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Full-Text Articles in Criminology

The Comparative Lethality Of Two Disparate World Regions : An Examination Of Latin America And Europe To Explain Discrepant Homicide Trends, Karise Marie Curtis Jan 2018

The Comparative Lethality Of Two Disparate World Regions : An Examination Of Latin America And Europe To Explain Discrepant Homicide Trends, Karise Marie Curtis

Legacy Theses & Dissertations (2009 - 2024)

Within recent decades, homicide rates in Latin American nations have strongly diverged from those of European nations. The former experienced a sharp increase in the last two decades, while the latter have experienced the oft-characterized “modern crime decline.” However, few studies have endeavored to explain this divergence, and many that do often attribute any differences to a regional dummy variable said to characterize some unique phenomenon occurring in the region (i.e., machismo) without modeling specifically for levels of said phenomenon. As such, this study uses a panel extension of a well-known homicide model (Land, McCall, & Cohen, 1990) in a …


Live Fast, Die Young : Anticipated Early Death And Adolescent Violence And Gang Involvement, Arna Leigh Carlock Jan 2016

Live Fast, Die Young : Anticipated Early Death And Adolescent Violence And Gang Involvement, Arna Leigh Carlock

Legacy Theses & Dissertations (2009 - 2024)

Strategies employed by criminal justice agencies to reduce offending often focus on deterrence, with policies relying on the threat of punishment to discourage individuals from crime. However, such strategies will fail if individuals do not fear these consequences, or when potential rewards of offending outweigh the risks. According to life history theory, adolescents with a dangerous or unpredictable childhood environment discount the future and engage in risky behaviors because they have little to lose. Many adolescents embody this “live fast, die young” mentality, particularly those already at risk of delinquency due to other factors. The scientific literature refers to this …


Socially Situated Identities Of Gay Gang- And Crime-Involved Men, Vanessa R. Panfil Jan 2013

Socially Situated Identities Of Gay Gang- And Crime-Involved Men, Vanessa R. Panfil

Legacy Theses & Dissertations (2009 - 2024)

Within the criminological literature, gay men have primarily been portrayed as victims of anti-gay bias crimes or intimate partner violence, or as sex workers and/or drug users. This coverage, which is limited in scope, largely fails to recognize that gay men have agency (choice or power to control the situation). It also provides an incomplete picture regarding gay men's involvement in gangs, violence, and crime.


The Value Of Human Life : An Individual-Level Determinant Of Violence, Maria Tcherni Jan 2011

The Value Of Human Life : An Individual-Level Determinant Of Violence, Maria Tcherni

Legacy Theses & Dissertations (2009 - 2024)

My contribution to the study of causes of violence in criminology is introducing a theoretical concept of the Value of Life (VL) and developing an empirical solution to measuring it. The value that an individual implicitly assigns to the human life - both his/her own life and other people's lives - is a theoretical concept that synthesizes information about precursors, correlates, and determinates of violence. The VL concept provides a meaningful way to explain some phenomena not commonly associated with violent behavior (for example, reckless behavior with regard to one's health), while also illuminating some puzzling associations consistently found in …


Darwin's Other Idea : Sexual Selection, Gender And Violence, Robert Samuel Moschgat Jan 2011

Darwin's Other Idea : Sexual Selection, Gender And Violence, Robert Samuel Moschgat

Legacy Theses & Dissertations (2009 - 2024)

This dissertation provides an empirical exploration of Darwin's theory of sexual selection, which views the male propensity to engage in short term mating strategies--sexual promiscuity and violence--as the result of sexual selection. Within an environmental context, biological father and mother household presence are expected to inhibit the initiation of short-term mating strategies and increase parental investment--paternal and maternal attachments, supervision, and protection. Whereas, structural disadvantage--living in poverty and in dangerous neighborhoods--is predicted to increase the initiation of a short-term mating strategies and compromise the parents' ability to protect their children and by weakening paternal and maternal attachments, thereby increasing the …


Authoritarian Parenting : A Race Socializing Protective Factor That Deters African American Adolescents From Delinquency And Violence, Frank S. Pezzella Jan 2010

Authoritarian Parenting : A Race Socializing Protective Factor That Deters African American Adolescents From Delinquency And Violence, Frank S. Pezzella

Legacy Theses & Dissertations (2009 - 2024)

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