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Articles 1 - 11 of 11
Full-Text Articles in Criminology
Police Legitimacy In Trinidad And Tobago: Resident Perceptions In A High-Crime Community, Ericka B. Adams
Police Legitimacy In Trinidad And Tobago: Resident Perceptions In A High-Crime Community, Ericka B. Adams
Faculty Publications
Violent crime in Trinidad and Tobago has increased over the last two decades, yet the police have been largely unsuccessful in reducing violence. Between 1999 and 2016, the murder rate increased by 475%. Despite the fact that the murder rate has increased, approximately 76 homicides are cleared each year, resulting in a low-homicide clearance rate. Using 40 semi-structured interviews with community members from a high-crime, low-income community in Trinidad and Tobago, this study examines residents’ experiences with police officers, and respondents’ willingness to work with the police to clear criminal cases. The results indicate that due to a lack of …
Delineating Victims From Perpetrators: Prosecuting Self-Produced Child Pornography In Youth Criminal Justice Systems, Bryce Westlake
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 …
“I’Ve Risen Up From The Ashes That I Created”: Record Clearance And Gendered Narratives Of Self-Reinvention And Reintegration, Elsa Chen, Ericka Adams
“I’Ve Risen Up From The Ashes That I Created”: Record Clearance And Gendered Narratives Of Self-Reinvention And Reintegration, Elsa Chen, Ericka Adams
Faculty Publications
Record clearance allows some individuals to redesignate or remove certain minor convictions from their criminal records. This interview-based study finds that both men and women seek opportunities for personal gain through record clearance, but women are more motivated by moral and religious influences and concern about reputation. Women are also more likely than men to acknowledge personal flaws, and to desire to replace criminal identities with law-abiding identities. As women redefine their identities, caregiving is especially important as a personal obligation and professional aspiration. Record clearance is particularly compatible with women’s motivations, willingness to change, and personal and professional goals.
Erasing The Mark Of A Criminal Past: Ex-Offenders’ Expectations And Experiences With Record Clearance, Ericka Adams, Elsa Chen, Rosella Chapman
Erasing The Mark Of A Criminal Past: Ex-Offenders’ Expectations And Experiences With Record Clearance, Ericka Adams, Elsa Chen, Rosella Chapman
Faculty Publications
Through the process of record clearance, individuals can have certain minor convictions removed from their criminal records or designated as expunged. This study analyzes data gathered from semi-structured interviews with 40 persons with past criminal convictions to examine the expectations of individuals who seek record clearance and the extent to which completion of the process facilitates efforts to reintegrate into society and desist from crime. The analysis finds that record clearance benefits ex-offenders through external effects, such as the reduction of barriers to employment, and internal processes, such as the facilitation of cognitive transformation and the affirmation of a new …
Criminal Careers In Cyberspace: Examining Website Failure Within Child Exploitation Networks, Bryce G. Westlake, Martin Bouchard
Criminal Careers In Cyberspace: Examining Website Failure Within Child Exploitation Networks, Bryce G. Westlake, Martin Bouchard
Faculty Publications
Publically accessible, illegal, websites represent an additional challenge for control agencies, but also an opportunity for researchers to monitor, in real time, changes in criminal careers. Using a repeated measures design, we examine evolution in the networks that form around child exploitation (CE) websites, over a period of 60 weeks, and determine which criminal career dimensions predict website failure. Network data were collected using a custom-designed web-crawler. Baseline survival rates were compared to networks surrounding (legal) sexuality and sports websites. Websites containing CE material were no more likely to fail than comparisons. Cox regression analyses suggest that increased volumes of …
Comparing Methods For Detecting Child Exploitation Content Online, Bryce Westlake, Martin Bouchard, Richard Frank
Comparing Methods For Detecting Child Exploitation Content Online, Bryce Westlake, Martin Bouchard, Richard Frank
Faculty Publications
The sexual exploitation of children online is seen as a global issue and has been addressed by both governments and private organizations. Efforts thus far have focused primarily on the use of image hash value databases to find content. However, recently researchers have begun to use keywords as a way to detect child exploitation content. Within the current study we explore both of these methodologies. Using a custom designed web-crawler, we create three networks using the hash value method, keywords method, and a hybrid method combining the first two. Results first show that the three million images found in our …
Finding The Key Players In Online Child Exploitation Networks, Bryce Westlake, Martin Bouchard, Richard Frank
Finding The Key Players In Online Child Exploitation Networks, Bryce Westlake, Martin Bouchard, Richard Frank
Faculty Publications
The growth of the Internet has been paralleled with a similar growth in online child exploitation. Since completely shutting down child exploitation websites is difficult (or arguably impossible), the goal must be to find the most efficient way of identifying the key targets and then to apprehend them. Traditionally, online investigations have been manual and centered on images. However, we argue that target prioritization needs to take more than just images into consideration, and that the investigating process needs to become more systematic. Drawing from a web crawler we specifically designed for extracting child exploitation website networks, this study 1) …
Strategies To Disrupt Online Child Pornography Networks, Kila Joffres, Martin Bouchard, Richard Frank, Bryce Westlake
Strategies To Disrupt Online Child Pornography Networks, Kila Joffres, Martin Bouchard, Richard Frank, Bryce Westlake
Faculty Publications
This paper seeks to determine which attack strategies (hub, bridge, or fragmentation) are most effective at disrupting two online child pornography networks in terms of outcome measures that include density, clustering, compactness, and average path length. For this purpose, two networks were extracted using a web-crawler that recursively follows child exploitation sites. It was found that different attack strategies were warranted depending on the outcome measure and the network structure. Overall, hub attacks were most effective at reducing network density and clustering, whereas fragmentation attacks were most effective at reducing the network's distance-based cohesion and average path length. In certain …
The Structure And Content Of Online Child Exploitation Networks, Richard Frank, Bryce Westlake, Martin Bouchard
The Structure And Content Of Online Child Exploitation Networks, Richard Frank, Bryce Westlake, Martin Bouchard
Faculty Publications
The emergence of the Internet has provided people with the ability to find and communicate with others of common interests. Unfortunately, those involved in the practices of child exploitation have also received the same benefits. Although law enforcement continues its efforts to shut down websites dedicated to child exploitation, the problem remains uncurbed. Despite this, law enforcement has yet to examine these websites as a network and determine their structure, stability and susceptibleness to attack. We extract the structure and features of four online child exploitation networks using a custom-written webpage crawler. Social network analysis is then applied with the …
Sunday Friends: The Working Alternative To Charity, James D. Lee, Yoko Baba, Claudio V. Sanchez, Rebecca Wang, Chelsey White
Sunday Friends: The Working Alternative To Charity, James D. Lee, Yoko Baba, Claudio V. Sanchez, Rebecca Wang, Chelsey White
Faculty Publications
Sunday Friends is a non-profit organization in San José, California, that provides multiple activities for families who are in need of financial support. Given the particular location of the program, most families are Latino and bilingual. Participants and program volunteers form a community at an elementary school on a couple of scheduled Sundays each month. When family members participate in activities designed to educate, improve skills, and to give back to the larger community, they earn tickets that they can redeem for items that they need and want from the Sunday Friends store. Activities include healthy cooking projects, “Thank You …
Stigma Sentiments And Self-Meanings: Applying The Modified Labeling Theory To Juvenile Delinquents, James Lee, Amy Kroska, Nicole Carr
Stigma Sentiments And Self-Meanings: Applying The Modified Labeling Theory To Juvenile Delinquents, James Lee, Amy Kroska, Nicole Carr
Faculty Publications
We use “stigma sentiments” as a way to operationalize the stigma associated with a juvenile delinquency label. Stigma sentiments are the evaluation, potency, and activity (EPA) associated with the cultural category “a juvenile delinquent.” We find consistent support for the validity of the evaluation component as measures of these conceptions. Then we assess hypotheses derived from the modified labeling theory: we expect each stigma sentiment to be related positively to the corresponding dimension of self-identities among juvenile delinquents but unrelated to the corresponding dimension among non-delinquents. We find support for this hypothesis on the evaluation dimension. We also find two …