Criminology Commons^™

It’S Dirty Work But Someone Has To Do It: An Examination Of Correctional Officer Taint Management Techniques, Scott Chenault, Brooke Collins

Qualitative Criminology (QC)

"Since the 1950s scholars have applied the term dirty work to occupations that society views as demoralizing or disgusting. Occupations are labeled as dirty when they require work which is physically, socially and/or morally tainted. Correctional officers experience pervasive levels of all three types of taint while working in a low prestige occupation. This article relies on ethnographic data to examine how occupational stigma management techniques are taught to new officers and what techniques are most prominent. The findings indicate that new officers are taught occupational ideologies regarding stigma management primarily through sense-making and storytelling. We find that officers manage …

Ethically Representing Drug Use: Photographs And Ethnographic Research With People Who Use Methamphetamine, Heith Copes, Whitney Tchoula, Jared Ragland

Qualitative Criminology (QC)

"The use of photographs in criminological research can be an important tool for both collecting data and illustrating findings. When used in published research, photographs can aid in viewers connecting with the subject matter and the participants. However, photographs can also reify and reinforce cultural stereotypes. We believe that the potential damage done by including photographs can be mitigated when the photographs are properly contextualized. Our aim here is to argue for the value of contextualized photographs in research with those who engage in crime or deviance. We illustrate how by including the stories of participants and ourselves we can …

An Analytical History Of Black Female Lynchings In The United States, 1838-1969, David V. Baker, Gilbert Garcia

Qualitative Criminology (QC)

"Narratives on the lynching of black females in the United States have rarely commanded much more than minor postscripts in the lynching scholarship, thus leaving the historical picture of lynching violence incomplete and distorted. To correct for this unfinished portrait of American lynchings, the present work provides a contextual history on black females victimized largely by white male terrorists. To distinguish black female lynchings and bring into sharper focus the wretched horror suffered by black women and young black girls, this work constructs an inventory of 188 confirmed cases of black females lynched mostly by white mobsters from 1838 to …

“I Did What I Believe Is Right”: A Study Of Neutralizations Among Anonymous Operation Participants, Kimberly A. Detardo-Bora, Erica N. Clark, Bill Gardner

Qualitative Criminology (QC)

"Our knowledge of online activists or hacktivists is growing, but it is still far from complete. The reasons why some of these individuals violate computer laws or how they justify their behavior remains elusive, yet one particular framework that lends itself to understanding a hacker or hacktivist’s belief system is Sykes and Matza’s (1957) neutralization theory. The present study involved a content analysis of publicly available commentary found online and made by participants in Anonymous operations against United States targets from 2008-2013. Over 13,000 words were analyzed, and of the 384 passages of text and phrases, roughly 62% of passages …

#Jesuisparis?: An Appeal To Hypocrisy And Justifications For Mass Casualty Violence, Karyn Sporer, Michael K. Logan, Gina S. Ligon, Doug C. Derrick

Qualitative Criminology (QC)

We draw from Sykes and Matza’s techniques of neutralization theory to interpret how Islamic State and the Levant (ISIL) soft-sympathizers justify violence perpetrated by ISIL. Data come from Tweets associated with ISIL-affiliated accounts that occurred within 24 hours of three high-profile ISIL-attributed attacks: Paris, Nice, and Orlando. Our findings suggest that condemnation of the condemners was a particularly salient neutralization technique used to point out the perverse motives and inconsistent behaviors of Western armed forces, media, and the public. More specifically, we found that the condemnation of the condemners was underlined by three specific claims: (1) comparable violence, (2) …

The Influence Of Age At Migration On Criminal Offending Among Foreign-Born Immigrants, Omar Melchor-Ayala

Dissertations and Theses

Domestic and international events -- such as the recent migrant caravans from Central and South America, and the records number of migrant children detained at the border -- have brought renewed attention to the adaptation of immigrants in the United States. More specifically, questions regarding whether the population of immigrants is driving the "crime problem," have taken center stage. Immigrants vary significantly in terms of when they migrate into the country. According to the Current Population Survey (CPS), the population of approximately 12 million foreign-born immigrant children living in the United States is split in terms of their age and …

Testing A Theoretical Model Of Perceived Audience Legitimacy: The Neglected Linkage In The Dialogic Model Of Police–Community Relations, Justin Nix, Justin T. Pickett, Scott E. Wolfe

Criminology and Criminal Justice Faculty Publications

Objectives:

Democratic policing involves an ongoing dialogue between officers and citizens about what it means to wield legitimate authority. Most of the criminological literature on police legitimacy has focused on citizens’ perceptions of this dialogue—that is, audience legitimacy. Consequently, we know little about how officers perceive their legitimacy in the eyes of the public and the antecedents of such perceptions. Pulling together separate strands of literature pertaining to citizen demeanor, hostile media perceptions, and danger perception theory, we propose and test a theoretical model of perceived audience legitimacy.

Method:

We conducted two separate studies: the first a survey of 546 …

The Future Of Cybercrime Prevention Strategies: Human Factors And A Holistic Approach To Cyber Intelligence, Sinchul Back, Jennifer Laprade

International Journal of Cybersecurity Intelligence & Cybercrime

New technology is rapidly emerging to fight increasing cybercrime threats, however, there is one important component of a cybercrime that technology cannot always impact and that is human behavior. Unfortunately, humans can be vulnerable and easily deceived making technological advances alone inadequate in the cybercrime fight. Instead, we must take a more holistic approach by using technology and better understanding the human factors that make cybercrime possible. In this issue of the International Journal of Cybersecurity Intelligence and Cybercrime, three studies contribute to our knowledge of human factors and emerging cybercrime technology so that more effective comprehensive cybercrime prevention strategies …

A Test Of Structural Model For Fear Of Crime In Social Networking Sites, Seong-Sik Lee, Kyung-Shick Choi, Sinyong Choi, Elizabeth Englander

International Journal of Cybersecurity Intelligence & Cybercrime

This study constructed a structural model which consists of social demographic factors, experience of victimization, opportunity factors, and social context factors to explain the public’s fear of crime on social networking sites (SNS). The model is based on the risk interpretation model, which predicts that these factors influence users’ fear of crime victimization. Using data from 486 university students in South Korea, an empirically-tested model suggests that sex and age have direct and significant effects on fear of victimization, supporting the vulnerability hypothesis. Among opportunity factors, the level of personal information and the number of offending peers have significant effects …

An Exploratory Perception Analysis Of Consensual And Nonconsensual Image Sharing, Jin Ree Lee, Steven Downing

International Journal of Cybersecurity Intelligence & Cybercrime

Limited research has considered individual perceptions of moral distinctions between consensual and nonconsensual intimate image sharing, as well as decision making parameters around why others might engage in such behavior. The current study conducted a perception analysis using mixed-methods online surveys administered to 63 participants, inquiring into their perceptions of why individuals engage in certain behaviors surrounding the sending of intimate images from friends and partners. The study found that respondents favored the concepts of (1) sharing images with romantic partners over peers; (2) sharing non-intimate images over intimate images; and (3) sharing images with consent rather than without it. …

Blockchain Security: Situational Crime Prevention Theory And Distributed Cyber Systems, Nicholas J. Blasco, Nicholas A. Fett

International Journal of Cybersecurity Intelligence & Cybercrime

The authors laid the groundwork for analyzing the crypto-economic incentives of interconnected blockchain networks and utilize situational crime prevention theory to explain how more secure systems can be developed. Blockchain networks utilize smaller blockchains (often called sidechains) to increase throughput in larger networks. Identified are several disadvantages to using sidechains that create critical exposures to the assets locked on them. Without security being provided by the mainchain in the form of validated exits, sidechains or statechannels which have a bridge or mainchain asset representations are at significant risk of attack. The inability to have a sufficiently high cost to attack …

Aren’T You Scared Of Us? Expressions Of Healthy Masculinity In Men’S Prisons, Ruth Fuller

Scholarly Undergraduate Research Journal at Clark (SURJ)

After hegemonic masculinity theory became the dominant paradigm for studying masculinities in the social sciences in the 1990s, it was swiftly applied to criminological research. In the decades since, studies of prison masculinities have emphasized the role of prison as an incubator of hypermasculinity. Incarcerated men are subsequently implicated as the unwilling victims of the spatial and social restrictions that characterize prisons as “total institutions” (Goffman 1961). Operating under this premise, research on prison masculinities have documented a culture driven by hypermasculine ideals, particularly the use of violence to obtain status among inmates. While these perspectives have been illuminating, I …

[Book Review] When Police Use Force: Context, Methods, And Outcomes. By Craig Boylstein. Boulder, Colo.: Lynne Rienner Publishers, 2018., David Klinger

Criminology and Criminal Justice Faculty Works

Book Review

The Ferguson Effect In Contemporary Policing: Assessing Police Officer Willingness To Engage The Public, Christopher Mercado

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Researchers suggest that as public scrutiny and video recording of violent/tumultuous police encounters increase, police would back away from proactive enforcement, resulting in an increase in crime—the Ferguson Effect. Recent scholarship refined these concerns over police disengagement with the study of de-policing, while other scholars explored police self-legitimacy, in order to explain law enforcement behavior, given the immediacy and ubiquity of social media and digital communication. This study surveyed 792 law enforcement officers from 10 different police agencies in the United States, to ascertain if police officers’ personal and contextual characteristics influence their decision to either take enforcement action (i.e., …

Behavioral Effects Of Restrictive Housing On Prisoners, Mijin Kim

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Restrictive housing (RH) is a complicated and controversial management tool used by local, state, and federal correctional agencies. Unlike previous studies that predominantly examined the psychological harms of restrictive housing placement, this study aims to extend the understanding of the use of restrictive housing, the conditions and specific utility of restrictive housing, and how such use can impact inmates’ subsequent behavioral outcomes or misconducts inside of the correctional facility. Restrictive housing data from the Pennsylvania Department of Corrections (PADOC) was used to identify the differential impact of different types of restrictive housing (i.e., administrative, disciplinary, and protective RH) through a …

The Impact Of Client's Gender And Culture On Service Providers Strategies In Diversion Programs, Stephany Betances

Student Theses

Despite the growing rate of adolescent girls in the criminal justice system, there has been little institutional support for empirically supported programs tailored for girls (Matthews & Hubbard, 2008). There is a similar substantial lack of culturally specific programming. Problematically, both constructs have been found to impact treatment (Bright & Jonson-Reid, 2010; Matthews & Hubbard, 2008). This qualitative study utilized grounded theory principals to investigate the impact of gender and culture on the therapeutic relationship for justice-involved youth in seven alternative-to-incarceration agencies in New York City. Elicited themes focused on both recommended strategies and continued challenges. Results indicated that while …

Adherence To The Street Code Predicts An Earlier Anticipated Death, Kevin T. Wolff, Jonathan Intravia, Michael T. Baglivio, Alex R. Piquero

Publications and Research

Objective: Criminologists have long been interested in the relationship between subcultural attitudes and antisocial behavior, with Anderson’s street code thesis being the most recent and often researched foray in this area. Relatedly, scholars have begun to investigate the risk factors associated with the anticipation of early death. Extant research, however, has yet to empirically test Anderson’s hypothesis that subscription to the street code is predictive of an anticipated early death. This study contributes to the literatures on the street code as well as fatalism by investigating the link between these two constructs.

Method: Using data from a sample of serious …

Turning Gender Inside-Out: Delivering Higher Education In Women’S Carceral Spaces, Giulia Federica Zampini, Linnéa Anna Margareta Österman, Camille May Stengel, Morwenna Bennallick

Journal of Prison Education and Reentry (2014-2023)

This article is a critical reflection of the role of gender in the delivery of a higher education course based on the Inside-Out Prison Exchange Programme. Related concepts such as hegemonic masculinity, heteronormativity, and intersectionality are discussed within the prison education setting. This reflection primarily draws on critical incidents from the experiences of the first three authors facilitating a higher education course in a women’s prison in England. One major reflection is that learning in a group of ‘inside’ and ‘outside’ students, all self-identified women, who vary along the dimensions of age, class, ethnicity, nationality and sexual expression, presented unique …

Demeanor And Police Culture: Theorizing How Civilian Cooperation Influences Police Officers, Justin T. Pickett, Justin Nix

Criminology and Criminal Justice Faculty Publications

Purpose
The purpose of this paper is to revisit classic theoretical arguments regarding the broad effects of civilian demeanor on policing and extend associated findings.

Design/methodology/approach
The theoretical framework draws on insights from the literatures on police culture, the group engagement model and fairness heuristic theory. The authors argue that demeanor is best conceptualized as the degree of procedural justice exhibited by civilians toward police. Theoretically, procedurally just cooperation should influence officers’ adherence to police culture by affecting their social identification and assessments of civilians’ motives and moral deservingness. To test the hypotheses, the authors surveyed sworn officers from a …

Is It Terrorism?: Public Perceptions, Media, And Labeling The Las Vegas Shooting, Matthew J. Dolliver, Erin M. Kearns

Criminology and Criminal Justice Faculty Publications

When a mass casualty event occurs, why do some people label it terrorism while others do not? People are more likely to consider an attack to be terrorism when the perpetrator is Muslim, yet it is unclear what other factors influence perceptions of mass violence. Using data collected from a national sample of U.S. adults shortly after the 2017 Las Vegas shooting, we examine how media consumption and social identity influence views of the attack. Media consumption and individual-level factors—Islamophobia, political ideology, and other participant demographics—influence how people view the attack and how confident people are in their assessments.