Criminology and Justice Policy Dissertations

The relationship of coercion, social support and self-efficacy with violent crime

Christopher Eugene Bruell — Mon, 03 Jun 2013 13:35:15 PDT

Both coercion and social support have been included in theoretical explanations of participation in criminal behavior and it is generally hypothesized that coercion causes crime while social support prevents crime. In an attempt to better clarify relationships between coercion, social support, and offending, Colvin, Cullen, and Vander Ven put together their Differential Social Support and Coercion Theory. The current study examines the underlying causal mechanism that drives these relationships. Instead of simply describing the strength and form of the relationships between coercion, social support, and offending, the current study seeks to further explain how the relationships actually work, especially when...

Organized crime, culture, and social institutions in Europe: an application of institutional anomie theory

Diana Summers Dolliver — Wed, 22 May 2013 10:13:47 PDT

Organized crime activity is one form of transnational crime that is at the forefront of concerns for the global community. Organized crime quickly adapts to new social environments, illustrating its flexible and dynamic qualities. As the United Nation's Organized Crime Threat Assessment (2011) noted, "More than ever before, strong levels of cooperation exist between different organized crime groups, transcending national, ethnic, and business differences" (8). Despite these alarming global trends, criminologists have not routinely applied a socio-cultural approach to an empirical study of organized crime. With Europe identified as the global "hotspot" for consumption of illicit goods and services provided...

Struggling for success: the role of social support in female reentry pathways

Laura Adams Gross — Tue, 21 May 2013 09:35:58 PDT

This research explores the gendered reentry experience of females on parole in Massachusetts in order to understand the role that social support and parole services play in the negotiation of the process of desistance and reentry. Using a mixed-methodological approach including field observations of Regional Parole Offices and community-contracted Transitional Housing Programs (n= 300 hours), narrative interviews and social support surveys conducted with high-risk female parolees living in transitional housing (n=22; 38 interviews), and a time-to-recidivism survival analysis of all active female parolees under supervision in Massachusetts from 2006-2009 (N= 2405) this research asked: (1) how do women conceptualize successful...

Understanding contemporary maritime piracy

Anamika Agnieszka Twyman-Ghoshal — Thu, 07 Mar 2013 09:17:06 PST

Although the international news media is often filled with reports on maritime piracy, particularly those occurring in Somalia, little research has been done in the field of criminology to understand this crime. To address these issues, the present research employed two complementary research strategies designed to examine the character, magnitude and underlying dynamic of contemporary piracy in the 21^st century. To examine the character and magnitude of contemporary piracy this study drew on and merged information from the two primary international data sources on piracy; information collected by the International Maritime Bureau and the United States Office of Naval Intelligence....

Gender and social control: examining the federal justice process for women offenders

Danielle Marie Rousseau — Wed, 09 Jan 2013 13:18:48 PST

With the "war on drugs" and increased attention on immigration crime, more women defendants have entered the federal criminal justice system. However, women continue to comprise a small proportion of federal criminal justice defendants overall and remain an often-understudied population. The current work explores the unique and at times overlooked condition of federal justice outcomes for women.

In 2005, the Supreme Court decision of the United States vs. Booker declared mandatory federal sentencing guidelines unconstitutional, rendering guidelines as advisory only. As a result, judges were afforded greater discretion in sentencing practices. Increased judicial discretion and contemporary prosecutorial focus on drug...

Managing mentally ill inmates in Massachusetts: risk assessment, classification, and programming in a house of correction

Garrett A. R. Yursza Warfield — Mon, 19 Nov 2012 09:49:53 PST

Since the deinstitutionalization of psychiatric hospitals in the 1950s, American correctional institutions have become the primary sites for managing mental illness nationwide. Mentally ill inmates present many challenges to correctional administrators, including but not limited to the prevention of suicide, delivery of psychiatric medication, and implementation of key programming services. Moreover, each challenge must be met while ensuring the safety and security of staff, inmates, and the community. To this end, administrators use evidence-based practices that promote safe and efficient service delivery throughout detention and minimize the likelihood of re-offending after release. One of the most widely supported management strategies,...

Subcultural theory, drift and publicity: how a contemporary culture of adolescence relates to delinquency

Adam Monroe Stearn — Fri, 15 Jun 2012 11:15:47 PDT

In order to understand adolescents, criminologists have looked to cultural theories of adolescence. These cultural theories emphasize adolescent norms and values and draw on the term subcultural to denote how delinquency can be explained among segments of youths. They tend to focus either on impoverished inner-city youths or youths without any class affiliation. Few studies have examined the extent to which adolescent subcultures exist in the middle-class and what these subcultures might look like. The subcultural study of adolescence has also shifted from criminology to the realm of sociology resulting in the role of delinquency all but being ignored. Thus,...

College students and the illicit use of prescription drugs: a test of general strain theory

Deborah T. Vegh — Tue, 16 Aug 2011 10:46:44 PDT

Traditional college students face a plethora of stresses that usually occurs simultaneously and includes college-related academic strains as well as personal stressors, such as interpersonal relationships and finances. The use of drugs and alcohol by the college population may be one way in which they ameliorate such strains, and is both a common and dangerous activity. This research uses General Strain Theory (GST) (Agnew, 1992) as the theoretical framework to examine the criminal and risky behaviors of the illicit use of prescription drugs, binge drinking, and the use of illegal drugs by college students. An online survey was administered to...

Understanding and modeling the convergenceof the UCR and NCVS: a time series analysis

Sami Ansari — Wed, 22 Dec 2010 06:21:30 PST

The initial discrepancies between the UCR and NCVS data sets decreased with time, and the two data sets are assumed to have converged for most of the crime categories. Different definitions and methods have been used by the studies that have tested and explained the convergence between the two data sets, and those studies often reported different results. The two objectives of this study include understanding and explaining the convergence between the two data sets. The data for the study have been drawn from multiple sources. A multiple analytic strategy is used to test the convergence, and autoregression models with...

Diversity in municipal police agencies: a national examination of its determinants and effects

Joseph L. Gustafson — Tue, 23 Nov 2010 09:48:40 PST

The present study is divided into two component parts. The first examines institutional and external factors associated with racial, ethnic, and gender diversity in policing at the line and managerial ranks (the determinants of diversity). Line representation analyses utilize new data sources and a full range of theoretically informed covariates. Managerial representation analyses provide the first comprehensive attempt to understand the dynamics behind minority promotion. Portions of the U.S. Census of Population and Housing Equal Employment Opportunity Tabulation (EEO), Division of Governmental Studies and Services (DGSS) survey, and Law Enforcement Management and Administrative Statistics (LEMAS) survey were combined to produce...