Criminology Commons^™

The Role Of Transit Countries In Global Wildlife Trafficking, Joseph Gangi

Student Theses

This thesis explores the role of transit countries in the global trade of illegal wildlife. While much research has been conducted on source and destination countries, transit countries remain an under-researched link in this chain, even though they play an integral role in facilitating this trade. This study utilizes the Rational Choice and Institutional Theory theoretical frameworks to examine the factors associated with transit countries' roles in wildlife trafficking. The findings indicate that transit countries play an active role in wildlife trafficking, and there is a need for policy to address this issue. Considering the findings of this study, this …

The Osborne Association Prepare Program: Recidivism Analysis, Kathleen A. Tomberg, Gina Moreno

Publications and Research

The Research and Evaluation Center (REC) at John Jay College of Criminal Justice partnered with the Osborne Association to evaluate Osborne’s Prepare program that aimed to improve relationships between formerly incarcerated fathers and their children using a family-centered approach. The workshops focused on parenting and workforce skills, and were supplemented with one year of follow-up support. The JohnJayREC team examined data from 578 participants from cohorts one through 47. The research team’s findings suggest Prepare was successful in helping individuals reconnect with their children and families.

Color Contrast: Racial And Ethnic Disparities In New York City Law Enforcement, Gina Moreno, Richard A. Espinobarros, Sheyla A. Delgado, Jeffrey A. Butts

Publications and Research

Researchers at the John Jay College Research and Evaluation Center examined racial and ethnic disparities in arrest rates across New York City neighborhoods, focusing on assault and larceny offenses. Using 911 call data and demographic controls, the study grouped neighborhoods by proportions of Black and Hispanic residents and analyzed arrest patterns. While arrests of Black and Hispanic individuals were more common in neighborhoods with higher populations of these groups, the arrest-to-resident ratios revealed disproportionate impacts, especially for larceny. The findings highlight the importance of monitoring disparities to promote equitable justice practices.

Designing Safety: Community Safety Initiatives Managed By The New York City Department Of Youth And Community Development, Kwan-Lamar Blount-Hill, Patricia A. Cobar, Fidel L. Osorio, Sheyla A. Delgado, Jeffrey A. Butts

Publications and Research

New York City supplements traditional policing with community-based strategies to prevent crime and violence. At the request of the Department of Youth and Community Development, the Research and Evaluation Center at John Jay College reviewed three such programs: the Crisis Management System (CMS), the Mayor’s Action Plan for Neighborhood Safety (MAP), and the Precision Employment Initiative (PEI). While grounded in promising practices, these initiatives have not yet undergone rigorous evaluation. Additional research is needed to assess their effectiveness and guide potential expansion efforts.

Ethnographic Activism And Critical Criminology, David C. Brotherton

Publications and Research

No abstract provided.

Understanding Victim-Offender Overlap Among Youth In Custody In The United States And Taiwan, Tzu-Ying Lo

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

The issue of the victim-offender overlap was identified more than 60 years ago (Wolfgang, 1958), but it was not until the last decade that research interest in the victim-offender overlap began to flourish. Although the victim-offender overlap is arguably established by a substantial body of research, a closer look at the existing literature will find scant attention paid to the incarcerated population. Recent studies (Daquin & Daigle, 2020; Kuo et al., 2021; Toman, 2017) have begun to discover the victim-offender overlap in adult prisons, but the victim-offender overlap in juvenile facilities remains underexplored. To fill the research gap, this dissertation …

Beyond Punishment: A Critical And Interpretive Phenomenology Of Accountability, Cameron Rasmussen

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

State responses to interpersonal violence in the US have long been focused on punishment and prison. While opposition to punitive responses to interpersonal violence has been marginal, there are small but growing efforts to challenge the primacy of punishment and incarceration. In its place, different non-punitive approaches to justice have been practiced and promoted including restorative justice and transformative justice, which see accountability, not punishment, as a primary goal. Accountability has been theorized and researched largely from the perspective of survivors of harm, and there is limited research on the experiences of people who have caused harm and engaged in …

Typologies Of Battering: Uncovering Patterns Of Coercive Tactics Used By Abusive Men In A Mixed Methods Study, Abbie L. Tuller

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Coercive control provides a current day feminist understanding of intimate partner violence (IPV). Recent research has demonstrated the significance of coercive control and suggests it provides a more accurate understanding of IPV than using physical violence alone. Utilizing a feminist lens, this study’s first aim was to explore if typologies based on coercive control could be developed. The second and third aims were to explore if demographic differences and differences in masculinity exist across typologies. The final aim of this study was to continue the feminist understanding of IPV using the moral emotions of shame and guilt as an extension …

A Multifaceted, Non-Militarized Approach To Security Dynamics In Protected Areas: From Foot Patrols, To Tourism, And Local Communities, Monique Sosnowski

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

A wide range of interventions have been implemented to reduce wildlife poaching incidents across the globe. These include community-based strategies, such as the development of alternative livelihoods; legal strategies, such as the development of legal frameworks at local, regional, and international levels; and wildlife law enforcement efforts, such increasing patrolling efforts. While community-based and legal strategies generally attempt to reduce the motivating factors surrounding the commission of crimes, wildlife law enforcement further attempts to prevent crimes from happening, assuming that someone will always be inclined. Given this inevitability, the question is raised regarding how to best reduce the occurrence of …

The Punitive Laboratory Of Neoliberalism: A Cross-National Examination, Beth A. Fera

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

A large body of research has been produced to explain global punitive trends in recent decades. Neoliberalism, an economic philosophy expressed by market deregulation, privatization, and the retrenchment of social supports, has been offered as an explanation for increases in cross-national punitiveness. According to neoliberal penality theory, neoliberalism has shifted principles guiding punishment practices and the treatment of offenders, which has resulted in harsher national responses to crime. However, many tenets of this theory have not yet been tested empirically. Drawing heavily on propositions from neoliberal penality, group-threat, and penal populism literature, this dissertation examines the relationship between economic shifts, …

Dynamic Risk Trajectories, Community Context, And Juvenile Recidivism, Kevin T. Wolff, Michael T. Baglivio, Jonathan Intravia

Publications and Research

Purpose

While the implementation of risk assessment has expanded, the extent to which there are different trajectories of risk/protective factors among adjudicated youth during supervision in the community remains unanswered. The goal of the current study is to identify the distinct trajectories in dynamic risk and protective factors among youth on probation and assess whether different patterns in risk over time are associated with continued offending.

Method

Group-based trajectory modeling is used to identify distinct trajectories across multiple domains of risk/need. The individual- and neighborhood-level factors associated with these trajectories are then explored, prior to examining their relationship to continued …

Shoplifting And Other Types Of Petit Larceny In New York City, Jeffrey A. Butts, Richard A. Espinobarros

Publications and Research

This data brief from the Research and Evaluation Center at John Jay College of Criminal Justice highlights recent trends in petit larceny in New York City, based on the latest police crime data. Thefts involving items valued under $1,000 have increased by 50% since 2006 and 29% since 2019. Between 2019 and 2022, incidents at major commercial retailers rose sharply by 53%, with drug stores and chain stores experiencing some of the most dramatic increases. While some types of petit larceny had been in decline prior to 2019, many surged again in the years following. These patterns suggest shifting dynamics …

Minor Role: Youth Under Age 18 And New York City Violence, Jeffrey A. Butts, Sheyla A. Delgado, Richard A. Espinobarros

Publications and Research

Media outlets attribute recent concerns about increased violent crime in New York City to the behavior of juveniles and associate the increase with New York State's policy governing the handling of 16 and 17-year-olds in family courts rather than adult criminal courts. This databit explores age differences in violent crime arrests and shooting victimizations in New York City and finds the recent concerns to be misplaced.

Investigating Key Risk Factors Across Violent And Non-Violent Extremists In The United States, Leevia Dillon

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Problem Statement: This study investigated risk factors commonly highlighted by prior studies and risk assessment tools (e.g., Violent Extremism Risk Assessment Version 2 (VERA-2) and Extremism Risk Guidance 22+ (ERG22+)). It compared the risk factors across and within two groups – violent extremists (i.e., jihadists and far-right extremists) and non-violent extremists (i.e., jihadists and far-right financial/material support crime extremists) in the U.S. Jihadists and far-rightists are the two greatest security threats facing the U.S., and the findings can aid counterterrorism efforts on assessment development, identifying effective risk factors across varying groups, and assessing violence risk. Research Questions/Objectives: This study aimed …

From Prostitution To Sex Trafficking: Dilemmas Of Victim Service Workers Helping Chinese Immigrant Women At The Courts, Yen-Chiao Liao

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This study aims to explore the policy ambivalence towards commercial sex trade, resulted by prostitution laws and anti-trafficking policies in the United States. It focuses on Chinese immigrant women and those who served them in the Human Trafficking Intervention Courts (the HTICs) in New York City. Specifically, it investigates the process of Chinese immigrant women becoming potential “victims” of sex trafficking from the perspectives of the service workers, the social workers and the public defenders. Though research on human trafficking seems to be exploding for the past decades since the passage of the Trafficking Victims Protection Act (TVPA) in 2000, …

Bearer Negotiable Instruments: Addressing A Financial Intelligence Gap And Identifying Criminogenic Weaknesses, Hollis B. Kegg

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Bearer Negotiable Instruments (BNI) are a long-standing category of financial instruments used to transfer large amounts of money in ways that may not be subject to regulation, reporting, tracking, review, or oversight. There is limited information available on BNIs, and no evidence that any studies have been undertaken on BNIs alone, much less reported. Increasingly, BNIs are being used for illegal purposes including money laundering. This study gathers information about their characteristics, nature, purpose, legal status, and numbers. It also focuses on the crime risks associated with BNIs, the crime opportunities they facilitate, and the criminal weaknesses in the financial …

The Role Of Suspect Development Practices In Eyewitness Identification Accuracy And Racial Disparities In Wrongful Conviction, Margaret Bull Kovera

Publications and Research

This article reviews the three previously studied categories of variables that are related to eyewitness identification accuracy: estimator (characteristics of the witnessing conditions), system (characteristics of the identification procedure that are under the control of the criminal legal system), and reflector (variables that reflect the likely accuracy of a witness). Although eyewitness scholars frequently turn to these variables and models of memory to explain why eyewitnesses make mistakes, none of these variables provides a reasonable explanation for the large racial disparities in wrongful convictions based on mistaken identifications, yet problematic policing practices might. The policies and practices guiding police efforts …

Misogynistic Extremism: A Scoping Review, Robin O'Hanlon, Frederick L. Altice, Roy Ka-Wei Lee, Jack Laviolette, Gloria Mark, Orestis Papakyriakopoulos, Koustuv Saha, Munmun De Choudhury, Navin Kumar

Publications and Research

In recent years, the concept of “misogynistic extremism” has emerged as a subject of interest among scholars, governments, law enforcement personnel, and the media. Yet a consistent understanding of how misogynistic extremism is defined and conceptualized has not yet emerged. Varying epistemological orientations may contribute to the current conceptual muddle of this topic, reflecting long-standing and on-going challenges with the conceptualization of its individual components. To address the potential impact of misogynistic extremism (i.e., violent attacks), a more precise understanding of what this phenomenon entails is needed. To summarize the existing knowledge base on the nature of misogynistic extremism, this …

Thematic Consistency Between Criminal History And Crime Scene Behaviors: Comparing Sexual Homicide Offenders With And Without Criminal Histories Of Sexual Offenses, Shannon E. Ettinger

Student Theses

Offender profiling research suggests that offenders may display behavioral consistency, meaning they may behave in some consistent manner between their crime scene actions and other aspects of their lives. Through behavioral themes, researchers can identify consistency in groups of individual behaviors that are thematically similar. Previous literature successfully applied the Expressive/Instrumental themes to homicide crime scene behaviors and criminal history. The current study aims to apply the Expressive/Instrumental thematic approach to analyzing the relationship between sexual homicide offender’s criminal history and their crime scene behaviors. The present study focuses on the distinction between sexual homicide offenders with a history of …

Credible Messengers: An Exploratory Analysis Of What Makes Them "Credible", Jason Szkola

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

The use of credible messengers to deliver violence reduction programs has spread rapidly since it was first used in a criminal justice context by Cure Violence in 2006. Despite the rapid growth in the use of credible messengers and the accompanying evaluations of these programs, there is no clear operationalization of what a credible messenger is, aside from vague definitions contained in the evaluation literature. This research explores what it means to be credible from the perspectives of the Credible Messengers themselves. The research used a mixed method approach wherein qualitative interviews were used to identify traits that the Credible …

Carceral Calisthenics: Physical Culture In The Hood, Albert L. De La Tierra

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

How do racialized men who reside in structurally marginalized locales that are putatively regarded as “the hood” navigate and manage their social conditions? This dissertation sheds light on this question by treating “street workout,” a physical culture centered around calisthenics exercises performed in public space, as an empirical site for generating a situated understanding of how some Black men assert themselves in social space at the same time that they are asserted upon by social forces. Taking an ethico-onto-epistem-ological stance that refuses the colonial gaze (a ubiquitously employed optic that dehumanizes racialized people), this dissertation asks: (1) What embodied practices …

Mitigating The Harm Of Public Mass Shooting Incidents Through Situational Crime Prevention, Emily Greene-Colozzi

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This dissertation used environmental theoretical frameworks to understand how public mass shooting incidents are impacted by aspects of the crime situation and opportunity. Predatory, public shootings perpetrated by individuals with evidence of mass intent were examined in the United States between 1966 and 2019. This project progressed in several distinct steps with discrete aims: (1) establish an open source database of public mass shooting incidents meeting definitional criteria; (2) perform statistical analysis, including latent class analysis, regression modeling, and structural equational modeling to assess research questions; and (3) perform comparative case studies and crime script analysis to assess situational crime …

Aging On Parole: An Empirical Analysis Of Reentry, Reintegration, And Life Satisfaction, Angela Silletti Murolo

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

As the prison population grays, so too does the people leaving prison. In New Jersey and New York, 35% and 26% of people on parole are over the age of 50 respectively. While older persons have lower recidivism rates compared to younger persons, there are physical, mental, and societal challenges that come with advancing age that can make reentry and reintegration a particularly difficult experience compared to younger persons. The aim of this dissertation is to explore the experiences of older adults on parole and the parole officers that assist them in their reentry and reintegration.

This study is unique …

Cpted And The City: The Impact Of Privately Owned Public Spaces On Crime In Manhattan, Julia Von Ferber

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Privately-Owned Public Spaces (POPS) are public recreational areas that are maintained and secured by a private owner. POPS contrast their surrounding environments of public streets in urban city centers, creating distinct social environments that influence pedestrian paths and behavior. This dissertation evaluates POPS and how their physical features influence the occurrence of various street crime types through the lens of Crime Prevention Through Environmental Design (CPTED). Empirical evidence supports CPTED as a crime prevention strategy framework, primarily in residential neighborhoods rather than city centers. To quantitatively assess CPTED in an urban context, this study examined 255 outdoor POPS with unrestricted …

The Experiences Of Older Formerly Incarcerated Adults In A Specialized Reentry Program During The Covid-19 Pandemic, Robin O'Hanlon, Jessica Broome

Publications and Research

A growing area of concern among prison reform advocates and human rights activists is the “greying prison population” or the continuous, unified growth in the number of older incarcerated individuals. Older individuals experience an accelerated aging process while incarcerated, but are less likely to reoffend upon release. While the aging prison population has in recent years become a focus of criminological and gerontological scholars, the lived experience of older formerly incarcerated individuals during the reentry process remains understudied. Using a qualitative approach, this cohort study seeks to further elucidate the unique needs, beliefs, and perceptions of this population within the …

Community Violence Intervention At The Roots (Cvi–R), Katheryne Pugliese, Paul Oder, Talib Hudson, Jeffrey A. Butts

Publications and Research

The crime and justice field recently started to label a wide array of violence prevention strategies as Community Violence Interventions. Many of these strategies depend on law enforcement and social services, but the most innovative approaches are community-centered and community-sourced. They are grassroots efforts that rely on the resources of neighborhoods and residents themselves, operating separately from law enforcement and traditional human services. Researchers from the John Jay College Research and Evaluation Center reviewed the history of community violence intervention strategies that operate at the grassroots level (or CVI-R) and examined evaluations of several community-centered approaches, providing recommendations for researchers …

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 …

Where Gunshots Turn Fatal: A Geographic Examination Of The Spatial Patterning Of Gun Violence, David Hatten

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This dissertation contributes fundamental work to the examination of gun violence through an investigation of prevalence, trends, and likely place-based dynamics that explain the spatial patterning of gun violence in Kansas City, MO over a 5-year period (2015-2019). Specifically, this dissertation assesses 1) the degree to which separate shooting typologies (fatal and non-fatal) concentrate in micro-places, 2) whether they co-locate at micro-places, and 3) the likely community characteristics and place-based dynamics that explain these observed patterns. Importantly, the role of place-based dynamics related to the post-incident operational response to gun violence is tested (e.g., a street segment’s proximity to trauma …

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 Economic And Demographic Dynamics Of Pretrial Justice, Christopher Thomas

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Scholars since Rusche (1978 [1933]) have tried to explain the observed relationship between changes in punishment patterns and changes in local labor markets, most recently framing the criminal justice system as a racialized labor market institution. In an era of bail and jail reform, this dissertation contributes to the literature on the causes and consequences of changes in one especially salient form of punishment, pretrial detention. In particular, it focuses on the macro relationship between pretrial detention and local labor markets. Prior research in this tradition has examined how changes in labor markets lead to changes in penality, as reflected …