Criminology Commons^™

Punishment, Fast And Slow: Five Experiments On Behavioral Economics In The Mass Incarceration Context, Nathaniel M. Schutten

Electronic Theses & Dissertations (2024 - present)

As many jurisdictions across the United States seek to reduce their prison populations, a pressing question is whether the public will support the reforms necessary to do so. Public openness to reform likely varies across policy areas, with the path of least public resistance occurring where attitudes are the most malleable and loosely held. A major challenge, however, is that traditional methods for measuring public opinion are poorly suited to identifying which policy areas are characterized by such weakly held views.

This dissertation develops a novel behavioral economics framework for identifying these areas. I theorize that when public opinion is …

Mass Homicides And Mass Shootings: Comparisons, Trends, And Unpacking Further, Stefana E. Lotempio

Electronic Theses & Dissertations (2024 - present)

Mass shootings have garnered more public attention in recent years, in large part due to their increase in both frequency and lethality. Despite public concern, policy and prevention efforts have remained limited and have not yet resulted in a decrease in these events. Understanding mass shootings as a subset of mass murder will help identify how mass shootings are unique from other mass murders, which will help to identify more effective prevention tactics. Additionally, exploring mass shooting trends in the context of homicide trends and other crime trends will illuminate patterns that can be used to inform policy and prevention …

From Sparks To Insights: An Aggregate Analysis On Arson And Explosive Data Reporting Published By The Atf (2014-2024), Zahra A. Khan

Electronic Theses & Dissertations (2024 - present)

This thesis provides an aggregate assessment of arson and explosives incidents reported by the Bureau of Alcohol, Firearms, and Tobacco, from 2014 to 2024. This thesis is written to highlight trends, investigative outcomes, and evolving patterns of criminal activity. Analysis of the data reveals notable shifts in incident frequencies, data distributions, and case resolution rates. This suggests both emerging technologies and changing operational dynamics that have affected long-term trends in arson and explosive incidents. Variations in incident types and investigative outcomes underscore the interplay between law enforcement priorities, resource allocation, and reporting practices over the ten-year period. The study also …

Macroeconomics, State Action, Civic Trust, And Homicide: The Causes And Consequences Of Interpersonal Violence In Latin America, Guillermo Escano

Electronic Theses & Dissertations (2024 - present)

Latin America and the Caribbean (LAC) represent 8 percent of the global population but about one-third of global homicides, yet interpersonal violence in the region receives limited attention in the English-language literature. This dissertation contains three distinct studies of the causes and consequences of crime and violence in LAC. The first study examines the predictive effects of inflation on robbery, burglary, and homicide rates in Argentina, which possesses one of the highest robbery rates worldwide and has endured high inflation – and, at times, hyperinflation – for years. I obtained annual crime data for 1973-2022 from the National Criminal Information …

Street Outreach And Reentry: The Role Of Community Violence Intervention In The Reintegration Of Returning Citizens, Hilary Jackl

Electronic Theses & Dissertations (2024 - present)

Amidst ongoing efforts to reduce the nation’s prison population, as well as calls to defund the police and invest in civilianized public safety strategies following the murder of George Floyd, community-based violence intervention (CVI) strategies have been increasingly recognized as a critical means by which to ameliorate the United States’ enduring gun violence problem without exacerbating the harms of overpolicing and mass incarceration. However, most contemporary CVI research has assessed program impacts on neighborhood rates of gun violence and has produced conflicting findings, leading scholars to call for the need to examine a wider range of program-related functions and outcomes. …

How Do Young Adults With Drug Use Disorder (Dud) Utilize Treatment? Exploring And Examining Lived Experiences Towards Treatment Completion In Indonesia, Dewi Kartikawatiningsih

Electronic Theses & Dissertations (2024 - present)

In Indonesia which has the highest rate of drug addiction in Southeast Asia, there is currently little knowledge about how young adults perceive the barriers faced when completing treatment or how treatment providers' perspectives influence their treatment completion. Understanding and identifying barriers to treatment completion is essential to making drug treatment more effective. The purpose of this study is to explore the perspectives and live experiences of young adults with DUD and their addiction counselors to develop a deeper understanding of treatment needs. This study interviewed 33 clients and 15 counselors from the rehabilitation center of the Badan Nasional Narkotika …

Explaining Mass Shooting Motivations: A Case Survey Analysis Of Us Mass Shootings (2006-2024), Isaiah H. Harris

Electronic Theses & Dissertations (2024 - present)

Research on the motivations behind mass shootings remains inconclusive as these events often lack a singular or explicit cause. The motivations of mass shooters are complex, shaped by the interplay of psychological, social, and ideological factors. While some attacks are clearly driven by extremist beliefs, others appear to stem from less defined forces such as depravity or sadistic intent. Existing typologies, such as Langman’s (2009) analysis of school shooters, offer valuable insight but are limited in scope. This study expands upon previous research by examining U.S. mass shootings from 2006 to 2024 to determine whether such events are more frequently …

Latin American Homicide (Chapter 3), Guillermo Escano

School of Criminal Justice Other Graduate Student Scholarship

The urgency for studying Latin America and the Caribbean(LAC) emanates from violence rates that are remarkably higher than in most world regions. Global homicide rates have recently declined (Rogers & Pridemore, 2018; Tuttle et al., 2018). While LAC followed suit, its rates are still comparatively high, and it is home to less than 10% of the global population but about one-third of homicides. The World Health Organization defines violence as endemic if a nation reaches ten homicides per 100,000 residents. Over two-thirds of LAC, nations meet this threshold (World Health Organization, 2023), and the regional mean is above 10. The …

Exploring Intersectional Differences In Employment And Desistance, Rachel Novick

Legacy Theses & Dissertations (2009 - 2024)

Employment is critically important to the re-entry process for most recordholders, as a standard condition of their community supervision agreement, as a turning point, and as a way to solidify new prosocial identities in the desistance process. However, seeking and maintaining gainful employment is easier for some recordholders than others. Prior research suggests that applicant race and gender impacts employment opportunities and outcomes. It is also the case that desistance may look different based on the race and gender of the recordholder. Thus, it may be the case that the relationship between desistance and employment varies for recordholders of different …

Population-Level Alcohol Consumption And Homicide Rates In Latin America: A Fixed Effects Panel Analysis, 1961-2019, Guillermo J. Escano, William Alex Pridemore

School of Criminal Justice Faculty Scholarship

Latin America and the Caribbean (LAC) possesses 8% of the global population but approximately one-third of global homicides. The region also exhibits high per capita alcohol consumption, risky drinking patterns, and a heterogeneous mix of beverage preferences. Despite this, LAC violence receives limited attention in the English-language literature and there are no studies of the population-level alcohol-homicide association in the region. We examined the effects on total, male, and female homicide rates of total and beverage-specific alcohol consumption (22 nations, 1961-2019) and of risky drinking patterns (20 nations, 2005 and 2010). We collected homicide and alcohol data from the World …

Constructing, Integrating, And Testing The Choice Set For Models Of Offender Decision-Making, Matthew Kijowski

Legacy Theses & Dissertations (2009 - 2024)

Models of offender decision-making are premised on a rational actor weighing the perceived options within their choice set. One will choose to engage in a behavioral option that provides them with the greatest benefits and fewest costs as compared to the other perceived options. Even though the choice set is the foundation from which offender decision-making is built, criminologists, and offender decision-making scholars specifically, have assumed the choice set without directly measuring it. Without appraising the choice set, a multi-step process of decision-making is collapsed into a single step. This precludes an understanding of the composition of the choice set, …

Public Opinion On Compensating Different Types Of Wrongful Convictions, Sishi Wu

Legacy Theses & Dissertations (2009 - 2024)

People who are wrongfully convicted are a unique vulnerable group. However, not all exonerees get compensated for their time in prison. This research explores public opinion on compensating wrongful convictions from erroneously rejected affirmative defenses and from false guilty pleas. Using a randomized survey experiment of 1,000 US adults, this research found that (1) most respondents supported wrongful conviction compensation, regardless of wrongful conviction types and plea status. (2) Wrongful conviction types matter. People supported compensating exonerees in the self-defense case as much as in the wrong person case. The amount of compensation people gave in the mistaken self-defense case …

The Quest To End Human Trafficking: An Educational And Practical Guide For Everyone Who Wants To Help Break The Bonds And Assist Survivors, Dennis W. Mccarty

Emergency Preparedness, Homeland Security, and Cybersecurity Faculty Scholarship

People often assume that only legislators and law enforcement personnel can take meaningful steps to fight human trafficking, one of the most lucrative transnational crimes in the world. This inquiry sought to assess the validity of that belief. The study was informed by the author’s experience as a college instructor of human trafficking and the inspiration he drew from the range and quality of his students’ projects.

The methodology included examining the strategies that governmental and non-governmental organizations are using to fight trafficking and assist survivors. It also considered the work of individual activists and service providers such as social …

The Age, Period, And Cohort Effects On Crime Rates In The Republic Of Korea, Byunggu Kang

Legacy Theses & Dissertations (2009 - 2024)

The age–crime relationship has been a theoretical and empirical puzzle for criminologists for decades. Although the age–crime curve is often considered a stylized fact, a large body of research suggests that the age–crime relationship is dynamic under the influence of age, period, and cohort effects. The impact of these effects can vary across different social contexts, as the consistency or variability in socio-economic and cultural factors experienced by consecutive generations or populations differs in each context. Thus, the extent to which age, period, and cohort effects contribute to the age–crime relationship in various social contexts is a question that requires …

Race And Ethnicity In Juvenile Justice Sentencing: The Role Of Static And Dynamic Community Threat, Victoria Lynn Nelson

Legacy Theses & Dissertations (2009 - 2024)

Research consistently finds that Black and Hispanic youth are overrepresented at various stages of juvenile justice processing. However, less research has considered the role of community characteristics in juvenile justice processing, and much of this research has been mixed. This is particularly concerning given the explicit reliance on extralegal factors, and on the local organization of juvenile justice systems which likely make them considerably more vulnerable to community anxieties. Racial threat theory posits that as “threatening” populations increase, they begin to threaten economic and political resources of the dominant group. As this happens, the dominant group will retaliate with discriminatory …

When Payday Is Not Enough : The Impact Of Small Loan Regulation On Reported Crime In Cincinnati, Ohio, Colleen D. Mair

Legacy Theses & Dissertations (2009 - 2024)

Legislators have largely regarded payday lending, a type of alternative financial service through which borrowers obtain unsecured loans for fast cash, as predatory and detrimental for already vulnerable areas. Critics of this industry suggest that the use of payday loans creates a cycle of debt that can lead to several negative outcomes, including an increase in crime in the areas in which they are located. In an effort to address the negative effects of payday lending, several laws have been passed to regulate or eliminate traditional payday lending. Despite these intentions, prior research has produced mixed results about whether or …

Morality, Context, And Crime Decision-Making, Shaina Herman

Legacy Theses & Dissertations (2009 - 2024)

Recent criminological advancements increasingly aim to better understand criminal behavior in context. This is particularly true regarding how perceptions of legal sanction risk are anchored in reality and influence offending decisions. Yet research on extralegal considerations such as morality has not kept pace. The current dissertation integrates criminological morality literature, with psychological research on Self Concept Maintenance Theory (SCMT) and moral identity, into a perspective on moral decision-making dynamics that integrates personal and situational factors. I utilize three data collections containing randomized experiments to investigate the situational malleability of moral evaluations and the interrelatedness with moral identity and criminal intentions. …

Lay Judges Vs. Lawyer Judges : How Much Difference Can A Law Degree Make?, Jingyi Fei

Legacy Theses & Dissertations (2009 - 2024)

With about 13.2 million misdemeanor cases processed through the criminal justice system each year, an increasing number of researchers has shifted their interests from felony courts to lower criminal courts (Smith & Maddan, 2019). One aspect of these lower criminal courts that is of particular interest is the eligibility of non-lawyers to run for and hold judgeships. Although New York and 18 other states have permitted the employment of lay judges, court reformers have long questioned their ability to safeguard defendant’s due process rights. However, at no point in the history of agitation against lay judges have their critics sought …

Public Opinion And The Morality Of Drug Use : Experimental And Time-Series Analyses, Benjamin Kuettel

Legacy Theses & Dissertations (2009 - 2024)

Trends in public opinion research suggest that Americans are becoming more liberal with respect to drugs. This research is limited by the absence of a reliable and valid indicator of drug sentiment, which inhibits our understanding of how and why public opinion toward drugs evolves over time. Recent studies also suggest that Americans are morally approving of drug use in certain contexts and are supportive of “harm reduction” or other progressive drug policies viewed as solutions to the drug war, but the underlying reasons as to why are not completely understood. This dissertation uses time-series analysis and two survey experiments …

Spatio-Temporal Analyses Of The Relationships Between Stop, Question And Frisk And Crime In New York City, Haemi Won

Legacy Theses & Dissertations (2009 - 2024)

Previous research has shown mixed findings on a deterrent effect of Stop, Question and Frisk (SQF) on crime. As SQF is one of the most fundamental methods of police crime control, an accurate examination of the relationship between SQF and crime is critical. This dissertation examined spatio-temporal interactions of crime and those of SQF respectively, and then the spatial relationships between SQF and crime at microgeographic level, controlling for the effect of the street network. Using inhomogeneous cross K function with the exact location x-y coordinates of each point of both SQF and crime, this dissertation explored the spatio-temporal relationships …

Adolescent Maltreatment, Substance Use, And Self-Efficacy : A Test Of General Strain Theory Among A Sample Of Clinical Youth, Sonya Worthington

Legacy Theses & Dissertations (2009 - 2024)

The relationship between adolescent maltreatment and delinquency has been of growing interest to social control, social learning, strain, and family-oriented theorist since the 1980’s. While ‘social control’, ‘social learning’, and ‘traditional strain’ theories dominated early delinquency research literature surrounding the association, the past few decades have experienced a shift from these sociological theories to those more social-psychological in nature, lending much support, credibility, and acceptance of Agnew’s General Strain Theory (GST). GST offers a theoretical framework for understanding micro-level and macro level factors that influence the likelihood of delinquency. In short, GST contends some individuals engage in criminal and deviant …

An Iterative Theory Of The Legislative Process : A Case Study Of The New York State Commission On Prosecutorial Conduct, Kimberly M. Bernstein

Legacy Theses & Dissertations (2009 - 2024)

Prosecutors wield the power of the criminal justice system (Medwed, 2014) and the ability to deprive a person of their constitutional rights (Imbler v. Pachtman, 1976). With such power, it is unsurprising that a leading cause of miscarriages of justice is prosecutorial misconduct (e.g., Joy, 2006; Ridolfi & Possley, 2010). New York State became the first state in the country to respond to this issue with a specialized Commission on Prosecutorial Conduct (CPC). The goal of the CPC is to serve as an official mechanism for holding District Attorneys and Assistant District Attorneys accountable by challenging convictions and handing down …

The Dark Figure Of Wrongful Convictions : How Intake Decisions Impact Exonerations, Jennifer Weintraub

Legacy Theses & Dissertations (2009 - 2024)

Innocence organizations contributed to 45% of exonerations in the year 2020, and account for nearly 25% of all U.S. exonerations. Yet little is known about these organizations, including a review of their intake criteria and procedures, how they select their intake criteria and procedures, or how those choices influence the landscape of known wrongful convictions. The contents of these intake decisions as well as how they are chosen have implications for what is currently known about wrongful convictions nation-wide. In this study, 19 innocence organizations represented by 24 innocence organization staff and leaders completed qualitative interviews to address this gap …

Addressing The Scale Issues In Spatial-Temporal Analysis Of Crime : An Integrative Framework And Empirical Findings, Mohammed Abdulrazak Alazawi

Legacy Theses & Dissertations (2009 - 2024)

Based on a critical review of existing literature in the spatial-temporal analysis of crime, three challenges have been identified: spatial-temporal scaling, theorizing spatial patterns for different types of crime, and the micro interaction between space and time. The spatial-temporal scaling issue is related to choosing the appropriate geographic unit of analysis. The theoretical issue concerns the lack of an integrative approach that can integrate the benefits of each theoretical perspective and identify broader processes to explain the resulting spatial patterns for different types of crime. Also, examining and explaining the variation of the micro space-time interactions for different types of …

Towards A Psychological Science Of Abolition Democracy: Insights For Improving Theory And Research On Race And Public Safety, Cynthia J. Najdowski, Phillip Atiba Goff

Psychology Faculty Scholarship

We call for psychologists to expand their thinking on fair and just public safety by engaging with the “Abolition Democracy” framework that Du Bois (1935) articulated as the need to dissolve slavery while simultaneously taking affirmative steps to rid its toxic consequences from the body politic. Because the legacies of slavery continue to produce disparities in public safety in the U.S, both harming Black people and the institutions that could keep them safe, psychologists must take seriously questions of history and structure in addition to immediate situations. In the present article, we consider the state of knowledge regarding psychological processes …

The Racial And Partisan Underpinnings Of Attitudes Toward Police In A Time Of Protest, Andrew Thompson

Legacy Theses & Dissertations (2009 - 2024)

Racial and ethnic differences in policing attitudes have generally been examined through the group position or other conflict perspectives. This perspective contains a limitation, especially when considering recent trends in racial and policing attitudes. Racial attitudes have been liberalizing for over a decade among White political liberals and moderates, while Republicans’ racial attitudes have been relatively stagnant. These divergent trends may have accelerated since the murder of George Floyd. While racial attitudes (including attitudes about the police) have been polarizing along political lines, the group position model suggests that racial attitudes and policy preferences among dominant group members, regardless of …

Exploring Group-Threat And Police-Involved Homicide : A Spatial Analysis Of Police Involved Homicide In Us Counties, Kyle Demori Maksuta

Legacy Theses & Dissertations (2009 - 2024)

The recent advent of the Black Lives Matter movement has reinvigorated criminological inquiry into police violence. Recent advances in spatial analysis have opened new opportunities for understanding the spatial relationship between social structure and police violence. Spatial analysis is both statistically and substantively important to our understanding of police-involved-homicide (PIH), yet few studies have attempted to marry recent advances in spatial econometrics to this topic. The current study introduces spatial Durbin modeling (SDM) as a particularly useful approach to studying the spatial relationships between variables associated with group threat theory and PIH. Previous research has demonstrated the connections between group …

Longitudinal Examination Of Contextual Risk, Promotive Factors, And Psychosocial Functioning Using Structural Equation Modeling With A Sample Of Serious Adolescent Offenders, Daniel J. Knauer

Legacy Theses & Dissertations (2009 - 2024)

Mental health problems, including substance use problems, are more prevalent among adolescent criminal offenders than among the general population and are associated with an elevated risk of re-offending. It is important to understand what factors are associated with serious adolescent offenders’ future mental health and re-offending outcomes to promote their positive development. This study examined potential mechanisms behind established relationships between risk factors for mental health and criminal offending and psychosocial outcomes while integrating ecological theory and a risk and protective framework. To do this, a mediation model was examined using structural equation modeling in which contextual risk was hypothesized …

Roaring Tiger Or Bounce Tigger? : Examining Corruption Seriousness Perception In China From A Socio-Cultural Perspective, Yunhan Zhao

Legacy Theses & Dissertations (2009 - 2024)

Recent years have witnessed a steadily increasing scholarly interest in perceptions of corruption, particularly in terms of level and prevalence. However, previous studies have largely overlooked perceived seriousness as another unique dimension of corruption perception. Furthermore, previous studies seeking causes of corruption perception have failed to consider cultural factors at either the individual or aggregate level as potential predictors. To fill the gap, the current dissertation employs the 2014 Chinese Family Panel Studies and other relevant data to explore the relationships between corruption seriousness perception and cultural factors. This dissertation strategically examines two individual cultural attachments (i.e., Confucianism and Legalism …

Caregivers’ Expectations, Reflected Appraisals, And Arrests Among Adolescents Who Experienced Parental Incarceration, Cynthia J. Najdowski, Melissa Noel

Psychology Faculty Scholarship

This research sought to identify a potential process by which intergenerational crime occurs, focusing on the effect of parental incarceration on adolescents’ subsequent arrests. We drew from Matsueda’s work on reflected appraisals as an explanatory mechanism for this effect. Thus, the present research examined whether caregivers’ and adolescents’ expectations for adolescents’ future incarceration sequentially mediated the effect of parental incarceration on adolescents’ actual arrest outcomes. Propensity score matching was used to examine this effect in a sample of 1,735 15- to 16-year-olds using NLSY97 data. Parental incarceration was positively related to caregivers’ expectations of adolescents’ future arrest. Moreover, caregivers’ expectations …