This study looks at the impact of experience with the criminal justice system and attitudes towards the criminal justice system. It is the fist study to incorporate incarceration in one's neighborhood with race, concentrated disadvantage, victimization and perception of neighborhood problems in the explanation of attitudes toward the criminal justice system. To do this I use data from a community survey, crimes reported to the police, department of corrections data and census data all of which have been previously collected for Tallahassee, Florida. Using a proportional grab technique I am able to give each individual a unique score on the neighborhood-level variables of crime, incarceration, concentrated disadvantage and mobility. With this I run an ordinary least squares regression finding that race, perception of neighborhood problems and percent of individuals incarcerated in one's neighborhood impact attitudes toward the criminal justice system. The most significant finding is that incarcerating individuals from a person's neighborhood generally leads to more positive attitudes. However, when a neighborhood has a very high level of incarceration, it can actually have a negative impact on person's attitudes toward the criminal justice system. This finding suggests that formal agents of control can have negative effects at the community level. / 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, 2005. / September 30, 2005. / Incarceration, Neighborhoods, Attitudes / Includes bibliographical references. / Ted Chiricos, Professor Directing Dissertation; David Rasmussen, Outside Committee Member; Todd Clear, Committee Member.

During the last 20 years, efforts to "get tough" on crime in America has resulted in the initiation of a number of punitive sanctions designed to send a message to criminal offenders and society. This new message has been "if you do the crime, you do the time." This philosophy has spilled over into the juvenile court arena as well, where more and more juvenile offenders have been transferred to the adult criminal court to receive adult punishment for their crimes. Such punitive sanctions are in opposition to the original foundation of the juvenile court system, a system designed more than a century ago to deal specifically with youthful offenders. Ideally, juvenile delinquents would receive the benefit of treatment and rehabilitation efforts, with the belief that, due to their young ages, they should not be handled in the same fashion as adult offenders. As violent juvenile crime escalated in the late 1980s, a more punitive response emerged in which juveniles who committed serious crimes against persons and society would be addressed in the much harsher adult court. Responding to the American public's outcry regarding the perceived juvenile crime wave, many states enacted stronger penalties for juvenile offenders and instituted various mechanisms that made the transfer of youthful offenders to the adult court easier and more efficient. Many states implemented legislative (statutory) waivers, in which the state statutes would identify which cases would be handled by the adult court. Other states provided the prosecutor's office with the ability to determine which court would have jurisdiction over the case. The state of Tennessee, however, did not increase the methods of transfer; instead, this state utilized, and continues to utilize, judicial waiver as its only form of transfer mechanism. This research addresses how justice officials in the state of Tennessee view the juvenile court, their roles in dealing with youthful offenders, and how the determination is made that decides which cases remain under the paternalistic goals of juvenile court versus those cases that are moved to the more punitive adult criminal court. The justice officials in the state of Tennessee overwhelmingly support judicial transfers in which the final decision is made by juvenile court judges, with very little support for prosecutorial or legislative waivers; this support reflects an adherence to the goals of the original juvenile court system established in 1899. / 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, 2006. / February 24, 2006. / Juvenile Transfer, Juvenile Waiver, Juvenile Justice, Juveniles In Tennessee Courts / Includes bibliographical references. / Bruce Bullington, Professor Directing Dissertation; Neil Abell, Outside Committee Member; Dan Maier-Katkin, Committee Member.

Punitive measures taken by the United States criminal justice and juvenile justice systems have expanded over the past thirty years. With punitive policies and practices in place, many Americans continue to express strong support for the harsh treatment of adult and juvenile offenders. There also exists in this country a racialized image of crime. That is, popular and media discourse on crime and punishment commonly connects race and ethnicity with the threat of crime. The equation of race/ethnicity and criminal threat is so well established in American culture that some regard popular discourse about crime and punishment to be part of the rhetorical code of "modern racism." It has been suggested that the increasingly punitive attitudes of Americans toward crime is related to this association of blacks and, more recently, Hispanics with criminality. A similar sentiment underlies the social threat and racial threat approaches to the sociology of social control. According to social threat theory, as the size of the minority population grows, the dominant majority will feel threatened and will respond in ways to directly or indirectly reduce crime. Racial threat theory, as it has evolved, suggests that the relationship between race and punishment is conditioned by the racialization of crime, fear of crime, and the perceived crime threat of racial minorities. The relationship between race-related threat and punitiveness is the focus of this dissertation. Specifically, this dissertation examines associations between race, racial and ethnic compositions of neighborhood, and fear of black and Hispanic men and teenagers and support for punitive measures to deal with adult criminals and juvenile offenders. The data are from a 1997 statewide sample of 2,250 Florida residents. Using OLS regression and controlling for fear of criminal victimization, racial prejudice, violent crime rates, and other factors related to punitiveness, results indicate the following key findings: white respondents are more punitive than black respondents. Whites who reside in neighborhoods with greater percentages of blacks are more punitive toward juvenile offenders. Whites who are more fearful of black and Hispanic men are more punitive. Whites who are more fearful of black, Hispanic, and white teenagers are more punitive. Punitive sentiments in response to racial and ethnic fears are shared by black and Hispanic respondents. / 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, 2007. / May 25, 2007. / Crime, Race And Ethnicity, Punitive Attitudes, Racial Threat, Social Threat / Includes bibliographical references. / Ted Chiricos, Professor Directing Dissertation; Irene Padavic, Outside Committee Member; Gary Kleck, Committee Member.

A large body or research provides strong evidence that parents play a significant role in the likelihood that adolescents will refrain from or engage in delinquent behavior. However, a significant omission in this line of inquiry pertains to the stability of parenting practices during adolescence and the implication of changes in parenting for delinquent behavior and factors known to be related to delinquency. The current study sheds light on these issues by making use of data from the National Institute of Child Health and Human Development (NICHD) Study of Early Child Care and Youth Development (SECCYD), a 15-year study that followed a U.S. national sample of families from the birth of a child to the time the child reached the age of fifteen. The findings of this study reveal that there are significant changes in parenting practices during early adolescence and that these changes are related to changes in delinquent behavior. In addition, changes in the quality of parenting are significantly related to changes in adolescent self-control and affiliations with delinquent peers, providing further evidence that changes in parenting having meaningful effects. Lastly, the observed relationship between changes in parenting and changes in delinquency during early adolescence is almost entirely accounted for by changes in self-control and changes in delinquent peer affiliations. Thus, this study contributes to the body of literature on the relationship between parenting and delinquency by providing evidence that parenting practices change over time and that these changes are related to patterns of delinquent behavior during a crucial developmental period in the lives of adolescents. / 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, 2010. / April 28, 2010. / Parenting, Stability, Change, Delinquency / Includes bibliographical references. / Carter Hay, Professor Directing Dissertation; Lenore McWey, University Representative; Sarah Bacon, Committee Member.

In the past two decades, every state in America has enacted some type of sex crime law, including sex offender registration, community notification, residency restrictions, castration policies, mandatory prison sentences for possessing child pornography, and a host of other sanctions. Scholars have noted that sex crime legislation has been "hastily passed" (Fortney, Levenson, Brannon, and Baker, 2007:1) and that "decisions about what to do with sex offenders are often made without the benefit of theoretical insights" (Kruttschnitt, Uggen, and Shelton, 2000:66) and instead have been in reaction to "unusual and compelling cases" (La Fond, 2005:9). Juxtaposed against these observations is the fact that today we know little about most sex crime policies. In particular, we know little about why they emerged and whether they are, or are likely to be, effective in reducing sexual offending and victimization. To this end, the goal of this dissertation is to contribute to scholarship on and debates about sex crime policies by examining five key questions. First, what is the range of the types of sex crime laws nationally? Second, to what extent do Erikson's (1966) and Jensen's (2007) theories about witch hunts explain the emergence of sex crime laws in recent decades? Third, to what extent are sex crime laws based on theory and research? Fourth, is there variation in public views about sex crime laws, especially concerning use of the death penalty for sex offenders? Fifth, does the U.S. Supreme Court use criminological theory and research in reaching decisions about sex crime policy, and if so, does the Court's assessment of theory and research accord with the actual state of the literature? Data for this dissertation come from a variety of sources, including information about state laws from the National Conference of State Legislatures (NCSL), national public opinion data examining views about sex offenders from the Roper Center for Public Opinion Research, and a number of U.S. Supreme Court decisions. The dissertation is structured around five substantive chapters that address the five questions above. It concludes with a discussion of the study's implications and future directions for theory, research, and policy. / 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, 2009. / June 5, 2009. / Sexual Victimization, Sexual Offending, Sex Crime, Sex Offender Laws / Includes bibliographical references. / Daniel P. Mears, Professor Directing Dissertation; Melissa Radey, Outside Committee Member; Kevin Beaver, Committee Member.

The United States criminal justice system has continued along a path of punitive policies and practices that began in the 1980s. These punitive measures include both the expansion of existing enhancements, such as Habitual Offender laws, as well as new initiatives, such as the Florida Career Offender Registration Act. In the State of Florida, both laws allow for the application of enhanced sentences to defendants who are designated as either "Habitual Offenders" or "Career Offenders." The application of these laws is completely discretionary and as such, state prosecutors seek the designations for only a fraction of the defendants who qualify. Utilizing Hierarchical Generalized Linear Modeling, this study examines whether individual attributes, such as race and ethnicity, impact an individual's likelihood of receiving either the Habitual or Career Offender designation. Additionally, the second level of analysis incorporates county level characteristics into the equation and tests whether these characteristics have either a direct or a cross level effect on the relationship between race, ethnicity and the likelihood that an individual will receives one of the designations. Situational threat is examined as a context for individual level effects in the form of both crime types and specific crime categories. The broad theoretical framework that guides the research is grounded in the social threat and social control perspective. For the Habitual Offender outcome, results indicate that both black and Hispanic defendants have significantly higher odds of being Habitualized when compared to white defendants with similar personal characteristics and legal attributes. The race and ethnicity effect on the Habitual Offender outcome is more prominent for drug offenders and in counties with a higher number of cases per judge, higher drug arrest rate and a higher violent crime rate. Results for the Career Offender sample indicate that both black and Hispanic defendants have significantly lower odds of receiving the Career Offender designation than similarly situated white defendants. Defendants who went to trial and those accused of violent offenses are the most likely to be sentenced as a Career Offender as are defendants sentenced in counties with a higher number of cases per judge and a higher percent of Hispanic residents. / 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. / September 17, 2007. / Social Control, Career Offenders, Social Threat, Habitual Offenders, Sentencing, Race / Includes bibliographical references. / Theodore Chiricos, Professor Directing Dissertation; Joyce Carbonell, Outside Committee Member; William Bales, Committee Member.

Criminological research has consistently found support for the notion that prior offending is one of the strongest predictors of future offending. However, the discipline has not fully explored the dynamics of this relationship – more specifically, what factors may intensify the effects of prior offending on future offending and what factors may weaken the effects of prior offending on future offending. The present study attempts to address this void by examining the potential moderating effects of various risk and protective factors on this relationship. From a neighborhood disadvantage perspective, the implications here are quite substantial. Existing research has provided support for the idea that residents living in a disadvantaged environment are more likely to engage in deviant behavior. Thus, for those individuals in these disadvantaged areas, it is important to explore what happens following one's initial participation in deviant behavior, and whether certain factors may possibly push an individual deeper into a delinquent or criminal career or on the other hand, protect and guard the individual from further engagement in offending. The results presented here suggest that there are indeed certain risk and protective factors that may amplify or diminish the effects of prior offending on future offending. / A Thesis submitted to the College of Criminology and Criminal Justice in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Science. / Spring Semester, 2011. / November 8, 2010. / Protective Factors, Risk Factors, Prior Delinquency, Moderating Effects / Includes bibliographical references. / Carter Hay, Professor Directing Thesis; Eric A. Stewart, Committee Member; Patricia Y. Warren, Committee Member.

In an effort to determine the dominance of the maternal role in offspring pre-dispositional criminality, two families were selected. An intergenerational study was conducted with two families that appeared to share certain characteristics: age, educational achievement, age of first pregnancy. One family provided four generations of data, and the other three generations of information. During the field study phase, each subject was asked to respond to inquiries on a variety of questionnaires, self-report surveys, and a personal interview. The results indicated that (a) females in these two families did participate in numerous criminal acts; (b) their husbands/significant others participated in criminal activity; (c) the females were committing the same types and rates of crime as the males in these families; (d) the females' offspring participated in criminal acts; however, (d) female dominance in producing pre-dispositional children could not be definitively determined. / A Thesis submitted to the College of Criminology and Criminal Justice in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Science. / Summer Semester, 2007. / March 24, 2006. / Pre-Disposition, Criminality, Maternal Contributions / Includes bibliographical references. / Thomas B. Kelley, Professor Directing Thesis; H. Dale Nute, Committee Member; Graham Kinloch, Committee Member.

Due to its pervasive affinity for conceptual abstractions, German criminal law has been said to suffer from a rationalist hubris that leads to the formulation of artificial rules and lacks respect for the realities of life. The following study will examine this hypothesis with respect to one area of German criminal law that is particularly characterized by an abstract, conceptual way of thinking: the area of what in Germany is called "offences against personal freedom". A case where a store detective suggested to a 16 year old female shoplifter that he would abstain from making a larceny report to the police if she engaged in sexual intercourse with him has caused a lot of debate in German criminal law as to the question of whether the detective infringed the shoplifter's "personal freedom" in a way prohibited by criminal law. This debate will be presented and contrasted with the approach Canadian criminal law would be likely to adopt had the case occurred in Canada. The thesis adopts a comparative, analytical approach that focuses on law reform: • comparative, because the question of whether German criminal law does lack respect for the realities of life will be examined by comparing German legal reasoning with Anglo-Canadian legal reasoning. • analytical, because when exploring what German and Canadian law regarding "offences against personal freedom" is, the focus will be on familiar, formal techniques of legal reasoning, such as those which draw on legislative texts, legislative history, underlying principles, academic commentary, fundamental values in the constitution, and theoretical concerns. • law reform, because the question is explored of whether German criminal law can learn from Canadian criminal law how to be more open to taking varying social locations of people affected by criminal law into account. In particular it is asked whether one can reconcile the traditional German conceptual approach that promises certainty of the law and the Canadian contextual approach that is better able to be attentive to equality as a fundamental right. It will be argued that such a reconciliation of approaches is possible and consists in a method that might be called egalitarian conceptualism. This approach unites the advantages of conceptual, abstract legal reasoning with the advantages of contextual thinking by merging equality as a fundamental concept with the existing conceptual framework of criminal liability. The principle "in dubio pro aequalitate" will be added to the principle "in dubio pro libertate".

Due to its pervasive affinity for conceptual abstractions, German criminal law has been said to suffer from a rationalist hubris that leads to the formulation of artificial rules and lacks respect for the realities of life. The following study will examine this hypothesis with respect to one area of German criminal law that is particularly characterized by an abstract, conceptual way of thinking: the area of what in Germany is called "offences against personal freedom". A case where a store detective suggested to a 16 year old female shoplifter that he would abstain from making a larceny report to the police if she engaged in sexual intercourse with him has caused a lot of debate in German criminal law as to the question of whether the detective infringed the shoplifter's "personal freedom" in a way prohibited by criminal law. This debate will be presented and contrasted with the approach Canadian criminal law would be likely to adopt had the case occurred in Canada. The thesis adopts a comparative, analytical approach that focuses on law reform: • comparative, because the question of whether German criminal law does lack respect for the realities of life will be examined by comparing German legal reasoning with Anglo-Canadian legal reasoning. • analytical, because when exploring what German and Canadian law regarding "offences against personal freedom" is, the focus will be on familiar, formal techniques of legal reasoning, such as those which draw on legislative texts, legislative history, underlying principles, academic commentary, fundamental values in the constitution, and theoretical concerns. • law reform, because the question is explored of whether German criminal law can learn from Canadian criminal law how to be more open to taking varying social locations of people affected by criminal law into account. In particular it is asked whether one can reconcile the traditional German conceptual approach that promises certainty of the law and the Canadian contextual approach that is better able to be attentive to equality as a fundamental right. It will be argued that such a reconciliation of approaches is possible and consists in a method that might be called egalitarian conceptualism. This approach unites the advantages of conceptual, abstract legal reasoning with the advantages of contextual thinking by merging equality as a fundamental concept with the existing conceptual framework of criminal liability. The principle "in dubio pro aequalitate" will be added to the principle "in dubio pro libertate". / Law, Peter A. Allard School of / Graduate