Criminology Commons^™

Adverse Childhood Experiences And Deleterious Outcomes In Adulthood: A Consideration Of The Simultaneous Role Of Genetic And Environmental Influences In Two Independent Samples From The United States, Joseph A. Schwartz, Emily M. Wright, Bradon A. Valgardson

Criminology and Criminal Justice Faculty Publications

Background

Adverse childhood experiences (ACEs) are a potent risk factor. Despite these findings, studies have also recognized the importance of considering additional sources of genetic and environmental influence that cluster within families.

Objective

To properly control for latent sources of genetic and within-family environmental influences and isolate the association between ACEs and the following outcomes in adulthood: physical health, depressive symptoms, educational attainment, income attainment, alcohol problems, and antisocial behavior.

Participants and Setting

Two independent samples of twins and siblings from the United States: the Midlife Development in the United States (MIDUS) study (N = 862) and the National …

Not “That Kind Of Cop”: Exploring How Officers Adapt Approaches, Attitudes, And Self-Concepts In School Settings, Trisha N. Rhodes, Samantha S. Clinkinbeard

Criminology and Criminal Justice Faculty Publications

Prior research indicates school resource officers (SROs) perform an array of nontraditional police tasks and work in settings culturally distinct from street patrols. To thrive in SRO programs, police must adapt to these new roles and settings, likely affecting how they view themselves and their work. The present study examined how SROs view and respond to their work in schools through interviews and observations of 20 participants in four states. Findings revealed participants adopted policing strategies that facilitated communication and rapport. They generally viewed citizens positively and felt being an SRO made their work meaningful. Participants further described identities at …

Psychosocial Analysis Of An Ethnography At The Cuyahoga County Public Defenders Office, Ernest M. Oleksy

The Downtown Review

Too often, social science majors become jaded with their field of study due to a misperception of the nature of many potential jobs which they are qualified for. Such discord is prevalent amongst undergraduates who strive for work in the criminal justice system. Hollywood misrepresentations become the archetypes of the aforementioned field, leaving out the necessity and ubiquity of accompanying desk work. Still other social science majors struggle to identify theoretical interpretations in praxis.

A Public Health Argument Against Arming Teachers, David I. Swedler

Health Behavior Research

The peer-reviewed scientific literature does not support the idea that arming teachers will prevent school shootings. In this commentary, I draw on the criminal justice, injury prevention, and firearm safety literature to demonstrate how arming teachers will do more harm than good.

Disparity Does Not Mean Bias: Making Sense Of Observed Racial Disparities In Fatal Officer-Involved Shootings With Multiple Benchmarks, Brandon Tregle, Justin Nix, Geoffrey P. Alpert

Criminology and Criminal Justice Faculty Publications

Racial disparities in officer-involved shootings have dominated the national discourse recently. Unfortunately, we have yet to identify an appropriate benchmark, or at-risk population, to put these observed racial disparities into context. In this article, we use seven benchmarks—based on population data from the US Census, police-citizen interaction data from the Police-Public Contact Survey, and arrest data from the Uniform Crime Report—to compare OIS fatality rates for black and white citizens from 2015 to 2017. Using population, police-citizen interactions, or total arrests as a benchmark, we observe that black citizens appear more likely than white citizens to be fatally shot by …

Youth Activism, Art And Transitional Artist: Emerging Spaces Of Memory After The Jasmin Revolution, Arnaud Kurze

Arnaud Kurze

This project explores the creation of alternative transitional justice spaces in post-conflict contexts, particularly concentrating on the role of art and the impact of social movements to address human rights abuses. Drawing from post-authoritarian Tunisia, it scrutinizes the work of contemporary youth activists and artists to deal with the past and foster sociopolitical change. Although these vanguard protesters provoked the overthrow of President Zine El Abidine Ben Ali in 2011, the power vacuum was quickly filled by old elites. The exclusion of young revolutionaries from political decision-making led to unprecedented forms of mobilization to account for repression and injustice under …

Victimization Of The Homeless: Public Perceptions, Public Policies, And Implications For Social Work Practice, Marion M. Turner, Simon P. Funge, Wesley J. Gabbard

Journal of Social Work in the Global Community

Homeless individuals are particularly vulnerable to victimization, sometimes resulting in fatalities. Theories of victimization prove useful to understanding the risks inherent in being homeless as well as the public’s perception of the homeless population. Problematically, public policy that criminalizes this population may exacerbate the victimization of this group. Municipalities have turned to law enforcement and the criminal justice system to respond to people living in public spaces. Programs that ensure adequate income, affordable housing, and supportive services to prevent homelessness and address the needs of those who are homeless are essential. In addition, increased law enforcement training and the implementation …

A Leak In The Pipeline: College In Jail From The Participants’ Perspective, Kathy Mora

Student Theses

Offering college-level coursework to people in correctional facilities has proven to be a good investment in reducing recidivism and violence, however, how incarcerated students evaluate ‘prison to college pipeline’ programs, and how they access education after release is less understood. This study is a participant-observation approach with semi-structured surveys of a college class in Rikers Island that aims to answer the question: How do incarcerate students describe their experience with college in jail and their post-release plans to continue their education? This study uses 25 surveys of persons who participated in a college program in Rikers Island. A significant theme …

Political Competition And Predictors Of Hate Crime: A County-Level Analysis, Eaven Holder

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Research on hate crime has tended to utilize sociological frameworks to best explain the incidence of such offending, but little research has been conducted to determine whether political factors may play a role. Although Olzak (1990) touched upon the relationship between racial violence and third-party politics during the American Progressive era (1882-1914), the research did not fully articulate how political competition may influence the commission of hate crime. The current study seeks to fill this gap, while also extending concepts associated with social disorganization theory and the defended communities perspective. It does so by utilizing a longitudinal research design to …

Technology And The American Criminal Justice System, Taylor Hunt

Information Systems Undergraduate Honors Theses

The American prison population has grown to over 2.3 million citizens incarcerated (“United States of Incarceration,” 2016) and there are more than 900,000 police officers in the nation (“Law Enforcement Facts,” n.d.). These over 3 million people use technology every day in either their work or incarcerated lives. As the effectiveness of the criminal justice system is being questioned, now is the time to perform an assessment of the technology used and make technological recommendations to lower crime, incarceration, and recidivism rates simultaneously. To obtain that technology assessment, a student research study was conducted and consisted of research and interviews …

Disproportionate School Disciplinary Responses: An Exploration Of Prisonization And Minority Threat Hypothesis Among Black, Hispanic, And Native American Students, Meghan M. Mitchell, Gaylene Armstrong, Todd A. Armstrong

Criminology and Criminal Justice Faculty Publications

This research tests two potential explanations of school disciplinary responses: minority threat hypothesis and prisonization of schools. Data from the Arizona Safe and Drug-Free Schools (SDFS) survey and Arizona Youth Survey (AYS) are analyzed using ordinary least squares (OLS) regressions. Findings demonstrate that the percentage of Black, Hispanic, and Native American students was not associated with exclusionary responses to school misconduct, but was linked to decreases in mild and restorative disciplinary practices. Findings support the hypothesis that minority threat reduces access to mild and restorative disciplinary responses. Although, further research is needed on the roles of mental health professionals and …

Risk Factor And High-Risk Place Variations Across Different Robbery Targets In Denver, Colorado, Nathan T. Connealy, Eric L. Piza

Publications and Research

Purpose

Risk Terrain Modeling (RTM) has been effectively used to spatially diagnose risk for crimes such as robbery, aggravated assault, and gun violence. An important contribution is to consider how risk differs across individual crimes and different target types. This study tests four different robbery target types in unique models to examine the potential for variation across significant risk factors and high-risk locations.

Methods

Using the online diagnostic software RTMDx, individual robbery models were run for four robbery target types in Denver, Colorado: commercial (businesses), carjacking (driver/vehicle), residential (home/dwelling), and street (pedestrians). A conjunctive analysis of case configurations was also …

Falling Between The Cracks: Understanding Why States Fail In Protecting Our Children From Crime, Michal Gilad

All Faculty Scholarship

The article is the first to take an inclusive look at the monumental problem of crime exposure during childhood, which is estimated to be one of the most damaging and costly public health and public safety problem in our society today. It takes-on the challenging task of ‘naming’ the problem by coining the term Comprehensive Childhood Crime Impact or in short the Triple-C Impact. Informed by scientific findings, the term embodies the full effect of direct and indirect crime exposure on children due to their unique developmental characteristics, and the spillover effect the problem has on our society as …

Demanding Accountability In Domestic Violence Courts, Johnna Pike

Violence Against Women conference

This presentation explores whether specialized domestic violence courts are achieving their stated objective of abuser accountability. Domestic violence emerged from the private realm of family life into the public consciousness during the 1970s. Since then, there has been a largely successful movement to reframe domestic violence as a “real” social problem necessitating meaningful criminal justice intervention. Within the criminal justice system, victim and feminist groups have mostly prevailed in controlling the discourse around domestic violence as a gender-based offense. As a result, a criminal court model aimed at empowering victims and at holding abusers accountable has emerged. However, the efficacy …

The Sponge Theory: Introducing A New Interpersonal Communication Theory, Ben Brandley

Shared Knowledge Conference

Abstract Law enforcement is an extremely stressful career. In exploration of the influence of career stress on law enforcement officers’ relationships, data was collected from eighteen in-depth interviews and ninety hours of participant observation with American peace officers. The results of this research found that while all of the officers admitted to the omnipresent nature of their career stress, the majority of them repeatedly devalued the impact of present or potential detriments caused by that stress. For example, they often invalidated emotions through jadedness and dark humor, challenged the stance that their organizational culture is harmful (e.g. many officers undermined …

The Critical Need For Mental Health Education To Be Mandated In New Mexico's Public Schools, Bonnie L. Murphy

Shared Knowledge Conference

Based on a review of research and best practices in mental health awareness and skills, this inquiry project argues for state legislative policies that would require mental health awareness and skills in the K-12 curriculum. Mental health affects individual accomplishments in every stage of people’s lives beginning in early childhood and throughout the life cycle. Prevention and treatment of mental illness plays a key role in the ability of an individual to cope with loss and develop resiliency and perseverance in challenging times and to make better decisions that improve the individual’s life and the lives of those around them. …

The Uncommon Ground: Drunk Drivers’ Self-Presentations And Accountings Of Drunk Driving, Lars Fynbo

The Qualitative Report

The paper analyses the self-presentations of three convicted drunk drivers: two women and one man. It applies symbolic interaction theory to analyze how the interviewees account of themselves and their driving under the influence (DUI) convictions. The analysis shows how uncontrolled and unpredictable features of the data generating process impacts on the interviewees’ self-presentations. One interviewee, a 28-year-old man, uses his dog and tattoos to close-in on his problem with alcohol consumption. Another interviewee, a 61-year-old woman, uses legitimate cultural scripts of being a responsible woman to neutralize the fact that she has been drunk driving frequently for many years. …

Program Evaluation Of The Federal Reentry Court In The Eastern District Of Pennsylvania: Report On Program Effectiveness For The First 265 Reentry Court Participants, Caitlin J. Taylor

Sociology and Criminal Justice Faculty work

This report describes the latest evaluation of the Supervision to Aid Reentry (STAR) program (hereafter referred to as Reentry Court). The success of the Reentry Court is assessed by comparing the first 265 Reentry Court participants to a group of similarly situated individuals under supervised release. Results indicate that while Reentry Court participation does not appear to influence the likelihood of new arrests, participation is associated with a significant reduction in the likelihood of probation revocations and an increase in the likelihood of employment.

Understanding Micro-Spatial Crime Patterns: A Comprehensive Trajectory Analysis Of Violent Crime At Street Segments In St. Louis, Mo, Aaron Levin

Dissertations

Spatial crime studies have existed for over a century, but the last 20 years have seen a turn in focus toward micro-spatial units such as street blocks and street segments. A particular subfield of this modern micro-spatial perspective is called crime trajectory analysis, which can isolate patterns of crime at small spatial units over time. Though several crime trajectory analyses have been conducted for coastal cities, the technique has never been applied to Midwestern data. This project fills that research gap by using the group-based trajectory modeling (GBTM) algorithm to uncover patterns of violent crime at street segments in St. …

Hidden In Plain Sight: A Machine Learning Approach For Detecting Prostitution Activity In Phoenix, Arizona, Edward Helderop, Jessica Huff, Fred Morstatter, Anthony Grubesic, Danielle Wallace

Criminology and Criminal Justice Faculty Publications

Prostitution has been a topic of study for decades, yet many questions remain about where prostitution occurs. Difficulty in identifying prostitution activity is often attributed to the hidden and seemingly victimless nature of the crime. Despite numerous challenges associated with policing street prostitution, these encounters become more difficult to identify when they take place indoors, especially in locations away from public view, such as hotels. The purpose of this paper is to develop a strategy for identifying hotel facilities and surrounding areas that may be experiencing elevated levels of prostitution activity using high-volume, user-generated data, namely hotel reviews written by …

Political Action As A Function Of Grievances, Risk, And Social Identity: An Experimental Approach, Erin M. Kearns, Victor Asal, James Igoe Walsh, Christopher Federico, Anthony F. Lemieux

Criminology and Criminal Justice Faculty Publications

Why would individuals engage in or support contentious politics? This question is challenging to answer with observational data where causal factors are correlated and difficult to measure. Using a survey-embedded experiment, we focus on three situational factors: grievances, risk, and identity. We also explore how individual differences in sociopolitical orientations—social dominance orientation (SDO) and right-wing authoritarianism (RWA)—impact action. Grievances influence engagement in and support for protests. Risk influences engagement in protest, but not support for it. Regardless of condition, SDO and RWA help explain why some people engage in protest while others do not, particularly within the same context.

A General Mitigation For Disturbance-Driven Crimes?: Psychic State, Personal Choice, And Normative Inquiries, Paul H. Robinson

All Faculty Scholarship

It is argued here that the narrow provoked “heat of passion” mitigation available under current law ought to be significantly expanded to include not just murder but all felonies and not just “heat of passion” but potentially all mental or emotional disturbances, whenever the offender’s situation and capacities meaningfully reduce the offender’s blameworthiness for the violation. In determining eligibility for mitigation, the jury should take into account (a) the extent to which the offender was acting under the influence of mental or emotional disturbance (the psychic state inquiry), (b) given the offender’s situation and capacities, the extent to which one …

Social Justice Guest Speaker Series: Does More Immigration Mean More Crime In The United States?, Ramiro Martinez Ph.D.

Social Justice & Activism

Professor Martinez is a quantitative criminologist. Within that broad arena, his work contributes to violent crime research. His core research agenda asks how does violence vary across ecological settings, and, does violent crime and violent deaths vary across racial/ethnic and immigrant groups? In 2011, he was a recipient of American Society of Criminology DPCC’s Lifetime Achievement for outstanding scholarship in the area of race, crime, and justice. In 2007 he was a recipient of American Society of Criminology DPCC’s Coramae Richey Mann Award for outstanding scholarship in the area of race, crime, and justice. In 2006 he was a recipient …

A Bit Like Cash: Understanding Cash-For-Bitcoin Transactions Through Individual Vendors, Stephanie J. Robberson, Mark R. Mccoy

Journal of Digital Forensics, Security and Law

As technology improves and economies become more globalized, the concept of currency has evolved. Bitcoin, a cryptographic digital currency, has been embraced as a secure and convenient type of money. Due to its security and privacy for the user, Bitcoin is a good tool for conducting criminal trades. The Financial Crimes Enforcement Network (FinCEN) has regulations in place to make identification information of Bitcoin purchasers accessible to law enforcement, but enforcing these rules with cash-for-Bitcoin traders is difficult. This study surveyed cash-for-Bitcoin vendors in Oklahoma, Texas, Arkansas, Missouri, Kansas, Colorado, and New Mexico to determine personal demographic information, knowledge of …

Putting An End To The Punishment And Rehabilitation Pendulum, Cassandra Long

Criminology Student Work

Over the past 30 years, the juvenile justice system can be described as a pendulum that swings between the concepts of rehabilitation and punishment. When the juvenile justice system was first created, rehabilitation and restorative justice were its primary purposes. However, over time the system has strayed from these views and has turned its focus toward punishment. The punishment focus has partially risen out of the communities’ fear of crime that has been ignited by the media concerning adolescents who are not deterred by the juvenile justice system. Nonetheless, it can be argued that the juvenile justice system should revert …

Delineating Victims From Perpetrators: Prosecuting Self-Produced Child Pornography In Youth Criminal Justice Systems, Bryce Westlake

Faculty Publications

Video recording technology advancements and accessibility has been paralleled by a growth in self-produced child pornography (SPCP). Although social and judicial attention has been given to instances of teenage sexting, Internet-based forms of SPCP, such as webcam/website sex tourism, have almost been ignored. While some of the proposed legislation reform has referenced video-based SPCP, the majority has focused on SPCP distributed through cellular phones; excluding that which is manifested online or through entrepreneurial efforts. The purpose of this article is to introduce non-sexting SPCP, using the case study of Justin Berry (in the United States), and to propose a broad …

Student Attitudes Toward Sex Offender Policies And Laws In An Era Of High Profile Sex Crimes In The News, Amber Bennett

Mahurin Honors College Capstone Experience/Thesis Projects

This is a study looking at the attitudes that undergraduate college students taking introductory sociology and criminology courses have toward sex offender policies and laws such as community notification, residence restrictions, and the registry system. Voluntary participants were also asked to look at the appropriateness of the punishment given to perpetrators in case studies based off real cases. Results showed that there are potential gender differences in the attitudes about appropriateness of notification and the registration of sex offenders. There were less favorable attitudes toward chemical and surgical castration. Further research should be done to look at different types of …

Abuse Or Be Abused: Traumatic Memory, Sex Inequality, And Millennium As A Socio-Literary Device, Kate Rose

Dignity: A Journal of Analysis of Exploitation and Violence

This article applies the research of French psychiatrist Muriel Salmona to literary analysis of Stieg Larsson’s protagonist, Lisbeth Salander, in the Millennium trilogy (The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo, 2008; The Girl Who Played with Fire, 2009; The Girl Who Kicked the Hornet’s Nest, 2010). It suggests that Larsson’s novels may be useful in raising awareness of childhood sexual abuse, through reading neglected signs linked to the neurology of traumatic memory. In the tradition of Nordic noir novels, hyperboles in Salander’s sensationalized identity serve to magnify and bring to light a misunderstood social problem. The article …

Bonding Images: Photography And Film As Acts Of Perpetration, Christophe Busch

Genocide Studies and Prevention: An International Journal

Historical and contemporary cases of collective violence show an incremental use of photography and film to capture and disseminate violent acts. Recording cruelty during conflict seems to be a highly ritualised practice that urges the question what communicative and psychological functions these acts have? Why and how does perpetrator photography shape a binding moral world that divides 'us' versus 'them'? These visualising acts are commonly seen as proof of power that desensitises the perpetrators and dehumanises the victims. This contribution focuses on the imagery of the Holocaust, looks into the functions that capturing and sharing cruelty has on the evolution …

Should Female Prostitution Be Legalized? An Opinion Survey Of Jordanian Citizens Living In The United States, Rana Q. Alzoubi

Criminology Student Work

Prostitution is a worldwide phenomenon in which different cultures attempt to control and regulate sex work often with terrible consequences. The purpose of the current study is to examine the opinions of Jordanian citizens living in the United States concerning the legalization of prostitution. To provide a better understanding of prostitution in the Middle East, this research explores the opinions of Jordanian citizens on the legalization of prostitution in the Middle East. The research asks participants about prostitution as it relates to health, victimization, and the marginalization of prostitutes, as well as the ways in which prostitutes lack protection through …