Social disorganization and social control are two seemingly competing theories attempting to explain crime and delinquency. In this study, social control and social disorganization are measured in a sample of college students via self-report surveys using questions derived from Hirschi's social control questionnaire and a previously employed social disorganization measure. Factor and reliability analyses were examined to validate each of these key constructs. Zero-order correlations, regression analyses, and path analysis were then used to test the key propositions of these theories. These tests provide full and qualified support for these theories. Implications for future research and criminal justice policy are discussed in light of these findings.

The purpose of this study was to analyze the influences such as age at current offense, gender, race, previous convictions, and the seriousness of crimes that contributed to the decisions received by juveniles in adult court. This study examined a secondary data set from the United States Department of Justice entitled Juvenile Defendants in Criminal Courts (JDCC): Survey of 40 Counties in the United States, 1998. The cases from these 40 jurisdictions represented all filings during one month in 75 of the most populous counties. The current study found significant differences among race, prior criminal history, current offense severity, and juveniles adjudicated in adult court. Future research should therefore continue to examine the impact of juveniles adjudicated in adult court to better inform the debate surrounding the potential dangers associated with juvenile offending and adult criminal sanctions.

This thesis examined police practices of the North Carolina Highway Patrol concerning the occurrence of racial profiling. The sample data consisted of motorists stopped in North Carolina by the Highway Patrol between January 1, 2000 and July 31, 2000 (N = 332, 861). The findings suggested that race was a likely factor in pretextual stops. The results also indicate that racial profiling was occurring more in the western region than the eastern region of North Carolina. Theoretical reasons are offered in support of these findings.

Research testing the relationship between adolescent religiosity and delinquent behavior is inconclusive. Some studies show a significant negative relationship while others indicate no relationship. Stark (1996) asserts that the relationship between religiosity and delinquency is a function of community religiosity as opposed to personal religiosity. Thus, in areas of high religiosity, there will be a strong relationship, while areas of low religiosity will show no relationship. This study looks at the relationship between religiosity and delinquency of LDS youth in four different religious ecologies: Utah County (high religious ecology), the East coast (moderate religious ecology), the Pacific Northwest (low religious ecology), and Great Britain (very low religious ecology). Structural Equation Modeling of the data indicates that the relationship between religiosity and delinquency is strong regardless of religious ecology. Thus, the religious ecology hypothesis is not supported.

Foster care case managers are responsible for the wellbeing of foster youth in the foster care system. Teens (ages 13-17) in foster care are most vulnerable to serious risks, such as sex trafficking. Such risks have been heightened by the advent of internet-based technologies that connect foster youth with unsafe others at unprecedented frequency and speed. This thesis examines how case managers tackle the challenge of online safety as it relates to adolescents in the foster care system in the United States. I conducted 32 semi-structured interviews with case managers who worked with foster teens (ages 13-17) within the past 5 years. After each interview, I transcribed the recording and conducted qualitative data analysis to identify emerging themes. I found that foster teens face numerous online risks with sexual-related risks (e.g., sex trafficking) and contact-related risks (e.g., unsolicited contact) being most prominent. However, case workers may not be prepared to address all of these challenges because of lack of online safety training and support from foster parents. Also, case workers are overburdened with many responsibilities that make online safety a secondary priority. This thesis identifies the gaps in which case managers are trained and highlights the need for more support to handle online safety challenges. Therefore, this thesis recommends that the foster care system must place a higher priority in establishing support groups and collaborative training among foster parents, case workers, and foster children to fully manage foster youth online safety.

<p>The dissertation is a study of the 1985 alcohol policy reform in the Soviet Union. The task is to explain the making and failure of the policy, and to examine the policy as a case in rule creation in society. More specifically, I analyze the policy-making in terms of symbolic politics, moral entrepreneurship, and the prohibitive measures it led to a5 a reaction to alcohol abuse. Each of these concepts offers a partial explanation of rule creation. Yet, none adequately explains the policy repeal, much less the creation of informal social definitions of right and wrong. Similar to alcohol prohibitions in the USA, Finland and Canada, the Soviet alcohol reform effort attempted but ultimately did not succeed in changing the social definition of alcohol and drinking. This is in contrast to cannabis, opium and cocaine prohibitions that aimed to preserve existing definitions and have been largely successful around the world. The relationship between formal and informal definitions is addressed as a key element in any understanding of variations in the fate ofmoral reforms. From this standpoint, the post-reform period comes to be viewed as a distinct stage wherein the viability of a proposed definition is tested. Presently dominant approaches to the definitional process appear to limit their own potential in that they refuse to reconsider assumptions that can be shown erroneous, do not differentiate between dissimilar processes and settings, do not ask more pointed research questions and do not stimulate empirically grounded and verifiable explanations. To redress these limitations, I offer a critical reexamination of both the moral entrepreneur and claims-making approaches to social definition-making.</p> / Doctor of Philosophy (PhD)

L'agriculture est un secteur d'activité qui est confronté aujourd'hui à des objectifs d'accroissement de productivité pour subvenir aux besoins alimentaires de la population mondiale en pleine explosion démographique. Cependant, cette activité sollicite fortement les biens environnementaux tels que l'eau et le sol, et des solutions sont aujourd'hui recherchées pour limiter l'incidence des pratiques agricoles sur l'environnement. Les systèmes de guidage des véhicules agricoles font partie de ces nouvelles technologies qui contribuent à cet objectif, en offrant la possibilité d'assurer la précision du suivi des trajectoires dans les parcelles, et de favoriser ainsi l'efficacité et la qualité du travail agronomique réalisé. Des fonctionnalités essentielles font néanmoins aujourd'hui défaut à ces systèmes. Citons la capacité à compenser la marche en crabe du véhicule sur les terrains glissants en pente, la capacité à contrôler les trajectoires des outils agricoles traînés, et la capacité à effectuer certaines manoeuvres en zone de fourrière. Ce travail de thèse aborde l'ensemble de ces problématiques au travers l'étude de la commande en milieu naturel de robot mobile poly-articulé à roues (RMPA), composé d'un véhicule " tracteur " à deux trains directeurs associé à n remorques passives à attache déportée. Une modélisation cinématique étendue est d'abord adoptée pour tenir compte des effets induits par les faibles conditions d'adhérence sur le comportement global du RMPA. Les variables de glissement introduites sur chacun des trains directeurs et roulants sont estimées à l'aide d'un observateur bâti à la manière d'une loi de commande. La trajectoire de référence à suivre gamma est quant à elle préalablement apprise ou construite à l'aide de primitives élémentaires et d'arcs de clothoïdes pour générer les manoeuvres de demi-tour. En premier lieu, les deux trains directeurs du RMPA sont exploités pour contrôler avec précision non seulement l'écart latéral mais également l'écart angulaire du véhicule " tracteur " par rapport à gamma : la commande du train directeur avant est basée sur la transformation du modèle en un système chaîné, conduisant à un découplage exact des performances latérales et longitudinales, puis sur des techniques de linéarisation exacte pour assurer la régulation latérale. La commande du train directeur arrière se base sur la dynamique de l'écart angulaire pour compenser les glissements et asservir cet écart sur le point de fonctionnement choisi. En second lieu, ces commandes sont étendues pour asservir latéralement la ieme remorque du RMPA le long de gamma : une approche en cascade est utilisée pour traduire une commande virtuelle de la ieme remorque en terme de commande du train directeur avant du véhicule " tracteur ". La commande longitudinale du RMPA est quant à elle basée sur une stratégie de commande prédictive à modèle interne, afin de suivre avec précision le profil de vitesse associé à gamma. De nombreuses expérimentations en conditions réelles, effectuées sur un RMPA composé d'un véhicule " tracteur " à deux trains directeurs et d'une remorque passive à attache déportée, viennent valider les différentes approches présentées dans ce mémoire et permettent d'apprécier les performances des lois de commande proposées. / Agriculture has today the challenge to increase its productivity in order to supply enough food for the growing needs of the world population. However, this activity strongly damages environmental ressources as water and soil, and new solutions are today required to reduce the impact of agricultural practices on environment. Automatic guidance systems for farm vehicles are some new technologies that contribute to this objective, allowing accurate path following in the fields and therefore improving efficiency and quality of the agricultural work carried out. Essential functionalities are however absent in these systems, as the capacities to compensate for the crabway motion of the vehicle on sliding sloping fields, to control the trajectories of the towed implement,and to perform U-turn maneuvers in headland. This thesis studies these problems through the control in presence of sliding of a poly-articulated wheeled mobile robot called RMPA, composed of a four-wheel-steering vehicle and n passive trailers hooked up at some distance from the rear axle of the previous one. An extended kinematic model of the RMPA is first used in order to take into account for the sliding effects on the overall behaviour of the robot. The sliding parameters, introduced on each rolling and steering axle of the RMPA, are estimated using a state observer built as a control law. The reference path [gamma] to be followed is either previously learned or specially planned using elementary primitives connected together with pieces of clothoid to produce the U-turn maneuvers. In a first step, both front and rear steering actuations of the robot are used to accurately control both lateral and angular deviations of the RMPA's four-wheel-steering vehicle with respect to [gamma] : the control of the front steering wheels is based on the transformation of the extended kinematic model into a chained system, allowing to dissociate the lateral and longitudinal commands, and on exact linearization techniques in order to servo lateral deviation. The control of the rear steering wheels is built from the angular deviation dynamic and ensures the convergence of the vehicle deviation to the desired set point. In a second step, these control laws are extended to control the lateral deviation of the ith trailer of the RMPA with respect to [gamma] : a backstepping approach is proposed to calculate the control law for the RMPA's front steering wheels from the study of a virtual control law for the ith trailer. Finally, the longitudinal control law of the RMPA is based on model predictive control, in order to accurately follow the velocity references linked to [gamma]. Numerous experiments relying on an actual RMPA, composed of a passive trailer hooked up at some distance from the rear axle of a four-wheel-steering vehicle, permit to validate the various approaches presented in this thesis and to appreciate the capabilities of the proposed control laws.

Individuals interacting in an environment that exacerbates fear of crime and general distrust may face erosion of democratic values and perceive authoritarian policies as a solution to restore order. In Latin America historical widespread distrust in the government apparatus as well as fear of crime, have always been a topic of interest, not only for sociologists but also for political scientists and lawmakers. This study uses the LAPOP wave 2012 (Latin American Public Opinion) survey to assess Ecuadorians’ perceptions about trust in the government and fear of crime as predictors of support for authoritarian policies (mano dura). Logistic regressions show evidence that fear of crime acts as a better predictor than level of trust in the government for predicting the likelihood of supporting authoritarian policies. Overall, this study provides a hint of how Ecuadorians support for democratic principles may have weakened by fear of crime and lack of trust in the government apparatus.

The overrepresentation of racial and ethnic minorities in crime has been an issue of debate. Some evidence, however, has shown that racial differences in offending are largely accounted for by economic disadvantage. Using data from the National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent Health (n = 4,290), the relationship between race and delinquency was examined looking at social disorganization factors. It was hypothesized that there would be racial and ethnic differences in delinquency and that these differences would be accounted for by social disorganization factors, specifically collective efficacy and economic disadvantage. The results show that compared to White adolescents Hispanic adolescents have increased odds of nonviolent and violent delinquency, and Black adolescents have increased odds of violent delinquency. Contrary to expectations, social disorganization factors did not account for the racial and ethnic differences in delinquency. Unexpectedly, higher levels of collective efficacy actually increased the odds of violent delinquency.

Religious institutions are among the deepest reservoirs of social belonging in America, but what determines whether belonging is cultivated in these institutions? Previous research shows that individuals’ social network composition is a primary predictor of feelings of belonging. However, less is known about how group characteristics condition the influence of social networks on belonging. We use data from the 2001 U.S. Congregational Life Survey and multilevel modeling to examine how organizational characteristics such as group size, in-group network density, and aggregate ideological uniformity moderate the effects of individual social networks on sense of belonging. Results indicate that both structural (network density, church size) and cultural (ideology) characteristics of groups significantly condition the effects of individual social networks on belonging. Smaller group size, network density, and ideological unity cultivate contexts that amplify the relationship between personal networks and belonging.