Criminology Commons^™

Controlling The Narrative: The Effects Of Media Coverage On Fear Of Crime And Socio-Political Ideology, Andrew Koppelman

Theses

Several decades of study have established an understanding that media have a unique power to influence the perspectives and worldviews of audiences. This phenomenon has been explored through the lenses of Social Learning and Cultivation theory, wherein media appeal to base human tendencies of self-preservation and teaches audiences how to maximize rewards for their actions by acting as a sort of instructor or friendly warning from members of the community. While prior studies have suggested the presence of this effect, little research has been devoted to understanding the ways that this may influence behaviors in viewers. My research seeks to …

Tablets As A Vehicle For Imprisoned People’S Digital Connection With Loved Ones, Andrea Mufarreh

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

The intersection between criminal justice and technology is fairly understudied, despite increasing technological advancements in the world and within the criminal justice system. A rather recent addition to the technological landscape of prison is the adoption of tablets used by imprisoned people for communication and connection with loved ones and other activities, which is particularly important given the context of COVID-19, a virus which caused a global pandemic from 2020-2022. While the use of tablets by imprisoned people appears to be a new trend, the use of tablets in prison both prior to and during the pandemic has remained an …

Can Violent Political Rhetoric Influence Bias Homicide Rates? Analyzing The Trump Effect, Tyler Joseph Patrick Ford

Sociology and Criminology Undergraduate Honors Theses

The founding document of the United States declares that all men are created equal. However, history has shown that this is not the case. Citizens in this country have been discriminated against since its inception based on their race, gender, religion, sexual orientation, national origin, and many other factors. The first Federal Legislation passed to prevent discrimination against citizens in the United States did not come until 1968, which “made it a crime to use, or threaten to use, force to willfully interfere with any person because of race, color, religion, or national origin” (United States, Department of Justice). It …

Reformation Within The Nation: Adapting The Nordic Rehabilitation And Reintegration Model To Positively Recondition The United States Criminal Justice System, Jessica Cornell

Helm's School of Government Conference - American Revival: Citizenship & Virtue

An analytical and statistical based comparison of criminal sentencing, incarceration, rehabilitation and reintegration in the United States of America to those of the five countries which follows those of the Nordic Criminal Justice System.

Exclusionary Spillage: A Reckoning Of Belonging And Mass Incarceration, Valentina Flores Mayen

Senior Projects Spring 2022

Senior Project submitted to The Division of Social Studies of Bard College.

Neither “Post-War” Nor Post-Pregnancy Paranoia: How America’S War On Drugs Continues To Perpetuate Disparate Incarceration Outcomes For Pregnant, Substance-Involved Offenders, Becca S. Zimmerman

Pitzer Senior Theses

This thesis investigates the unique interactions between pregnancy, substance involvement, and race as they relate to the War on Drugs and the hyper-incarceration of women. Using ordinary least square regression analyses and data from the Bureau of Justice Statistics’ 2016 Survey of Prison Inmates, I examine if (and how) pregnancy status, drug use, race, and their interactions influence two length of incarceration outcomes: sentence length and amount of time spent in jail between arrest and imprisonment. The results collectively indicate that pregnancy decreases length of incarceration outcomes for those offenders who are not substance-involved but not evenhandedly -- benefitting white …

Sanctuary Cities And Their Respective Effect On Crime Rates, Adam R. Schutt

Undergraduate Economic Review

According to the U.S. Center for Immigration Studies (2017), cities or counties in twenty-four states declare themselves as a place of “sanctuary” for illegal immigrants. This study addresses the following question: Do sanctuary cities experience higher crime rates than those cities that are not? Using publicly available data, this regression analysis investigates the relationship between crime rates in selected cities and independent variables which the research literature or the media has linked to criminal activity. Results of this research reveal that sanctuary cities do not experience higher violent or property crime rates than those cities that are not sanctuary cities.

Al-Shabaab And Boko Haram: Recruitment Strategies, J. Tochukwu Omenma, Cheryl Hendricks, Nnamdi C. Ajaebili

Peace and Conflict Studies

This paper is an examination of the membership recruitment strategies of two violent extremist organizations (VEOs), namely al-Shabaab and Boko Haram. The majority of the literature on VEOs concentrates on the conceptualization of terrorism, motivations for terrorism and counter-terrorism strategies, as well as a focus on the frequency of VEO attacks, number of fatalities and funding sources. The literature tends to portray poverty as the main driver of recruitment. The focus on recruitment strategies has been relatively recent. There is therefore still a lack of in-depth analyses on the processes of recruitment of specific extremist groups, and this impacts on …

Crimmigrant Nations: Resurgent Nationalism And The Closing Of Borders [Table Of Contents], Robert Koulish, Martje Van Der Woude

Law

As the distinction between domestic and international is increasingly blurred along with the line between internal and external borders, migrants—particularly people of color—have become emblematic of the hybrid threat both to national security and sovereignty and to safety and order inside the state. From building walls and fences, overcrowding detention facilities, and beefing up border policing and border controls, a new narrative has arrived that has migrants assume the risk for government sponsored degradation, misery, and death. Crimmigrant Nationsexamines the parallel rise of anti-immigrant sentiment and right-wing populism in both the United States and Europe to offer an unprecedented …

In Fear We Trust: Anxious Political Rhetoric & The Politics Of Punishment, 1960s-80s, Stella Michelle Frank

Senior Projects Spring 2019

Senior Project submitted to The Division of Social Studies of Bard College.

The Predictors Of Juvenile Recidivism: Testimonies Of Adult Students 18 Years And Older Exiting From Alternative Education, La Toshia Palmer

Dissertations

Purpose: The purpose of this descriptive, qualitative study was to identify and describe the importance of the predictors of juvenile recidivism and the effectiveness of efforts to prevent/avoid juvenile recidivism as perceived by previously detained, arrested, convicted, and/or incarcerated adult students 18 years of age and older exiting from alternative education in Northern California. A second purpose was to explore the types of support provided by alternative schools and the perceived importance of the support to avoid recidivism according to adult students 18 years of age and older exiting from alternative education.

Methodology: This qualitative, descriptive research design identified …

Cognitive Sociology, Michael W. Raphael

Publications and Research

Cognitive sociology is the study of the conditions under which meaning is constituted through processes of reification. Cognitive sociology traces its origins to writings in the sociology of knowledge, sociology of culture, cognitive and cultural anthropology, and more recently, work done in cultural sociology and cognitive science. Its central questions revolve around locating these processes of reification since the locus of cognition is highly contentious. Researchers consider how individuality is related to notions of society (structures, institutions, systems, etc.) and notions of culture (cultural forms, cultural structures, sub-cultures, etc.). These questions further explore how these answers depend on learning processes …

Revitalizing The Ethnosphere: Global Society, Ethnodiversity, And The Stakes Of Cultural Genocide, Christopher Powell Ph.D.

Genocide Studies and Prevention: An International Journal

This paper uses the concepts of ethnosphere and ethnodiversity to frame the stakes of cultural genocide in the context of the emerging global society. We are in an era of rapid global ethnodiversity loss. Global ethnodiversity is important because different cultures produce different solutions to the subjective and objective problems of human society, and because cultures have an intrinsic value. Rapid ethnodiversity loss is a byproduct of the expansion of the modern world-system, and Lemkin’s invention of the concept of genocide can be understood as a dialectical reaction to this tendency. The current phase of globalization creates pressures towards global …

Racism Vs. Social Capital: A Case Study Of Two Majority Black Communities, Bruce W. Strouble

Walden Dissertations and Doctoral Studies

Several researchers have identified social capital as a means to improve the social sustainability of communities. While there have been many studies investigating the benefits of social capital in homogeneous White communities, few have examined it in Black homogeneous communities. Also, there has been limited research on the influence of racism on social capital in African American communities. In this dissertation a comparative case study was used within a critical race theory framework. The purpose was to explore the role of racial oppression in shaping social capital in majority African American communities. Data were collected from 2 majority Black communities …

“Decentralization Dilemma In Indonesia: Does Decentralization Breed Corruption?”, Glenys Kirana

Independent Study Project (ISP) Collection

Given the pervasiveness of corruption, collusion and nepotism during Suharto’s rule (1967-1998), many people assume that the Reformasi era (1998-present) would introduce a new wave of liberal democratic values, which would consequently reduce corruption in Indonesia. This paper seeks to look at the changes in people’s socio-political incentives to corrupt given the changes in political and legal structure, analyzing it in the context of its contribution to Indonesia’s socio-economic development. Specifically, it centers on how decentralization has affected corruption in the regional districts, legislative, judiciary, and other civil society groups. It is the prominence of the corruption issue in the …

Book Review: Policing And The Poetics Of Everyday Life., Rodger E. Broome Phd

Rodger E. Broome

Policing and the poetics of everyday life. Chicago: University of Illinois Press, 2008. 256 pp. ISBN 978-0-252-03371-1 (cloth). $42.00. Policing and the Poetics of Everyday Life is a hermeneutical-aesthetic analysis within a human scientific approach of modern policing in the United States. It is an important study of police-citizen encounters informed by hermeneutic aesthetic thought and the author’s professional experience as a veteran with a Seattle area police department in Washington, USA.

Who We Are: Incarcerated Students And The New Prison Literature, 1995-2010, Reilly Hannah N. Lorastein

Honors Projects

This project focuses on American prison writings from the late 1990s to the 2000s. Much has been written about American prison intellectuals such as Malcolm X, George Jackson, Eldridge Cleaver, and Angela Davis, who wrote as active participants in black and brown freedom movements in the United States. However the new prison literature that has emerged over the past two decades through higher education programs within prisons has received little to no attention. This study provides a more nuanced view of the steadily growing silent population in the United States through close readings of Openline, an inter-disciplinary journal featuring …

Managing The Polarities Of Democracy: A Theoretical Framework For Positive Social Change, William J. Benet

Journal of Sustainable Social Change

People around the globe have embraced democracy to bring about positive social change to address our environmental, economic, and militaristic challenges. Yet, there is no agreement on a definition of democracy that can guide social change efforts. The Polarities of Democracy model is a unifying theory of democracy to guide healthy, sustainable, and just social change efforts. The Polarities of Democracy model consists of ten elements, organized as five polarity pairs: freedom & authority, justice & due process, diversity & equality, human-rights & communal-obligations, and participation & representation. In this model each element has positive aspects and negative aspects and …

Phenomenological Theories Of Crime, Peter K. Manning, Michael W. Raphael

Graduate Student Publications and Research

The distinctive aspect of phenomenological theories of crime is that they are based upon a stated epistemology: how things are known and a specific ontology—the nature of social reality. This specificity aligns itself with neo-Kantian concern with forms of knowing, interpretation, and meaning, as well as with 20th-century concern with perception, cognition, and the framing of events. While there are influences of phenomenological thinking on varieties of theorizing, such as symbolic interactionism, critical theory, queer theory, and gender-based theories of crime, these ideas are refractions and are inconsistent in their reference to and understanding of the foundational phenomenological works. A …

Play Fair With Recidivists, Richard Dagger

Political Science Faculty Publications

Retributivists thus face a difficult challenge. Either we must go against the social grain, and perhaps our own intuitions, by insisting that a criminal offense carry the same penalty or punishment no matter how many previous convictions an offender has accrued; or we must find a way to justify the recidivist premium. I shall take the second route here by arguing that recidivism itself is a kind of criminal offense. In developing this argument, I shall rely on Youngjae Lee's insightful analysis of "recidivism as omission." I shall complement his analysis, however, by grounding it in a conception of criminal …

Provocation Manslaughter As Partial Justification And Partial Excuse, Mitchell N. Berman, Ian Farrell

All Faculty Scholarship

The partial defense of provocation provides that a person who kills in the heat of passion brought on by legally adequate provocation is guilty of manslaughter rather than murder. It traces back to the twelfth century, and exists today, in some form, in almost every U.S. state and other common law jurisdictions. But long history and wide application have not produced agreement on the rationale for the doctrine. To the contrary, the search for a coherent and satisfying rationale remains among the main occupations of criminal law theorists. The dominant scholarly view holds that provocation is best explained and defended …

Against The State Governance, Governance From Below & Governing Through Terrorism: Analytically Investigating The Technologies Of Power Within The Terrorist Arsenal., Allen Gnanam

Allen Gnanam

Terrorism as a violent and destabilizing act performed by terrorists, meaning loyal followers of political or religious agendas who hold resent and animosity toward a certain authority/ government (Lin, Liou, & Wu, 2007, pg. 149), will be explored and analyzed through the utilization of the governmentality perspective. For the purposes of this paper terrorism governance will refer to the governance/ control/ influence exerted by terrorists and terrorism. The focus of this explorative and analysis paper will be to identify diverse terrorism oriented technologies of governance, and analyze the ways in which these technologies enable terrorist to exert governance both indirectly …

The Logic Of Protest Action, Herman L. Boschken

Herman L. Boschken

In recent years, there has been a noticeable growth in political protest involving groups of widely diverging interests. The rising incidence of protest seems paradoxical to the apparent growth of affluence in society. This paper attempts to resolve this paradox by contending that most forms of protest are a function of the degree of separation between (a) the values and goals of those controlling collective decision processes and (b) the diversity of interests and aspirations in segmented society at large. Through protest action, disenfranchised groups are able to impose "external" costs on "establishment" regimes that lead to alteration of the …