Why do judges and police in authoritarian regimes violate laws in order to support some human rights and suppress others? This dissertation seeks to explain the seemingly paradoxical behavior of law enforcement agents in the post-Soviet world regarding women's rights, press freedom and the rights of religious minorities. In comparative politics and public law scholarship, law enforcement agents are assumed to obediently enforce the will of the political elite, and dare to act against the state only when a change in political power is expected or an economic incentive (i.e. bribery) coexists with a decrease in state pressure. Some authors argue that courts attempt to support human rights groups when institutional limitations are lessened by the state (for example, to attract foreign investment). None of these existing theoretical frameworks help us understand why judges and police violate state law to support some categories of rights but suppress others. Examining why law enforcement agents differentiate between categories of rights helps us understand why they are willing to break the laws of an authoritarian state. Through qualitative analysis of court rulings, interviews, public opinion data and archival research, I found that judges and police act against the will of a repressive state in accordance with their values of justice, which reflect public conceptions of rights in a given country. Public conceptions of rights, in turn, are influenced by the formation of national identities in these relatively new states. Thus, I found that since the public supports press freedom across the authoritarian countries in the study, judges are likely to limit state-prescribed penalties for libel. However, when the public views certain religious groups as a threat to national identity, judges and police are likely to suppress the rights of these groups despite constitutional provisions of religious freedom. The role national identity plays in shaping public conceptions of rights, and the link between these conceptions and law enforcement behavior, provide a vital insight for human rights literature, comparative legal studies and democratization theory.

<p> The focus of this study was to determine the characteristics of successful re-entry programs for youth as they transition back into the educational mainstream. The study was also used to determine the implementation needed for effective inter-agency coordination of social service systems for students to successfully transition into the educational setting. The NCLB accountability measures were reviewed to discover how the measures influenced educators and created a reluctance to accept delinquent youth when they re-enter public school. The three overarching questions addressed in this study were: What inter-agency involvement is necessary in implementing a successful re-entry program? What are the characteristics of successful school re-entry programs for juvenile delinquents as they transition back into the public school setting? Due to the pressures of NCLB accountability measures, what are the reasons educators are reluctant to accept delinquent youth back into the educational mainstream? This study yielded findings showing few schools had few schools had a transition plan in place. Transition data results revealed the process for schools and juvenile officers differ from that of Division of Youth Services (DYS), with DYS having more proactive transition planning protocols. Inter-agency involvement is necessary for successful re-entry plans and involves transition planning, positive parental involvement, increased inter-agency coordination, and positive relationships. This research study also revealed that successful re-entry programs involve consistent communication, progress monitoring, provide protective factors, parent involvement, meet individual needs of students, and provide positive connections. Schools and various agencies must strive to improve inter-agency coordination and collaboration practices.</p>

<p> Technology innovations in visual, wireless communications have yet to be leveraged by law enforcement. These technologies have a future in law enforcement. This limited study has provided evidence that the addition of visual, wireless communication for tactical police commanders enhances situational awareness and speeds decision making. In addition, this study has established that the technology would be accepted for use by police tactical officers once utility is demonstrated. Several issues remain that may delay its widespread adoption. These include unfamiliarity, a police centric design that is rugged, reliable and without impaired vision, and liability and cost. In addition, there is not a current wireless, broadband backbone that could transmit the signals over a large distance. Once these limitations have been overcome this technology has the potential to revolutionize policing and tactical law enforcement. </p>

This thesis set about to achieve three goals. First it discusses street gang research, assessment of the gang problem, and in particular the forces that push and pull American youths into the street gang lifestyle and the gang member experience. Second, it explores how alternative forms of data presentation, such as ethnodrama, blur the boundary lines between art and scientific research and demonstrates that the embodiment of human experience through artistic means enhances our understanding of the gang problem and creates context. Third, it includes an ethnodrama text constructed from qualitative interviews of three former gang members, in support of narrative inquiry research methods, and illustrating how three young men were drawn into the gang lifestyle, what they experienced by being in a gang, and the factors that helped them to leave the gang and lead them to make positive changes in their lives.

The relationship between staff organizational commitment and staff perception of working alliances with youth in juvenile justice settings was investigated. Staff of the North American Family Institute (NAFI) were the subjects of this investigation. Meyer and Allen's (1991) model of organizational commitment with dimensions of affective, normative and continuance commitments was used to investigate staff organizational commitment as an independent variable impacting perceptions of working alliances between staff and youth in juvenile institutions. Horvath and Greenberg's (1994) Working Alliance Inventory (WAI) was used to measure staff perceptions of working alliance. A significant positive correlation was found between normative commitment and perceptions of working alliance using Pearson correlation statistics. Affective commitment and continuance commitment did not correlate significantly with staff perceptions of working alliance. Regression of normative, affective, and continuance commitment with the dependent variable of working alliance showed only normative commitment as significantly impacting working alliance. Age, gender and ethnicity were not found to be significantly correlated with staff perceptions of working alliances.

Increasingly, government agencies are facing the challenge of effective implementation of information technologies that are critical to their digital government programs and initiatives. This dissertation reports two user-centric evaluation studies of COPLINK, a criminal knowledge management system that supports and enhances law enforcement officers' crime-fighting activities. Specifically, these aforementioned evaluations concentrated on system usability and user acceptance in a law enforcement setting. The chapters of this dissertation describe the study design, highlight the analysis results, and discuss their implications for digital government research and practices. Overall, the models used in this study showed a reasonably good fit with officers' usability and acceptance assessments and exhibited satisfactory explanatory power. The analysis also showed that individuals included in the current study exhibited important characteristics common to individual professionals. Compared to end-users and knowledge workers in business settings, law enforcement officers appear to be pragmatic in their technology acceptance assessments, concentrating more on the usefulness of a technology than on its ease of use. Participating officers also attached limited weight to the suggestions or opinions of significant referents. Findings from this study should provide valuable insights to digital government systems evaluation and, at the same time, shed light on how government agencies can design management interventions to foster technology acceptance and use.

This study incorporates concepts from accounting and criminology literatures to develop a model of financial statement variables that provides researchers and auditors with information about the likelihood of fraudulent financial reporting. This study is also one of the first to test whether the predictive ability of fraud indicators has changed over time. Game theory suggests that if fraud firms consistently manifest similar characteristics then auditors will isolate those fraud indicators and react to them. The results show that accruals, market-to-book ratio, and lack of a Big Four auditor are the most influential fraud risk indicators. Fraud firms generally have higher abnormal market returns in the year of the fraud and larger market-to-book ratios compared to nonfraud firms. This finding suggests that managers who commit fraud generally attempt to preempt bad earnings news rather than react to bad news in the form of low company stock price. The results do not suggest a fundamental shift in fraud risk indicators. However, while the lack of a Big Four auditor was not significant in the 1970's and 1980's, it was significant in the 1990's. Fraud firms in the 1970's and 1980's appear to have more debt relative to the industry but are not more profitable. Frauds in the 1990's appear to be more profitable relative to the industry but do not have more debt. This finding may be due to more stock options and other performance-based incentives in the 1990's and a greater emphasis on beating analysts' expectations.

This dissertation analyzes the emergence of the criminal justice system in modern Argentina, focusing on the city of Buenos Aires as case study. It concentrates on what I call the formative period of the postcolonial penal system, from the installation of the second Audiencia (superior justice tribunal in the viceroyalty of Rio de la Plata) in 1785 to the promulgation of the Argentine national constitution in 1853, when a new phase of inter-regional organization and codification began. During this transitional period, basic features of the modern Argentine criminal justice system emerged which I study in detail. They are: (a) institutional subordination of the judiciary; (b) police interference and disruption in the judiciary-civil society interface; (c) manipulation of the initial stages of the judicial process (sumario) by senior police officers (comisarios); and (d) utilization of institutionally malleable penal-legal procedures as a punitive system, regardless of the outcome of criminal cases judicially evaluated.

This study examines the structure of antisocial behavior in 219 juvenile offenders. The study shows, through a series of nested model comparisons via confirmatory factor analysis, that reliable data on firesetting juvenile offenders (n = 85) best fits a three-factor model composed of overt, covert, and oppositional antisocial behavior. The same three-factor model also best fits the data for comparable non-firesetting juvenile offenders (n = 134). It is argued that results from this study support a conceptualization of firesetting as likely part of a pattern of developmentally advanced, persistent, antisocial behavior. Though the same general structure of antisocial behavior best fit the data for both groups, the firesetting group exhibited a significantly higher frequency and variety of antisocial acts. Finally, the present study illustrates and discusses the implications of large methods effects due to source of information (i.e., parent and child ratings) in typical measurement approaches to youthful antisocial behavior.

This dissertation, "Testing the Boundaries: Intimate Violence and the General Theory of Crime" is a test of the General Theory of Crime regarding intimate violence. The investigation is three pronged. I test the applicability of the General Theory to explain the causal structure of intimate violence, intimate offending risks and risks of intimate victimization. Additionally, the meaning for both learning theory and control theory in criminology concerning the link between witnessing parental violence and later delinquent acts is discussed. This current work fills two gaps in the field of contemporary criminology. First, few studies of intimate violence have been undertaken from a criminological, control perspective. Second, this investigation attempts to extend the General Theory to predict victimization risks. The results of the analyses clearly support the applicability of applying the General Theory of Crime to explain dating violence and general crime.