Criminology and Criminal Justice Commons^™

The Relationship Between Social Mobilization, Crime, And Crime Control: A Longitudinal Analysis Of 900 Cities In The U.S. Between 1964-1995, Erin R. Coleman

Sociology ETDs

This dissertation explores the longitudinal relationships between social mobilization, crime, and crime control. The dataset used to explore these relationships combine Uniform Crime Report (UCR) data on crimes known to the police and crime clearances by arrest with decennial census data and data on reported social mobilization events reported in the New York Times between 1964-1995. The data include information from all these sources for over 900 cities in the U.S. Analyses model violent and property crime counts, and well as clearance by arrest rates in the month after the social mobilization events. Results show that social mobilization is often …

Female Perpetrators Of Ritually Motivated Pedicide And Mutilation Of Children, Chima Agazue

Dignity: A Journal of Analysis of Exploitation and Violence

Ritually motivated pedicide is among contemporary Africa’s most severe crimes against children. Most of these crimes involve brutal acts of violence or mutilation of the victim. While men are most often the perpetrators of violent crimes, ritually motivated pedicide and mutilation equally attract women. The role of women in these crimes is not restricted to the less violent aspects of the crimes; instead, they also extend to the most brutal elements, often involving mutilation, decapitation or outright murder of the victim. This article explored the involvement of women in these crimes that target children for mutilation and pedicide. The article …

Examining The Impact Of The Covid-19 Pandemic On Violent Crime In The City Of Pittsburgh, Brittany Urban

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

The goal of this research is to examine patterns of Part I crimes [including Part I Person/Violent: Homicide, Rape, Aggravated Assault, and Robbery, and Part I Property: Burglary, Larceny-Theft, Motor Vehicle Theft, and Arson, as defined by the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) Uniform Crime Reporting (UCR) Standards] in The City of Pittsburgh, framing the COVID-19 pandemic as a major stressor that Robert Agnew’s General Strain Theory suggests may lead to increased opportunity for crime, due to the perceived unjustness of the associated lockdown orders and potential incentive for criminal coping (Agnew 1992). This descriptive analysis is based primarily upon …

Crime Attractors In Sin City? A Pre/Post Test Of Crime Patterns And Police Enforcement Around Recreational Marijuana Facilities, Joshua Donnelly

UNLV Theses, Dissertations, Professional Papers, and Capstones

The federalist system in the United States has created criminal opportunities within jurisdictions that have approved recreational marijuana facilities (RMFs). These facilities have characteristics that are attractive for motivated offenders including marijuana and marijuana-related tangible goods. Through ArcGIS, this research examined the crime patterns and police enforcement patterns that occurred within a 288-meter street-network buffer around RMFs through a pre/post-test exploratory design in the Las Vegas area. The time periods examined were 2015 to 2016 (pre-legalization), and 2018 to 2019 (post-legalization). Calls for service data were used to demonstrate both crime and enforcement patterns. Furthermore, facilities were classified into “local …

Elements Of Social Disorganization And Environmental Criminology: A Spatial Analysis Of Homicides In Villa Nueva, Guatemala, David J. Topel

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This study seeks to integrate the main spatial theories of crime, social disorganization, and routine activities theories while investigating the spatial dimension of homicides in Villa Nueva, Guatemala. Empirical relationships at a small unit of analysis, the natural cadaster blocks as defined by the municipality offer a more appropriate unit of analysis for the context of the city. While there is a robust body of work in developed nations synthetizing social disorganization and routine activities theories, the exploration of criminological theory integration and the use of the smallest unit of analysis still needs the addition of empirical research in Latin …

The Spatial Associations Between Crime And Economy In Chicago 2015-2020, Hongtao Huang

Honors Capstones

The severity of the crime is often the most intuitive reflection of whether a region is safe and the top factor for the public when evaluating a region. Economist's list of the safest cities in seven major North American cities, Chicago was ranked at six, just above Dallas. Chicago scored the lowest in personal security, which is closely tied to the crime. Against the backdrop of higher unemployment and prices, this study is interested in how property-based crimes are related to the economic decline in Chicago geographically. The study used the heterogeneity analysis tool Geodetector to investigate the correlation between …

Immigrants And Crime, Daniel L. Stageman

Publications and Research

The gap between public perception of immigrant criminality and the research consensus on immigrants’ actual rates of criminal participation is persistent and cross-cultural. While the available evidence shows that immigrants worldwide tend to participate in criminal activity at rates slightly lower than the native-born, media and political discourse portraying immigrants as uniquely crime-prone remains a pervasive global phenomenon. This apparent disconnect is rooted in the dynamics of othering, or the tendency to dehumanize and criminalize identifiable out-groups. Given that most migration decisions are motivated by economic factors, othering is commonly used to justify subjecting immigrants to exploitative labor practices, with …

Reflective Writing In Prisons: Rehabilitation And The Power Of Stories And Connections, Sandeep Kumar

VA Engage Journal

The United States has the highest rate of incarceration in the world. Even though the rate of crime is dropping, incarceration rates remain fairly steady. What’s more, recidivism (i.e., re-offending after conviction for other crimes) is also very high in the US. If offenders continue to offend, even after completing their sentences in a correctional system designed to address their underlying criminal activity, what is the point of having such a system? Can the system be made more accountable and better? Have we considered all the options for criminal reform? This article explores these questions using effective rehabilitation principles to …

Is Emerging Adulthood Influencing Moffitt’S Developmental Taxonomy? Adding The “Prolonged” Adolescent Offender, Christopher Salvatore, Travis A. Taniguchi, Wayne Welsh

Christopher Salvatore

The study of offender trajectories has been a prolific area of criminological research. However, few studies have incorporated the influence of emerging adulthood, a recently identified stage of the life course, on offending trajectories. The present study addressed this shortcoming by introducing the "prolonged adolescent" offender, a low-level offender between the ages of 18 and 25 that has failed to successfully transition into adult social roles. A theoretical background based on prior research in life-course criminology and emerging adulthood is presented. Using data from the National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent Health analyses examined the relationship between indicators of traditional turning …

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 …

Perceptions, Lived-Experiences, And Environmental Factors Impacting The Crime-Reporting Practices Of Private College Students, Kelly Lynn Arney

Walden Dissertations and Doctoral Studies

The purpose of this study was assessing the perceptions of student's on how the campus climate impacts their likelihood of reporting crime. Victimization studies have been conducted at large universities and community colleges; however, there remains a lack of research regarding private colleges. This study was designed to examine the reasoning behind students' crime-reporting behaviors and the influencers that impact their decisions. Cohen and Felson's routine activity theory along with the collective-efficacy theory were used as frameworks to analyze the crimes that occur to college students as well as to explore the reasons for not reporting some crimes to law …

National Strategy Against Narcotics, Drug Control Policy, And Law Enforcement Experiences In Kosovo, Ferid Azemi

Walden Dissertations and Doctoral Studies

This research is focused on evaluation of National Strategy Against Narcotics (NSAN) enacted in 2012 in Kosovo. The purpose of this study was to understand the impact of NSAN through visualizing data and gaining deeper insight from experiences of antidrug experts. Convergent parallel mixed methods were used to answer the main research questions. The central research questions examined the impact of strategy implementation in juvenile drug arrest reduction, and its effectiveness on Kosovo criminal justice system. Markwood's comprehensive theory of substance abuse prevention (CTSAP) was used to assess and explore the NSAN. Deidentified juvenile arrest rates taken from Kosovo official …

Undocumented Crime Victims: Unheard, Unnumbered, And Unprotected, Pauline Portillo

The Scholar: St. Mary's Law Review on Race and Social Justice

Abstract forthcoming

Police Integrity Lost Podcast Episode 28: Police Shootings: Are Officers Ever Convicted?, Philip M. Stinson

Philip M Stinson

This episode of the Police Integrity Lost podcast features an interview of Bowling Green State University professor Phil Stinson that aired live January 24, 2016, on the Nick Taliaferro Show on WURD 900AM Radio in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.

Tasers Help Police Avoid Fatal Mistakes, Paul H. Robinson

All Faculty Scholarship

This op-ed piece argues that police will inevitably be placed in impossible situations in which they reasonably believe they must shoot to defend themselves but where the shooting in fact turns out to be unnecessary. What can save the police, and the community, from these regular tragedies is a more concerted shift to police use of nonlethal weapons. Taser technology, for example, continues to become increasingly more effective and reliable. While we will always have reasonable mistakes by police in the use of force, it need not be the case that each ends in death or permanent injury. Such a …

The Use Of Minors In Material Support Of Terrorist Organizations, Teresa Maria Feliciano

Walden Dissertations and Doctoral Studies

Adult criminals' use of minors to commit crimes associated with the support of terrorist organizations is a significant problem in the United States. Despite strict laws prohibiting adult offenders from exploiting youth, these individuals aggressively pursue minors to commit crimes associated with the support of terrorist organizations. This quasi-experimental, cross-sectional study used resource dependency theory to explore the likelihood that adult criminal offenders in the U.S. will use minors for crimes that are associated with the support of terrorist organizations, based on crime typology, country of origin, and location of crime. Data were collected from a crime database maintained by …

A Link Between Single Parent Families And Crime, Nicole Howell

Ed.D. Dissertations

This quantitative study is an investigation of whether or not there is a link between crime and the family structure within an urban Midwestern community. The study took place in a Midwestern urban community in Chicago Illinois. Participants were gathered from a prominent Church within the community. Participants were randomly selected to participate in the study. The participants completed two surveys that offered results pertaining to parental behavior and likelihood of youth engagement in crime. The results indicated that there was some relationship between the family structure and criminal activity among youth. Additional information will be provided in the following …

Delinquency And Crime Prevention: Overview Of Research Comparing Treatment Foster Care And Group Care, Gershon K. Osei, Kevin M. Gorey, Debra M. Hernandez Jozefowicz

Social Work Publications

Background: Evidence of treatment foster care (TFC) and group care’s (GC) potential to prevent delinquency and crime has been developing.

Objectives: We clarified the state of comparative knowledge with a historical overview. Then we explored the hypothesis that smaller, probably better resourced group homes with smaller staff/resident ratios have greater impacts than larger homes with a meta-analytic update.

Methods: Research literatures were searched to 2015. Five systematic reviews were selected that included seven independent studies that compared delinquency or crime outcomes among youths ages 10–18. A similar search augmented by author and bibliographic searches identified six additional studies with an …

Discounting And Criminals' Implied Risk Preferences, Murat C. Mungan, Jonathan Klick

All Faculty Scholarship

It is commonly assumed that potential offenders are more responsive to increases in the certainty than increases in the severity of punishment. An important implication of this assumption within the Beckerian law enforcement model is that criminals are risk-seeking. This note adds to existing literature by showing that offenders who discount future monetary benefits can be more responsive to the certainty rather than the severity of punishment, even when they are risk averse, and even when their disutility from imprisonment rises proportionally (or more than proportionally) with the length of the sentence.

Committed To The Cause? Violent And Financial Criminal Behaviors Of Domestic Far-Rightists, Ashmini G. Kerodal

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This study used factor analysis, logistic and multinomial logistic regression analysis to evaluate the effects of an individual's level of commitment to far-right extremism on his / her criminal offending behavior. Agnew's General Strain Theory (2001, 2005), Cloward and Ohlin's Differential Opportunity Theory (1960) and Simi and Futrell's (2010) concept of free / movement spaces were used to address the three research questions: (1) What effect did individual level stressors, significant others, and negative interactions with government officials have on membership in a far-right group, (2) What effect did individual level stressors, significant others, membership in an extremist group, and …

A Spatial Analysis Test Of Decennial Crime Patterns In The United States, Kristina R. Donathan

UNLV Theses, Dissertations, Professional Papers, and Capstones

Crime in the United States has steadily been decreasing since the 1990s. Social disorganization theory states that breakdowns of social institutions were the root causes of juvenile delinquency. Using exogenous variables of poverty, residential mobility, and ethnic heterogeneity, this study aims to investigate the impacts and magnitude of these variables on violent and property crime committed in the United States for adults and for juveniles. By comparing adult crime rates to juvenile delinquency rates, these findings will guide policy makers to develop effective policy tools that will provide a safer environment for the community. Using annual crime datasets, this thesis …

Your Friends And Neighbors: Localized Economic Development And Criminal Activity, Matthew Freedman, Emily Owens

Matthew Freedman

We exploit a sudden shock to demand for a subset of low-wage workers generated by the 2005 Base Realignment and Closure (BRAC) program in San Antonio, Texas to identify the effects of localized economic development on crime. We use a difference-in-difference methodology that takes advantage of variation in BRAC’s impact over time and across neighborhoods. We find that appropriative criminal behavior increases in neighborhoods where a fraction of residents experienced increases in earnings. This effect is driven by residents who were unlikely to be BRAC beneficiaries, implying that criminal opportunities are important in explaining patterns of crime.

Forthcoming in the …

The Strength Of Family Bonds: A Look Into The Lives Of A Family That Has Overcome Adversity And Marginality, Angelique Nevarez Maes

Open Access Theses & Dissertations

In the recent literature that entails the effectiveness of parent/child bonds in deterring children from crime and related deviant activities, little information is mentioned about the effectiveness of Kinship (extended family members) and its possible effectiveness in deterring an individual from crime and related deviant activities. Adverse events such as drug abuse, early death, prostitution and gang activity can plague a family and threaten its unity when parental bonds are absent or non-consistent during adolescence. Marginalities such as poverty and racism take the family unit to the edge of society only serve to further the extent of the damage that …

Is Emerging Adulthood Influencing Moffitt’S Developmental Taxonomy? Adding The “Prolonged” Adolescent Offender, Christopher Salvatore, Travis A. Taniguchi, Wayne Welsh

Department of Justice Studies Faculty Scholarship and Creative Works

The study of offender trajectories has been a prolific area of criminological research. However, few studies have incorporated the influence of emerging adulthood, a recently identified stage of the life course, on offending trajectories. The present study addressed this shortcoming by introducing the "prolonged adolescent" offender, a low-level offender between the ages of 18 and 25 that has failed to successfully transition into adult social roles. A theoretical background based on prior research in life-course criminology and emerging adulthood is presented. Using data from the National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent Health analyses examined the relationship between indicators of traditional turning …

Ua12/8 Annual Campus Security And Fire Report, Wku Police

WKU Archives Records

This report is designed to provide students, prospective students, parents, faculty, and staff with accurate crime statistics, information on university services, and crime prevention programs. These programs are designed to help inform our campus community about safety practices that will help reduce the risk of becoming a victim of crime. These safe practices can provide individuals with vital information that they can carry with them through college and beyond, keeping them safe for the rest of their lives.

Social Disorganization And The Spatial Distribution Of Homicides In El Paso, Nicholas Andrew Emerick

Open Access Theses & Dissertations

Recent research on social disorganization theory shows general support for economic and stability measures of disorganization, but spatial dispersions and the disaggregation of homicides of crime have not been fully examined. 1985-1995 homicide data from the El Paso Police Department's detective logs and US Census data are combined to explore social disorganization in El Paso, the impact of ports of entry, and how motive interacts with social disorganization. Findings for total homicides in El Paso support existing social disorganization research. Motive specific homicides displayed distinct relationships to the disorganization measures. The concentrations of homicides near ports of entry can be …

Participatory Evaluation Of The Tribal Victim Assistance Programs At The Lummi Nation And Passamaquoddy Tribe, Ada Pecos Melton, Michelle Chino

Public Health Faculty Publications

The high rate of crime in American Indian/Alaska Native (AI/AN) communities and/or against AI/AN people reflected in numerous studies in the last three decades, demonstrates the need for victim assistance programs in Indian Country to help victims cope with and heal from violent crime (Wolk 1982; Allen 1985; Sacred Shawl Women’s Society, no date; McIntire 1988; DeBruyn, Lujan & May 1995; Norton & Manson 1995; Fairchild et. al 1998; Greenfield & Smith 1999; Alba, Zieseniss, et al 2003; Perry 2004). The U.S. Department of Justice, Office for Victims of Crime (OVC) became aware of the lack of resources available to …

Understanding Deviant Behaviors Through Coercion And Social Support Theory, Maria Nicte-Ha Uribe

Open Access Theses & Dissertations

Mark Colvin, Francis T. Cullen and Thomas Vander Ven (2002) developed an integrated theory of crime called "coercion, social support, and crime" which hypothesizes that coercion and social support are inversely related and that these variables have direct effects on criminal and deviant behavior as well as a combined effect. Specifically if an imbalance between coercion and social support exists, crime is more likely to occur because coercion induces weak social bonds and low self control thereby increasing crime. On the other hand, social support prevents criminal involvement through organized networks of human relations that assist people in meeting their …

A Case Against Bringing Monsters To Justice: Pinochet, Deterrence, And Personal Identity, Ibpp Editor

International Bulletin of Political Psychology

This article presents a philosophical psychology case against subjecting former national leaders who allegedly committed atrocities committed while they were in power to adjudication through a criminal or civil justice system.