As in many countries, burglary is a very serious crime in Turkey. Scientific methods and techniques are needed to solve complex burglary cases. This study is completed in the Bursa Police context since they classified many crime data conducive to scientific studies under a project called BEMTAP. The main purpose of this study is to examine the factors influencing the commission of burglaries, using an epid-criminological perspective. It can be argued that factors leading to the commission of a crime are important for formulating preventive strategies in the community. In this study, the contributing factors are categorized into three main groups of predictors, by adapting a disease triangle in epidemiology: opportunity factors (agent), offender factors (host), and environmental factors. Criminal method (technique) and time of burglary are conceived as the opportunity factors. Four personal or host characteristics of offender factors are age, gender, marital status, and education level. Distance between the home addresses of burglars and target houses and distance between target houses and police stations are examined as environmental factors. This epid-criminology perspective is thought as a basic framework for integrating two theories: routine activity theory and rational choice theory. Two hypotheses, using agent, host, and environmental factors as predictors, were proposed to test their relationships with the frequency of burglaries committed and with the likelihood of committing repeated burglaries. In measuring the relative influence of the predictor variables on the number of burglaries and on repeated burglaries, two different models were constructed and validated. For the first model of predictors of crime against property (burglary), Hierarchical Multiple Regression Analysis was performed. For the second model, a logistic model of the predictors of repeated burglaries was used and analyzed. The results show that offender factors are more influential than opportunity and environmental factors in explaining the variability in frequency of burglaries committed and the likelihood to commit repeated burglaries. In conclusion, the best way to reduce burglary rate is to focus on offender factors. Dealing with opportunity factors and environmental factors would also contribute to a decreased burglary rate.

As a result of high media attention surrounding school shootings in recent years, it may appear that American public schools are becoming dangerous places (Schildkraut & Elsass, 2016; Elsass, Schildkraut, & Stafford, 2016; Toppo, 2013). Though schools remain to be one of the safest locations for children, various safety measures are discussed and implemented in schools to combat this perceived problem and ensure the safety of school campuses. Discussions of best safety practices spikes directly following a school shooting event from relevant parties, such as school administration, law enforcement agencies, parents, and students, (Crawford & Burns, 2015; Chrusciel, Wolfe, Hansen, Rojek, & Kaminski, 2014) but little existing literature focuses on teachers, more specifically how safe teachers perceive schools to be with regard to gun violence and school shootings. This study seeks to build upon the small body of literature that currently exists on teachers' perceptions of safety and hopes to introduce new opportunities for research in the future. This study is comprised of 212 teachers throughout Central Florida. The results of this research show that while teachers overall feel very safe teaching at their schools, there are areas they believe can be improved upon. Of the safety measures used to prevent and reduce gun violence at schools, program-based safety measures and School Resource Officers make these teachers feel the safest. These perceptions of safety do not vary from one Central Florida county to the next, as most teachers are largely in agreement as to what measures make them feel safe. It was also revealed that most teachers in the sample are also unsupportive of legislation that would allow classroom teachers to carry firearms on school campuses.

This study employs a mixed methods approach, combining a quantitative survey and qualitative interviews to gain a comprehensive understanding of how the use of TV or online news sources can affect one's opinion of police reform. The theoretical framework guiding this research draws upon Critical Race Theory, controlling images in the media, and the Propaganda Model of Communication. By centering Critical Race Theory, the study examines how race and power dynamics intersect with individuals' media consumption and influence their attitudes toward police reform. It acknowledges that news media representations of incidents of police brutality play a crucial role in shaping public opinion, particularly concerning marginalized communities affected by policing practices. Additionally, the Propaganda Model of Communication provides a lens to analyze the media landscape's underlying structural biases and the potential impact on individuals' opinions. This model helps reveal how corporate interests and ideological factors may shape the content presented by TV news outlets, working in the interest of the institution of policing. While the quantitative survey results yielded statistically insignificant findings, the qualitative interviews offer valuable insights into the nuanced complexities surrounding media consumption and its impact on attitudes toward police reform. The interviews reveal that online news sources provide a more democratized platform, offering diverse perspectives which led to a belief in systemic changes to policing. Additionally, interviews uncovered how TV news uses racial stereotypes and superficial news stories to create a "bad apples" ideology.

The thesis will focus on prison privatization and the accountability that private prison companies should maintain to build and operate them. It starts by detailing the political history of the privatization of prisons, starting with the Reagan era and the legislation and ideologies that emerged from it, highlight the reasons and justifications the government gave to outsource its system of punishment. By examining the War on Drugs and Tough on Crime legislations, it will show the way that mass incarceration allowed private companies to develop a solid grasp on the criminal justice system, transforming prisons into a system of hyper incarceration, capitalization and expansion. Using Richard Harding’s book, Private Prisons and Public Accountability, the second chapter will then focus on the accountability that the private prison companies must maintain to effectively and acceptably punish lawbreakers. It will also examine the justifications of the criminal justice system and private prisons, using a utilitarian and retributivist lens. Finally, Chapter 3 will investigate the accountability of the world’s first and largest private prison company: the Corrections Corporation of America. By using its website, this chapter will investigate how the CCA’s claims line up with its actions and what that indicates about its accountability. In the end, with a solid understanding of the flaws of CCA and private prisons, the conclusion will then question the position of private prisons within American society, providing ways to improve the flawed system.

Surveillance studies suffer from a near-total lack of empirical data, partially due to the highly secretive nature of surveillance programs. However, documents leaked by Edward Snowden in June of 2013 provided unprecedented proof of top-secret American data mining initiatives that covertly monitor electronic communications, collect, and store previously unfathomable quantities of data. These documents presented an ideal opportunity for testing theory against data to better understand contemporary surveillance. This qualitative content analysis compared themes of technology, privacy, national security, and legality in the NSA documents to those found in sets of publicly available government reports, laws, and guidelines, finding inconsistencies in the portrayal of governmental commitments to privacy, transparency, and civil liberties. These inconsistencies are best explained by the risk society theoretical model, which predicts that surveillance is an attempt to prevent risk in globalized and complex contemporary societies.

This research investigated the effects of the media on attitudes toward police and fear of crime, while controlling for selected audience trait variables. A self-report questionnaire was administered to 351 students at East Tennessee State University. The survey consisted of demographic and audience trait variables. The survey also contained items that measured the respondants' media consumption. Respondents were asked, for example, which format they typically get news from (e.g., newspaper, television), how often they watch television, and how real they perceive crime related television to be. Multivariate analysis showed that demographic and audience trait variables explained more variance than did media-related variables.

As long as the public maintains staunch and unwarranted negative attitudes toward sex offenders, little hope remains for released sex offenders to successfully reintegrate into society. Therefore, it is in the interest of society that we understand the nature of views of sex offenders so that attempts can be made to promote maximal reintegration and preventing recidivism. To date no valid psychometric instrument exists that measures attitudes toward sex offenders. Therefore, the purpose of this project is to develop such an instrument that will accurately measure stigma associated with sex offenders. Unrotated Prinicipal Components Factor Analysis revealed a single interpretable factor comprised of 17 of the original 27 items with factor loadings of .4 or greater. Chronbach's Alpha Reliability Procedure (a=.88) indicates the SOAS is a valid instrument. The findings suggest possible uses of the SOAS in a variety of areas of sex offender rehabilitation, including treatment and reintegration programs.

FAITH NO MORE: WHY PEOPLE REJECTRELIGION. By Phil Zuckerman. New York:Oxford University Press, 2011. 240 pp. $24.95cloth.

The Nonreligious: Understanding Secular People and Societies, by PHIL ZUCKERMAN, LUKE W. GALEN, and FRANK L. PASQUALE. New York: Oxford University Press, 2016, 336 pp.; $24.95 (paper), $99.00 (cloth)

Review of Warner, Rob. Secularization and Its Discontents. London: Continuum, 2010. 221 pp. pbk $34.95 (USD). ISBN: 978-1441127853