Criminology Commons^™

Application Of Routine Activities Theory To The Study Of Residential Armed Robbery In Ghana, Neeh Nhai Lhayea

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

This study utilized Routine Activities theory to explain deterrent and motivating factors associated with residential armed robbery in Ghana. Although several studies have examined crime through the lenses of Routine Activities theory, none such studies have been dedicated to the study of residential armed robbery in Ghana. This study, therefore, attempts to fill that void by applying Routine Activities theory to the study of residential armed robbery. This research samples 56 of armed robbers in three selected prisons of contemporary Ghana to provide a fuller criminological and descriptive analysis of the offence, the offenders, motivation and guardianship to committing residential …

Impact Of Community Treatment And Neighborhood Disadvantage On Recidivism In Mental Health Courts, Woojae Han

Legacy Theses & Dissertations (2009 - 2024)

The purpose of the study is to investigate the impact of community treatment and neighborhood disadvantage on recidivism among offenders with mental health problems in Mental Health Courts (MHCs) and in traditional courts. Although treatment is believed to lead to reduced recidivism for offenders with mental illness, little research has been conducted for MHC participants. Further, neighborhood disadvantage are known to influence recidivism generally, but environmental factors have not been examined in the MHC context.

Exploring Racial Differences In System Treatment And Criminal Justice Involvement : A Criminal Career Perspective, Jaeok Kim Kim

Legacy Theses & Dissertations (2009 - 2024)

The overrepresentation of racial minorities is one of the key issues of the contemporary U.S. criminal justice system, and has motivated many studies to explore the cause and extent of the resulting disparities in the system. My dissertation consists of three separate papers, which contribute to the understanding of such disparities through unique approaches. Additionally, using both self-reported and official administrative datasets, I identify the strengths and limitations inherent to each type of data source, and discuss ways to increase the accuracy of the estimates of interest.

Live Fast, Die Young : Anticipated Early Death And Adolescent Violence And Gang Involvement, Arna Leigh Carlock

Legacy Theses & Dissertations (2009 - 2024)

Strategies employed by criminal justice agencies to reduce offending often focus on deterrence, with policies relying on the threat of punishment to discourage individuals from crime. However, such strategies will fail if individuals do not fear these consequences, or when potential rewards of offending outweigh the risks. According to life history theory, adolescents with a dangerous or unpredictable childhood environment discount the future and engage in risky behaviors because they have little to lose. Many adolescents embody this “live fast, die young” mentality, particularly those already at risk of delinquency due to other factors. The scientific literature refers to this …

Work-Family Structures And Cross-National Rates Of Women's Offending, Samantha Applin

Legacy Theses & Dissertations (2009 - 2024)

This dissertation examines women’s offending from a cross-national perspective, using a theoretical lens that integrates insights from feminist and criminological scholarship. The analysis is based on a pooled cross-sectional time-series design, assessing data from 32 European countries for five time points between 1995 and 2010. The purpose of the dissertation is to determine how the effects of work-family and gender indicators are moderated by women’s labor force participation when it comes to predicting women’s theft and homicide. Inclusion of men’s offending helps discern the extent to which the effects of the predictors are specific to the illegitimate behaviors of women, …

Prisons And Power : Carceral Coloniality In Hybrid Post-Neoliberal Venezuela, Cory Fischer-Hoffman

Legacy Theses & Dissertations (2009 - 2024)

This dissertation examines contemporary Venezuela’s dual prison system--in which half of the prison population is incarcerated in internally controlled prisons run by armed inmates, and the other half are locked up in the Bolivarian Government’s restricted “New Regime” prisons. The Venezuelan state formation is conceptualized as ‘hybrid post-neoliberal,’ demonstrating how rationalities of a liberal rentier state and neoliberalism, combined with anti-neoliberal logics all act together in competing yet co-existing ways in the post-neoliberal era, which was initiated by the 1999 Bolivarian Revolution. The central question examines the “work” of the prison in the (re)production of power relations and how policies, …

Terrorist Ideology And Behavior : An Examination Of The Behavior Of Known And Unknown Perpetrators, Rose Bellandi

Legacy Theses & Dissertations (2009 - 2024)

The terrorist decision-making process is the key component of understanding the types of attacks terrorists execute, and the group’s ideology is the goal-orientation portion of that rational decision-making process. Terrorist group ideology determines a number of aspects of the decision-making process that expand or limit the targets groups will attack and the tactics they will use to achieve their larger ideological goals. These aspects include: a group’s long-term goals, short-term objectives, an attack’s purpose, the audience, the group’s constituency, its enemies, and its message. Terrorism is a tactic of asymmetrical warfare and a unique form of violent crime. Acts of …

Criminal Specialization In The Criminal Justice Context, Shi Yan

Legacy Theses & Dissertations (2009 - 2024)

The dissertation consists of two studies. Study 1 examines how criminal specialization predicts the sentencing outcomes. Theories of sentencing have pointed out the association between the sentence and the assessment of the defendant’s risk and culpability, and one of the most important indicators of an individual’s risk is his or her criminal records. Most quantitative studies of sentencing today take criminal records into consideration by controlling for the number of prior criminal justice contacts, and overlook the nature of the prior crimes. The concept criminal specialization refers to the tendency for an individual to repeat the same or a set …

Examining Law Enforcement Analysis And Intelligence Capabilities : A Case Study Of Urban Policing, Shelagh Dorn

Legacy Theses & Dissertations (2009 - 2024)

Extant research, concerning police use of intelligence analysis, hypothesizes that police culture and information-sharing partnerships may affect outputs of intelligence analysis. Previous efforts have provided overviews of criminal intelligence analysis, without examining organizational and structural factors which might affect the genesis and use of intelligence and crime analysis. Examining the role and impact of both analysis and information sharing in law enforcement has been largely absent, and based on current research, it is difficult to determine what accounts for law enforcement variation in the knowledge, use, and demand for crime and intelligence analysis. Ashton Police Department’s (APD) Information Coordination Unit …

Subnational Predictors Of Racially Motivated Crime : A Cross-National Multilevel Analysis, Sylwia Janina Piatkowska

Legacy Theses & Dissertations (2009 - 2024)

The present study examines the effects of sub-national correlates on the changing rates of racially motivated crime across different regions and counties in seven European countries between 1996 and 2013. Using pooled cross-sectional time-series data on officially recorded racist crimes, I examine whether the regional and county levels of racially motivated crime in these countries’ subnational jurisdictions have been influenced over time by the size of the foreign-born population, increased immigration, and the economic conditions. In developing hypotheses about the effects of these factors, I draw primarily upon the theories of intergroup crime and prejudice.

An Empirical Research Agenda For The Forensic Sciences, Jonathan J. Koehler, John B. Meixner Jr.

Journal of Criminal Law and Criminology

After the National Academy of Sciences issued a stunning report in 2009 on the unscientific state of many forensic science subfields, forensic science has undergone internal and external scrutiny that it had managed to avoid for decades. Although some reform efforts are underway, forensic science writ large has yet to embrace and settle upon an empirical research agenda that addresses knowledge gaps pertaining to the reliability of its methods. Our paper addresses this problem by proposing a preliminary set of fourteen empirical studies for the forensic sciences. Following a brief discussion of the courtroom treatment of forensic science evidence, we …

The Exercise Of Power In Prison Organizations And Implications For Legitimacy, John Wooldredge, Benjamin Steiner

Journal of Criminal Law and Criminology

Extrapolating from Bottoms and Tankebe’s framework for a social scientific understanding of “legitimacy,” we argue that differences in how correctional officers exercise “power” over prisoners can potentially impact their rightful claims to legitimate authority. Given the implications of this argument for the “cultivation” of legitimacy (as discussed by Weber), the study described here focused on (a) individual and prison level effects on the degree to which officers generally rely on different power bases when exercising their authority, and (b) whether more or less reliance on different power bases at the facility level impacts prisoners’ general perceptions of officers as legitimate …

Small Cells, Big Problems: The Increasing Precision Of Cell Site Location Information And The Need For Fourth Amendment Protections, Robert M. Bloom, William T. Clark

Journal of Criminal Law and Criminology

The past fifty years has witnessed an evolution in technology advancement in police surveillance. Today, one of the essential tools of police surveillance is something most Americans carry with them in their pockets every day, the cell phone. Cell phones not only contain a huge repository of personal data, they also provide continuous surveillance of a person’s movement known as cell site location information (CSLI).

In 1986, Congress sought to provide some privacy protections to CSLI in the Stored Communication Act. Although this solution may have struck the proper balance in an age when cell phones were a mere novelty …

Recidivism And Time Served In Prison, Daniel P. Mears, Joshua C. Cochran, William D. Bales, Avinash S. Bhati

Journal of Criminal Law and Criminology

A justification for lengthier stays in prison stems from the belief that spending more time in prison reduces recidivism. Extant studies, however, have provided limited evidence for that belief and, indeed, suggest the effect of time served may be minimal. Few studies have employed rigorous methodological approaches, examined time spans of more than one to two years, or investigated the potential for the relationship between recidivism and time served to be curvilinear. Drawing on prior scholarship, this paper identifies three sets of hypotheses about the functional form of the time served and recidivism relationship. Using generalized propensity score analysis to …

Fulfilling Daubert's Gatekeeping Mandate Through Court-Appointed Experts, Stephanie Domitrovich

Journal of Criminal Law and Criminology

No abstract provided.

Looking Backwards At Old Cases: When Science Moves Forward, Jules Epstein

Journal of Criminal Law and Criminology

Forensic evidence—be it in the form of science-derived analyses such as DNA profiling or drug identification, or in more subjective analyses such as pattern or impression [latent print, handwriting, firearms] examinations—is prevalent and often critical in criminal prosecutions. Yet, while the criminal court processes prize finality of verdicts, science evolves and often proves that earlier analyses were inadequate or plainly wrong. This article examines the tension between those two concerns by focusing on the 2015 decision of the United States Supreme Court in Maryland v. Kulbicki, addresses the inadequacies of the Court’s analysis, and suggests some factors for judges confronted …

Sleuthing Scientific Evidence Information On The Internet, Carol Henderson, Diana Botluk

Journal of Criminal Law and Criminology

No abstract provided.

The Alleged “Ferguson Effect” And Police Willingness To Engage In Community Partnership, Scott E. Wolfe, Justin Nix

Criminology and Criminal Justice Faculty Publications

In response to increasing violent crime rates in several U.S. cities over the past year, some have pointed the finger of blame at de-policing, a result of the so-called “Ferguson Effect.” Although the Ferguson Effect on crime rates remains an open question, there may also be a Ferguson Effect on other aspects of police officers’ jobs, such as willingness to partner with community members. This study used data from a cross-sectional survey of 567 deputies at an agency in the southeastern U.S. to accomplish 2 objectives: (a) to determine whether the Ferguson Effect is associated with de-policing in the form …

How Cognitive Genetic Factors Influence Fertility Outcomes: A Mediational Sem Analysis, Michael A. Woodley Of Menie, Joesph A. Schwartz, Kevin M. Beaver

Criminology and Criminal Justice Faculty Publications

Utilizing a newly released cognitive Polygenic Score (PGS) from Wave IV of Add Health (n = 1,886), structural equation models (SEMs) examining the relationship between PGS and fertility (which is approximately 50% complete in the present sample), employing measures of verbal IQ and educational attainment as potential mediators, were estimated. The results of indirect pathway models revealed that verbal IQ mediates the positive relationship between PGS and educational attainment, and educational attainment in turn mediates the negative relationship between verbal IQ and a latent fertility measure. The direct path from PGS to fertility was non-significant. The model was robust to …

Exploring The Defensive Actions Of Drug Sellers In Open-Air Markets: A Systematic Social Observation., Eric Piza, Victoria A. Sytsma

Publications and Research

Objectives: The current study contributes to the literature through a systematic social observation of the defensive actions of drug sellers within open-air retail markets. The study expands upon previous literature by incorporating a novel data collection and coding method.

Methods: Video footage of narcotics transactions was extracted from the closed-circuit television (CCTV) system of the Newark, NJ Police Department. Researchers transcribed and coded the footage to measure the frequency of defensive actions incorporated by drug sellers. Fisher’s exact tests measured whether the frequency of each defensive action significantly differed across geographic setting or time of day.

Results: The frequency of …