Domestic violence impacts millions of Americans annually and, in spite of the use of rehabilitative programs, recidivism in domestic violence continues to be more likely than in any other offense. To date, batterer intervention programs (BIPs) have not proven to be consistently impactful in reducing recidivism in cases of domestic violence. The purpose of this quasi-experimental, quantitative study was to examine differences in recidivism for first-time male domestic violence offenders who have participated in a BIP and a more recently developed alternative: victim-offender mediation (VOM). The theories of restorative justice and reintegrative shaming frame this study to determine if offenders take accountability for their actions and face the victim in mediation, there can be a reduction in recidivism. Archival data from records of first-time male, domestic violence offenders, between the ages of 18 and 30, who participated in either a VOM or BIP in a county in the Midwest were examined for recidivism 24-months postintervention, and analyzed with an ANCOVA analysis while controlling for age. The findings revealed no significant difference in recidivism for first-time male offenders 24-months post participation in a BIP or a VOM intervention while controlling for age F (1,109) =.081, p = .777. The findings provide support for the notion that restorative justice interventions may be an additional intervention used in cases of domestic violence deemed appropriate for the intervention. The findings from this study can add to the body of research examining interventions to address the high recidivism in cases of domestic violence, which impacts victims, offenders, and communities.

Probation Officers' Attitudes on Illinois Electronic Monitoring Program For Drug Offenders by Erika Jones-Dilworth MPA, Governors State University, 2009 BS, Governors State University, 2007 Dissertation Submitted in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree of Doctor of Philosophy Public Policy & Administration Walden University November 2018

Female delinquency and adult female incarceration rates increased from the 1980s until the early 2000s. Many of these women and girls have been victimized, and their unresolved victimization issues may have led them to criminal behavior which may not be adequately addressed in the juvenile and criminal justice systems. The theoretical framework for this study consisted of 3 developmental theories (pathways, trauma, and addiction theories) that facilitated an understanding of the impact of victimization and criminality in these women and girls' lives. Florida's Department of Juvenile Justice implemented changes to address the victimization issue in the 10 female gender-specific programs in the state. The purpose of this study was to investigate the extent of that implementation by examining whether those programs use gender-specific interventions and if so, whether they address victimization issues. This quantitative descriptive study investigated the correlation between remedial programming, victimization remediation, and the delinquency facility quality improvement (QI) rating in Florida's gender-specific delinquency programs for girls. Using a checklist questionnaire to gather information on programming content and archival data that reported the state QI ratings, a Fisher's Exact Test was used to determine the relationship between the dependent variable and the independent variable. The results indicated that there was no relationship between the QI ratings and victimization intervention. This study's implication for social change includes the use of findings for future programming and empirical strategies, including victimization interventions. These strategies may decrease future recidivism rates for female delinquents and adult criminality.

Early involvement in delinquent behavior coupled with large academic deficiencies increase the chances of long-term offending over a lifetime. A 2012 Texas report on recidivism rates and types of judicial-related programs offered showed that 1-year reoffense rates for youth in secure placement rose slightly from 41.9% in 2007 to 43.3% in 2010. The primary purpose of this qualitative case study was to examine how a Texas-based juvenile probation department coordinated services to address the needs of incarcerated juveniles who are at risk of school failure and recidivism. Maslow's hierarchy of needs framework and Moffitt's developmental classification framework served as the conceptual framework for this study. This case study specifically examined the residential, education, and executive staff's perceptions on addressing school failure and recidivism and how division staff collaborates to provide educational services and behavioral modifications to youth between the ages of 10-13. Staff interviews provided personal perceptions of these collaborative services. The study triangulated data from interviews with three subsets (residential, education, and administration) of the juvenile department that included 4 juvenile administrators and 8 line staff members. Interview data were recorded, coded, and analyzed to identify common themes and perceptions. Identifying effective programs for delinquent youth who are chronic offenders is critical to their successful return to their home schools and can motivate a positive social change in behavior. My research findings indicated that when juvenile probation departments utilize effective collaboration of services with a holistic approach it can result in positive changes in behavior that decrease recidivism and school failure in delinquent youth.

Children who suffered parental abuse or neglect can be returned home if their safety can be ensured following offender treatment. However, some caregivers will continue to abuse or neglect their children upon return home, leading to additional treatment, state involvement, and harm to the child. This study assessed personality differences between child abusers and neglectors who were caregivers by applying a binary logistical regression analysis to the Minnesota Multiphasic Personality Inventory, Second Edition (MMPI-2) scores sampled from archival data for 215 caregivers. Analysis showed that the abusers had statistically significant higher scores on the F Scale ('Faking Bad'), but significantly lower scores on Scale 6 (Paranoia) than neglectors. While trait theory asserts that personality aspects are fundamentally fixed, there are treatment implications for differing personality defects. Even though caregivers who had their children removed for abuse or neglect are currently treated homogenously by the legal system, it was hypothesized that the two groups, abuse or neglect, would have different personality traits. Greater insights into the caregiver personalities can lead to more specific treatment, with separate components tailored to the individual, and improved case outcomes for caregivers reunited with their children after child protective services involvement. The social change implication of this study is the continued safety of children through improved treatment for the caregiver, a decrease in recidivism, and lowered child maltreatment rates in the community through a better psychological understanding of the offending caregiver.

The present study was designed to examine the variations in criminal justice expenditures across states in relation to crime, measures of political party membership, and several control variables that also attempt to explain both property and violent crime. The year, 2009, was chosen for the analysis. Data in the present study were collected by Olugbenga Ajilore (2016) for the year 2009 and supplemented with other state level data. The Ajilore dataset is one of the few datasets that has reliable criminal justice expenditure data across states, which is also disaggregated by type. Criminal justice expenditure data is actually quite difficult to collect across states and is not widely available across states particularly over consecutive years/time. The dependent variables in the current study is the crime rate, which is separated into two categories; violent and non-violent crime. Both variables are important and essential in understanding the effects of police expenditures and political influences. The independent variables are correctional direct expenditures, judicial and legal direct expenditures, police protection expenditures, state legislative composition, state control, and governor’s party. Each of these variables either measures the level of expenditures on crime control, or measures factors that may influence the level of expenditures on crime control. The control variables are imprisonment, population age, unemployment rate, poverty rate, education, and foreign born. These six control variables are utilized to accurately account for the other possible factors leading to the effect of police expenditures on crime. An OLS regression of each criminal justice expenditure on crime was conducted in three models: expenditure/threat Hypothesis Models; expenditure/political party model, and reduced form models. Three equations were estimated for each model to help assess the effects of the independent and control variables on property and violent crime independently. The criminal justice expenditures were used in separate models due to collinearity. Models for total criminal justice expenditures were also estimated to address collinearity between individual criminal justice expenditure measures. The study found that though Republican states increase criminal justice expenditures, this does not deter or decrease crime. The minority threat is also lightly supported in relation to politics and crime which lacks evidence to support the claim of Blalock’s minority threat hypothesis. There is an economic threat that can be seen in the reduced crime models that may indicate that there is in fact a power threat with Republican states. These findings display evidence of social control through politicians, mostly Republicans as the reduced crime models show an increase in poverty and criminal justice expenditures as crime increases. Lastly, the deterrent theory was seen to fail in this study as this research revealed that there is a positive relationship between politics and crime through criminal justice expenditures, specifically police expenditures.

Satisfied employees are essential to an organization, as they are the primary means for meeting organizational needs. Employees who are more satisfied at work are less likely to leave their job or think about leaving their job, less likely to feel burnt out or stressed, and perform better at work. Job satisfaction is particularly important among criminal justice agencies, specifically probation agencies which largely rely on personnel for the supervision and rehabilitation of offenders. Yet the correlates of job satisfaction among juvenile probation staff are largely unknown. Theory suggests that organizational characteristics are influential predictors of job satisfaction across occupational domains. This current body of research is limited due to its predominant focus on institutional corrections, a deficiency in assessing a diverse variety of climate domains and their influence on job satisfaction, and a lack of standard factor analytic techniques. Accordingly, the goal of this study is to address these gaps within the current body of research and examine the correlates of job satisfaction among juvenile probation staff. First, the psychometrics properties of six perceived organizational climate domains (i.e., innovation and flexibility, communication, agency quality, supervisory support, job–related stress, and organizational support) and job satisfaction are evaluated. Second, salient personal and organizational characteristics which influence job satisfaction are identified. Specifically, the model evaluates both direct and indirect effects of perceived organizational climate characteristics on job satisfaction, as mediated through perceptions of job-related stress. Third, the study assesses whether job satisfaction varies across agencies. Towards this goal, the study uses baseline data from the Juvenile Justice – Translational Research on Adolescents in the Legal System (JJ-TRIALS) initiative, a National Institute on Drug Abuse (NIDA) funded research project conducted in seven states with 36 participating juvenile probation agencies. Data are especially useful in the identification of job satisfaction correlates because they provide information on personal and organizational factors for a large sample of juvenile probation staff. This study used a number of analytic techniques including bivariate analyses, factor analysis, structural equation modeling, path analysis, and multivariate analyses. Findings from the current study expand our understanding of the influence of personal and organizational factors on job satisfaction to an understudied population. Overall, juvenile probation staff reported moderate levels of job satisfaction. Furthermore, results highlight the importance of work-place factors and suggest efforts towards increasing job satisfaction and staff retention should focus on the improvement of organizational characteristics.

This research examined the police-media relationship through an exploratory content analysis of news articles indexed as police brutality and/or deadly force published in six newspapers (The New York Times, Los Angeles Times, Chicago Tribune, St. Louis Post-Dispatch, Denver Post and USA Today) between August 9th, 2013 and August 9th, 2015. This timeframe was selected in order to determine whether significant differences exist between articles published in the year before the killing of Michael Brown in Ferguson, Missouri on August 9th, 2014 compared to those published in the year afterward. Specifically, this research examined whether and how news stories pre and post-Ferguson exhibited characteristics of Lawrence’s (2000) event-driven model of news production. Event-driven news stories are indicated by increased frequency of coverage and differences in the types of voices and views represented. Content analysis indicated significant increases in overall reporting on police brutality and deadly force were found in the year after the killing of Michael Brown compared to the year before. Also, there were increases in the types of voices and views associated with the event-driven model of news production (critical nonofficial voices and systematizing views) in the year after the killing of Brown compared to the year before. Finally, Critical Discourse Analysis (CDA) results indicated considerably different discourse construction in news stories indexed as police brutality or deadly force in the aftermath of Brown’s killing compared to similar articles published the year before. Specifically, racial categories are more emphasized and victims of police brutality and deadly force are constructed as more passive and sympathetic after Brown’s killing compared to the year before.

The decision to establish a mental health court in Utah's First District was largely a political one prompted by the growing popularity of problem-solving courts throughout the country. Because this motivation was policy-driven and not needs-driven, the court was established without an ongoing data collection schedule. As a result, barring anecdotal evidence from program participants, the current impact of the court on two key goals-- reducing recidivism and increasing community-based treatment contact--is entirely unknown. The current study aims to provide a summative program evaluation of the first sixty-eight months of specialty court operation by (1) estimating basic demographic and clinical information about program referrals, participants, and graduates; and (2) measuring program effectiveness by examining between-group differences in key outcome measures (e.g., new charges, use of therapeutic services, time to rearrest, etc.) for those referrals who are accepted into the program as participants versus those referrals who are rejected from the program and sentenced to treatment-as-usual. Ideally, the current study will not only provide an evidence-based assessment of local practices at the current study site but will also empirically inform the greater community of mental health practitioners, researchers, and policymakers who are operating in smaller, more rural districts.

This mixed methods study examined the attitudes, knowledge and perceptions of barriers toward Evidence-Based Practice (EBP) among Florida Juvenile Justice Service Professionals (JJSP). Previous research established individual factors such as age, gender, years of professional experience and educational attainment are related to attitudes and perceptions of barriers among social service and mental health professionals, but scant research has been conducted among juvenile justice providers (Aarons 2004, 2010; Rubin & Parrish, 2007, 2012; Jette et al., 2003). Most individual factors were found to have no significant effect on attitude and knowledge scores within this population with exception of gender and major of study as predictors to barrier scores. Qualitative analysis to a question asking JJSPs to list their top three perceived barriers confirmed quantitative results and revealed Lack of Time to be the most frequently endorsed barrier among JJSPs. By adapting existing instruments to measure primary research variables with a new population, this study advances knowledge in both social work and criminal justice fields. The study's results also support the use of Rogers's Theory of Innovation Diffusion and Ajzen's Theory of Planned Behavior