Criminology Commons^™

Developing And Analyzing A “Top Offender” List For The Cuyahoga County Crime Strategies Unit, Rachel E. Lovell, Joanna Klingenstein, Duoduo Huang, Ryan Mcmaster, Edward Dabkowski

Criminology and Sociology Department Faculty Publications

No abstract provided.

A Look Into Wrongful Conviction Within The U.S. Justice System, Isabella T. Likos

The Downtown Review: An Interdisciplinary Journal Written and Peer-Reviewed by Mandel Honors College Students at Cleveland State University

The United States justice system has principles in place in order to prevent wrongful convictions such as the presumption of innocence and having to prove beyond a reasonable doubt. However, even with these principles in places there are times that people are wrongfully convicted. There are multiple reasons why wrongful conviction occur, including false confessions and erroneous eyewitness testimony. Wrongful conviction impacts not only the wrongfully convicted, but their family, friends, and the victims. While wrongful convictions do happen, there are steps that can be taken going forward that can help prevent them and exonerate the wrongfully convicted.

Examining Trauma And Crime By Gender And Sexual Orientation Among Youth: Findings From The Add Health National Longitudinal Study, Jinhee Yun, Miyuki F. Tedor, Matthias I. Quinn, Linda M. Quinn, Christopher A. Mallett

Criminology, Anthropology, & Sociology Faculty Publications

LGBTQ youth, and in particular those of color, are significantly more at risk for experiencing trauma at home and in their community, having school difficulties including bullying and suspensions, and subsequently being involved with the juvenile and criminal justice systems. Research is limited in understanding the pathways these young people take toward youthful and young adult offending and incarceration. The national longitudinal Add Health study data were used to explain how trauma, sexual orientation (gay, bisexual), school experiences, gender, and race impacted juvenile and adult criminal activity and incarceration—looking at a trauma-delinquency-crime link. It was found that females were more …

The Yakuza: Organized Crime In Japan, Darlene N. Moorman

The Downtown Review: An Interdisciplinary Journal Written and Peer-Reviewed by Mandel Honors College Students at Cleveland State University

Examining organized crime groups should not be purely economic; in other words, the culture, social structure, political contexts, and so on, are also critical in an insightful analysis of any organized crime group. For this paper, the Japanese yakuza are considered both in an economic viewpoint, such as how they make money, but also in other areas, such as its syndicates' notable cultural contributions and specific social characteristics. Moreover, this paper explores the dynamic changing of the organization overtime, especially in regards to its shifting relationship with the Japanese government.

Brief Literature Review On Conscientiousness And Responsivity To Cbi Programming, Ernest M. Oleksy

The Downtown Review: An Interdisciplinary Journal Written and Peer-Reviewed by Mandel Honors College Students at Cleveland State University

This article reviews the literature of how individual differences (specifically trait conscientiousness) may contribute to ex-offender responsivity to reentry programming. By studying if individual differences (e.g. personality traits) contribute to specific responsivity, programming can be determined to be ineffective for the general population and redesigned in a manner that is beneficial for the largest number of clients. To that end, this literature review provides a conceptual foundation for potential future studies, based on what previous researchers have found in their own studies. With this knowledge, future researchers will be better equipped to make sense of findings once they analyze their …

A Criminological Interpretation Of Kip Kinkel, Ernest M. Oleksy

The Downtown Review: An Interdisciplinary Journal Written and Peer-Reviewed by Mandel Honors College Students at Cleveland State University

Kip Kinkel, responsible for the Thurston High School Shooting, made headlines for his criminality in the late '90s. Whenever a tragedy like the aforementioned one occurs, researchers and law enforcement attempt to hypothesize and theorize why a particular individual resorted to violent crime, and if such occurrences can be predicted and suppressed in the future. This article offers numerous theoretical explanations to Kinkel's behavior, analyzing his background, lifestyle, and information provided by himself and other who knew him.

Psychosocial Analysis Of An Ethnography At The Cuyahoga County Public Defenders Office, Ernest M. Oleksy

The Downtown Review: An Interdisciplinary Journal Written and Peer-Reviewed by Mandel Honors College Students at Cleveland State University

Too often, social science majors become jaded with their field of study due to a misperception of the nature of many potential jobs which they are qualified for. Such discord is prevalent amongst undergraduates who strive for work in the criminal justice system. Hollywood misrepresentations become the archetypes of the aforementioned field, leaving out the necessity and ubiquity of accompanying desk work. Still other social science majors struggle to identify theoretical interpretations in praxis.

Postmodern Social Control: Dividuals And Surveillance, Ernest M. Oleksy

The Downtown Review: An Interdisciplinary Journal Written and Peer-Reviewed by Mandel Honors College Students at Cleveland State University

As a society's foundational philosophy changes, so, too, will its forms of social control. By using the works of thinkers like Deleuze and Foucault as pivot points, the dynamic nature of social interactions and the agents to mediate those actions shall be investigated. This article includes findings from archival analysis written in a journalistic prose for simplicity of consumption.

Rituals Upon Celluloid: The Need For Crime And Punishment In Contemporary Film, J C. Oleson

Cleveland State Law Review

Most members of the public lack first-hand experience with the criminal justice system; nevertheless, they believe that they possess phenomenological knowledge about it. In large part, the public’s understandings of crime and punishment are derived from television and film, which provide modern audiences with a vision of institutions that are normally occluded from view. While public rituals of punishment used to take place on the scaffold, equivalent moral narratives about crime and punishment now occur on film because modern punishment is imposed outside of the public gaze. Yet because crime films distort what they depict, the public’s view of crime …

Incarcerated Mothers: What Role Does Communication Play In Successful Family And Community Reintegration?, Rebecca Fowler, Jill E. Rudd, Kimberly A. Neuendorf

Undergraduate Research Posters 2014

The Incarcerated Mothers Project (TIFF--Transitioning Incarcerated Females & Families) is a four-tiered investigation into the subject of incarcerated mothers and how communication affects parental dynamics. The first tier of research included an earlier pilot study of 53 incarcerated mother. The second tier involved an experiment assessing the impact of exposure to a documentary narrative about the impact of a mother’s incarceration on her family; results showed significant knowledge gain and empathetic responses among general receivers. This summer, additional footage was added to the documentary, with instrumentation ready for a Fall 2014 data collection. Also this summer, progress was made on …

The Nation's Two Measures Of Homicide, Wendy C. Regoeczi, Duren Banks, Michael Planty, Lynn Langton, Margaret Warner

Sociology & Criminology Faculty Publications

The United States uses two national data collection systems to track detailed information on homicides: the Federal Bureau of Investigation’s Supplementary Homicide Reports and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s Fatal Injury Reports. Both measures were developed as part of a federal effort to improve national statistical systems in the early twentieth century and have gone through a number of changes since then to improve their consistency and coverage. Each program provides valuable information on the nature, trends, and patterns of homicides in the United States. Although the two measures generally capture information on the same types of events, …

Race, Poverty, And The Traffic Ticket Cycle Exploring The Situational Context Of The Application Of Police Discretion, Wendy C. Regoeczi, Stephanie L. Kent

Sociology & Criminology Faculty Publications

Purpose – Through systematic observation of police decision-making behavior, the aim of this paper is to investigate what factors differentiate between citizens who receive a warning vs a ticket from police and whether the influence of those factors varies by race. The paper also explores the context of those decisions for both blacks and whites to further the understanding of the underlying mechanisms of any observed differences in the likelihood of receiving a ticket vs a warning. Design/methodology/approach – Data were collected during police ridealongs conducted in a sample of cities within Cuyahoga County, Ohio. A total of 140 ridealongs …

Racial Residential Segregation And Social Control: A Panel Study Of The Variation In Police Strength Across U.S Cities, 1980–2010, Stephanie L. Kent, Jason T. Carmichael

Sociology & Criminology Faculty Publications

Despite a great deal of theoretical and empirical attention given to racial residential segregation and its influence on a number of social problems in the United States, few scholars have examined the role that this persistent form of racial inequality plays in shaping the magnitude of formal social control efforts. Our study examines this relationship by assessing the potential influence that the isolation of minorities may have on efforts to control crime in urban centers across the United States. Using a pooled time-series regression technique well suited for the analysis of aggregate, longitudinal data, we assess the potential influence of …

Rural Women’S Pathways To Crime: A Grounded Theory Study Of Rural Women And Their Experiences In Jails And Prisons, Angela Mesenburg

Undergraduate Research Posters 2012

In discussing the lack of research on female offenders there is even less research on women incarcerated from rural areas. Our focus is to initiate a discussion that could eventually be a part of a design of programs to provide much needed assistance for the women in these rural areas.

Gender, Social Bond, And Academic Cheating In Japan, Emiko Kobayashi, Miyuki Fukushima

Sociology & Criminology Faculty Publications

There is evidence that females are less likely to cheat than males on college campuses. A frequently offered but still untested explanation is that females, with a stronger sense of responsibility for the maintenance of social relationships, tend to develop a stronger bond to a conventional society—a key explanatory concept in Hirschi’s (1969) social control theory. With academic cheating as the dependent variable, we test the hypotheses that the four elements of social bond are the intervening variables linking gender to such dishonesty among Japanese students who, due to their stronger orientation toward masculinity on Hofstede’s (1980) scale of gender …

Association Between Mental Health Disorders And Juveniles' Detention For A Personal Crime, Patricia A. Stoddard Dare, Christopher A. Mallett, Craig Boitel

Social Work Faculty Publications

Background: Youth involved with juvenile courts often suffer from mental health difficulties and disorders, and these mental health disorders have often been a factor leading to the youth’s delinquent behaviours and activities.

Method: The present study of a sample population (N= 341), randomly drawn from one urban US county’s juvenile court delinquent population, investigated which specific mental health disorders predicted detention for committing a personal crime.

Results: Youth with attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder and conduct disorder diagnoses were significantly less likely to commit personal crimes and experience subsequent detention, while youth with bipolar diagnoses were significantly more likely.

Conclusion: Co-ordinated youth …

Killings Of Police In U.S. Cities Since 1980: An Examination Of Environmental And Political Explanations, Stephanie L. Kent

Sociology & Criminology Faculty Publications

Most research on killings of police in urban areas attempted to link lethal violence against officers to the violence and disorder in the communities they work.Yet support for this relationship is inconsistent. Fewer studies considered whether local political arrangements affect killings of police. This study attempts to remedy this gap by using recent data to investigate the relationship between the political conditions of large U.S. cities and the number of homicides of police officers in the line of duty in the years 1980, 1990, and 2000. Negative binomial regression analyses suggest that racial income inequality and the size of the …

Killings Of Police In U.S. Cities Since 1980: An Examination Of Environmental Andpolitical Explanations, Stephanie L. Kent

Sociology & Criminology Faculty Publications

Most research on killings of police in urban areas attempted to link lethal violence against officers to the violence and disorder in the communities they work. Yet support for this relationship is inconsistent. Fewer studies considered whether local political arrangements affect killings of police. This study attempts to remedy this gap by using recent data to investigate the relationship between the political conditions of large U.S. cities and the number of homicides of police officers in the line of duty in the years 1980, 1990, and 2000. Negative binomial regression analyses suggest that racial income inequality and the size of …

Parental Divorce: A Protection From Later Delinquency For Maltreated Children, Christopher A. Mallett, Patricia A. Stoddard Dare

Social Work Faculty Publications

Family structure and maltreatment (abuse and neglect) have been identified as predictors of youth delinquency, although the relationship is not clear. This article furthers this research by studying a sample of maltreated children (n = 250) in one Midwest county, and through a multiple regression analysis of many risk factors, the study identified only one significant delinquency variable that made delinquency less likely—children who experience parental divorce. Some established risk factors were surprisingly found not to be predictive of later delinquency: minority race, one-parent families, youth substance abuse, recurrent maltreatment, and youth behind in academic grade level. Implications for the …

Homicides Clearances An Analysis Of Arrest Versus Exceptional Outcomes, John P. Jarvis, Wendy C. Regoeczi

Sociology & Criminology Faculty Publications

A number of studies in the homicide clearance literature combine arrest and exceptional clearances into a single category. This study addresses the question of whether these divergent homicide case outcomes are influenced differently by various aspects of the case. Using National Incident-Based Reporting System data on homicides from 1996 to 2002, the authors analyze logistic regression models of cases cleared by arrest and exceptionally cleared. Our results show that although certain factors have similar influences on both arrest and exceptional clearances, victim gender, offender race, weapon use, victim/offender relationship, and circumstances have differing impacts on case outcomes. The …

The Importance Of Responsivity Factors In Predicting Reductions In Antisocial Attitudes And Cognitive Distortions Among Adult Male Offenders, Dana Jones Hubbard, Jennifer Pealer

Sociology & Criminology Faculty Publications

The research has demonstrated that cognitive-behavioral treatment programs for offenders work to reduce recidivism. One reason these programs have been found to be effective is that they target one of the “number one” predictors of crime, antisocial attitudes and values. Unfortunately, these programs may not “work” for all offenders. The literature suggests that personal characteristics of offenders, although not directly related to recidivism, may in fact interfere or hinder the ability for the program to “work.” This is referred to in the literature as the “responsivity principle.” This study seeks to understand the role that personal or responsivity characteristics of …

Moving Ahead: Five Essential Elements For Working Effectively With Girls, Betsy Mattews, Dana Jones Hubbard

Sociology & Criminology Faculty Publications

Quite a bit of literature these days addresses what is believed to be an increase in the frequency and severity of girls' problem behaviors and the need for gender-responsive treatment. The extent to which this literature has been translated into juvenile justice practices, however, appears limited by several factors. This article briefly discusses these impediments, and offers suggestions for five essential elements that reflect the current state of knowledge regarding effective intervention with girls involved in the juvenile justice system.

The Conjunctive Analysis Of Case Configurations: An Exploratory Method For Discrete Multivariate Analyses Of Crime Data, Terance D. Miethe, Timothy C. Hart, Wendy C. Regoeczi

Sociology & Criminology Faculty Publications

Derived from comparative approaches in both qualitative and quantitative research, the current study describes a simple exploratory technique for the multivariate analysis of categorical data. This technique is referred to as the conjunctive analysis of case configurations. After describing the logic and underlying assumptions of this conjunctive method, it is applied and illustrated in the study of the federal sentencing of drug offenders. The relative value of this conjunctive approach for purposes of exploratory data analysis and its overall utility as a method for confirmatory research are also discussed.

Clearing Murders: Is It About Time?, Wendy C. Regoeczi, John P. Jarvis, Marc Riedel

Sociology & Criminology Faculty Publications

This study uses data from the National Incident-Based Reporting System (NIBRS) to explore the impact of model selection on determining the association of victim-level and incident-level factors to the likelihood of homicide clearance. We compare both traditional operationalizations of clearance rates as well as the time to clearance as dependent variables in examinations of correlates of solvability in homicide cases. Using a different approach than most other analyses of this problem, the results affirm the consistency of some effects but also reveal some important differences when the aspect of time is factored into the model. Implications for analyses of efficiency …

Air Pollution, Economic Development Of Communities, And Health Status Among The Elderly In Urban China., Rongjun Sun, Danan Gu

Sociology & Criminology Faculty Publications

In Western societies, the impact of air pollution on residents' health is higher in less wealthy communities. However, it is not clear whether such an interaction effect applies to developing countries. The authors examine how the level of community development modifies the impact of air pollution on health outcomes of the Chinese elderly using data from the third wave of the Chinese Longitudinal Health Longevity Survey in 2002, which includes 7,358 elderly residents aged 65 or more years from 735 districts in 171 cities. The results show that, compared with a 1-point increase in the air pollution index in urban …

The Functions Of The Social Bond, James J. Chriss

Sociology & Criminology Faculty Publications

Travis Hirschi's control or social bonding theory argues that those persons who have strong and abiding attachments to conventional society (in the form of attachments, involvement, investment, and belief) are less likely to deviate than persons who have weak or shallow bonds. Later, Gottfredson and Hirschi moved away from the social bond as the primary factor in deviance, and toward an emphasis on self-control. In short, low self-control is associated with higher levels of deviance and criminality irrespective of the strength or weakness of one's social bonds. In this article I argue that Talcott Parsons' AGIL schema easily incorporates Hirschi's …

Vigilantism, Current Racial Threat, And Death Sentences, David Jacobs, Stephanie L. Kent, Jason T. Carmichael

Sociology & Criminology Faculty Publications

Capital punishment is the most severe punishment, yet little is known about the social conditions that lead to death sentences. Racial threat explanations imply that this sanction will be imposed more often in jurisdictions with larger minority populations, but some scholars suggest that a tradition of vigilante violence leads to increased death sentences. This study tests the combined explanatory power of both accounts by assessing statistical interactions between past lynchings and the recent percentage of African Americans after political conditions and other plausible effects are held constant. Findings from count models based on different samples, data, and estimators suggest that …

Who Survives On Death Row? An Individual And Contextual Analysis, David Jacobs, Jason T. Carmichael, Zhenchao Qian, Stephanie L. Kent

Sociology & Criminology Faculty Publications

What are the relationships between death row offender attributes, social arrangements, and executions? Partly because public officials control executions, theorists view this sanction as intrinsically political. Although the literature has focused on offender attributes that lead to death sentences, the post-sentencing stage is at least as important. States differ sharply in their willingness to execute and less than 10 percent of those given a death sentence are executed. To correct the resulting problems with censored data, this study uses a discrete-time event history analysis to detect the individual and state-level contextual factors that shape execution probabilities. The findings show that …

Murder Clearance Rates: Guest Editors' Introduction, John P. Jarvis, Wendy C. Regoeczi

Sociology & Criminology Faculty Publications

The journal Homicide Studies has long been devoted to empirical studies addressing issues pertinent to the study of homicide and violence. Although a large variety of theoretical papers, research summaries, and public policy reviews of issues concerning homicide and violence have been explored in the journal over the past 10 years, at least one issue has garnered relatively little attention—the law enforcement response to homicide. This special issue attempts to begin filling this gap in the literature.

Juvenile Court Probation Supervised Youths: At Risk In Cuyahoga County, Ohio, Christopher A. Mallett

Social Work Faculty Publications

Focuses on the increasing court cases of juvenile delinquents which are being processed in the U.S. Average of 1.2 million youths who are adjudicated delinquent and subsequently monitored by the juvenile justice system each year; Legal implication of the term probation; Risks involved in the juvenile justice system including family conflicts, addiction disorders, school problems and trauma.