Criminology Commons^™

Looking Within And Beyond: Restorative Justice In Schools, Imani A. Shell

Masters Theses

Across the past three decades, restorative justice (RJ) has become increasingly popular in the U.S as an alternative to criminal legal approaches, particularly in schools suffering from the effects of school securitization and a rise in discipline. However, what RJ means is often variable in how it is practiced and dependent upon its local context: school, family, community, etc. This study reveals the tensions underlying RJ’s implementation process in schools and investigates the role that political climate plays in those efforts. The results of this study are based on a series of eight semi-structured interviews with key national organizers and …

Film Women Violence, Madison R. Ross

Masters Theses

As a condensed version of social reality, film has become a more common object of modern sociological and criminological investigation. As such, we can explore film to understand taken-for-granted as well as innovative constructions of social phenomena. Among these are gendered violence. We can use film to dig deep into its logics, elaborated in visual and narrative representations. Prior literature has analyzed crime films and the behavioral constructions within them, outlining the representations of serial homicide, rape, mass shootings and revenge. However, few studies have outlined films that do meaningful, non-voyeuristic representational work on the issue of violence against …

Putting The Meat In Meat-Less?: A Critical Discourse Analysis Of Corporate Marketing Of Plant-Based Products, Samantha A. Mcintyre

Masters Theses

The plant-based industry has sustained rapid growth within recent years due to awareness surrounding environmental harms. Due to the rise in profitability of plant-based products in the consumer market, multiple corporations have either acquired or created plant-based brands. The corporations that have done so (Tyson, Smithfield, Kellogg’s, Nestlé, and Conagra Foods) are the subjects of study for this project. These major corporations are also part of the industrial animal agriculture system, and garner profit from meat and dairy businesses. This study explores the way the marketing is embedded in ideologies of Western capitalism and patriarchy. I use critical discourse analysis …

Meet The Duggars: The Reproduction Of Gender Privilege In The Popular Construction Of Sibling Sexual Abuse, Jessica Reené West

Masters Theses

Sibling sexual abuse a nefarious harm that researchers suspect occurs for often than any other form of child sexual abuse, and is very rarely reported to authorities. On May 19th 2015, allegations of sexual abuse by Joshua Duggar against four of his younger sisters and a female babysitter during 2002 and 2003, were made public knowledge by the tabloid InTouch. In response to the public outcry, parents Jim Bob and Michelle Duggar sat for an interview on June 3rd 2015, in their family home with Fox News moderator Megyn Kelly. Statements made by The Duggars about sibling sexual abuse …

Steven Avery, A Case Study: Making A Murderer Or Making An Identity, Allison Grussing

Masters Theses

Steven Avery, a Wisconsin native, has spent the majority of his adult life in prison, once for a crime he was later exonerated from, and then again for murder. The Netflix series Making a Murderer documents Avery's murder trial, and uses only first hand accounts. Ultimately, this research had two goals: one was to better understand how the series utilized framing to engage in advocacy for Avery and the second was to uncover what identity was constructed by the producers and series for Avery. With a thematic analysis approach and open and axial coding this research revealed three themes that …

A Multimodal Discourse Analysis Of The Bonnaroo Music And Arts Festival Website: A Cultural Criminology Of Peace- And Community-Building, Katie Marie Highbaugh

Masters Theses

Social settings that are low in interpersonal crime offer an opportunity to understand social control and, moreover, peace-making. Bonnaroo Music and Arts Festival held each summer since 2002 in Manchester, Tennessee, is a contemporary example of a peaceable provisional community. To analyze the culture of Bonnaroo, I undertook a multimodal discourse analysis, which is as a systematic analysis of all texts and images (Fairclough 2013; Machin & Mayr 2012). I paid particular attention to how the website was able to foster community via what they communicated and how – through overall website design or visual semiotics, and images, as well …

Entropy And The Economy Of Violence: Anthropophagy And Sacrificial Violence In Late Modernity, Benjamin Corey Webster

Masters Theses

In this project, I explore the relationship of biosocial perspectives, specifically the study of energy and entropy, to contemporary work in criminology and social theory. After working through an elaboration of entropy, I explore its relevance to social life through an eclectic but necessary survey of a key set of scholars whose work focuses upon the sacrifice and criminalization of the poor, the intensification of exclusion and genocidal contexts, and finally, the possibility of a politics of change through indigenous knowledges. Bringing these various schools of thought together allows us to see the interdisciplinary linkages that might better reveal the …

America’S Lethal Dilemma: Legitimating Old Methods Of Execution In An Era Of Abolition, Kyle Ward Letteney

Masters Theses

American capital punishment has been facing new opposition from abroad. In 2011 the European Union (EU) placed an embargo on the export of the primary lethal injection drug, sodium thiopental. Since the 2011 embargo, the 32 American states with the death penalty have been unable to obtain additional quantities of sodium thiopental and have since depleted or nearly depleted their supply, prompting a discussion of alternatives. This study analyzes that discussion. Specifically, the analysis of pro-death penalty rhetoric used by Tennessee state politicians who have recently taken steps to retain the death penalty despite the ongoing controversy surrounding the death …

An Analysis Of The Patterns Of Crime And Socioeconomic Status Visualized Through Self-Organized Maps, Jason Carlin Kaufman

Masters Theses

This work is research to explore the association of spatial patterns between crime and socioeconomic status (SES) through the use of self-organized maps (SOM). It had been found that the spatial patterns of crime could be associated with those of socioeconomic, and this work sought to further these analyses in order to better understand how crime patterns and SES were related. To explore this association, patterns of crime and SES were examined in three cities: Nashville, TN; Portland, OR; and Tucson, AZ. Three SOMs were used in each city: one to analyze the patterns of crime, a second to analyze …

The Inmate Code: The Stories Lived And The Stories Told Of Men Behind Bars, Pauline Matthey

Masters Theses

Using Coordinated Management of Meaning, this study links socialization and identification with the intricate levels of the inmate code that male prisoners live by, or live with anyway, while being incarcerated. In doing so, the research showed that the more highly identified to the inmate code a prisoner is, the less likely he is to have a desire to coordinate the meaning of his stories lived with the stories told of others. Furthermore, this project uncovered a characteristic of metamorphosis, the TRAP, or Temporary Relapse Alluding to the Past. TRAP takes place when prisoners who have developed the ability to …

A Cross-National, Longitudinal Test Of Institutional Anomie Theory, Marc Alan Kittleson

Masters Theses

Institutional anomie theory, developed by Messner and Rosenfeld (1994), explains variations in crime rates across geographic areas and time as resulting from the interrelationship between social institutions and culture. Their theory predicts that when the institution of the economy dominates all other social institutions, and when norms and values focus heavily on monetary success, crime rates will be higher than when there is less dominance of the economy. Institutional anomie theory has been tested using a number of different methods and data from county-level to international-level aggregates. This study addresses the research question of whether variations in crime victimization can …

Education & Crime: A Study In Student Perceptions Of Culpability, Larry Curtis Long

Masters Theses

Criminological research has long been concerned with how stereotypes of offender race and gender affect perceived culpability and policy formation. Using data collected from a college student population that were administered six vignettes written in the form of police blotters that depicted different crimes being committed by offenders with differing educational characteristics, this study seeks to identify whether or not an offender’s educational characteristics affect their perceived culpability. Although the data indicates that offender’s are seen as culpable regardless of their educational characteristics, it is evident that some degree or sociopathy is assessed to offender’s that are seen as educated …

Passivity: Looking At Bystanding Through The Lens Of Criminological Theory, Rahim Manji

Masters Theses

Criminologists have long since marginalized passivity as a variable of interest when studying the phenomenon of harm-doing. In this thesis, I explore the role of passivity in such instances and build a case for its centrality to deviance. I also undertake a number of other tasks. First, I review the extent to which research throughout the academy has connected passivity to violence. Second, I explore whether criminological theories have incorporated the variable of passivity and how they could. Lastly, I reflect on why more work on passivity has not been done given its manifest connection to harm, and I offer …

A Policy Analysis Of Teen Courts: A Look At Teen Courts As A Viable Alternative To The Juvenile Court System, Jon P. Mathieu

Masters Theses

Teen Courts are rapidly emerging as one possible solution to the escalating juvenile crime problem in the United States. From the initial court, started over 20 years ago in Texas, Teen Courts are now in 30 states, with over 250 programs. As the crime problem grows within this population, a need for alternative methods to the Juvenile Court has emerged. Moreover, to date, no formal evaluation has been conducted between United States Teen Courts for a comparative study. Therefore, I sought to explore the following issues: (a) the need for Teen Court implementation, (b) a rationale for Teen Court existence, …

Factors Influencing Prison Industry, Erik Dill

Masters Theses

Prison industry has a sporadic history in the United States. Interstate trade of prison made goods was banned from 1940 until 1979; business and labor opposed slavelike competition from early programs. This thesis studies competitive prisoner work, deemed prison industry, as different from state-use labor.

Formal theory on prison industry is inadequate. Rusche would suggest that unemployment directly effects incarceration, and prison industry develops to provide labor in economic upswings. Since 1980 prison industry expanded and unemployment fell, but incarceration did not decline. Therefore, this study focuses on theory genesis. Explanations for incarceration can assume prison is exploitative. Legal history …

Perceptions Of Corporate Crime: Assessing The Seriousness, Dale J. Ardovini-Brooker

Masters Theses

Many studies have been done concerning the seriousness of traditional street crime. There is a need in the field of criminology to expand our knowledge about how serious corporate crimes are. A key feature of seriousness is how researchers measure it. Using a survey, I analyzed people's perceptions of corporate crime. I had the respondents indicate the seriousness of the crime and harm by using a Likert Scale as well as identifying the appropriate sanction/sentence for the company convicted of the crime. This proved useful in attempting to identify how seriousness is measured by the sanctions/sentences imposed by the respondents. …

Repeat Violence In The Emergency Department, Jeanne A. Dorsey

Masters Theses

The purpose of this descriptive study was to conduct a secondary analysis of the data set obtained from the Trauma and Emergency Center Violence Project (Dorsey, 1994). It was noted during the original 6 month study of 33,098 emergency department visits that some patients threatened or carried out real violence on multiple visits.; This study (a) identified the percentage of incidents in the initial sample that were perpetrated by repeat offenders, (b) described the types of violent behaviors, (c) explored the relationship between current substance and psychiatric history and the number of threatened or real violence incidents.; A descriptive research …

Assassination In Modern America: Political Participation Through A Gun Barrel?, Richard Grossenbacher

Masters Theses

Assassination has been a constant companion of the world's societies from the beginning of recorded history. Only relatively recently have social scientists begun empirical study of these acts in an effort to reveal any commonalties and possible predictive traits. Investigation of the assassination phenomenon assumed a special urgency in America as violence seemed to escalate in the 1960s, which resulted in some notable research.

The present research collected data of presidential and non-presidential assassinations and attempts that occurred from 1969 through 1992 and compared the findings with the results of earlier studies.

The data indicate that presidential assaults increased in …

Language Abilities Of Male Adolescents In A Juvenile Detention Center, Krista J. Klein

Masters Theses

This study was designed to analyze the language abilities of male adolescents with delinquent behavior. It was based on the hypothesis that male adolescents with delinquent behavior would have lower language skills during expressive language tasks. Language skills of male adolescents in a juvenile detention center were examined by comparing 12 grammatical variables, four subtest scores, and one total score from the Screening Test for Adolescent Language (STAL; Prather, Ausdal-Breecher, Stafford & Wallace, 1980). Results indicated that the adolescents with delinquent behavior omitted significantly more words, but also produced significantly more secondary verbs in a narration task. Significantly lower results …

Aggressive Dating Behavior Among College Students, Felicia D. Flowers

Masters Theses

Past studies have revealed that people with traditional gender role views are often involved in dating violence. This study examines both male and female athletes and non-athletes in terms of traditional gender role views and dating violence. Athletes and non-athletes are an important focus because literature is virtually silent on these two populations in terms of dating violence. The researcher surveyed 188 undergraduate students attending Western Michigan University on their attitudes and experiences concerning gender role views, athletic involvement, and history of dating violence, respectively. The results indicate that gender role views and athletic participation appeared to have no significant …

State-Corporate Crime In The U.S. Nuclear Weapons Production Complex: A Case Study, David Kauzlarich

Masters Theses

The objectives of this research are (1) to identify the characteristics of the environmental law violations committed during the production of nuclear weapons, (2) to identify the historical forces and events which have contributed to those violations, and (3) to use data on the illegal acts of the nuclear weapons production complex to help adjudicate between a number of competing explanations of the causes of organizational crime.

This research, a qualitative, socio-historical case study, found that a historical and structural level of analysis is best equipped to explain the causes of the weapons production complex's criminality. The conclusion of this …

Reagan-Bush Drug Crusades: An Historical Perspective And Critique, Martin Randall Hill

Masters Theses

This study is a sociological analysis of anti-drug legislation during the last one hundred years within the United States. Anti-drug legislation is explored with regard to specific substances, as well as in general, and compared to anti-drug legislation of today. The conflict perspective was employed as an aid in understanding the occurrence of such phenomena as anti-drug legislation and drug wars. It becomes apparent that social problems or deviance, related to drug use, are more than simply a matter of someone transgressing. The laws are created in an effort to perpetuate the existence of groups with access to power and …

Drug Problem And Social Change In Saudi Arabia: A Study Of The Attitude Of Saudi Students Studying In The U.S.A. Towards Drug Use In Saudi Arabia, Abdullah Yousef

Masters Theses

The main focus of this study is the relationship between level of income, level of education, length of stay in U.S.A., frequency of contact with foreigners, and level of religiosity on student attitudes towards smoking cigarettes and hashish, and drinking alcohol.

A sample of 110 students was randomly drawn from three areas: Kalamazoo, Ann Arbor, and Lansing, Michigan. Data were collected through administering a questionnaire.

Analysis of the data revealed the following: income, level of education, length of stay in the U.S., frequency of contact with foreigners, and level of religiosity were associated with student attitudes towards drug use.

An Analysis Of Self-Report Delinquency: A Test Using An International Instrument, Linda Robyn

Masters Theses

This is part of an international pilot study on juvenile delinquency in the U. S. and six European countries. Research questions were designed based on using Hirschi’s (1969) theory of Social Control as a guide. Among the questions to be studied are the relationships between delinquency and single- and two-parent homes, participation in organized sports, and acts committed alone or with others. Interviews were conducted with 100 youths from 14- to 18-years of age. The population consisted of past and present students from junior high and high school in a mid-western city. The data were stratified into census tracts and …

Mmpi Profiles Of Sexual Perpetrators, Steven G. Vaupel

Masters Theses

The purpose of this study was to compare MMPI scores of 60 men referred for assessment and/or counseling at community mental health facilities. No MMPI protocols were excluded due to elevated validity configurations (70T or above). Forty of the referrals were referred for suspected child sexual abuse. Twenty of the referrals admitted (Admitter) to sexually abusing a child at the time of referral and twenty did not admit (Nonadmitter) to sexually abusing a child when referred. A control group of the remaining twenty subjects were referred for various offenses, none of which included sexual offenses against children. Significant differences were …

A Comparison Of Selected Old And New Right Wing Groups: Involvement With Law Enforcement, Elvin W. Keith

Masters Theses

This study has determined that current right wing extremist groups in the U.S. have no greater propensity for damage to the national security than older right wing groups.

Although right wing groups are dangerous due to the popularity of conservative causes and the proliferation of modern weaponry, an examination reveals that dedication and increased military capability are offset by more efficient law enforcement response and lack of support by the general populace.

A careful examination of the American right wing, both old and new shows the disparity between the two groups. Emphasis is placed on exploring the old right wing …

Recidivism After Youth Imprisonment In Relationship To Criminal Career: A Twenty Year Follow Up Study, Helmut F. Janssen

Masters Theses

The purpose of this study is to examine the effects of early biographical factors on the future development of the juveniles and focusses on recidivism and factors influencing the development of a criminal "career." It includes a twenty year follow-up period, studying 500 juveniles released from two juvenile prisons of West Germany in 1961.

From a data set originally created in 1966, which included 290 variables, 29 variables, including individual and social characteristics as well as variables dealing with prior experiences with sanctioning, were ultimately used for this study. In addition, some new variables were created from the variables of …

Crime And Delinquency In Haiti: A Study Of Crime In A Developing Country, Gerard Mauze

Masters Theses

The primary intent of this study was an attempt at describing, understanding and analyzing the most common types, incidences and forces that produce crime and delinquency in Haiti. A secondary concern of this work was to do the ground work which would enable the formulation of testable hypotheses about the causes of crime and delinquency in Haiti.

Even though a number of developing nations face a rapid growth in their crime and delinquency rates, Haiti appears to maintain a relatively low crime rate.

The law-abiding behavior of Haitian youths is due to a number of factors: (a) the strong family …

Drug Addict And Non-Addict Offenders: A Comparison Of The Disparity In The Types Of Crimes, Sentencing Recommendations, And Formal Dispositions Of Each Group, Scott B. Courtney

Masters Theses

The purpose of this study is to explore the relationship between the type and severity of a crime and the offender's known history (past or present) of controlled substance abuse.

A random sample of federal cases between the years 1980-1985 was used to see if the offender's known problem with substance abuse had any impact on the severity of the recommended and actual sentence imposed on the offender.

Specific control variables such as race, age, educational level, and marital status of the offenders were also incorporated.

The Kalamazoo County Juvenile Home's Foster Shelter Care Unit: Toward An Evaluation, Michael John Underwood

Masters Theses

A formative evaluation of the Foster Shelter Care Unit was conducted in order to analyze the success/failure of the program during its firs t year of operation. Data on 77 cases were analyzed, and nine Independent variables and one dependent variable were bivariately tested 1n order to provide a theoretical explanation of the success/failure rate.

The evaluation was conducted 1n order to supply the Foster Shelter Care Unit with recommendations to enhance its success/ failure rate and to modify its existing policies.

The success rate for the unit was 48.1%, and it was found that the only significant association with …