Criminology and Criminal Justice Commons^™

Traumatic Brain Injuries Among Adolescent Inmates In Rikers Island, Nyc Jail: A Mixed Methods Study, Cassandra Ramdath

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

There is a higher prevalence of traumatic brain injury (TBI) among incarcerated population than in the general population. It is possible that head injuries can lead to behavioral difficulties, increasing the risk of criminal justice involvement and custodial difficulties. Principles of bio-social criminology put forth that the interaction between people's environment and their biological makeup that can lead to maladaptive behaviors. One of the main domains within the bio-social criminology approach is neurocriminology; neurocriminology uses principles of neuroscience to better understand delinquent and antisocial behaviours and suggests that brain injury can interact with environmental factors to produce seemingly aggressive and …

Pimps Of Harlem: Talk Of Labor And The Sociology Of Risk, Amber Horning Ruf

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This dissertation examines how third-party labor is socially constructed by pimps or third parties. Pimps and their labor are investigated using sociological paradigms of risk. Risk is defined as exposure to danger (Beck, 1992; Giddens, 1991) and can produce negative or positive feelings and outcomes (Lupton, 1999). I explore how third-party labor is connected to risk with the following research questions: 1) How does the U.S. media portray third parties as risky, and how does this influence proposed remedies to this social problem? 2) How do third parties' at-risk status impact their role in illicit and licit economies? 3) How …

A Long-Term Follow-Up Of Crossover Youth: Young Adult Outcomes For Maltreated Youth In The Juvenile Justice System, Carly Lyn Baetz

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Crossover youth, those with histories of childhood maltreatment and delinquency, may be at high risk for negative outcomes compared to other youth. However, very little is known about the long-term outcomes for this population. This dissertation compared four groups: youth with histories of child maltreatment and juvenile arrest (n = 180), youth with a history of maltreatment only (n = 428), youth with a history of juvenile arrest only (n = 91), and youth with no history of maltreatment or juvenile arrest (n = 496), on a range of outcomes, including mental health, education, employment, and criminal behavior. Data from …

Sexual Victimization, Disclosure, And Accountability: Organizational Responses Of The Boy Scouts Of America To Child Sexual Abuse, Michelle Anne Cubellis

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Child sexual abuse has always been a highly publicized and controversial topic due to the vulnerability of children. However, there have been several recent child sexual abuse (CSA) scandals garnering even more attention and concern. With the exposure of the Catholic Church abuse scandal in 2002, public attention became focused on the Archdiocese's poor and prolonged response. However, this crisis was not the sole case of widespread sexual violence and institutional failure. In October of 2012, Boy Scouts of America files from 1959 to 1991 containing reports of child sexual abuse were released. These reports feature detailed information about the …

Women Are Like Silk And Men Are Like Gold: A Cross-Country Comparison Of Institutional Responses To Honor Violence, Alana Michele Henninger

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Over the past decade, a specific form of interpersonal violence known as honor violence has drawn international attention because it has been increasingly reported in immigrant communities in western countries. There are currently no specific institutional responses to honor violence in the United States, but the growing media coverage of honor-related crimes has led interest groups to call for new legislation and institutional responses specific to honor violence. The global debate on the codification of honor violence hinges on the discussion of whether honor violence is a cultural crime that deserves special consideration, or whether such codification encourages discriminatory responses …

Dangerous Spaces: The Structural Context Of Violence Against Foreign Nationals In South Africa, Alexandra Hiropoulos

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Since South Africa's heralded democratic transition in the mid-1990s, ongoing patterns of violence specifically targeting people on the basis of their race and nationality have been observed throughout the country. This dissertation study examines the spatial nature of violent incidents against foreign nationals in the Republic of South Africa and the effect of structural conditions on the occurrence of anti-foreigner violence.

While international migration has been historically accompanied by resentment and ill-treatment of migrants worldwide, this phenomenon is inadequately studied in developing countries such as South Africa. Since nationwide riots targeting foreign nationals in townships in 2008, there has been …

Law Enforcement Innovation And Diffusion: A Network Analysis Of Police Accreditation, Jeremiah Paul Johnson

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This study seeks to identify network structures capable of predicting innovation uptake among law enforcement organizations. Utilizing a mixed-methods approach, diffusion is studied through the lens of a single innovation, state law enforcement accreditation. Quantitative data culled from a variety of social artifacts in two New England states are used as a basis for the study. Relational data extracted from meetings held by a private police chief's association over an 11 year period were used to construct an affiliation matrix. Social network analysis demonstrates that actors with high levels of centrality are more likely to self-select state accreditation enrollment than …

The Power Of Place: A Comparative Analysis Of Prison And Street Gangs, Jennifer M. Ortiz

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

One misconception in gang research is the assumption that the terms prison gang and street gang are organizationally and ideologically synonymous. Although in the minority, some researchers suggest that prison gangs are qualitatively and quantitatively different from other gangs (Fleisher & Decker, 2001). Utilizing 30 in-depth semi-structured interviews, this study assesses the effect of environment on the emergence, organization, and ideologies of prison and street gangs. The findings identify key differences between the 'free' society where gangs emerge and the captive societies where prison gangs emerge. The primary difference was the level of formal and informal control exerted over individuals …

Exploring The Effects Of Strain On Cross-National Lethal Violence: An Integrated Model, Catrin Andersson

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Lethal violence is a global problem. In 2012, the United Nations documented 437,000 homicides worldwide (United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime, 2014b), and in 2012, the World Health Organization reported that there were 800,000 suicides internationally (World Health Organization, 2015c). There is a large body of research on violence in the social sciences. Although suicide and homicide are often studied separately, they have been said to share many of the same correlates, such as inequality and divorce (e.g., inequality and divorce; Nivette, 2011; Stack, 2000). There is a need to integrate theories drawn from different disciplines to better understand …

Intercoder Reliability Assessment Of Supplemental Document Coding In A Quantitative Content Analysis Study Of Police Crime In The United States, Raven Ory, Philip M. Stinson

Criminal Justice Faculty Publications

Dr. Stinson maintains an object-relational research database in OnBase, Bowling Green State University’s enterprise-level content management system. An analysis of the intercoder reliability of the supplemental articles indexed in OnBase during the years 2012-2014 was conducted to determine and promote reliability among research assistants. This project is important because reliability is the hallmark of any research database, and because the institutional memory is short with annual turnover of student research assistants working in Stinson’s research group. Training recommendations are made from the findings of this study for the purpose of improving the reliability of document coding in the project object …

Visualizing Abolition: Two Graphic Novels And A Critical Approach To Mass Incarceration For The Composition Classroom, Michael Sutcliffe

SANE journal: Sequential Art Narrative in Education

This article outlines two graphic novels and an accompanying activity designed to unpack complicated intersections between racism, poverty, and (d)evolving criminal-legal policy. Over 2 million adults are held in U.S. prison facilities, and several million more are under custodial supervision, and it has become clearly unsustainable. In the last decade, there has been a shift in media conversations about criminality, yet only a few suggest decreasing our reliance upon incarceration. In meaningfully different ways, the two novels trace the development of incarceration from its roots in slavery to its contemporary anti-democratic iteration and offer an underpublicized alternative.

Critical and community …

Rape, Race, And Capital Punishment In North Carolina: A Qualitative Approach To Examining An Enduring Cultural Legacy, Douglas Wholl

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Despite positive steps toward the suppression of racial discrimination in the United States capital punishment process, the enduring effects of a cultural legacy of Black oppression (e.g., slavery; segregation; lynching) and historic and systemic racial discrimination in the criminal justice system have persisted to the present day. The purpose of the current study is to explore whether this enduring cultural legacy still exists by examining whether juries in rape-involved capital murder trials in North Carolina are more likely to recommend a sentence of death when the defendant is a Black male and the victim is a White female (compared to …

An End To The Era Of Mass Incarceration? Reflections On The Nas Report, Jeremy Travis

Publications and Research

No abstract provided.

Human Rights And Prison Rape, Lenny Gallo

21st Century Social Justice

Prison Rape is a common occurrence in America’s penal institutions. Sexual assault occurs most frequently on juveniles, the LGBT community, and people who are weak in stature. To combat this problem, The Prison Rape Elimination Act (PREA), passed in 2003 with bipartisan support and the backing of special interest groups, was envisioned as a human rights milestone. Prison rape is assumed by an apathetic public to be an expected part of the incarceration experience. PREA, in addition to encountering major time setbacks in implementation, has not become a human rights milestone and, even where it has been implemented, is often …

Police Shootings: A New Problem Or Business As Usual?, Philip M. Stinson

Criminal Justice Faculty Publications

No abstract provided.

Leaving The Gang: A Review And Thoughts On Future Research, Dena C. Carson, J. Michael Vecchio

Criminal Justice & Criminology: Faculty Publications & Other Works

Researchers have examined aspects of gangs and their members for almost a century. This work, however, focuses primarily on youth prior to joining as well as during gang involvement. While comparatively less is known about the leaving processes, work in this area has been increasing in recent years. This chapter will discuss the growing body of research on the processes associated with leaving the gang. Specifically, it will review difficulties associated with defining gang desistance, theoretical perspectives on desistance, variations in motives, methods, and consequences of leaving, barriers to desistance, as well as make recommendations for policy and future research.

All School Shooters Are Not Created Equal: Identifying New Typologies Of K-12 School Violence Perpetrators, Gordon A. Crews, Garrison A. Crews

Criminal Justice Faculty Publications

The focus will be to argue new typologies for K-12 School Violence Perpetrators and suggestions for improving responses to school violence in general.

A Descriptive Analysis Of A Problem-Based Learning Police Academy, David A. Makin

Interdisciplinary Journal of Problem-Based Learning

In the 1970s, Egon Bitner offered a critique of police academy training, signified by the ability to train compliant soldierbureaucrats rather than competent practitioners. Over the years, subsequent training models have been implemented, evaluated, and modified in an attempt to exceed what has been deemed adequate training. This research provides the first of several outcome evaluations as part of a longitudinal study on the efficacy of problem-based learning in a Basic Law Enforcement Academy (BLEA). Data for this research include survey results for the period of 2009–2012. Early results suggest the problematic nature of the dualistic dilemma within police academy …

Rearrests During Mental Health Court Supervision: Predicting Rearrest And Its Association With Final Court Disposition And Post-Court Rearrests, Donald M. Linhorst Phd, David Kondrat Phd, Ann Dirks-Linhorst Ph.D., J.D.

SIUE Faculty Research, Scholarship, and Creative Activity

Mental health courts are one means to address the involvement of persons with mental illness in the criminal justice system. Using a sample of 811 participants of a municipal mental health court, this study found that 23.2% of participants were rearrested during court supervision. This study also identified factors associated with these rearrests, as well as the effects of rearrests during supervision on program completion and rearrests in the one-year period following program completion. This study concludes with implications for mental health court supervision.

The Admissibility Of Polygraph ("Lie Detector") Evidence Pursuant To Stipulation In Criminal Proceedings, Bruce C. Heslop

Akron Law Review

American courts have traditionally held that evidence pertaining to the results of a lie-detector test is inadmissible in a criminal proceeding on behalf of either the prosecution or defense….In recent years, however, a few jurisdictions have withdrawn from the traditional approach and have admitted lie-detector evidence in limited situations, notwithstanding objection by the adverse party….The decision of whether or not to adopt the approach presented here must critically evaluate the potential value of polygraph evidence along with its potential dangers. In so doing, the courts of Ohio should determine whether a procedure may be devised to maximize the value and …