abstract: Gender disparity in sentencing outcomes has a long tradition in sentencing literature, with a substantial body of evidence indicating that women offenders are treated with greater leniency over male counterparts. The prior literature on gender and sentencing, however, has ignored broader social contexts within which judicial decision-making occurs. This dissertation attempts to address this limitation by dissecting the nature of gender disparity through ecological lenses. Using federal sentencing data for FY 2001 through 2010 and other complementary data sets, this dissertation, divided into two major sub-studies, has examined the roles of two social contextual variables, such as religioius and political conservatism, in producing gender differentials in sentencing outcomes. / Dissertation/Thesis / Doctoral Dissertation Criminology and Criminal Justice 2015

This dissertation consists of three papers relating to the field of Law and Economics. The first two papers examine the impact of increased judicial discretion on both racial disparities and inter-judge disparities in the federal criminal justice system. The third paper analyzes the effects of OSHA programs on workplace safety, wages, and employment. The common thread throughout this work is a focus on how legal actors and institutions affect substantive outcomes of individuals. / Economics

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abstract: In this dissertation, I examine the treatment and sentencing of American Indian defendants. This work contributes to research on cumulative disadvantage and the role race and social context play to influence federal sentencing outcomes. Disparities in federal sentencing for racial and ethnic minorities are an important concern to scholars and policy makers. Literature suggests that blacks and Latinos are sentenced more harshly than similarly situated white offenders. These findings are concerning because they suggest that minorities are treated unfairly by the criminal justice system, questions the legitimacy of how offenders are processed and treated, and defendants of color who are meted out tougher punishments face substantial social and economic difficulties thereafter. Although the black-white and Latino-white disparities have been identified and highlighted, less is known about whether disparities extend to other minority groups, and consequently little is known about the treatment of these neglected groups. I investigate whether American Indian defendants experience cumulative disadvantages at multiple decision points, disadvantage over time, and the effect of social context on drawing on American Indian disadvantage, the focal concerns and minority threat perspectives. The focal concerns perspective is used to develop hypotheses about how American Indian defendants will receive harsher punishments at multiple decision points. I also use this perspective to predict that American Indian disadvantages will increase over time. Lastly, I examine social context and its effect on punishment decisions for American Indians using the minority threat perspective. I hypothesize that 
social context impacts how American Indian defendants are sentenced at the federal level. Data come from the Federal Justice Statistics Program Data Series, the US Census, and the Uniform Crime Report, with a focus on data gathered from the Administrative Office of the United States Courts and the United States Sentencing Commission. A range of modeling strategies are used to test the hypotheses including multinomial logistic regression, ordinary least squares regression, and multilevel modeling. The results suggest that cumulative disadvantages against American Indian defendants is pronounced, American Indian disparity over time is significant for certain outcomes, and social context plays a limited role in American Indian sentencing disadvantage. / Dissertation/Thesis / Doctoral Dissertation Criminology and Criminal Justice 2019

Compliance programs have grown since the early 1990s and evolved more formally into corporate institutional or enterprise-wide programs with the passage of the Sarbanes-Oxley Act of 2002. Formal institutional compliance programs are emerging in colleges and universities to assist in the management of the myriad of regulations and requirements placed on them by accrediting bodies, creditors, boards, donors, grantors, and federal and state regulators. An effective compliance program provides the structure for the institution and its employees to conduct operations ethically, with integrity, and in compliance with legal and regulatory requirements. The goals of this study were to identify organizational structures that assist large, public universities in effectively managing institutional compliance, the elements that shape these structures, and the benefits and limitations of those structures.