<p>The purpose of the current content analysis was to identify response trends concerning social connections within the prison community in relation to participation in available programs and activities in 181 surveys completed by long-term inmates incarcerated at Louisiana State Penitentiary in 2003. As social connectivity has been linked to decreased levels of violence and rule infractions, and this group of inmates will likely be the responsibility of the state for the rest of their natural lives, it is important to investigate the connections that they share with other inmates. The current analysis addressed the following three questions: Are the number of programs that inmates participate in and their rating of connection to the prison community related? Which programs do the inmates at Louisiana State Penitentiary view as the most beneficial in aiding their connection to the prison community? What factors do inmates identify in their selected programs as valuable to forming and maintaining social connections within the prison community? In order to answer these questions, survey responses concerning inmate program participation, reasoning behind participation, and indications of connection within the prison community were input into a spreadsheet. The separated data was then subjected to content analysis. The program participation was compared to indicated level of prison connection. Written explanations of participation, in particular programming, were examined for similarities amongst all respondents. Results suggest a positive correlation between program participation and an increased sense of connection with the prison community, as well as concern for the well-being of others. Suggestions for future research include in-person data collection specifically designed to investigate inmate connections with the prison community and program participation, and an interview versus survey structure.

<p> While there is considerable research on active shooters, civil liberties, and security in school, there is only limited research that focused upon the parent&rsquo;s perceptions. Parent&rsquo;s perceptions affect children&rsquo;s success in learning and influence children&rsquo;s perceptions on feeling safe in school. The purpose of this study is to use a quantitative correlational study to evaluate the parent&rsquo;s perceptions as they relate to sacrificing civil liberties for increased school security. A specific focus is upon parents with children in high schools within the United States. The theoretical basis for this study is the decision making theory which assumes rational behavior. The study required the creation, validation, and testing for reliability of the sacrificing civil liberties for security survey instrument. The sampling of 254 parents from throughout the United States was completed utilizing a web-based survey. The results of this study identified a significant relationship between every subscale of sacrificing civil liberties (SCL) and both predictors Trust in Government (TIG) and Right Wing Authoritarianism (RWA). No relationship was found between educational levels and SCL. A relationship with the predictor age was found with the SCL subscales active monitoring and passive monitoring. Finally, a relationship with the predictor gender was found with the SCL subscale active monitoring. These findings indicate that parents are willing to sacrifice some of their children&rsquo;s civil liberties within certain constraints. Based upon the results of this study, a conclusion can be drawn that parent&rsquo;s perceptions are influenced by many of the predictors. The largest relationship was with the predictors TIG and RWA. School officials, law enforcement, and government officials can use these results to assess the acceptability of their actions of increased security while carefully limiting the impact upon student&rsquo;s civil liberties.</p>

<p> The United States is one of the top destination countries for human trafficking, and Florida has the third highest number of reported cases of human trafficking. Despite the severity of this issue, Florida anti-trafficking legislation, reintegration programs, and awareness campaigns tend to contribute to the invisibility of the victims and undermine their recovery and reintegration into society, especially when the victims are immigrants. This project uses a multi-method approach including content analysis of anti-human trafficking campaigns to argue that portrayals of a &ldquo;perfect victim&rdquo; only amplify stigmatization and discrimination against immigrant victims. Through in-depth interviews and ethnographic observation highlighting the voices of immigrant survivors, law enforcement and service providers, I analyze the individual and structural challenges to reintegration. Using these insights, I offer several recommendations about the type of services and training necessary to help trafficking victims recover from their trauma and rebuild their lives. </p>

<p> This thesis will demonstrate the ways in which Mailer treats the <i> Gilmore v. Utah</i> case, the space of the courtroom, and the legal system that Gary Gilmore challenged. <i>The Executioner&rsquo;s Song</i> can be used as a document of sorts, displaying changing attitudes within the traditional American fascination with marginal characters, death-row inmates specifically. This thesis also argues that Mailer presents a man who believes in the law and in upholding the sentences that are given to those who break it. Additionally, Mailer exploits the space of the courtroom and the state of Utah as places in order to establish a discussion regarding capital punishment and criminal figures in the United States. Finally, this thesis will look at the specific way that Mailer presents the legal facts of the case and the liberties he took with these details in order to construct his &ldquo;true-life novel&rdquo; in a very particular way.</p>

<p> This study examines the national criminal justice system&rsquo;s and the state of Tennessee criminal justice system&rsquo;s policies in terms of how they influence citizens&rsquo; need for prisons with the private sector's desire for profits and their effects on the incarceration rate of African American males in the state of Tennessee. There is an important, often neglected correlation among prison sentencing, felony disenfranchisement, voting and the continuing problematic issues of race in America, particularly in Tennessee. Tennessee serves as a representative case study for which to examine local, state, and national criminal justice system, disparate outcomes and social inequality. The research therefore investigates ethically questionable public-private business relationships and arrangements that contribute to socially-constructed economic policy instruments used to fulfill Conservatives and Whites supremacists&rsquo; objectives for White domination in the State. Through mass incarceration and felony disenfranchisement, African Americans&mdash;in particular, African American males, have been discriminated against and systematically excluded from political participation, employment, housing, education and other social programs. This dissertation utilizes the Racial Contract Theory and Racial Group Threat Theory (Racial Threat Theory or Group Threat Theory) to investigate the issue. The Racial Contract Theory suggests that racism itself is an intentionally devised institutionalized political arrangement, of official and unofficial rule, of official and unofficial policy, socioeconomic benefit, and norms for the preferential distribution of material wealth and opportunities. The Racial Group Threat Theory suggests that growth in the comparative size of a subordinate group increases that group&rsquo;s capacity to use democratic political and economic institutions for its benefit at the expense of the dominant group.</p><p> This dissertation therefore first hypothesizes that race, mass incarceration and felony disenfranchisement are employed to influence election outcomes in Tennessee. The second hypothesis that profit-seeking motive or other forms of economic incentives contribute to racist policy in the criminal justice system of Tennessee. The secondary data for this study were collected from books, scholarly articles, and online sources using the document analysis technique. The primary data were collected using national, state, local government reports and expert testimonials already conducted.</p>

<p> The 9/11 Commission Report opined that part of the problem in preventing the 9/11 terrorists attacks was the lack of community partnerships which fuse community and law enforcement members in efforts to identify suspicious terrorist behaviors. The lack of community partnerships essentially reflects the absence of capable guardians, which contribute to the increased risk of terrorism. A literature review emphasized the community-policing concept has imparted the same goals and strategies applied in the past for partnerships in crime prevention, and complements prevention efforts against terrorism in homeland security. Few studies have focused on the guardian construct of the routine activity theory (RAT) sociology theory. The lack of federal guidance towards specific anti-terrorism programs for local law enforcement and community members after the 9/11 terror attacks with current emerging domestic terror threats continues to be problematic. The purpose of this qualitative explanatory holistic case study was to explore how the Los Angeles Police Department (LAPD) and Los Angeles community members perceived their partnerships toward anti-terrorism measures taken to address the current lack of federal anti-terrorism guidelines. The unit of analysis consisted of the LAPD along with the single phenomenon consisting of the unique LAPD iWATCH anti-terrorism program. Eighteen participants for the study were purposefully sampled with semi-structured interviews conducted. Participants consisted of ten LAPD law enforcement participants and eight Los Angeles community members. The researcher employed the constant comparative method (CCM) to identify emerging themes among interviewee responses. The CCM method enabled the determination of codes, which were sorted into themes from interviewed participants. Four key themes and ten associated concepts were derived from the data analysis. The findings revealed the RAT guardian construct complements both the iWATCH and community-policing concept in anti-terrorism efforts. The findings also revealed the apparent increase of youth involvement in terrorist organizations, make it is necessary to promote greater awareness among the impressionable youth against terrorist radicalization and recruitment. These findings fill a void in the RAT guardian construct literature, as these variables can play a greater role in anti-terrorism prevention efforts. Recommendations for practice included community and law enforcement leader&rsquo;s improvement regarding the level of awareness and application of the LAPD's iWATCH community based anti-terrorism program. Recommendation for future research included a quantitative study of the guardian construct in anti-terrorism efforts against emerging terror threats.</p>

<p> The Nigerian government has emplaced counterterrorism policy measures to combat Boko Haram terrorism since the group became violent in 2010. However, there is a gap in the understanding of how these policies were developed and implemented. Such knowledge may offer suggestions as to how these policies can be improved. The purpose of this qualitative case study was to explore and describe the development and implementation of counterterrorism policy towards Boko Haram in Nigeria during 2009&ndash;2015. Scott&rsquo;s institutional theory and Baumgartner&rsquo;s punctuated equilibrium theory constituted the study&rsquo;s theoretical foundation. Interview data were collected from individuals selected using a purposive and criterion sampling strategy who played prominent roles in the development and implementation of the policy as well as those who were its beneficiaries. Data were analyzed using content analysis and coding. Key findings from this study provide an understanding of how the policy was developed and how it is being implemented and might be improved. Recommendations include the development of a holistic strategy involving both soft and hard approaches. Collaboration between stakeholders in the security sector and key community leaders in northeast Nigeria is crucial to active counterterrorism effort. The insights from the study on Nigeria&rsquo;s past counterterrorism policy development and implementation may assist policy makers in making improvements in their mechanisms and strategies for actively fighting Boko Haram terrorism in Nigeria. Policy makers in other African countries may also find the outcomes of this study useful as they provide a potential blueprint for counterterrorism policy development and implementation.</p><p>

This dissertation analyses the survival strategies that wealthy people in Mexico City have designed and implemented to protect themselves from kidnapping with special focus on household employment relationships. This particular crime has demonstrated a particular evolution in the last 20 years that deserves analysis. Once a political crime, it became an economic crime that at first only targeted wealthy individuals and then over time began targeting working class victims. Based on extensive qualitative fieldwork in Mexico City which included a year in the field, 78 interviews with employers, employees, kidnapping victims and members of the police forces and justice system and the creation of a news reports database this thesis presents a detailed history of the evolution of kidnapping in the period 1968-2009. This is followed by an in depth analysis of the strategies elites use to protect themselves from this crime. Special attention is focused on the hiring process of household employees, namely drivers, as evidence suggests that most kidnappings are organized or facilitated in some way by a close collaborator of the victim. The hiring process is approached as a problem of trust. Signaling theory is the main framework used for the solving of this problem, as well as some ideas found in transaction cost economics, namely vertical integration. The results point towards strategic behavior from the actors involved that seeks to minimize the risk of being kidnapped for the employer. Signaling helps us uncover the specific mechanisms by which employer establish their prospective employees’ trustworthiness. The use of informal social networks made up of strong ties is one of the most salient mechanisms used to guarantee honest employees and this, together with a composite set of properties is signaled throughout. This thesis contributes to the literature on crime in Latin America as well as to the sociological literature on signaling, a branch of analytical sociology.

Juvenile delinquency continues to be a major social problem in the United States. One of the more salient problems with the juvenile justice system in the United States is its staggering incarceration rate, which poses a significant problem for youth exposed to the juvenile justice system, and the community as a whole. The purpose of this qualitative case study was to understand the perspective of the program facilitators about the effectiveness of the restorative justice program in reducing recidivism for African American males aged 12 to 17 in Baltimore City's urban community. This study relied upon restorative justice theory as conceptualized by Braithwaite as the theoretical framework. Using intrinsic case study design, data were collected from 7 restorative justice facilitators, who participated in face-to-face interviews using semistructured, open-ended questions. Miles and Huberman's qualitative content analysis was used to analyze the data and to record emerging themes and patterns. The key finding of this study indicates that facilitators believe restorative justice results in a reduction of the recidivism rate specifically through the conferencing program when Braithwaite's reintegrative shaming is incorporated into the process. According to the program facilitators, the conferencing program is effective in reducing juvenile recidivism as it promotes transparency and openness to all stakeholders through being very clear and upfront on all levels with the juveniles, parents, and volunteers. As such, there are implications for positive social change by involving all the stakeholders---family, community, policy makers, and juvenile justice practitioners---that may result in reduced incidences of juvenile offending, thereby promoting safer communities.