Criminology Commons^™

Dynamic Risk Trajectories, Community Context, And Juvenile Recidivism, Kevin T. Wolff, Michael T. Baglivio, Jonathan Intravia

Publications and Research

Purpose

While the implementation of risk assessment has expanded, the extent to which there are different trajectories of risk/protective factors among adjudicated youth during supervision in the community remains unanswered. The goal of the current study is to identify the distinct trajectories in dynamic risk and protective factors among youth on probation and assess whether different patterns in risk over time are associated with continued offending.

Method

Group-based trajectory modeling is used to identify distinct trajectories across multiple domains of risk/need. The individual- and neighborhood-level factors associated with these trajectories are then explored, prior to examining their relationship to continued …

From Prostitution To Sex Trafficking: Dilemmas Of Victim Service Workers Helping Chinese Immigrant Women At The Courts, Yen-Chiao Liao

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This study aims to explore the policy ambivalence towards commercial sex trade, resulted by prostitution laws and anti-trafficking policies in the United States. It focuses on Chinese immigrant women and those who served them in the Human Trafficking Intervention Courts (the HTICs) in New York City. Specifically, it investigates the process of Chinese immigrant women becoming potential “victims” of sex trafficking from the perspectives of the service workers, the social workers and the public defenders. Though research on human trafficking seems to be exploding for the past decades since the passage of the Trafficking Victims Protection Act (TVPA) in 2000, …

Tablets As A Vehicle For Imprisoned People’S Digital Connection With Loved Ones, Andrea Mufarreh

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

The intersection between criminal justice and technology is fairly understudied, despite increasing technological advancements in the world and within the criminal justice system. A rather recent addition to the technological landscape of prison is the adoption of tablets used by imprisoned people for communication and connection with loved ones and other activities, which is particularly important given the context of COVID-19, a virus which caused a global pandemic from 2020-2022. While the use of tablets by imprisoned people appears to be a new trend, the use of tablets in prison both prior to and during the pandemic has remained an …

Neighbors At Risk, Jeffrey A. Butts, Gina Moreno, Richard A. Espinobarros

Publications and Research

Most New York City neighborhoods did not experience high rates of shootings in recent years, but others clearly did. Comparing crime rates across these relatively small geographic areas is important for officials considering where to invest in resources that support public safety and community wellbeing.

Hostile, Quick-Tempered, And Exposed To Dangerous Environments: Exploring The Link Between Temperament And Street Code Adherence, Kevin T. Wolff, Sharron Spriggs, Jonathan Intravia, Michael T. Baglivio, Matt Delisi

Publications and Research

Although Elijah Anderson’s (1999) code of the street thesis has received a great deal of scholarly attention, fewer studies have examined the characteristics associated with its adoption. Existing evidence is supportive of Anderson’s initial observations, however, less is known about the association between personality and emotional characteristics and adopting street code norms. The current study assesses the role of Delisi and Vaughn’s difficult temperament index in the adoption of the street code among a sample of juvenile justice-involved youth. Results indicated youth with more difficult temperaments, characterized by lower levels of effortful control and higher levels of negative emotionality, were …

The Effect Of Program Staffing Difficulties On Changes In Dynamic Risk And Reoffending Among Juvenile Offenders In Residential Placement, Kevin T. Wolff, Katherine E. Limoncelli, Michael T. Baglivio

Publications and Research

Recently there has been growing concern regarding the staffing challenges that plague the U.S. correctional system. This study examines whether staffing challenges within residential facilities are associated with changes in dynamic risk and the likelihood of reoffending among a sample of serious juvenile offenders returning to the community from residential placement. Using administrative data on 2,022 youth who completed a court-imposed placement, in combination with information drawn from a provider’s human resources database, we employ several analytical techniques to untangle the effects of staffing difficulties on youth outcomes. Results indicate that the rate of unscheduled absences was associated with changes …

Spheres Of Identity: Theorizing Social Categorization And The Legitimacy Of Criminal Justice Officials, Kwan-Lamar Blount-Hill

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Identity is of central importance in the subjective experience of justice and assessments of legitimacy. In this study, the researcher explores whether perceptions of legitimacy are constructed differently across social group identity, particularly where social groups differ in relation to government (e.g., outgroup or ingroup). The analyses are conducted using data from a procedural justice study conducted in two U. S. cities. The findings suggest evidence of a generally similar construction of legitimacy though with important dissimilarities based on social group. Additionally, certain respondents’ narratives follow common narrative scripts in describing interactions with police, suggestive of a shared master narrative …

An Analysis Of The Parental Structure And Involvement On Subsequent Delinquency, Bosco Villavicencio Jr

Student Theses

This thesis examines how parental involvement and family structure relate to the prevalence of juvenile delinquency. To answer the research question, the current study used a large sample of 12^th grade youth (n=1,272) from the Monitoring the Future project which includes measures on parental involvement, household structure, academic abilities, and risky behavior and delinquent behavior. The results of this secondary analysis showed a significant association between parental-child involvement measures and the delinquent outcomes examined; drinking, suspension, and skipping school. This study emphasizes the need to consider that the impact of household structure as well as that of a supportive …

Examining The Contextual Effects Of Racial Profiling, And The Long-Term Consequences Of Punitive Interventions: Testing Labeling Theory With The National Longitudinal Study Of Adolescent To Adult Health Data, Margrét Valdimarsdóttir

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

The overrepresentation of minority youth in the juvenile justice system has been well documented. More research has, however, been needed on levels of discrimination, particularly on potential biases in the earliest point of contact, such as police decisions to stop and arrest young people. Further, few studies have examined individual and neighborhood characteristics simultaneously, which has limited the understanding of citizens’ experiences with the police. Focusing on potential biases in the juvenile justice system is essential as recent studies indicate that most types of interventions have different negative consequences for the lives of young people, such as increasing the probability …

Digilantism, Discrimination And Punitive Attitudes. A Digital Vigilantism Model, Sebastián A. Galleguillos

Student Theses

In this article, I propose and apply a digital vigilantism model to a specific incident that occurred in Mexico, where the death of two innocent people was filmed through Facebook Live. Using a mixed methods approach and content analysis, I analyzed digilante Facebook posts (N=942) coding gender, digital vigilantism categories, discriminatory comments, and punitive attitudes aimed at the perpetrators and the inciter of the lynching. The categories include investigating, blaming, or rebuking, while the discriminatory comments include classism, racism, homophobia, and body-shaming. I coded the punitive attitudes distinguishing four categories: non-physical punishment (calling for God’s wrath and the guilty conscience …

Weaving The Dark Web: Legitimacy On Freenet, Tor, And I2p, John Schriner

Publications and Research

This is a book review of Robert W. Gehl's Weaving the Dark Web: Legitimacy on Freenet, Tor, and I2P (2018). The book explores these anonymity networks and the concept of legitimacy throughout. Using a multidisciplinary approach and interviews with network-builders and users, Gehl helps to demystify the dark web and critically examine these networks and technologies.

Stop, Question, And Frisk: A Tool Of Racial Control In New York City, Justice D. Evans

Student Theses

Broken Windows policing through the utilization of Stop, Question, and Frisk has been widely used by the New York City Police Department (NYPD) since the 1990s, as guaranteed by landmark Supreme Court Case Terry v. Ohio (1968). As a result, hundreds of minority citizens have been the victim of routine stops for minor offenses through this aggressive police tactic. This study utilizes 2017 NYPD Stop, Question, and Frisk Data to determine whether broken windows policing, through stop, question, and frisk, operates as a mode of racial control for African Americans in New York City. Through the utilization of chi-square analyses, …

Defending The "Bad Immigrant": Aggravated Felonies, Deportation, And Legal Resistance At The Crimmigration Nexus, Sarah Rose Tosh

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This dissertation explores the development and effects of the “aggravated felony”—an expansive legal category that has spurred the detention and deportation of hundreds of thousands of immigrants, including many green-card-holding lawful permanent residents, over the past thirty years. Offenses in this category need not be “aggravated” nor “felonies,” but rather, include a broad range of criminal convictions, including misdemeanors, ranging from check fraud and simple drug possession to drug trafficking and murder. Non-citizens in removal proceedings based on aggravated felony convictions are mandatorily detained and almost certainly deported—usually without legal representation. Still, despite growing academic interest in deportation and the …

Bias-Motivated Homicides: Toward A New Typology, Lindsey Sank Davis

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Despite significant progress towards equal protection under the law for women, LGBT individuals, and people of color in the United States, hate crime remains a pervasive problem, and rates appear to have increased in recent years. Bias-motivated homicide – arguably the most serious form of hate crime – is statistically rare but may have far-reaching consequences for marginalized communities. Data from the Uniform Crime Reports and the National Crime Victimization Survey have suggested that, on average, fewer than 10 bias-motivated homicides occur in the United States per year; however, data from open sources indicate that the rate of bias-motivated homicide …

Islamic Terrorism In The United States – The Association Of Religious Fundamentalism With Social Isolation & Paths Leading To Extreme Violence Through Processes Of Radicalization., Shay Shiran

Student Theses

This exploratory study focuses on identifying motivations for religious terrorism and Islamic terrorism in the United States in particular. Terrorism is a crime of extreme violence with the end purpose of political influence. This crime is challenging to encounter for its multi-faced characteristics, the unusual motivations of its actors, and their semi-militant conduct. The hypothesis of this study asserts that religious terrorists are radicalized by passing from fundamental to extreme devout agendas, caused by isolation from the dominant society, and resulted in high potential to impose those agendas by extreme violence. Under the theoretical framework of subculture in criminology, this …

Does Mental Illness Affect Societal Perception Of Sex Offenders?, Keely A. Bartram

Student Theses

Although mental illness is common in the sex offender population, it has never been examined how evidence of such may influence societal perception. In comparison to the non-sex offender population, it was hypothesized that participants would consider mental illness less mitigating for sex offenders, would be less likely to support the mental health treatment of sex offenders while incarcerated, and would consider certain mental illnesses (schizophrenia and substance abuse disorders) as particularly aggravating for this group of offenders. Respondents were asked to read a short vignette and then respond to a series of questions about culpability, sentencing decisions, and mental …

Electric Light: Automating The Carceral State During The Quantification Of Everything, R. Joshua Scannell

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This dissertation traces the rise of digitally-driven policing technologies in order to make sense of how prevailing logics of governance are transformed by ubiquitous computing technology. Beginning in the early 1990s, police departments and theorists began to rely on increasingly detailed sets of metrics to evaluate performance. The adoption of digital technology to streamline quantitative evaluation coincided with a steep decline in measured crime that served as a proof-of-concept for the effectivity of digital police surveillance and analytics systems. During the turbulent first two decades of the 21^st century, such digital technologies were increasingly associated with reform projects designed …

Roadblocks To The Implementation Of Problem-Oriented Policing In Montevideo, Federico Del Castillo

Student Theses

In the broad context of Uruguay’s police reform, the Ministry of Interior is implementing a pilot Problem-Oriented Policing (POP) program in Montevideo since late 2012. This research examined the obstacles confronted by the program throughout its implementation. Using a grounded theory approach, qualitative data was collected through 20 semi-structured interviews with members of the Uruguay National Police (UNP) of different ranks. Findings were analyzed based on the following categories: a) contextual factors; b) theoretical and practical inaccuracies; c) characteristics, skills and actions of project managers; d) resistance and motivational issues; e) resources; f) external support and cooperation. Consistent with research …

Multiple Perpetrator Sexual Assault: The Relationship Between The Number Of Perpetrators, Blame Attribution, And Victim Resistance, Yi Jin Genevieve Lim

Student Theses

Sexual assault has been and continues to be a prevalent public health and social problem that can lead to severe ramifications for the victim. There has been growing research on multiple perpetrator sexual assault (MPSA) and how it qualitatively differs from single assailant offenses. However, there is a paucity of studies investigating the differences between sexual assault perpetrated by duos versus three or more individuals and how it affects victim behavioral responses and blame attribution. This study aimed to examine the relationship between the perceived level of victim blame and the number of perpetrators in MPSA cases contingent on the …

Hatred Simmering In The Melting Pot: Hate Crime In New York City, 1995-2010, Colleen E. Mills

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Hate crime proves prevalent in American society, inflicting a variety of harms on victims as well as society at large. Scholars have long sought to understand the motivations and conditions behind hate crime offending. Green and his colleagues conducted the classic neighborhood studies examining the conditions that foster hate crime (Green, Glaser, & Rich, 1998; Green, Strolovich, & Wong, 1998; Green, Strolovitch, Wong, & Bailey). Using data from the New York Police Department’s Hate Crimes Task Force, the current study replicates and extends Green's neighborhood studies by investigating hate crime in New York City from 1995 to 2010. This study …

The Fear Factor: Exploring The Impact Of The Vulnerability To Deportation On Immigrants' Lives, Shirley P. Leyro

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This qualitative study explores the impact that the fear of deportation has on the lives of noncitizen immigrants. More broadly, it explores the role that immigration enforcement, specifically deportation, plays in disrupting the process of integration, and the possible implications of this interruption for immigrants and their communities. The study aims to answer: (1) how vulnerability to deportation specifically impacts an immigrant’s life, and (2) how the vulnerability to deportation, and the fear associated with it, impacts an immigrant’s degree of integration. Data were gathered through a combination of six open-ended focus group interviews of 10 persons each, and 33 …

"Tough On Crime, Tough On The Causes Of Crime": Liberal Carceral Logics And The Reproduction Of Settler Colonial Violence In Winnipeg, Mb, Canada, Bronwyn Dobchuk-Land

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This dissertation illustrates how settler colonialism is reproduced in present-day Canada through the governance of crime, and how political struggles against policing, imprisonment, and colonialism are linked. It focuses on the politics of crime in the Province of Manitoba from 1999–2016, during which the left-of-center New Democratic Party (NDP) government engineered a significant expansion of the carceral state, overseeing unprecedented increases in policing and jail growth. In Manitoba, the vast majority of prisoners are Indigenous. This dissertation explores the logic through which the NDP integrated their support for policing and imprisonment into their “progressive” value system, packaging their carceral expansion …

Cognitive Sociology, Michael W. Raphael

Publications and Research

Cognitive sociology is the study of the conditions under which meaning is constituted through processes of reification. Cognitive sociology traces its origins to writings in the sociology of knowledge, sociology of culture, cognitive and cultural anthropology, and more recently, work done in cultural sociology and cognitive science. Its central questions revolve around locating these processes of reification since the locus of cognition is highly contentious. Researchers consider how individuality is related to notions of society (structures, institutions, systems, etc.) and notions of culture (cultural forms, cultural structures, sub-cultures, etc.). These questions further explore how these answers depend on learning processes …

New Approaches To Data-Driven Civilian Oversight Of Law Enforcement: An Introduction To The Second Nacole/Cjpr Special Issue, Daniel L. Stageman, Nicole M. Napolitano, Brian Buchner

Publications and Research

In April of 2016, National Association for Civilian Oversight of Law Enforcement (NACOLE) and John Jay College partnered to sponsor the Academic Symposium “Building Public Trust: Generating Evidence to Enhance Police Accountability and Legitimacy.” This essay introduces the Criminal Justice Policy Review Special Issue featuring peer-reviewed, empirical research papers first presented at the Symposium. We provide context for the Symposium in relation to contemporary national discourse on police accountability and legitimacy. In addition, we review each of the papers presented at the Symposium, and provide in-depth reviews of each of the manuscripts included in the Special Issue.

Phenomenological Theories Of Crime, Peter K. Manning, Michael W. Raphael

Graduate Student Publications and Research

The distinctive aspect of phenomenological theories of crime is that they are based upon a stated epistemology: how things are known and a specific ontology—the nature of social reality. This specificity aligns itself with neo-Kantian concern with forms of knowing, interpretation, and meaning, as well as with 20th-century concern with perception, cognition, and the framing of events. While there are influences of phenomenological thinking on varieties of theorizing, such as symbolic interactionism, critical theory, queer theory, and gender-based theories of crime, these ideas are refractions and are inconsistent in their reference to and understanding of the foundational phenomenological works. A …