Criminology Commons^™

Rethinking The Definition Of Police Crime: The Relationship Of Sex, Drugs, Violence And/Or Greed To Virtually All Police Crime, Philip M. Stinson

Criminal Justice Faculty Publications

No abstract provided.

Predicting The Prison Misconducts Of Women Offenders: The Importance Of Gender-Responsive Needs, Emily M. Wright, Emily J. Salisbury, Patricia Van Voorhis

Criminology and Criminal Justice Faculty Publications

The needs of women offenders may be qualitatively different than the needs of male offenders. The “pathways” and “gender-responsive” perspectives of female offending have recently garnered attention in both practitioner and scholarly arenas. The pathways perspective focuses attention on the co-occurrence and effects of trauma, substance abuse, dysfunctional relationships, and mental illness on female offending, while the gender-responsive perspective also suggests that problems related to parenting, childcare, and self-concept issues are important needs of women offenders. Few studies have examined whether or not these are risk factors for poor prison adjustment. With a sample of 272 incarcerated women offenders in …

Just Turn The Darn Thing Off: Understanding Cyberbullying., Elizabeth K. Englander, Amy M. Muldowney

MARC Publications

The central role that the Internet now plays in the life of children has transformed everything about bullying between youth in the First World. Three features characterize cyberbullying: it evolves rapidly, adults differ fundamentally from children in their use of the Internet, and children are comfortable with technology but ignorant about the psychological impact of their online behaviors and the dangers to which they expose themselves and their families. This presentation will review the Massachusetts Aggression Reduction Center’s innovative and aggressive approach to researching and addressing both bullying and cyberbullying.

State-Corporate Crime And The Paducah Gaseous Diffusion Plant, Alan S. Bruce, Paul J. Becker

Sociology, Anthropology, and Social Work Faculty Publications

While criminologists have for some time examined state and corporate crime as separate entities, the concept of state-corporate crime highlighting joint government and private corporate action causing criminal harm is a recent area of study with relatively few published case studies (Matthews and Kauzlarich, 2000). This paper focuses on state-corporate crime at the Paducah Gaseous Diffusion Plant (PGDP) in Paducah, Kentucky, and contributes to the study of state-corporate crime in three ways: (1) it adds a new case study to a field in which there are few published accounts, (2) it assesses the utility of Kauzlarich and Kramer’s (1998) integrated …

Evaluation Of A Psychoeducational Program Designed To Affect Attitudes Associated With Intimate Partner Violence In An Inmate Population, Melani Magee Wheeler

Doctoral Dissertations

The purpose of this study was to evaluate the effectiveness of a group intervention designed to impact male attitudes associated with the perpetration of intimate partner violence in a correctional setting. Specifically, the group intervention addressed gender role stereotypes and conflict, healthy and unhealthy entitlement attitudes, attitudes toward women, and effective communication and anger management. The group intervention also sought to increase positive attitudes toward seeking psychological assistance among participants. Results of the MANCOVA did not support the efficacy of the psychoeducational program in impacting attitudes among inmates. Implications and suggestions for future research are discussed.

The Effects Of Collective Efficacy And Dissatisfaction With Law Enforcement On Neighborhood Crime Rates, Kelly E. Cobb

Sociology & Criminal Justice Theses & Dissertations

The purpose of this thesis was to examine the effects of collective efficacy and dissatisfaction with law enforcement on neighborhood crime rates. A data set was obtained from the Inter-University Consortium for Political and Social Research titled, Project on Human Development in Chicago Neighborhoods: Community Survey 1994-1995 (PHDCN). This is one of the only studies which ask specific questions concerning collective efficacy and dissatisfaction with law enforcement, accompanied with a large, diverse sample. This research is important because it looks at two concepts, collective efficacy and dissatisfaction with law enforcement and their combined effect on neighborhood crime rates; violent …

The Functions Of The Social Bond, James J. Chriss

Sociology & Criminology Faculty Publications

Travis Hirschi's control or social bonding theory argues that those persons who have strong and abiding attachments to conventional society (in the form of attachments, involvement, investment, and belief) are less likely to deviate than persons who have weak or shallow bonds. Later, Gottfredson and Hirschi moved away from the social bond as the primary factor in deviance, and toward an emphasis on self-control. In short, low self-control is associated with higher levels of deviance and criminality irrespective of the strength or weakness of one's social bonds. In this article I argue that Talcott Parsons' AGIL schema easily incorporates Hirschi's …

Steekpartij Voor De Spiegel, Jenneke Christiaens

Jenneke Christiaens

No abstract provided.

Incarceration And Unwed Fathers In Fragile Families, Charles E. Lewis Jr., Irwin Garfinkel, Qin Gao

The Journal of Sociology & Social Welfare

Criminal justice policies have resulted in millions of Americans being incarcerated over the past three decades in systems that provide little or no rehabilitation. This study uses a new dataset-The Fragile Families Study-to document poor labor market outcomes that are associated with incarceration. We find that fathers who had been incarcerated earned 28 percent less annually thanfathers who were never incarceratedT hese previously incarceratedfa thers worked less weeks per year, less hours per week and were less likely to be working during the week prior to their interview. We also found that fathers who had been incarcerated were more likely …

Modern-Day Comfort Women: The U.S Military, Transnational Crime, And The Trafficking Of Women, Donna M. Hughes Dr.

Donna M. Hughes

The trafficking of women has been a lucrative moneymaker for transnational organized crime networks, ranking third, behind drugs and arms, in criminal earnings. The U.S. military bases in South Korea were found to form a hub for the transnational trafficking of women from the Asia Pacific and Eurasia to South Korea and the United States. This study, conducted in 2002, examined three types of trafficking that were connected to U.S. military bases in South Korea: domestic trafficking of Korean women to clubs around the military bases in South Korea, transnational trafficking of women to clubs around military bases in South …

Ua12/2/1 College Heights Herald, Vol. 83, No. 2, Wku Student Affairs

WKU Archives Records

WKU campus newspaper reporting campus, athletic and Bowling Green, Kentucky news.

Vigilantism, Current Racial Threat, And Death Sentences, David Jacobs, Stephanie L. Kent, Jason T. Carmichael

Sociology & Criminology Faculty Publications

Capital punishment is the most severe punishment, yet little is known about the social conditions that lead to death sentences. Racial threat explanations imply that this sanction will be imposed more often in jurisdictions with larger minority populations, but some scholars suggest that a tradition of vigilante violence leads to increased death sentences. This study tests the combined explanatory power of both accounts by assessing statistical interactions between past lynchings and the recent percentage of African Americans after political conditions and other plausible effects are held constant. Findings from count models based on different samples, data, and estimators suggest that …

Who Survives On Death Row? An Individual And Contextual Analysis, David Jacobs, Jason T. Carmichael, Zhenchao Qian, Stephanie L. Kent

Sociology & Criminology Faculty Publications

What are the relationships between death row offender attributes, social arrangements, and executions? Partly because public officials control executions, theorists view this sanction as intrinsically political. Although the literature has focused on offender attributes that lead to death sentences, the post-sentencing stage is at least as important. States differ sharply in their willingness to execute and less than 10 percent of those given a death sentence are executed. To correct the resulting problems with censored data, this study uses a discrete-time event history analysis to detect the individual and state-level contextual factors that shape execution probabilities. The findings show that …

Evaluation Of A Sleep Hygiene Program To Improve Inmate Sleep Quality, Jennifer F. Hodges-Crowder

Doctoral Dissertations

Research investigating the effectiveness of treatments for inmates with poor sleep quality appears minimal. Some difficulties related to poor sleep quality can be addressed effectively with little time and expense. Studies show that psychoeducational interventions are effective in reducing sleep complaints and improving sleep quality in a variety of populations including college students and adults. However, the effect of sleep hygiene interventions on inmate sleep complaints is unknown. Thus, the purpose of this study was to evaluate a psychoeducational intervention program aimed at improving prison inmate sleep habits, length, and quality.

Participants of this study were inmates at a department …

Particularisation Of Child Abuse Offences: Common Problems When Questioning Child Witnesses, Martine B. Powell, Kim P. Roberts, Belinda Guadagno

Psychology Faculty Publications

Prosecuting child abusers is often difficult due to lack of particularising details. Two possible ways of addressing this difficulty are: (a) to change the justice system to better serve prosecution for repeated offences (i.e., allow generic testimony), and (b) to bolster children's testimony. As this article has illustrated, there is still considerable potential for increasing (b). Given the low prosecution rates of child abuse offences, the need for exceptional interviewer training programs coupled with resources for ongoing supervision is now critical. While there have been some major improvements in child witness investigative interviews over the past two decades, there are …

Intimate Partner Homicide, Karitta A. Page

Sociology & Criminal Justice Theses & Dissertations

Using data collected from the Chicago Women's Health Risk Study (Block 2000), this study looked at female perpetrated intimate partner homicide. The purpose of this study was to identify what factors, if any, differentiate between abused women who kill versus abused women who do not kill their intimate partners. Through conducting this study, several factors such as substance abuse, support networks and severe violence were compared between abused women who kill their intimate partner versus those who were abused women but did not kill. It was found that severe abuse, substance abuse by the abuser and the abused person were …

Ua12/8 Annual Report, Wku Police

WKU Archives Records

Statistical report of crimes reported to and services rendered by the WKU Police Department during the fiscal year 2004-2007. Includes some five year comparisons.

Thereby Become A Monster: Complex Organizations And The Torture At Abu Ghraib, Janine A. Bower

Dissertations

Reasearch and theory on organizational crime and deviance suggest organizational offending includes aspects of the environment, organizational characteristics (such as tasks, structure, and processes), and cognition, and is systematically produced by the combination of these three. This research is an examination of the organization of the Abu Ghraib detention and interrogation facility in Iraq, the location of prison abuses now made infamous following their public disclosure in 2004. An ethnographic content analysis of documents was performed to probe organizational culture, structure and processes, and their intersection with individual biographies and contextual forces. While public questions focused on why seemingly ordinary …

Murder Clearance Rates: Guest Editors' Introduction, John P. Jarvis, Wendy C. Regoeczi

Sociology & Criminology Faculty Publications

The journal Homicide Studies has long been devoted to empirical studies addressing issues pertinent to the study of homicide and violence. Although a large variety of theoretical papers, research summaries, and public policy reviews of issues concerning homicide and violence have been explored in the journal over the past 10 years, at least one issue has garnered relatively little attention—the law enforcement response to homicide. This special issue attempts to begin filling this gap in the literature.

Undermining Individual And Collective Citizenship: The Impact Of Felon Exclusion Laws On The African-American Community, S. David Mitchell

S. David Mitchell

Felon exclusion laws are jurisdiction-specific, post-conviction statutory restrictions that prohibit convicted felons from exercising a host of legal rights, most notably the right to vote. The professed intent of these laws is to punish convicted felons equally without regard for the demographic characteristics of each individual, including race, class, or gender. Felon exclusion laws, however, have a disproportionate impact on African-American males and, by extension, on the residential communities from which many convicted felons come. Thus, felon exclusion laws not only relegate African-American convicted felons to a position of second-class citizenship, but the laws also diminish the collective citizenship of …

The Effects Of Post-Secondary Education On State Troopers’ Job Performance, Stress Levels, And Authoritarian Attitudes, Carl J. Lafata

Dissertations

This study was designed to determine the effects of post-secondary education on police officers' job performance, stress levels, and levels of authoritarianism as measured by Altemeyer's (1996) Right-Wing Authoritarianism Scale questionnaire. It involved the analysis of data voluntarily and anonymously submitted via an internet-based survey by 356 of the Michigan State Police's approximately 1,800 enlisted members (those members who are state-certified police officers), along with information collected from informal personal interviews held with a select group of seven of the department's senior leaders. Subsequent analysis of the collected quantitative data revealed no statistical support for the project's first two hypotheses, …

Social Disadvantage And Family Violence: Neighborhood Effects On Attitudes About Intimate Partner Violence And Corporal Punishment, Deeanna M. Button

Sociology & Criminal Justice Theses & Dissertations

Family violence is widespread and occurs everyday in the United States. The consequences of the various forms of family violence and physical discipline are both immediate and long lasting. As nearly every family is victimized by some type of family violence (Payne and Gainey 2005), it is important that all dynamics of family life be explored. Extending the focus of family violence risk factors to include neighborhood experiences allows for the potential development of different social policies. The purpose of this thesis was to analyze the effects of perceived neighborhood characteristics, in addition to a macro-level measure of crime, on …

Employers Preferences: What Type Of Employers Are Hiring Ex-Offenders?, Gia M. Dyke

Sociology & Criminal Justice Theses & Dissertations

The purpose of this study is to explore the relationship between employers and ex-offenders. The focus here is on which employers have experience in hiring ex-offenders and which do not. More specifically, the central research question of this study is what type of employers' are more inclined to hire what type of offenders? This question is examined by utilizing secondary data collected by the Michigan State Survey Center during spring of 2002. The data were collected for a research project entitled Consequences of a Criminal Record for Employment in Milwaukee, Wisconsin. For the purpose of this study, only data …

Dirty Cops: Patterns Of Offending In Sex Crimes By Sworn Law Enforcement Officers, Philip M. Stinson

Criminal Justice Faculty Publications

No abstract provided.

Risk And Protective Factors Predictive Of Sense Of Coherence During Adolescence, Shawn C. Marsh, Samantha S. Clinkinbeard, Rebecca M. Thomas, William P. Evans

Criminology and Criminal Justice Faculty Publications

This brief report presents a study undertaken to better understand the factors that are related to sense of coherence (SOC) levels among youth. Middle school students (N = 1619) reported on risk and protective factors across ecological domains. Analyses revealed that social support, anger expression, family conflict and neighborhood cohesion were predictors of SOC for both males and females. Community views regarding gang membership was a predictor of SOC only for males, while age was a predictor of SOC only for females. The findings suggest a resiliency and ecological framework may be helpful in understanding SOC in youth.

The Effect Of Local Life Circumstances On Victimization Of Drug‐Involved Women, Gaylene Armstrong, Marie L. Griffin

Criminology and Criminal Justice Faculty Publications

While numerous studies have examined female victimization in the general population, fewer studies have focused specifically on high‐risk populations such as drug‐involved females. Of the existing literature, the Lifestyle Exposure and/or Routine Activities theory is frequently used to examine the antecedent conditions and correlates of female victimization. This study employs a dynamic modeling approach to examine the effect of short‐term change (i.e., monthly) in local life circumstances on female victimization within a criminogenic population. Results demonstrated that risk of victimization increased in months a woman was in a relationship, lived with a significant other and/or her children, engaged in criminogenic …

Effects Of Individual And Contextual Characteristics On Preadjudication Detention Of Juvenile Delinquents, Gaylene Armstrong, Nancy Rodriguez

Criminology and Criminal Justice Faculty Publications

This study examined individual and contextual factors affecting preadjudication detention of juvenile delinquents in 65 counties of a northeastern state. Results demonstrated that while individual characteristics of the juvenile delinquents were important predictors, much of the variation in decisions was explained when contextual factors of the counties were included in a two‐level hierarchical linear model. In addition to the statistically significant legal and extralegal juvenile characteristics, our study found that counties with a higher percentage of non‐White population were more likely to detain juvenile delinquents prior to adjudication. These findings demonstrate the importance of considering both individual and contextual factors …

Crime In The Usa, Oklahoma State University - Main Campus

Crime/Violence

Photograph of a display of government documents from Oklahoma State University.

Combating Terrorism, San Antonio Public Library

Crime/Violence

Bibliography and photograph of a display of government documents from the San Antonio Public Library, Texas.

Violence In The Media, Minnesota State University, Mankato

Crime/Violence

Bibliography and photographs of a display of government documents at Minnesota State University, Mankato.