It has been argued that early family adversity and relationships with parents and peers are important variables in the etiology of juvenile delinquency. Although several studies point to the connection between attachment style and aggressive/antisocial behavior in childhood, few empirical studies have explored adolescents' attachment styles in their important relationships and delinquent behavior. This study evaluated 102 young offenders' attachments to mothers, fathers, and peers as potential mediators between early adversity and later criminal behavior. The young persons completed an interview regarding their parents and peers, self-report instruments concerning attachment style, as measured by the Relationship Questionnaire (RQ; Bartholomew & Horowitz, 1991) and The Important People Questionnaire (IPQ; Hazan & Ziefman, 1994). In addition, file reviews of relevant background information and criminal variables were conducted. Results indicated that attachment to fathers mediated the relationship between adversity and criminal outcomes. A mediational model was also supported when considering attachment to other adults in a caregiving role. Thus, these results suggest that a positive relationship with an adult caregiver may be a protective factor in the development of criminal behavior for young people who have experienced prior adversity. Findings are discussed in terms of implications for measuring attachment with juvenile delinquents, conducting therapy with young offenders, and future research. / Graduate

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Recently, numerous high-profile instances of police misconduct and corruption have been thrust into the national spotlight. Hiring police officers who will act with integrity and not betray public trust remains essential. The present research experimentally examines this phenomenon by evaluating pre-employment assessment results against applicant performance on a simulated cheating task (i.e., The Dots Task) in order to derive information to improve contemporary pre-employment screening and selection models. Four case examples are presented which depict malicious actors who possessed privileged access, assumed no one would ever scrutinize their activities, and attempted to leverage a lack of oversight for their personal benefit. A literature review of previous research findings is presented, and results from the current study are discussed. Spearman correlation analyses consistently indicated that participants who cheated were predisposed to moral disengagement via advantageous comparison. Participants who left all or part of their monetary award were less prone to general moral disengagement, particularly displacement of responsibility, while the opposite effect was observed for participants who took more than their earned award. Impression management was positively associated with stealing extra money, and cheating was more common among participants with elevated distorted thought patterns, including obsessional thinking, paranoid ideation, and alienation/perceptual distortion. Stepwise linear multiple regression analyses further substantiated the relationship between cheating and both distorted thought patterns and impression management, as well as provided evidence that (1) internalizing morality as part of one's self-identity and (2) warmth act as protective factors against cheating behavior. Positive relationships between cheating and distortion of consequences were also present within multiple regression analyses. Behavioral models produced from stepwise linear multiple regression analyses offer the potential to predict the likelihood and severity of cheating behavior that an individual may be predisposed to commit based upon their pre-employment assessment data, thereby enhancing pre-employment screening and selection decisions.

published_or_final_version / Sociology / Master / Master of Social Sciences

Thesis (Ph.D.)--University of Central Florida, 2008. / Adviser: Eugene A. Paoline III. Includes bibliographical references (p. 224-249).

Thesis (M.P.A.)--University of Hong Kong, 1994. / Includes bibliographical references (leaves 124-126).

Thesis (M.P.A.)--University of Hong Kong, 1994. / Includes bibliographical references (leaves 124-126). Also available in print.

The nonuse of community correction in the Nigeria criminal justice system has led to increased recidivism, contributed to prison congestion, introduced the risk of prison victimization, and lacked the provision of a rehabilitative structure for nonviolent offenders. The purpose of this phenomenological research study was to explore Nigerian judges' use of alternatives to incarcerations for nonviolent offenders. Dolinko retributive punishment theory provided the theoretical framework for this study. Ten participant judges comprised the study sample from a purposeful and criterion random sampling method. Data were collected from participants through structured interviews and were coded manually, sorted, and analyzed using the Saldana data coding process framework. According to study findings, judges were inclined to use alternatives to incarceration for nonviolent offenders. Also, community correction could reduce overcrowding in prisons and provide the opportunity for self-improvement for nonviolent offenders supervised in the community. The implications for positive social change include a better understanding and implementation of community corrections for Nigeria judiciary and policymakers and the use of alternatives to incarceration for nonviolent offenders, which would improve rehabilitation, reformation, and reintegration of offenders into society.

published_or_final_version / Criminology / Master / Master of Social Sciences

XML documents and related technologies represent widely accepted standard for managing and exchanging semi-structured data. However, surprisingly high number of XML documents is affected by well-formedness errors, structural invalidity or data inconsistencies. The aim of this thesis is the analysis of existing approaches resulting to the proposal of a new correction framework. The introduced model involves repairs of elements and attributes with respect to single type tree grammars. Via the inspection of the state space of an automaton recognising regular expressions, we are always able to find all minimal repairs. These repairs are compactly represented by recursively nested multigraphs, which can be translated to particular sequences of edit operations altering data trees. We have proposed four particular algorithms and provided the prototype implementation supplemented with experimental results. The most efficient algorithm heuristically follows only perspective repair directions and avoids repeated computations using the caching mechanism.