JENN
TOSTLEBE

Biography

Dr. Jenn Tostlebe is an Assistant Professor in the School of Criminology and Criminal Justice at the University of Nebraska Omaha, Co-Director of the Advancing Research in Corrections (ARC) Lab, and a Faculty Fellow at the Nebraska Center for Justice Research. She earned her PhD at the University of Colorado Boulder (Sociology) and received her B.A. and M.S. from Iowa State University.

Jenn has published in Criminology, Health & Justice, Homicide Studies, Journal of Criminal Justice, Journal of Research in Crime and Delinquency, and Preventive Medicine, among other journals.

Research:

Her research interests include incarceration and restrictive housing, criminological theory, mental and physical health, gangs and criminal networks, and prison misconduct and recidivism post-release.

Jenn is currently the Co-Principal Investigator of (a) a five-year Arnold Ventures–supported collaboration with the Iowa Board of Parole and Iowa Department of Corrections to develop and evaluate a decision-support tool designed to reduce overcrowding and support evidence-based parole decisions and (b) Nebraska’s legislatively mandated evaluation of structured programming within the Nebraska Department of Correctional Services.

She has been the Principal Investigator on a reentry initiative in Omaha standardizing and documenting the processes and procedures of the Never Give Up (NGU) Transitional Living program, which was funded by the Sherwood Foundation, and the Project Manager for a study investigating the impact of solitary confinement (and a step-down program) on prisoners and prisons in Oregon, which was funded by the Charles Koch Foundation. She has also worked as a graduate research assistant on a National Institute of Justice (NIJ) funded project examining gangs and prisoner reentry in Texas (The LoneStar Project), and on a National Institutes of Health (NIH; The National Institute of Child Health & Human Development) funded project examining the sources of mortality risk among individuals identified in a police database as gang members.

Teaching:

Jenn’s teaching interests include institutional corrections, criminological theory, quantitative methods, health and corrections, gangs and gang membership, research design, and juvenile justice and delinquency.

At the University of Nebraska Omaha, she teaches Survey of Corrections (undergraduate), Gangs and Gang Control (undergraduate), Applied Statistics (undergraduate), Seminar in Corrections (Masters & Doctoral levels), and Academic Writing (Doctoral).

Featured Publication

Tostlebe, J. J. (2026). Selection and facilitation: Is the gang membership-psychopathic traits link a product of individual differences, social influences, or both?. Journal of Research in Crime and Delinquency 63(1): 52-111. [Link]

Abstract: The issue of psychopathology among gang populations is controversial. Classic gang scholarship points to psychopathic traits as time-stable characteristics of those who join gangs, others argue gangs facilitate attitudes and behaviors endogenous to psychopathy, stisll others reject a gang-psychopathic traits link. Building off an interdisciplinary theoretical basis that adapts a tripartite theoretical model (i.e., selection, facilitation, and enhancement) on the gang membership-offending link to the mixed positions on the gang membership-psychopathic traits relationship, this study tests selection and facilitation models. Using longitudinal data from Pathways to Desistance, I examine whether psychopathic traits are an antecedent and/or consequence of gang membership. Specifically, I test whether (a) there are between individual differences in psychopathic traits that contribute to selection into gangs and (b) gangs facilitate within-individual change in psychopathic traits among their members. The findings suggest that the enhancement model (i.e., both selection and facilitation) best represents the relationship between gang membership and psychopathic traits. Analyzing the role of individual propensities—like psychopathic traits—and social-environmental influences—like gang membership—is critical for understanding crime and criminality. This study demonstrates that these factors do not operate in isolation but instead interact bidirectionally. By moving beyond the selection-facilitation dichotomy, this study contributes to a more integrated framework for explaining problem behaviors and helps establish best practices for prevention and rehabilitation.

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