Criminology Commons^™

Jody Miller And Wilson R. Palacios, Editors, Qualitative Research In Criminology, Carl Root

Qualitative Criminology (QC)

"Qualitative Research in Criminology is Volume 20 in the series titled Advances in Criminological Theory edited by William S. Laufer and Freda Adler. The title of Miller and Palacios’ contribution brings to mind the saying “one of these things is not like the others.” In fact, they acknowledge as much on page three of the introduction, as they state, “For some readers, our strategy may beg the question, why does a volume oriented around methodology belong in a theoretical series?” Miller and Palacios give a brief answer to this question, but allow the seventeen chapters that comprise their volume …

Homeland Security In The Post-9/11 Era: Forced Compliance Along The Northern Border, Nancy E. Marion, Ronald Gelleny

Qualitative Criminology (QC)

"The border relationship between the U.S. and Canada has traditionally been very trusting, allowing for an ease of trade and travel. However, the terrorist attacks of 9/11 altered this comfortable association. Now, U.S. policy is geared toward protecting the homeland from illegal immigration and potential terrorist actions. In other words, for Americans, security concerns trump trade. At the same time, Canada remains concerned with maintaining an ease of trade and travel with the U.S. To do this, Canada has been forced to establish and implement increased security measures as outlined by U.S. officials, even though there is strong opposition from …

When The Watchers Are Watched: An Interpretive Phenomenological Analysis Of Body-Worn Cameras, David A. Makin

Qualitative Criminology (QC)

"This research explores the individual construction of the bodyworn camera (BWC) within what would be labeled as an average size police agency. Using a pre- and post-implementation qualitative design and leveraging interpretive phenomenological analysis as the analytical strategy, this research explores the nuanced reaction to this technological diffusion within the agency. Results reveal global themes spanning a continuum of negative and positive reactions to the diffusion, with an overwhelming acceptance of the device and individual construction of how best to use the device. While providing an initial lens of analysis for future researchers, the research includes considerable unanswered questions concerning …

“Why So Serious?” Threat, Authoritarianism, And Depictions Of Crime, Law, And Order In Batman Films, Brandon Bosch

Department of Sociology: Faculty Publications

Drawing on research on authoritarianism, this study analyzes the relationship between levels of threat in society and representations of crime, law, and order in mass media, with a particular emphasis on the superhero genre. Although the superhero genre is viewed as an important site of mediated images of crime and law enforcement, cultural criminologists have been relatively quiet about this film genre. In addressing this omission, I analyze authoritarian themes (with an emphasis on crime, law, and order) in the Batman film franchise across different periods of threat. My qualitative content analysis finds that authoritarianism themes of fear and need …

The California S.T.E.P. Act: Prosecuting Fraternities As Criminal Street Gangs, Courtney Lee Spears

Undergraduate Honors Theses

This thesis project examines the similarities in structure, initiation processes, af liations, and motivations for joining both criminal street gangs and fraternities. These similarities serve as the foundation for the central idea of the thesis: using California’s street gang legislation, mainly the S.T.E.P. Act, to more severely prosecute fraternities for their crimes. My application of the legislation is supported through both comprehensive gang data, as well as case studies of fraternity crimes, as comprehensive data for this group does not exist. My research has important implications, as recent legislation serves to protect fraternity offenders from facing punishment for their crimes, …

An Evaluation Of The Federal Legal Services Program: Evidence From Crime Rates And Property Values, Jamein P. Cunningham

Economics Faculty Publications and Presentations

This paper uses the city level roll-out of legal service grants to evaluate their effects on crime. Using Uniform Crime Reports from 1960 to 1985, the results show that there is a short run increase of 7 percent in crimes reported and also a 13 percent increase in crimes cleared by arrest. Results show an increase in the staffing of police officers in cities that received legal services. These cities are also associated with having higher median property values 10 years later. This supports the narrative that legal services changed police behavior through litigation or threats of litigation.

Punishing Property Offenders: Does Moral Correction Work?, Sharona Aharony-Goldenberg, Yael Wilchek-Aviad

Touro Law Review

No abstract provided.

A Qualitative Case Study Of Police Officers' Perception Of Sexual Offender Registration, Tracy Lee Veri

Walden Dissertations and Doctoral Studies

Although many research studies about sexual offender registration exist, there is no qualitative study on the perspective of police officers whose job duties include the implementation of Sex Offender Registration and Notification (SORN) laws. The purpose of this case study was to explore specific police officers' perceptions of sex offender registration. Six police officers were hand selected for face-to-face interviews based on their unique job duties that included responsibilities and training related to the implementation of the sexual offender registration and community notification protocols. Festinger's cognitive dissonance theory provided the theoretical framework for this research study. According to study findings, …

Adolescent Sex Offender Registration Policy: Perspectives On General Deterrence Potential From Criminology And Developmental Psychology, Cynthia J. Najdowski, H. M. Cleary, M. C. Stevenson

Psychology Faculty Scholarship

Sex offender registration policies have expanded rapidly, now extending to adolescent offenders across the nation. Policies mandating registration are based, in part, on arguments that registration is needed to prevent dangerous sex offenders from committing additional offenses and that risk of registration deters would-be offenders from offending in the first place. Research suggests that registration does not serve the former specific deterrent function for adolescents, but less is known regarding the latter goal of general deterrence. The disciplines of criminology and developmental psychology both offer important theoretical perspectives, but these frameworks have yet to be applied to this unique context. …

Criminal Specialization In The Criminal Justice Context, Shi Yan

Legacy Theses & Dissertations (2009 - 2024)

The dissertation consists of two studies. Study 1 examines how criminal specialization predicts the sentencing outcomes. Theories of sentencing have pointed out the association between the sentence and the assessment of the defendant’s risk and culpability, and one of the most important indicators of an individual’s risk is his or her criminal records. Most quantitative studies of sentencing today take criminal records into consideration by controlling for the number of prior criminal justice contacts, and overlook the nature of the prior crimes. The concept criminal specialization refers to the tendency for an individual to repeat the same or a set …

An Empirical Research Agenda For The Forensic Sciences, Jonathan J. Koehler, John B. Meixner Jr.

Journal of Criminal Law and Criminology

After the National Academy of Sciences issued a stunning report in 2009 on the unscientific state of many forensic science subfields, forensic science has undergone internal and external scrutiny that it had managed to avoid for decades. Although some reform efforts are underway, forensic science writ large has yet to embrace and settle upon an empirical research agenda that addresses knowledge gaps pertaining to the reliability of its methods. Our paper addresses this problem by proposing a preliminary set of fourteen empirical studies for the forensic sciences. Following a brief discussion of the courtroom treatment of forensic science evidence, we …

The Exercise Of Power In Prison Organizations And Implications For Legitimacy, John Wooldredge, Benjamin Steiner

Journal of Criminal Law and Criminology

Extrapolating from Bottoms and Tankebe’s framework for a social scientific understanding of “legitimacy,” we argue that differences in how correctional officers exercise “power” over prisoners can potentially impact their rightful claims to legitimate authority. Given the implications of this argument for the “cultivation” of legitimacy (as discussed by Weber), the study described here focused on (a) individual and prison level effects on the degree to which officers generally rely on different power bases when exercising their authority, and (b) whether more or less reliance on different power bases at the facility level impacts prisoners’ general perceptions of officers as legitimate …

Small Cells, Big Problems: The Increasing Precision Of Cell Site Location Information And The Need For Fourth Amendment Protections, Robert M. Bloom, William T. Clark

Journal of Criminal Law and Criminology

The past fifty years has witnessed an evolution in technology advancement in police surveillance. Today, one of the essential tools of police surveillance is something most Americans carry with them in their pockets every day, the cell phone. Cell phones not only contain a huge repository of personal data, they also provide continuous surveillance of a person’s movement known as cell site location information (CSLI).

In 1986, Congress sought to provide some privacy protections to CSLI in the Stored Communication Act. Although this solution may have struck the proper balance in an age when cell phones were a mere novelty …

Recidivism And Time Served In Prison, Daniel P. Mears, Joshua C. Cochran, William D. Bales, Avinash S. Bhati

Journal of Criminal Law and Criminology

A justification for lengthier stays in prison stems from the belief that spending more time in prison reduces recidivism. Extant studies, however, have provided limited evidence for that belief and, indeed, suggest the effect of time served may be minimal. Few studies have employed rigorous methodological approaches, examined time spans of more than one to two years, or investigated the potential for the relationship between recidivism and time served to be curvilinear. Drawing on prior scholarship, this paper identifies three sets of hypotheses about the functional form of the time served and recidivism relationship. Using generalized propensity score analysis to …

Fulfilling Daubert's Gatekeeping Mandate Through Court-Appointed Experts, Stephanie Domitrovich

Journal of Criminal Law and Criminology

No abstract provided.

Looking Backwards At Old Cases: When Science Moves Forward, Jules Epstein

Journal of Criminal Law and Criminology

Forensic evidence—be it in the form of science-derived analyses such as DNA profiling or drug identification, or in more subjective analyses such as pattern or impression [latent print, handwriting, firearms] examinations—is prevalent and often critical in criminal prosecutions. Yet, while the criminal court processes prize finality of verdicts, science evolves and often proves that earlier analyses were inadequate or plainly wrong. This article examines the tension between those two concerns by focusing on the 2015 decision of the United States Supreme Court in Maryland v. Kulbicki, addresses the inadequacies of the Court’s analysis, and suggests some factors for judges confronted …

Sleuthing Scientific Evidence Information On The Internet, Carol Henderson, Diana Botluk

Journal of Criminal Law and Criminology

No abstract provided.

"Get Tough On Juvenile Criminals": An Assessment Of Punitiveness And Punitive Attitudes, Richard Charles Gehrke

All Graduate Theses, Dissertations, and Other Capstone Projects

This quantitative study surveyed college students (n=111), currently attending a community college in northeastern Minnesota, regarding whether juveniles should receive the same due process rights as adults, what the primary goal of the juvenile justice system should be, whether juveniles charged with serious offenses should be tried as adults, and whether juveniles convicted of committing a serious offense should be sentenced as adults. Utilizing two competing theoretical frameworks, the researcher hypothesized that students who self-identify with a conservative political ideology would be more punitive than students who self-identify with a liberal political ideology. The researcher's second hypothesis was that students …

The Political Implications Of Felon Disenfranchisement Laws In The United States, Katharine G. Connaughton

CMC Senior Theses

This empirical study analyzes the political implications for presidential election outcomes that stem from varying felon disenfranchisement laws within the United States. In the past decade incarceration rates have drastically increased, consequently augmenting the disenfranchised population. This paper focuses on presidential election outcomes and state political party majorities in the election years 2000, 2004, 2008, and 2012. I use demographic characteristics to calibrate assumptions for voter turnout and political party choice among the disenfranchised populations within each state. I then apply these voting populations to historical election outcomes and find that three state political party outcomes change, as well as …

Are Hispanics Discriminated Against In The Us Criminal Justice System?, Maria A. Eijo De Tezanos Pinto

Graduate Research Posters

Recent publications have contributed to increase the perception among Hispanics of an unfair and unequal treatment of this community by the US Criminal Justice System. One of the major concerns was the claim that Hispanics are incarcerated before conviction nearly twice as often as Whites. Unfair treatment perception by the population reduces legitimacy of police and government, and thus, it is imperative to analyze these uninvestigated allegations. Therefore, the purpose of this study is to address said allegations of discrimination against Hispanics and analyze with updated and reliable statistics whether Hispanics are incarcerated before conviction more often than Whites. There …

False Confessions From The Viewpoint Of Federal Polygraph Examiners, Bradford Beyer

Walden Dissertations and Doctoral Studies

While confessions are a powerful form of evidence, innocent people sometimes confess to crimes they did not commit. Many researchers have studied false confessions through laboratory experiments with university students or by focusing on proven cases of false confession. These approaches have led many researchers to form a conceptual framework that law enforcement interrogative methods are a key cause of false confessions. A gap exists in the literature as few researchers have queried law enforcement about false confessions or consulted with officers who specialize in interrogation. For this study, a qualitative case study approach was used to explore the experiences …

No More Mind Games: Content Analysis Of In-Game Commentary Of The National Football League’S Concussion Problem, Jeffrey Parker

Theses and Dissertations (Comprehensive)

American (gridiron) football played at the professional level in the National Football League (NFL) is an inherently physical spectator sport, in which players frequently engage in significant contact to the head and upper body. Until recently, the long-term health consequences associated with on the field head trauma were not fully disclosed to players or the public, potentially misrepresenting the dangers involved in gameplay. Crucial to the dissemination of this information to the public are in-game televised commentators of NFL games, regarded as the primary conduits for mediating in-game narratives to the viewing audience. Using a social constructionist theoretical lens, this …

How To Incite Crime With Words: Clarifying Brandenburg’S Incitement Test With Speech Act Theory, Bradley J. Pew

BYU Law Review

No abstract provided.

Adam Calverly, Cultures Of Desistance: Rehabilitation, Reintegration, And Ethnic Minorities, Whitney Threadcraft-Walker

Qualitative Criminology (QC)

"Third in an international series investigating desistance and rehabilitation, Adam Calverly’s Cultures of Desistance builds on the extant desistance literature through a comparative analysis of the impact of micro-, meso-, and macro- level factors on the processes associated with criminal disengagement on Indian, Bangladeshi and Black/Dual Heritage offenders in the Brixton neighborhood of London. The author has previously established expertise in the area of ethnicity and desistance through such as Understanding Desistance from Crime: Emerging Theoretical Directions in Resettlement and Rehabilitation (2005) co-authored with Steve Farrell and Black and Asian Offenders on Probationers (2004). Much of the data presented in …

Variations In Patrol Officers’ Concerns About Racial Profiling Across Communal Contexts, Paul Reck

Qualitative Criminology (QC)

"Numerous studies have explored the issue of racial profiling, but only a few studies have examined how officers view racial profiling and whether such views affect officers’ patrolling of racial minorities. These latter studies generally have found that officers rationalize and dismiss the issue of profiling. However, studies pertaining to citizens’ perceptions of the police and studies identifying policing imperatives that officers associate with particular spaces suggest that there are characteristics of communities that may play an important role in shaping officers’ perceptions of profiling and patrolling of racial minorities. The current study, which is based on ethnographic ride-along interviews …

Editorial, Will Oliver

Qualitative Criminology (QC)

"Welcome to the second issue of the third volume of the Journal of Qualitative Criminal Justice & Criminology, and also my last issue as editor. Four years ago, I was given the opportunity by the president and board of the Southwestern Association of Criminal Justice to start up a new association journal and they liked my idea of a qualitative methods journal that would appeal to not only criminal justice, but to criminology as well. I began putting together an editorial board and was overwhelmed by the positive support I received regarding my ideas for the journal. That made …

Michael Welch, Escape To Prison: Penal Tourism And The Pull Of Punishment, Lindsey L. Upton

Qualitative Criminology (QC)

"Prisons and asylums are unique institutions of confinement that attract our gaze long after they are abandoned. In Escape to Prison, Michael Welch draws attention to ten prison museums across the world where the histories of punishment and control found in each respective culture are presented for our consumption. Welch analyzes prison museums as sites of power and authority. Escape to Prison is an invaluable contribution to cultural criminology because it studies each prison museum in the context of their respective cultures and provides connections between dark tourism and the history of punishment across the globe."

Shaw, Clifford, The Jack Roller, Richard Tewksbury

Qualitative Criminology (QC)

"Learn from the classics. Understand where you came from. Know the past so you won’t repeat it. Be informed about those that have preceded you. Find the foundation your own work is based upon. All of these are viable, valuable, and unfortunately, often unheeded pearls of wisdom. I, for one, can admit that while I’ve espoused these lessons many times, I have not adhered to my own advice. Although we all are well versed (at least for an undergraduate level lecture or two) on the history of our field and the influential scholars and works of the field, unfortunately far …

“Age Is Just A Number In Here”: A Qualitative Study Of Adulthood In A Women’S Prison, Janani Umamaheswar

Qualitative Criminology (QC)

"Desistance from crime is a significant marker of adulthood, while persistence in criminal behavior is inconsistent with a subjective sense of adulthood (Massoglia & Uggen, 2010). To understand the relationship between crime and adulthood in greater detail, however, it is important to understand how offenders interpret and conceptualize the notion of adulthood in the first place. Based on interviews and mail correspondence with 35 incarcerated women, I explore this question through an examination of how incarcerated women construct definitions of adulthood while in prison. The findings indicate that in a restrictive environment marked by a lack of independence, women in …

Exploring Police Legitimacy Perceptions Among Arab And Chaldean Business Owners In Detroit, Vaughn J. Crichlow, Edmund F. Mcgarrell

Qualitative Criminology (QC)

"Most agree that police officers cannot do their jobs effectively without the support of community members. However, little is known about the perceptions of small business owners who could potentially make a meaningful contribution to safety and security in such communities. There is also a paucity of research on immigrant-owned businesses in disorderly urban communities. To address the gap, this study explores the attitudes of small business owners toward the police in Detroit, Michigan, a city known for high levels of violent crime and presents an analysis of the qualitative data collected from in-depth interviews with small business owners (n …