing Latino college students and the role NMPDU may play in HSIs.

The Lagged Environmental Consequences of Demographic and Economic Change: An Exploratory Study

Sociological Inquiry, 2022

Quantitative sociologists conducting environmental research often use temporally lagged variables... more Quantitative sociologists conducting environmental research often use temporally lagged variables to estimate the social drivers of ecological change. To highlight the relevance of temporal lags for this scholarship, we specifically look at the longitudinal relationship between demographic and economic change and two different environmental outcomes: land development and carbon emissions. For land development, we run longitudinal spatial regression models to assess whether increasing the lag time changes the slope estimates for in-migration and out-migration at the county level across the contiguous United States (n = 3,026). For carbon emissions, we use cross-national data in Prais–Winsten models to assess changes in the lagged estimates for GDP, urbanization, and age structure (n = 146). Results from these analyses indicate that the slope estimates continue to be statistically significant, but the magnitudes of these coefficients change with increased lag time. We propose that scholars use a more systematic approach when assessing the temporal duration of socio-ecological change.

Policing in Trinidad and Tobago: Officers’ Experiences with Stress

The Social Science Journal, 2022

This study examined duty-related stress among police officers in Trinidad and Tobago (T&T). Quali... more This study examined duty-related stress among police officers in Trinidad and Tobago (T&T). Qualitative interview data collected from 12 male senior police officers were analyzed for themes regarding experiences with stres- sors and emotional and behavioral reactions to stress. The officers indicated that obstacles to effective policing – the power and resources of offenders, officers’ lack of resources and support, and the threat of corruption – are major sources of stress. Also, cynicism and pessimism about achieving crime control and justice, aggressive policing, and avoidance of some duties were revealed as emotional and behavioral reactions to stress. These results imply that T&T officers do not believe they are adequately resourced to address public and personal safety needs. This study contributes to Southern criminological dialogue about policing stress by emphasizing the experiences of officers in a post-colonial developing country.

The persistent countervailing consequences of urbanization: A longitudinal study of homicide rates

European Journal of Criminology, 2022

Quantitative criminologists often use temporally lagged variables to estimate the structural forc... more Quantitative criminologists often use temporally lagged variables to estimate the structural forces contributing to variation in crime rates. We elucidate the relevance of temporal lags for cross-national research by looking specifically at the lagged longitudinal relationship between urbanization and homicide rates. Using cross-national time-series data for (n = 83) nations, we run a series of 10 separate panel models, in which we incrementally increase the time lag between the dependent variable homicide rate and two independent measures of urbanization, controlling for changes in GDP and age-structure as well as fixed effects for time and unit. Results from these panel models confirm that the two measures of urbanization are oppositely associated with homicide rates. Moreover, while the magnitudes of the associations for both predictors decline as lag time increases, they continue to be statistically significant. These results provide evidence that urbanization has countervailing and persistent consequences for homicide rates that ripple through time. These results also lead us to conclude that a more systematic approach to lag time in longitudinal research is needed.

Transformative Police Reform in Trinidad and Tobago: Prospects and Challenges

Policing

The country of Trinidad and Tobago presents an interesting case for analysing policing and police... more The country of Trinidad and Tobago presents an interesting case for analysing policing and police reform through the lens of transformative justice. Informed by a review of the relevant literature, including the author’s independent research, this article details how the Trinidad and Tobago Police Service faces numerous challenges even after multiple evaluations and efforts at reform. Local civil society groups have been largely left out of police reform processes in spite of their local knowledge and social capital. Police reforms rooted in transformative justice will be difficult to achieve and sustain given current conditions in the country, but it is possible if there is a long-term and serious commitment to reform, led by local actors that initiate local solutions democratically while ensuring the genuine involvement of civil society groups, women, and other traditionally marginalized groups.

format_quoteTrinidad and Tobago's murder rates peaked at 550 in 2008, yielding a rate of 42.3 per 100,000, among the highest globally.format_quote

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Are the Goals of Sustainability Interconnected? A Sociological Analysis of the Three E's of Sustainable Development Using Cross-Lagged Models with Reciprocal Effects

by Nathan Pino and Patrick T Greiner

Sociology of Development , 2020

Conceptual discussions of sustainability emphasize the interdependent relationship between releva... more Conceptual discussions of sustainability emphasize the interdependent relationship between relevant social and environmental factors. Yet, traditional quantitative analyses of the topic have tended to estimate the exogenous or direct/indirect effects a predictor variable has on a particular measure of sustainability. We examine the endogenous, interdependent relationship between the three E's of sustainability (economy, equity, and ecology), incorporating country-level data for 1990 through 2015 into cross-lagged structural equation models with reciprocal and fixed effects. Results from these longitudinal models suggest that over time, at the country level, increasing economic inequality reduces renewable energy consumption, with no evidence of reciprocal feedback. Keeping in mind the limitations of the analysis, we tentatively argue that the modern form of development has constrained the potential for the sustainability goals to feed back into each other. KEYWORDS sustainability, modernization, inequality, structural equation modeling, reciprocal effects.

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Rationalizing the Decision to Cheat: An Empirical Analysis to Determine Whether Social Rational Orientation can Predict Academic Dishonesty

Journal of College and Character, 2019

Academic dishonesty is a wide-spread issue in educational institutions, including higher educatio... more Academic dishonesty is a wide-spread issue in educational institutions, including higher education. This study determined if there was a correlation between social rational action orientations and the likelihood of engaging in academically dishonest acts. The relationship between course value and academic dishonesty was also examined. The researchers obtained data from 357 undergraduate students at a large public university in the Southwest. The instrument included a scale that was created to determine student social rational orientation membership. To measure potential academic dishonesty behaviors, vignettes were created and manipulated to portray either low or high perceived course value. Overall, this study found that social rational orientation and perceived course value predicted the likelihood of engaging in academically dishonest acts. This study uncovered new variables that can be used to predict academic dishonesty by elucidating how students rationalize their decision to cheat.

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Development Paradigms, Neoliberalism and Human Security — Western Style

Globalization, Police Reform and Development, 2012

Trinidad and Tobago: Crime, Police Corruption, and Police Reforms

Police Corruption and Police Reforms in Developing Societies, 2015

Deviance and Social Justice

The Death and Resurrection of Deviance, 2014

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