Criminology Commons^™

Student Criminality: The Influence Of Strain, Family And Peers, Annie Cvetan

Theses and Dissertations

General strain theory suggests that a number of conditioning factors affect who is more likely to respond to strain with crime. Research has also demonstrated that an individual's self-complexity plays a role in how an individual responds to strain. Self-complexity refers to (1) the number of identities individuals perceive as important to themselves; and (2) the varied characteristics they ascribe to these identities. This research study analyzed if college students were committing crime, whether the crimes were major or minor in nature, and if criminality was a new behavior or an imported one. This study also looked at who, if …

Homeland Security And Community Policing: Shift In Federal Funding Post Sep. 11: From Community Policing To Homeland Security, Mohsen S. Alizadeh

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

In the aftermath of the 9/11, Homeland Security became the major model of the American Policing system, thus superseding community policing model. The purpose of this research is to use "before and after study design" to follow the grant trends of policing systems in order to examine whether the catastrophic events of 9/11 had a positive or negative impact on the grant funds of the mentioned policing models. Preliminary analyses revealed that there is significant difference in the mean level of funding prior and after the event for Homeland Security, community policing, and general policing programs. Segmented and Stepwise Regressions …

Child Abductors Who Have Killed Their Victims: A Theoretical Approach To Spatial Analysis, Tonya M. Desa

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Despite the intense and prolonged public attention received when a child is abducted and killed, there are major gaps in the academic literature. One of the gaps pertains to the distances traveled by the offender between key crime locations. The overall aim of this study was to provide information concerning typical travel distances of offenders. This project utilized an archival data set compiled by the Federal Bureau of Investigation, National Center for the Analysis of Violent Crime. The database constructed for this project consisted of 72 victims who were abducted and murdered by 68 offenders. The date range for these …

Pennsylvania Academic Career/Technical Training Alliance Initiative: Engaging Youth In School And Work, Marna Goodman

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This research offers a feasibility study on the effectiveness of the Pennsylvania Academic Career Technical Training Alliance (PACTT) at engaging youth in school and work upon return to the community. The sample included adjudicated youth from Allegheny County, Pennsylvania committed to PACTT-affiliated residential facilities and who discharged between July1, 2011 and June 31, 2012. An overview of the PACTT Initiative, with specific attention to its core elements, is presented and examined in the context of Ecological Systems Theory. Secondary data was analyzed using logistic regression to measure the overall impact of the five PACTT elements, dosage of PACTT elements, and …

The Impact Of Police Misconduct In Kings County On New York City's Civil Liability 2006-2010, Brian A. Maule

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

The confluence of police misconduct and civil liability is an issue of growing concern for many communities throughout the U.S. today. The gravamen of the issue is evident in increases in the number of lawsuits alleging police misconduct and the civil liability that results from these lawsuits.

In New York City during the period 1997-2005 the cost for police misconduct went from $27.9 million in 1997 to $40.4 million in 2005 (Thompson, 2007). Concerns over these increases have resulted in efforts to curb both the number of lawsuits brought against the New York Police Department and the civil liability to …

Inmate-, Incident-, And Facility-Level Factors Associated With Escapes From Custody And Violent Outcomes, Bryce E. Peterson

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Introduction: Preventing escapes from custody is a critical function of prisons, jails, and the individuals who run these correctional facilities. Escapes are a popular topic in the news, among lawmakers, and in public discourse. Much of this interest stems from the widespread notion that escapees pose a serious threat to public safety, as well to the safety of correctional staff and law enforcement officers tasked with preventing and apprehending them. However, despite the importance of preventing escapes and minimizing violence, there has been very little empirical research on these issues in the past several decades. Extant research has also been …

Digital Forensics Tool Interface Visualization, Roberto A. Altiero

CCAC Theses and Dissertations

Recent trends show digital devices utilized with increasing frequency in most crimes committed. Investigating crime involving these devices is labor-intensive for the practitioner applying digital forensics tools that present possible evidence with results displayed in tabular lists for manual review. This research investigates how enhanced digital forensics tool interface visualization techniques can be shown to improve the investigator's cognitive capacities to discover criminal evidence more efficiently. This paper presents visualization graphs and contrasts their properties with the outputs of The Sleuth Kit (TSK) digital forensic program. Exhibited is the textual-based interface proving the effectiveness of enhanced data presentation. Further demonstrated …

Integrating The Principles Of Effective Intervention Into Batterer Intervention Programming: The Case For Moving Toward More Evidence-Based Programming, Dana L. Radatz, Emily M. Wright

Criminology and Criminal Justice Faculty Publications

The majority of batterer intervention program (BIP) evaluations have indicated they are marginally effective in reducing domestic violence recidivism. Meanwhile, correctional programs used to treat a variety of offenders (e.g., substance users, violent offenders, and so forth) that adhere to the “principles of effective intervention” (PEI) have reported significant reductions in recidivism. This article introduces the PEI—the principles on which evidence-based practices in correctional rehabilitation are based—and identifies the degree to which they are currently integrated into BIPs. The case is made that batterer programs could be more effective if they incorporate the PEI. Recommendations for further integration of the …

Mining Social Networking Sites For Digital Evidence, Brian Cusack, Saud Alshaifi

Australian Digital Forensics Conference

OnLine Social Networking sites (SNS) hold a vast amount of information that individuals and organisations post about themselves. Investigations include SNS as sources of evidence and the challenge is to have effective tools to extract the evidence. In this exploratory research we apply the latest version of a proprietary tool to identify potential evidence from five SNS using three different browsers. We found that each web browser influenced the scope of the evidence extracted. In previous research we have shown that different open source and proprietary tools influence the scope of evidence obtained. In this research we asked, What variation …

Gender Differences In Risk Factors And Mechanisms For Adolescent Offending, Emma Venell Espel

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

From 1985 to 2009, the juvenile justice system processed 86% more offending cases for females, with only a 17% rise in male cases (Puzzanchera et al., 2012), highlighting the urgent need for understanding of gender differences in etiological factors of offending. Specifically, there is an essential need to understand mechanisms of the relationship between risk factors and offending behavior. The current work combines two studies with a gender-sensitive approach and an aim to investigate gender differences in a subset of modifiable mechanisms, such as anxiety and impulse control, which link interpersonal risk and offending. The first study tests gender differences …

Challenging The Political Assumption That “Guns Don’T Kill People, Crazy People Kill People!”, Heath J. Hodges, Mario Scalora

Department of Psychology: Faculty Publications

Every time an infamous mass shooting takes place, a storm of rhetoric sweeps across this country with the fury of a wild fire. “Why are we letting these people carry guns?” “Why were they not hospitalized?” “The government needs to crack down on this issue!” What is the government’s response to these cries of concern? Politicians and the media attempt to ease public fears by drawing tenuous connections among a handful of poorly understood tragedies. The salient commonality is that these high-profile shooters had some history of mental illness. A cursory review of the Internet will paint a troubling picture …

Police Crime: The Criminal Behavior Of Sworn Law Enforcement Officers, Philip M. Stinson

Criminal Justice Faculty Publications

This essay examines the criminological conceptualizations and research on police crime, that is, the criminal behavior of sworn law enforcement officers. It starts with an overview of the conceptualization of police crime as it relates to organizational and scholarly perspectives of social deviance. Police deviance is often conceptualized to include various misconduct, corruption, and/or crime committed by police organizations and police officers. This essay focuses on police crime resulting in the arrest of a sworn law enforcement officer and is organized within a conceptual framework that incorporates five types of police crime: sex-related police crime, alcohol-related police crime, drug-related police …

Critical-Incident Trauma And Crime Scene Investigation: A Review Of Police Organizational Challenges And Interventions, Richard D. Clark, Catherine Distelrath, Gloria S. Vaquera, Daniel Winterich, Ernest Dezolt

Sociology

It is hypothesized that exposure to critical-incident trauma affects crime scene investigators. Individual and organizational attribution factors are analyzed through the use of self-report data collected from crime scene investigators working in a large Midwestern state. This paper analyzes key variables in the job of a crime scene investigator in an effort to determine the level of stress related to CSI work and the nature of organizational support available to the investigator. Although initial findings suggest a high level of satisfaction with the job, the nature of the job can lead to high levels of both professional and personal stress, …

Broadening Campus Threat Assessment Beyond Mass Shootings, Brandon A. Hollister, Mario Scalora

Department of Psychology: Faculty Publications

Record reviews of public figure, primary/secondary school, and workplace threateners and attackers displayed the importance of noticing pre-incident behaviors and intervening to prevent violence. General crime prevention strategies did not appear applicable. Similarly, campus threat assessment research has considered targeted violence as distinctive and unable to be reviewed within general collegiate samples, which has related to questions about the prevalence, predictiveness, applicability, and reporting of pre-incident behaviors. This article applies general criminological and crime prevention findings to these questions and presents campus threat assessment methodologies informed by these fields. With college student surveys, pre-incident behaviors have appeared predictive of general …

Is Downsizing Prisons Dangerous? The Effect Of California’S Realignment Act On Public Safety, Jody Sundt, Emily Salisbury, Mark G. Harmon

Criminology and Criminal Justice Faculty Publications and Presentations

Research Summary: Recent declines in imprisonment raise a critical question: Can prison populations be reduced without endangering the public? This question is examined by testing the effect of California’s dramatic efforts to comply with court-mandated targets to reduce prison overcrowding using a pretest-posttest design. The results showed that California’s Realignment Act had no effect on violent or property crime rates in 2012, 2013, or 2014. When crime types were disaggregated, a moderately large, statistically significant association between Realignment and auto theft rates was observed in 2012. By 2014, however, this effect had decayed and auto theft rates returned to pre-Realignment …

Alleviating Risks Of Parental Incarceration Through Mentorship, Sonia Murrey

Walden Dissertations and Doctoral Studies

The focus of the present study was on the lack of positive socialization of children affected by parental incarceration. Researchers have indicated the need to broaden the examination of the effects of parental incarceration on children. Mentorship has demonstrated a positive influence for youth who display at-risk behaviors. However, there is little research regarding the effectiveness of mentorship programs for youth who have experienced the negative effects of parental incarceration. The purpose of this transcendental phenomenological study was to describe the experiences of youth who have completed an individualized mentorship program following parental imprisonment. Flyers were distributed to case managers …

Critical Factors In Police Use-Of-Force Decisions, Orville Nickel

Walden Dissertations and Doctoral Studies

This study investigated law enforcement officers' perceptions of the legal, normative, and practical considerations that are implicit in their decisions when faced with using physical force. Law enforcement officers observe and protect fundamental human rights. A significant problem, however, is that physical force is sometimes misused, impacting public confidence in police services. The study was framed by Durkheim's conflict theory and Beirie's concepts of police corporate culture and social control. It used a grounded theory method and predeveloped case scenarios presented to 2 male focus groups of 7 and 6 participants respectively, and 2 female focus groups of 5 and …

General Strain Theory As A Predictor Of Occupational Fraud, Timothy Bergsma

Walden Dissertations and Doctoral Studies

The world economy loses an estimated $3.5 trillion annually due to fraud. A weakened economy leads to additional hardships for individuals, families, and organizations. General strain theory (GST) posits that certain strains lead to negative emotional responses, and the result is delinquent behavior. The purpose of this research was to analyze the relationship between strain and occupational fraud through the theoretical framework of GST. The research questions addressed (a) occupational frauds as measured by strain levels of perpetrators, (b) the relationship between strain scores and the different occupational fraud types, and (c) the significance of the relationship between fraud motivation …

Predictors Of Recidivism For Offenders With Mental Illness And Substance Use Disorders, Linda Buckmon

Walden Dissertations and Doctoral Studies

Mental illness and substance use disorders have been determined to be leading predictors for recidivism among criminal offenders in the United States who are released to community supervision. Women make up an increasing in percentage of this criminal justice population; however, few studies have explored the role that gender plays in determining men and women's recidivism. Offender's education, employment, and peer association have also been reported to be predictors increasing the likelihood of recidivism among criminal offenders. This study was designed to determine if gender, mental illness, substance use disorder, employment, education, and peer association predicted recidivism. Differential association theory …

Police Perceptions And Decision Making Related To Domestic Minors Trafficked Through Prostitution, Donna Sue Belin

Walden Dissertations and Doctoral Studies

In spite of a paradigm shift redefining domestic minors trafficked through prostitution as victims instead of criminal offenders, many police officers experience uncertainty in the way they evaluate the nature of domestic minor sex trafficking (DMST) and assess the culpability status of prostituted minors. This problem often results in revictimizing children and hindering their ability to access needed services. The purpose of this multiple case study was to explore police officers' perceptions of minors engaged in prostitution and derive an understanding of the experiences, beliefs, and values that underlie these perceptions. The study also focused on how these factors influence …

Predictors Of Community Supervision Failures Among Female Offenders, Fayola Wolfe

Walden Dissertations and Doctoral Studies

This study explored the predictors of community supervision failures amongst female offenders in the United States criminal justice system. Female offenders have, in comparison with male offenders, particular challenges for community reintegration. This study used the relational theory and Maslow's hierarchy of needs theory to investigate the effects of childhood trauma on adult female offenders' behaviors, including substance use disorder and mental health issues. Secondary archival data were obtained from the Court Services and Offender Supervision Agency's AUTO Screener and Supervision and Management Automated Record Tracking System; this data pool included information on 1,085 female offenders who had served at …

What Is Wrong With Sex In Authority Relations? A Study In Law And Social Theory, Galia Schneebaum

Journal of Criminal Law and Criminology

Criminalization of Sex within Authority Relations (SAR)—such as sex in the relationship between a therapist and a patient or an employer and an employee—is a growing phenomenon. Current theories conceptualize and consequently justify SAR offenses either under a liberal conception of sexual autonomy or under a feminist conception of gender inequality. Yet both conceptualizations are inadequate and fail to capture the distinctiveness of this new legal category. Specifically, they fail to explain the main puzzle underlying SAR offenses, which proscribe sexual contact in the absence of coercion by the offender. Rejecting both liberal and feminist analytical frameworks, this Article draws …

The Influence Of A Juvenile's Abuse History On Support For Sex Offender Registration, Cynthia J. Najdowski, M. C. Stevenson, J. M. Salerno, T. R. A. Wiley, B. L. Bottoms, K. M. Farnum

Psychology Faculty Scholarship

We investigated whether and how a juvenile’s history of experiencing sexual abuse affects public perceptions of juvenile sex offenders in a series of 5 studies. When asked about juvenile sex offenders in an abstract manner (Studies 1 and 2), the more participants (community members and undergraduates) believed that a history of being sexually abused as a child causes later sexually abusive behavior, the less likely they were to support sex offender registration for juveniles. Yet when participants considered specific sexual offenses, a juvenile’s history of sexual abuse was not considered to be a mitigating factor. This was true when participants …

"The Classical School, Deterrence Theory, And Zero Tolerance" An Analysis Of A Mandatory Zero Tolerance Sanctioning Policy In Relation To The Classical School Of Criminology And Deterrence Theory, Adam Saeler

School of Criminal Justice Theses and Dissertations

Mandatory sentences, and especially those that promote severe detention lengths, have become a popular mechanism in the fight against crime, but are they effective? Certain Sanctions, an adult probation-based sanctioning mandate, is an example of one such mandatory policy that emphasizes harsh sanctions in order to promote reduced future criminality. The philosophy behind such a device fits well into the theoretical framework of deterrence theory in that quick, severe sanctions ought to reduce future criminality. However, little research exists regarding the effectiveness of such a mandatory probation-based sanction policy with regards to the reduction of future criminality. Furthermore, the impact …

An Unfinished Journey: The Evolution Of Crime Measurement In The United States, Daniel J. Patten

The Hilltop Review

This article traces the history of crime measurement in the United States beginning with the U.S. census in 1790 while exploring several key pieces of history that influenced how crime is measured today. After discussing the origins of the U.S. census and its contributions to measuring crime, the Chicago School of Sociology is observed for its monumental influence on early criminology in America. Next, the division of sociology and criminal justice into two distinct fields had major implications for measuring crime. How crime is measured is often attributed to the ideological differences between these academic fields. Then, the three primary …

Safety Concerns, Fear And Precautionary Behavior Among College Women: An Exploratory Examination Of Two Measures Of Residency, Adam J. Pritchard, Carol E. Jordan, Pamela Wilcox

Office for Policy Studies on Violence Against Women Publications

This study examines the impact of two distinct measures of residency on college women's perceptions of safety, fear of crime and precautionary behaviors within both on-campus and off-campus areas. A student's current residency either on- or off-campus and a student's prior residency in a metropolitan, micropolitan or rural county prior to college are compared across these three aspects of campus safety. Current residency is found to be significantly related to a student's perceptions of safety in off-campus areas around campus, as well as the likelihood of engaging in precautionary behaviors such as avoiding specific locations on campus or carrying or …

Police Opinions Of Digital Evidence Response Handling In The State Of Georgia: An Examination From The Viewpoint Of Local Agencies’ Patrol Officers, Tanya Macneil

CCAC Theses and Dissertations

This research examined opinions of local law enforcement agencies’ patrol officers in the State of Georgia regarding preparedness and expectations for handling of digital evidence. The increased criminal use of technology requires that patrol officers be prepared to handle digital evidence in many different situations. The researcher’s goal was to gain insight into how patrol officers view their preparedness to handle digital evidence as well as their opinions on management expectations regarding patrol officers’ abilities to handle digital evidence. The research focused on identifying whether a gap existed between patrol officers’ opinions of digital evidence and the patrol officers’ views …

Citizen Volunteers In Prison: Bringing The Outside In, Taking The Inside Out, Lisa Kort-Butler, Sarah E. Malone

Department of Sociology: Faculty Publications

The United States correctional system relies heavily on citizen volunteers, but there is little contemporary research on prison volunteers, which is further limited by sample and geographic region. The purpose of this project was to explore the role of citizen volunteers, including investigating why they volunteer and what their experiences with inmates and prison staff are like. Semi-structured interviews were conducted with citizen volunteers in the penal system of a Midwestern state. Volunteers had altruistic or faith-based motivations, viewing themselves as ‘seed planters’ but not saviors, and placing priority on building relationships. They described how volunteering transformed their views on …

Analysis Of The Nebraska Intake Risk Assessment Instrument, Sarah Moore, Anne M. Hobbs

Reports

Under current Nebraska law, a youth in Nebraska should be placed in a secure detention facility for only two reasons: (1) “immediate and urgent necessity for the protection of such juvenile or the person or property of another or (2) if it appears that such juvenile is likely to flee the jurisdiction of the court” (Rev. Stat. § 43-251.01(5)).

In the State of Nebraska, the Office of Juvenile Probation Administration screens youth using the Nebraska Juvenile Intake Screening Risk Assessment prior to making a determination whether to detain the youth. The assessment is referred to in this report as the …

Immigration And Family Violence At The Household Level Of Analysis: Examining The Effects Of Immigrant Culture And Neighborhood Structure, Jorge Luis Hernandez

Open Access Theses & Dissertations

This study concerns the relationship between immigration and family violence at the household level of analysis. Previous studies have suggested that immigrant status - particularly first generation immigrant status - is not associated with crime. However, the same cannot be said about their descendants the second and third generations; as they are not as insulated from crime as their forefathers. This study measures the following variables which are relevant to the immigration and family violence relationship; immigrant generational status, acculturation levels, patriarchy, family oriented values, collective efficacy, surveillance, and measures of informal social control. This study finds that there is …