<p> The co-evolution of the operational art and technology in the military arena may have applications for emergency management operations. The application of network-based systems towards disaster management and public safety has the potential to capitalize on lessons learned from the military to improve command and control, speed of communication and operational agility. In order to react to a constantly evolving operational picture while maintaining forces spread across great distances, the military has developed network-based organizations and command and control structures to capitalize on advances in technology. These techniques and the understanding and development of local networks could have a similar impact on domestic disaster relief. In today&rsquo;s asymmetric operational environment, commanders have the ability and doctrine to develop the situation remotely, process raw data into actionable intelligence and push direction and guidance down to operating forces at a rapid rate. The size and scope of disasters affecting the populace today require a more agile and networked organizational structure. This research will explore whether the same netcentric techniques and practices used by the military can be used in domestic disaster response.</p><p>

Since the mid-1970s, the modern U.S. animal rights movement has grown in size and influence. Membership in People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA), the world's largest animal rights organization, for instance, has grown from fewer than 100 members in 1980 (Plous, 1991), to more than 1,800,000 "members and supporters" today (People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals, n.d.b), and donations to the organization indicate a similar upward trend (Charity Navigator, 2006). At the same time, the influence of the movement has been felt by animal users, consumers, and the government, and continues to be relevant to this day. From early campaigns leading to a considerable decrease in the numbers of animals used in product testing (Jasper and Nelkin, 1992) and a plummet in sales of fur coats (Singer, 2003), to more recent victories including concessions by McDonald's, Burger King, and other restaurants regarding their animal welfare policies (Martin, 2007), and a spate of initiatives passed at the state level banning or curtailing particular animal uses (Lubinski, 2003), the U.S. animal rights movement has had an effect on business practices, on the law, and on the nation's consciousness. Additionally, a minority faction of the movement has engaged in crimes in an effort to bring about animal liberation, resulting in millions of dollars in damage to animal use industries (Southern Poverty Law Center, 2002). This research explores the response of animal use industries and their supporters to these objective threats. I argue that opponents of the animal rights movement and their surrogates have responded to this growing and persistent threat by engaging in a campaign of claims-making, the goal and/or effect of which is to construct for the public, policy-makers, and other social control authorities an image of the animal rights movement as a social problem as well as a more serious threat necessitating social control. This project therefore combines key ideas from several different literatures, including claims-making, framing, and social movement and countermovement, and is theoretically grounded in the social threat-social control tradition. I rely on two different sources of claims—one, a sample of items published in the New York Times and the other, a sample of written statements prepared for and presented in Congressional hearings. Claims in these documents were coded and analyzed using a grounded theory approach (Glaser and Strauss, 1967). The project is guided by two different epistemic objectives. First, I examine the nature of the claims put forth by opponents of animal rights and their surrogates. My goal here is not to confirm or debunk the veracity of these claims, but rather, to uncover and understand the kinds of claims serving not only to counter the animal rights movement's assertions that animal use and abuse is a social problem, but also to construct animal rights as a threat. Second, after analyzing these claims, I offer an assessment of whether, in each sample, such claims-making is consistent with the expectations of social threat-social control theory (Blalock, 1967; Liska, 1992b). Consistent with past research informed by this theory, I expect to find that as the animal rights movement became more threatening to animal users and their supporters, there was a corresponding change in the quantity (e.g., in frequency) and/or quality (e.g., in intensity) of claims made about the movement. The research findings indicate that both primary and secondary claims-makers utilize a variety of claims, framing processes, and rhetorical strategies so as to support the status quo as it concerns animal use. Furthermore, consistent with the expectations of social threat-social control theory, in general, in both samples, the findings provide support for the idea that, as time passed and the threats by the animal rights movement increased, the number of claims in defense of animal use and claims constructing animal rights as problematic increased. Particularly noteworthy are the findings of increases in claims constructing animal rights as a threat, and indicating that increased criminal control of the movement is necessary. This research makes several contributions to the literatures it borrows from. First, this study expands conflict theory's threat hypothesis by extending it to explain the threat and control of a social movement (whereas, traditionally, this theory has been used to explain control of racial minority threat). Second, this study provides qualitative support for the idea that social control is mobilized by claims-making. Third, by demonstrating how opponents engage in claims-making activities for the purpose of constructing a social movement as a threat, this study provides a unique contribution to the social constructionism/claims-making perspective, which has tended not to examine the use of claims to construct a movement as a problem. Finally, this research is timely, in the sense that it helps explain the current focus of social control authorities on animal rights-motivated crimes and acts of "terrorism." / A Dissertation submitted to the College of Criminology and Criminal Justice in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy. / Spring Semester, 2008. / April 8, 2008. / Animal Rights, Claims-Making, Social Threat, Social Control / Includes bibliographical references. / Ted Chiricos, Professor Directing Dissertation; James Orcutt, Outside Committee Member; Bruce Bullington, Committee Member.

White-collar crime accounts for billions of dollars in annual losses but traditionally has been viewed as less serious and less deserving of harsh punishment compared with street crime. This pattern can be observed in public opinion surveys, law-enforcement resource allocations, and criminal justice system sanctioning. Scholars usually distinguish between different types of white-collar crime—bitterly noting the irony that broadened definitions of white-collar crime have perpetuated status-based disparities the very concept was designed to bring to light. Some of these scholars, particularly those study public perceptions, have begun to question the conventional wisdom of widespread public apathy toward the crimes of U.S. economic and political elites. They have pointed at Watergate in the 1970s, the savings and loan crisis of the late 1980s and early 1990s, and the wave of national corporate financial failures emerging in 2001–2002, and they have proposed that public outrage stemming from these widely publicized political and economic scandals should serve as a catalyst for sentencing reform that would more accurately tailor punishments to the harms caused. Lengthy prison sentences given to corporate executives and chairman—such as Bernie Madoff's June 2009 150-year prison sentence—seem to support the argument that a national attitudinal shift has translated into more severe punishments for white-collar offenders. But one could characterize recent severe white-collar sentences—most notably in this regard, Shalom Weiss's 840-year prison term—as aberrations that are both expressively powerful and functionally indistinguishable from a life sentence with no chance of parole. As such, far from bridging the gap between harm and punishment, these extreme reactions would also fail to represent the majority of white-collar offenders' experiences with the criminal justice system. Despite financial losses stemming from white-collar crime, most white-collar offenders are not prosecuted as criminal offenders and do not comprise the bulk of U.S. jail and prison populations. The present study addresses this paradox between harm caused, perceived seriousness and desired punitiveness, and the theoretical void in the white-collar crime literature by incorporating the concepts of ingroup favoritism and outgroup hostility from the social psychological literature on social identity theory. The study's purposes, then, are to determine whether there are observable differences in punitiveness toward white-collar and street offenders and then to test the applicability of the proposed integrated theory to explaining punitiveness by employing a representative telephone survey of 400 Floridian adults in 2008. The survey tested 10 hypotheses in several ways: An offense- and an offender-based definition of white-collar crime is used as well as nonviolent economic street crime, incarceration and disenfranchisement support serve as dependent variables; and two forms of offender identification (social and racial) and two forms of threats (offense seriousness and victim identification) are assessed. Incarceration support is modeled for six offenses: elite white-collar crime (corporate fraud and government bribery), consumer fraud white-collar crimes (false advertising and car sales fraud), and nonviolent economic street crimes (motor vehicle theft and burglary). The six offenses were then collapsed into three crime categories designed to represent three basic social status groups and to address the white-collar crime definitional debate: elite white-collar crime (high-status white-collar crime), consumer fraud white-collar crime (middle-status white-collar crime), and nonviolent economic street crime (low-status non-white-collar crime). No violent street crimes were included to enhance the comparability between the street crimes and white-collar crimes; likewise, the selected street crimes were economically motivated so they would also have the same basic motive (unlike non-violent street crimes like vandalism or drug use). Bivariate correlations revealed differences in public opinion, but the definition of white-collar crime (i.e., offense or offender based) and the measure of punitiveness (i.e., support for incarceration and for disenfranchisement) impacted the results. Multivariate logistic regression results indicate that offense seriousness had the consistent effect on increasing punitiveness for street crimes, but rarely influenced punishment recommendations for white-collar crimes—particularly those of the powerful corporate and government elites. However, little support emerged supporting the hypotheses derived from social identity theory. Rarely have past studies identified variables that are related to punitiveness toward white-collar offenders, be they theoretical or control variables. The present study, on the other hand, drew from the available research literature, identified the theoretical concept of social identification, and empirically tested this concept's association with incarceration and disenfranchisement recommendations for white-collar and street property offenders. Social identification was not always related to punitiveness; moreover, the hypothesized positive effect of social identification interacting with perceived seriousness failed to materialize. Yet social identification itself increased punitiveness in several models and this is an advancement of our knowledge about public opinion on white-collar crime—albeit an advancement in need of refinement. Theoretically, this study introduced the idea of social identity to the study of white-collar crime, a phenomenon that has long been anecdotally characterized as crime by seemingly normal and respectable individuals, but which has recently exhibited signs of increased governmental intervention and sanctioning. The unexpected findings were explained by drawing upon labeling theory and by discussing the differential roles of information in influencing punitive attitudes. A different causal model is then suggested wherein strength of incriminating evidence is predicted to moderate the effect of social identification on punitiveness toward white-collar offenders. In this revised model to be tested in future research, social identification is not predicted to interact with seriousness to influence punitiveness; rather, it is hypothesized to influence punitiveness indirectly through its influence on perceptions of guilt. The conclusion focuses upon the contradiction between the U.S. government's relative neglect of white-collar crime and contemporary empirical evidence on public punitiveness toward white-collar and street offenders. Bernie Madoff's recent 150-year is revisited, and it is concluded that recent examples of harsh white-collar crime sanctioning do not reflect a significant shift in attitudes. Instead, returning to social identity theory, it is proposed that certain offenders have gotten singled out in order to for the government send a symbolic message of intolerance toward corporate crime while at the same time, the criminogenic opportunity and motivation structures of U.S. finance capitalism are left untouched and ineffectively regulated, thus perpetuating the problem of white-collar crime. / A Dissertation submitted to the College of Criminology and Criminal Justice in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy. / Fall Semester, 2009. / October 16, 2009. / White-Collar Crime, Public Opinion, Social Identification, Puntiveness, Dissenfranchisement / Includes bibliographical references. / Thomas G. Blomberg, Professor Directing Dissertation; William D. Berry, University Representative; William D. Bales, Committee Member.

Over 600,000 individuals were released from prison in the U.S. in 2013 (Carson, 2014), and, if recent trends continue, two-thirds of them will be arrested within 3 years (Durose, Cooper, and Snyder, 2014). Over the last two decades, policy makers at the federal, state, and local levels have been looking for ways to reduce recidivism rates among released prisoners and often emphasize post-release employment as a critical factor for successful reentry. However, research to date on the relationship between employment and recidivism is surprisingly limited, and findings are mixed. In addition, most of the research on the employment-recidivism relationship has failed to control for an individual's propensity to obtain employment. In other words, when studies have found a negative relationship between employment and recidivism, it is unclear whether differences in recidivism are due to the job itself or to other confounders that make some individuals more likely to be employed. This study uses data collected for the evaluation of the Serious and Violent Offender Reentry Initiative to examine whether post-release employment decreases the likelihood of recidivism among adult men with extensive criminal histories. Propensity scores are used to control for a variety of possible confounders related to the individuals' likelihood of obtaining employment. Post-release employment has a modest negative effect on property crime and a positive effect on public order crime. Methodological considerations for studying employment among offender populations are also discussed. / A Dissertation submitted to the College of Criminology and Criminal Justice in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy. / Summer Semester 2015. / July 2, 2015. / Includes bibliographical references. / Ted Chiricos, Professor Directing Dissertation; J. Piers Rawling, University Representative; Daniel P. Mears, Committee Member; William D. Bales, Committee Member.

The purpose of this study is to investigate empirically the extent of consensus in normative systems for punishing convicted offenders. A factorial survey design was used to elicit either 25 or 50 distinct harshness ratings of prison terms given out hypothetically to convicted felons from more than 1,400 respondents. A block quota sample of Boston SMSA households and convenience samples of police, law students, and state prison inmates were interviewed. The general population respondent sample is segmented into gender by race groups for analysis. Proximity to crime and subjective experiences with crime vary by race and gender and may account for differences observed in judgments of prison sentences. Four indicators of judgment agreement derived from multiple regression models are used to investigate the extent of normative consensus found within the general population and across three selected groups of criminal justice system respondents. In general, these indicators suggest dissensus between the races that may be attributable to perceptions of injustice among blacks. More importantly, these indicators uncover more judgment disagreements between black men and black women than between blacks and whites, suggesting that structured differences in crime related experiences account for perceptions of fair punishments for convicted offenders. An investigation of judgments made by criminal justice system respondent groups shows prisoners dissent from the view shared by police and law students of who should get what prison sentence. State prison inmates are strongly influenced by the offender's personal attributes when forming judgments of fair punishments. Overall, the empirical analysis of judgments of prison sentences suggests that whites in the general population, police, and law students share the view that the just deserts principle for criminal sentencing can achieve justice. Blacks and state prison inmates share the view that an individualized justice model for sentencing can achieve fair systems for punishing offenders. Proximity to the crime problem and minority group status in the U.S. are suggested as two possible explanations for dissenting judgments of normative systems for distributing punishment.

The primary goal of this dissertation is to unravel the complex relationships between economic conditions and corporate crime. Theoretically, I propose that much corporate illegality stems from firm profit constraints, constraints which may be located in the corporate environment. Historically, the concept of organizational environment has been specified as internal to the firm and/or the company's immediate product market. Firm profit-squeeze may arise not only from these sources, but may be found in business cycle trends as well. The relationship between economic conditions and corporate illegality is tested using longitudinal time series and OLS regression analysis. Fifty-two survivor firms within seven product markets are tracked across fifty-five years, matching firm, industry, and business cycle economic conditions with patterns of antitrust criminality. The findings neither wholeheartedly support or refute this economic framework. I find that a firm's external environment, as measured by industry and business cycle indicators, has more of an effect on antitrust activity than firm profitability per se. Moreover, the utility of an economic model in explaining antitrust illegality varies greatly by: (a) economic conditions; (b) level of analysis; (c) crime seriousness; and (d) crime type. For example, certain types of antitrust crime (trivial violations) are more likely when industry measures of profitability reflect prosperity rather than scarcity. Serious crimes and/or conspiracy actions are strongly related to declining industry and macro conditions. On the other hand, for some crimes (e.g., price discrimination) an economic explanation of illegality is woefully lacking. The relationships between antitrust criminality and economic conditions clearly are not unequivocal. It is facile to argue that economic constraints alone produce crime or that all antitrust crime is produced from similar conditions. While this study is limited in focus to a few large manufacturing corporations, the fact that such a small sample of firms and industries could produce these diversities of crime types clearly warrants improved conceptual specification of both corporate crime and crime etiology. Until our imagery of corporate illegality can move beyond the monolithic, specific policies aimed at deterrence, punishment, and/or regulation are not firmly grounded.

Bibliography: leaves 165-170.

Considerable theoretical and empirical attention has been devoted to understanding the persistent relationship between victimization and offending. General strain theory is often applied to explain the origin of deviant behavior, while the risky lifestyles and opportunities perspective is more often used to examine the continuity of offending and victimization. However, the delinquent coping mechanisms operationalized by the general strain tests and the risky behaviors measured in the risky lifestyles/opportunities models are often the same behaviors. The current research proposes a theoretical model that integrates these two models to link victimization and offending within a uniform framework, and illustrates the method of integration using the relationships between child maltreatment, victimization, and offending. The project proposes two research questions that examine whether the integrated theoretical model can be used to explain (1) the relationship between child maltreatment and repeat victimization, and (2) the relationship between child maltreatment and adolescent offending. Using data from the first three waves of the National Longitudinal Survey of Adolescent Health (Add Health), the results showed that the integrated model can provide an explanation for the onset and continuity of victimization and offending, and engaging in deviant coping strategies places youth at further vulnerability for victimization and increased risk for offending. However, the model provides only one pathway linking child maltreatment to victimization and offending outcomes, and the strength of support based on the measures of negative emotions, deviant coping, and outcomes. / A Dissertation submitted to the College of Criminology and Criminal Justice in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy. / Spring Semester, 2015. / April 1, 2015. / Offending, Theoretical development, Victimization / Includes bibliographical references. / Eric P. Baumer, Professor Directing Dissertation; Miles G. Taylor, University Representative; Eric A. Stewart, Committee Member; Sonja Siennick, Committee Member.

The association between neighborhood context and antisocial behavior has been the focus of a considerable amount of criminological research over the past 50 years. During this time, numerous studies have found significant associations between neighborhood disadvantage and youth antisocial behavior. This body of evidence created the foundation for several neighborhood-level theories of crime and delinquency. One neighborhood-level theoretical framework that has received perhaps the most attention within criminology in recent years is collective efficacy theory. Although prior research has revealed that differences in collective efficacy explain differences in crime across neighborhood context, collective efficacy and other neighborhood-level risk factors only account for a fraction of the variance in youth antisocial behavior. One explanation for this finding could be that previous neighborhood-level research on neighborhood disadvantage and collective efficacy has not taken into account the effects of genetic factors, which have been found to explain a considerable amount of variation in antisocial behavior. Using longitudinal kinship data from the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth-Child and Young Adult Supplement, this study aims to assess whether and to what extent neighborhood disadvantage and collective efficacy moderate latent genetic influences on variation in antisocial behavior during childhood and adolescence. Findings from a series of biometric decomposition models show that exposure to neighborhood disadvantage and collective efficacy condition the influence of genetic and environmental effects on antisocial behavioral development across different stages of childhood and adolescence. Implications of these Gene x Neighborhood Environment findings for contemporary neighborhood-level theory and neighborhood-level criminological research are discussed. / A Dissertation submitted to the College of Criminology and Criminal Justice in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy. / Fall Semester, 2014. / December 2, 2014. / Includes bibliographical references. / Kevin M. Beaver, Professor Directing Dissertation; Janet Kistner, University Representative; Marc G. Gertz, Committee Member; Patricia Y. Warren, Committee Member.

Florida law allows judges to withhold adjudication of guilt for individuals who have been found guilty of a felony and are being sentenced to probation. This is accomplished if the judge chooses to sentence an individual to probation with "adjudication withheld." Such individuals lose no civil rights and may lawfully assert they have not been convicted of a felony on employment applications and elsewhere. Labeling theory would predict that the receipt of a felony label could increase the likelihood of recidivism, and that this effect may vary across individual characteristics. This research investigates this possibility by examining the reconviction experiences of the population of men and women found guilty of a violent, property, or drug felony and sentenced to probation between 2000 and 2003 in Florida (N=119,648). Logistic regression is used to assess whether applying the convicted felon label has negative consequences for reconviction within three years of sentencing. To assess the possibility that the effects of a criminal label may vary across groups of individuals, separate regression models are run for sub-samples (based on race/ethnicity, employment status, sex, criminal history, crime type) and slope difference tests are calculated to determine whether any of the differences in the impact of adjudication between groups are statistically significant. Being adjudicated was significantly associated with reconviction for all groups examined except for Hispanics and violent offenders. The findings also demonstrate that, while being labeled is a relatively consistent predictor of re-offense, individuals with certain characteristics may be more likely to suffer negative consequences than others. The effect of adjudication on recidivism was significantly larger for black females than black males (and approached significance for females and males). Additionally, labeling appears to be more detrimental for naïve than for experienced offenders and for property than for either drug or violent offenders. / A Dissertation Submitted to the College of Criminology and Criminal Justice in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree of Doctor of Philosophy. / Fall Semester, 2007. / August 3, 2007. / Labeling, Felony Conviction, Recidivism / Includes bibliographical references. / Ted Chiricos, Professor Directing Dissertation; C. Aaron McNeece, Outside Committee Member; William D. Bales, Committee Member.