No description available.

No description available.

No description available.

No description available.

No description available.

No description available.

No description available.

According to current scholarship on offender decision making, choosing to rob another is based on a variety of individual and situational characteristics. Explanatory models often invoked within environmental criminology include routine activity, rational choice and crime pattern theories. Situational action theory’s suggestion that this decision depends, at least in part, on the interaction between offender criminal propensity and the setting’s moral context has yet to be examined. This investigation tests this idea by conducting structured interviews with active probationers and parolees centered on their decoding of streetscapes to clarify offenders’ perceptions of street robbery opportunities (Part I). These results inform an agent-based simulation contrasting the merits of assumptions made in the previously stated theories to learn how well each generates realistic concentrations of street robbery (Part II). Support emerges for both environmental criminology and situational action theory, but the results differed by the method employed. Implications follow for clarifying the theoretical processes driving these incidents and for promoting public safety. / Criminal Justice

Each year, approximately one-third of all people admitted to prison in the United States are committed as the result of a revocation of community-based supervision such as probation, parole, or federal supervised release (Carson & Anderson, 2016). Many of these individuals are being incarcerated for technical violations of their supervision - conduct other than the commission of a new crime which is in violation of a condition of supervision. The practice of committing offenders to prison for technical violations of supervision is rather common at the state level. In a 2013 study, for example, Ostermann found that although paroled inmates in New Jersey were less likely than inmates who served their entire prison terms without parole to engage in new criminal conduct following their release, the paroled inmates were just as likely to be returned to prison within three years due to having been charged with technical violations of their supervision. This practice also occurs in the federal criminal justice system, where 70% of the offenders under community-based supervision who are returned to prison each year are recommitted on the strength of technical violations of supervision alone (Administrative Office of the United States Courts, 2017a). A substantial amount of prior work (for example, Apel et al., 2010; Clear, 2007; Petit, Sykes & Western, 2009; Rose & Clear, 1998) has revealed the potentially harmful consequences of imprisonment. Despite this, little research has examined how incarcerating persons for technical violations of supervision compares to widely-available alternative, intermediate sanctions such as home confinement and reentry center placement in terms of ability to prevent the commission of new crimes or continued technical non-compliance. The present study examined these questions, utilizing a sample of offenders in the federal criminal justice system. Propensity score matching was used to construct comparable treatment and control groups, thereby reducing concerns of selection bias. Post-matching analyses suggest the following: 1) the effect of incarcerating offenders for technical violations of supervision is negligible compared to subjecting them to intermediate sanctions with regard to preventing the commission of new crimes; 2) offenders incarcerated for technical violations of supervision are more likely to commit new crimes post-sanction – and sooner – than offenders subjected to intermediate sanctions; 3) offenders imprisoned for technical violations are more likely to engage in subsequent technical violations – and sooner – than offenders subjected to intermediate sanctions; and 4) the greater the intensity of the intermediate sanction (i.e., residential reentry center placement vs. home confinement), the more likely an offender will be charged with a technical violation during service of the sanction. Although the study is subject to concerns about potential sensitivity to unobserved confounders and other limitations, it makes an important contribution to our understanding of a topic which has rarely before been examined. When one considers the financial, public safety, and ethical consequences of incarcerating people for non-criminal conduct, the research has implications for persons under supervision, probation and parole organizations, and the general public alike. / Criminal Justice

A project was completed that 1) developed a list of potential primary law enforcement objectives; 2) analyzed the arrest component of agency and agent objectives; and 3) developed a computer model that produced an agent arrest score. A methodology to select law enforcement objectives using a hierarchy was developed. The objective hierarchy and example objectives are shown. A crime wildlife related list was developed. Game wardens and wildlife biologists with the Virginia Department of Game and Inland Fisheries, foresters with the Virginia Department of Forestry, and members of 2 private interest groups were surveyed to determine the relative importance of the crimes. Respondents ranked violations on a scale from 1 ("not very wrong") to 9 (livery wrong") relative to a given standard violation. The survey contained 3 sections: (A) specific violation list, (8) species list, and (C) list of violation categories. Differences among groups, consistency in responses, and relative consensus about importance of violations were analyzed. / Master of Science