Guided by traditional and micro-level theories, the present study seeks to identify the relationship between race/ethnicity and risk factors in the Florida juvenile justice system. Central to this explanation is the understanding that racial biases and stereotypes have been shown to influence the decision-making of probation officers. The objectives are to examine the extent that race and risk factors influence court outcomes, in addition to the extent to which individual level risk factors influence court outcomes. The results provide insight into the relationship between the influence of racial biases and stereotypes of probation officers and juvenile risk assessment scoring.

This descriptive study was designed to determine whether substance abusers could be differentially characterized by past involvement in crimes and, further, whether there is a relationship between the type of substance abused and the degree of violence of the crimes committed. By comparing the socio-demographic characteristics, substance-use, and strain-inducing events reported by 598 residential and outpatient treatment seekers in the Kentucky Treatment Outcome and Performance Pilot Studies Enhancement Project, this study provides further understanding of the crime-substance relationship. This study utilized Robert Agnew's 1992 general strain theory. Results suggest that substance addicts and substance users can be characterized in terms of their previous involvement in crime and their perceptions of personal strain. However, further differentiation between nonviolent and violent criminal offenders and type of substance used is not substantiated by findings presented in this study.

This study examines the sociodemographics, drug use, criminal, and treatment histories of 598 residential and outpatient legally coerced drug treatment seekers in the Kentucky Treatment Outcome and Performance Pilot Studies Enhancement Project. Analyses examined whether users/addicts entering chemical dependency treatment under legal coercion differed from nonlegally coerced treatment seekers. Stanley Cohen's theoretical model of social control provided the theoretical framework for the study. Results showed demographic and behavioral differences were noted between respondents under no coercion and those under legal coercion on gender, age, educational status, pretreatment criminality and current treatment modality. In addition, differences between the legally coerced and not legally coerced clients varied across geographic regions.

The Shackleford Marijuana Perception Survey is a series survey conducted on criminal justice students at Georgia State University. The current survey design is targeted towards determining perceptions of marijuana related issues at GSU related to the theoretical concepts of Social Learning Theory and the Gateway process of substance use escalation. The currentfindings will include the responses of 163 students in three criminal justice related classes. The major focus of the analysis will be the comparison of the results of the “marijuana knowledge test” section to the likert scale opinion section and the overall positive or negative opinion score for each respondent. It is the goal of this research is to measure and eventually tack changes in the opinions of students taking criminal justice themed classes at GSU as they pertain to marijuana and related issues. This research is called for by the increasing interest by State Legislations, and recently the federal government, in the reform of marijuana laws and policing practices. Understanding this, and other, samples’ level of knowledge and their relative opinions about this topic is needed in order to help formulate effective and efficient policy reform.

This study aimed to examine previous empirical literature indicating that death penalty support contains a divide among Blacks and Whites and a gap among males and females. Previous literature has indicated that there has been a persistent racial divide and gender gap in death penalty support that has spanned over 60 years of research. Attempts to attenuate these divides have failed to fully explain why Whites are more likely than Blacks to support the death penalty and men are more likely than women to support the death penalty. This study proposes the use of empathy to control for these divides because research has indicated that those who are more empathic tend to be less punitive. Using data collected from a survey conducted on Amazon’s Mechanical Turk, a paid task website, this study attempted to attenuate the racial divide and gender gap by controlling for empathy. The sample consisted of 403 usable surveys that contained questions that measured sociodemographic characteristics, three measurements of empathy (cognitive, affective and ethnocultural), death penalty support, and attribution styles. The results indicated that there was not a racial divide or gender gap in death penalty support despite over 60 years of research indicating otherwise. Furthermore, this study failed to find a significant relationship between cognitive and affective empathy with death penalty support. This study did find a relationship between attribution styles and death penalty support as well as ethnocultural empathy with death penalty support. Individuals who scored higher on the situational attribution style were less likely to support the death penalty. Those who scored higher on the ethnocultural empathy scale were also less likely to support the death penalty. Future research should refrain from testing with Amazon’s Mechanical Turk as was not generalizable to the United States population. Research should be continued on different samples that have been shown to be more reliable than online surveys. Finally, research should be continued beyond empathy to examine what effects other controls have on the racial divide and gender gap in death penalty support.

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Although criminality among mentally ill individuals is a well-documented phenomenon, limited research has focused on specific factors that need to be addressed to combat this issue. Utilizing the theoretical framework of Shaw and McKay’s (1942) Social Disorganization Theory, in conjunction with collective efficacy (Sampson et al., 1997) and social capital (Coleman, 1988), different factors were explored in an attempt to discover their relationship with recidivism. Using secondary data from Criminal Justice Drug Abuse Treatment Studies, variables such as homelessness, unemployment, and religious importance were analyzed in relation to rearrest rates from 889 parolees nine months post-release. Marriage, sex, and age were controlled for. A relationship was found between unemployment and rearrest; however, no relationship was found between rearrest and homelessness or religious importance among this sample. Results from this study could contribute to the future implementation of programs aimed at assisting mentally ill offenders who are being released from confinement.

Adolescent alcohol consumption is a topic that has been well-researched to date due to the dangers it can pose. A variety of factors may work to contribute to the habits these adolescents develop. One factor that has not been extensively studied is the impact of locations on drinking decisions. Location provides a perspective on how various social factors can intersect to dictate where and when young people will choose to consume alcohol. Most previous literature has focused on the alcohol usage found at parties or bars, but the current research wishes to expand this idea to other locations, such as a friend’s house and the school setting. By identifying these locations and seeking to determine whether various factors impact drinking choices, we can better understand the problem. The current study did so by utilizing data from the Monitoring the Future (MTF) Project. Results revealed that certain locations were more common than others, and that some demographic and social characteristics may influence this fact. Results are discussed, as are limitations and suggestions for future research.

There are many ways that people can form an opinion about law enforcement even if they have had a personal interaction with someone who works in the field. This idea has always been interesting as there needs to be some type of understanding when it comes to this certain viewpoint. There can be many factors that result in having a certain perspective on law enforcement in general like their background growing up, hearsay from close relatives, friends, and whatever they have seen up close in person. This study is going to aim at a specific area of how people view law enforcement from being exposed to certain types of movies, television shows, and news outlets. This idea has been discussed but it does not really dominate too much of the political arena. This study is designed to examine the perceptions of college students, good or bad, in regard to what they were exposed to growing up watching on television that included law enforcement. Data were obtained via surveys that were given out to 104 students at East Tennessee State University. Analysis revealed that there was no significant relationship between the types of media that the college students watched that shaped their current perceptions of policing.

Each year, hundreds of thousands of youth move through juvenile justice systems in the United States, and the number of female offenders is increasing. At the probation level, there appears to be a lack of services, such as mentoring, mental health services, sex education, and counseling, to meet the gender-specific needs of female juvenile delinquents in rural settings. The purpose of this study was to discover county probation officers' perceptions of girls' needs and the officers' decision-making processes related to recommending services. This case study was based on feminist criminology theory. The research questions sought to learn how probation officers working with female juvenile offenders in a rural county describe their roles in the supervision process and how they decide which gender-specific services are most appropriate. Three probation officers in a rural jurisdiction in a northeastern state were interviewed, and the responses were coded and analyzed using thematic content analysis. Findings indicated that the officers neither viewed girls differently nor felt the need to treat the genders differently, even though their responses revealed that female youth are more often subject to truancy, promiscuity, and running away than male youth. The primary recommendation resulting from the study is to implement gender-responsive programs to meet the diverse needs of delinquent girls. Such programs would offer female youth more guidance and rehabilitation, potentially reducing future offending. This study has implications for positive social change in informing those serving in the youth criminal justice field, and families involved in the system, about the gap in understanding and implementing gender-specific strategies to meet the needs of rural female youth in conflict with the law.