Our research examines the decision to participate in crime using a dynamic model of individual choice under uncertainty. The motivation for studying this decision in a dynamic framework is twofold. First, it allows us to formulate a theory of rational criminal choice, where agents anticipate the future consequences of their decisions. Second, it permits explanation of the temporal pattern displayed in aggregate arrest data. Across different countries, cities, and time periods, the aggregate arrest rate is a unimodal and positively skewed function of age. The standard static approach to crime offers no insight into the cause of this empirical regularity. We study criminality in a dynamic context by introducing social capital into the economic theory of crime. Social capital measures the extent to which an individual is bonded to legitimate society. The social control theory of crime posits that bonds to society strengthen as the individual ages, increasing the cost of deviant behavior, making criminal acts less likely. This hypothesis is consistent with the temporal pattern displayed in aggregate arrest data. In our formulation, preferences and legitimate income depend on the individual's stock of social capital. Rationality is imposed by requiring agents to take these effects into account. We empirically implement our model using panel data on a sample representative of young men in urban areas of the United States. Estimation is complicated by an omitted regressor problem, which arises because there are two possible future states--apprehension and escaping apprehension. Only one state is realized for each individual and subsequently observed by the econometrician. However, the unobserved choices in the state not realized enter the Euler equations. We resolve this problem by replacing the unobservables with Monte Carlo draws from the conditional empirical distribution of observed outcomes and using a Simulated Method of Moments estimator. Our results provide evidence in support of a social capital theory of crime. We find that social capital affects both preferences and earnings in the legitimate sector. Further, as predicted by social control theory, social capital becomes increasingly important over the life-cycle. This raises the cost associated with crime, making its occurrence less likely.

The crime of infanticide plagued England throughout the nineteenth century, but by the 1860s it seemed to experts and laymen alike that incidences of the crime had reached crisis proportions. The publicity that newspapers gave to the problem sparked public concern; such publicity brought the crime increasingly to the attention not only of middle-class readers but also of medical, penal, judicial, and government officials. To determine whether a crisis of infanticide actually occurred in Victorian England, it is necessary to examine several areas of Victorian history--gender roles and the legal, economic, and social inequities women faced. While a profile of murdering mothers can be drawn from secondary material, this examination of infanticide draws upon primary data from the criminal records of thirty women and two men charged, tried, and convicted of the crime between 1856 and 1878. Both primary and secondary research provides new insights into contemporary fears of the problem, illuminates those characteristics that many murdering mothers and fathers shared, illustrates public reaction to their crimes, trials, and sentences, and outlines the judicial process these women and men faced when they stood before the bar of Victorian justice.

<p> The prevalence of sexual assault and its consequences for individuals and society has been the subject of much research and advocacy even though most cases remain unreported and when reported, rarely move through the criminal justice and legal systems. This study uses a mixed methods approach in order to understand police officer perceptions of sexual assault reports and the factors that might influence their perceptions and decision making processes. Findings indicate wide variability in police officer perceptions of reported sexual assaults as &ldquo;legitimate&rdquo; and perceptions of victims as credible. Officers consider reported sexual assaults involving strangers, the use or threat of a weapon, and evidence of injury, as more clearly legitimate. The majority of sexual assaults reported to the police are considered ambiguous, often because of prior relationship between the victim and suspect, substance use or intoxication, a lack of clear non-consent, and a lack of evidence in general. There is less variation in officer&rsquo;s reported behavioral intentions, indicating that one&rsquo;s procedural response is routine, and all reports are responded to thoroughly. Officers also show wide variability in acceptance of rape myths and attributions of blame towards the suspect. Some officers point out the propensity for false reporting in sexual assault, however, many others counter this assumption, and argue that police officers should never make judgments about the veracity of a reported sexual assault. This research has implications for the way in which first responders&mdash;often police officers, health care workers, social service providers, mental health professionals and victim advocates&mdash;take action in a dignifying manner with those who have experienced sexual assault and have reported the incident with the hopes of achieving justice.</p>

<p> The purpose of this capstone project was to examine known cyber deception techniques used by cyber criminals in order to enhance end-user awareness. The focal point of the assessment was to research the origin of distinctive cyber deception tactics and study cyber terrorist behaviors to identify gaps in current cyber deception research and develop counter-deceptive tactics that protect valuable computer and infrastructure networks within the United States. This capstone focused on the basic principles and techniques of cyber deception, the relationship of denial and deception tactics, cyber deception vulnerabilities leading to human biases and impaired thinking, and counter deception principles that leave computer networks in a consistent state of cyber threat vulnerability. A thorough examination of a wide range of literature and publications concluded that there is a disturbing lack of communication between military, government, and civilian organizations in regards to the threat of cyber security. Despite current research that identifies common cyber deception tactics, readers will deduce there is inadequate communication from the U.S. government to its civilian counterparts stressing the need to work together in developing mitigation strategies to counter cyber threats. </p>

<p> Confirmation bias occurs when a person believes in or searches for evidence to support his or her favored theory while ignoring or excusing disconfirmatory evidence and is disinclined to change his or her belief once he or she arrives at a conclusion. The purpose of this quantitative study was to examine whether emotionally charged evidence and evidence presentation order could influence an investigator's belief in a suspect's guilt. The study included 166 sworn police officers (basic training recruits, patrol officers, and criminal investigators) who completed online surveys in response to criminal vignettes across different scenarios to record their measure of guilt belief. Analysis of variance was used to assess the relationship between the 3 independent variables: duty assignment (recruit, patrol, investigator), scenario condition (child and adult sexual assault), and evidence presentation order (sequential, simultaneous, reverse sequential). The dependent variable was confirmation bias (Likert-scaled 0&ndash;10 guilt judgment). According to the study results, confirmation bias was least evident in criminal investigators with more experience and training, and both emotion and evidence presentation order can influence guilt judgment. The findings generalize to criminal investigators and attest to the importance of working to include and exclude suspects and to withhold judgment until all available evidence is analyzed. Investigators benefit from this study and through their improved decision making, society benefits as well. This study will contribute to the need for professional dialogue concerning objective fact finding by criminal investigators and avoiding incidents of wrongful conviction.</p>

<p> This thesis considers the structural characteristics of online criminal networks from a technical and an economic perspective. Through large-scale measurements, we empirically describe some salient elements of the online criminal infrastructures, and we derive economic models characterizing the associated monetization paths enabling criminal profitability. This analysis reveals the existence of structural <i>choke points:</i> components of online criminal operations being limited in number, and critical for the operations&rsquo; profitability. Consequently, interventions targeting such components can reduce the opportunities and incentives to engage in online crime through an increase in criminal operational costs, and in the risk of apprehension.</p><p> We define a methodology describing the process of distilling the knowledge gained from the empirical measurements on the criminal infrastructures towards identifying and evaluating appropriate countermeasures. We argue that countermeasures, as defined in the context of situational crime prevention, can be effective for a long-term reduction in the occurrence of online crime.</p>

<p> Using an interdisciplinary critical theoretical approach and a mixed qualitative and quantitative methodology this research project aims to better understand the racial identities and perceptions of gang members and the causes of inter-minority racialized gang conflict in Los Angeles County and California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation (CDCR). The research methodology for this project consists of two years of ethnographic fieldwork, one hundred formal interviews, and statistical analysis using the interview data, census data, and data from CDCR. Existing research and theoretical perspectives that could account for inter-minority racialized gang conflict in Los Angeles are analyzed within this historical context, and evaluated against the qualitative and quantitative data produced by this research project and provided by existing demographic data sets. Both existing and novel theoretical perspectives are applied, which tie racialized gang conflict in Los Angeles in with larger macro-historical structures. </p><p> The project begins by analyzing the historical background of racial conflict between blacks and Latinos in Los Angeles. The second factor this research examines is the relationship between racial and gang identities and how these amalgamated identities are culturally defined and differentiated between the black and Latino gang communities specifically, and the black and Latino communities at large generally. Third, this research examines the extent of racial bias among and between black and Latino gang populations in Los Angeles County. </p><p> The dissertation goes on to examine the history of racialized prison gangs and the trajectory of inter-racial conflict between them in California's prisons, as well as the role that CDCR staff and administration play in provoking and perpetuating inter-racial conflict. Following that, the occurrence of inter-minority gang conflict between specific gangs on the streets of Los Angeles is subjected to an intense micro-analysis of specific conflicts between specific gangs in specific contexts. The proximate causes of specific conflicts are uncovered, and their trajectories are examined and analyzed. Respondents reveal the rules that govern interaction between black and Latino gang members in Los Angeles and California's carceral facilities, as well as the rules of engagement as to how targets are chosen during the course of racialized gang conflicts, and how gangs interpret and respond to the intentional or accidental victimization of innocent residents during the course of these conflicts. </p><p> The role local media, politicians and law enforcement officers and administrators play in provoking and perpetuating inter-racial conflicts on the streets of the Los Angeles County is examined. Finally the project concludes with a critical analysis of the role that conflict among and between marginalized criminalized populations both exacerbates and perpetuates their marginalization and criminalization. </p>

<p> In American juvenile law, the judicial transfer decision, or waiver of jurisdiction, is a legal maneuver by which young offenders are diverted away from the juvenile justice system and subsequently processed and adjudicated within adult systems of law. Although transfer decisions have a long history in modern American jurisprudence, social science has largely neglected to perform a comprehensive inquiry of the social psychological underpinnings of judicial waivers. The extant social psycholegal research hints to potential links between transfer decision-making and three categories of variables: (a) terror management and social information-processing, (b) uncertainty management and attributional reasoning, and (c) statutory and nonstatutory sources of influence. Two social theories (i.e., the dual-process theory of proximal/distal defenses and uncertainty avoidance/causal attribution theory), as well as the literature on judicial waivers, provided three alternative predictions about the nature of the transfer decision-making process. The first theory predicts that implicit mortality salience (MS) cues activate the experiential system, including terror-reducing distal defenses. The processing of vulnerability cues by legal decision-makers could undermine their inferences about a given case and encourage biased decision-making via extralegal analysis. The second theory presumes that the social context of legal decision-making is inherently inexact or uncertain. To the extent that cases are perceived as ambiguous, legal decision-makers could be prompted to apply attributional reasoning styles designed to manage uncertainty, manage crime and improve the likelihood of identifying satisfactory decision-making outcomes. Finally, in contrast to both social theories, research purports that transfer decisions emerge from a reconciliatory-type process which differentially weighs a wide array of statutory and nonstatutory sources of influence. In order to examine the three variable-categories within the context of an ambiguous waiver of jurisdiction hearing, a two-part experimental approach was adopted. Most legal decision-making studies that have applied terror management theory have relied on traditional mortality salience (MS) induction methodologies (e.g., death essays) without consideration of natural "social ecologies" wherein MS processes occur. Study 1, a simple four-group experiment with 192 college student participants, compared the impact of traditional MS cues (i.e., death essays) versus ecological MS cues (i.e., death-laden prosecutorial statements) on mock-juror behavior. In Study 2, a mock-waiver hearing vignette was embedded in an experimental-based survey. Sixty-four juvenile court judges provided data regarding the relations between ecological MS induction, social information-processing mode, uncertainty management, attributional reasoning orientation, legal considerations (e.g., the <i>Kent</i> Guidelines), extralegal factors (e.g., punishment attitudes) and judicial transfers. In Studies 1 and 2, the Smith-Cribbie-Bonferroni adjusted partial least squares structural equation modeling (PLS-SEM) estimator was applied for all central statistical analyses. Findings from both studies indicate that legal decision-making is not affected by vulnerability concerns. Study 1 also failed to uncover evidence that the traditional and ecological MS cues were similar (compared to control conditions) in their effects on mock-juror decision making, calling into question certain assumptions about the methods commonly used in legal-related terror management studies. Finally, data from Study 2 do not support the contention that uncertainty-managing attributional processes were active during the transfer decision-making process. Instead, waiver decisions appear to emerge out of complex interactions involving particular legal and extralegal sources of influence. These sources of influence include global and specified retributive and deterrent-based attitudes, the degree of legal experience, the perceived utility of specific Kent Guidelines and perceptions toward both the prosecution and juvenile offender. The closing chapter reviews the limitations and implications of the entire investigation. </p>

<p> Human sex trafficking is the harboring, recruiting, or transporting of a person for purposes of prostitution. Traffickers use social networking sites to lure victims in a process called "grooming." Past research suggests that sexual victimization online could be associated with online risky behaviors, offline risky behaviors (e.g., substance abuse), poor academic performance, and problems at home, among others. The purpose of this study was to identify those psychosocial constructs that increase an individual's likelihood of becoming a victim of online HST. The likelihood of victimization was estimated by examining participants' reactions to realistic vignettes representing messages from strangers. This study hypothesized that executive dysfunction, participation in offline and online risk behaviors, and poor self-esteem would predict the likelihood of victimization. The results from the 168 young, female participants showed that marijuana use, online risk behavior, and self-esteem were found to predict this outcome. Executive dysfunction did not predict victimization likelihood.</p>

<p> There is a general understanding in the financial and regulatory environment that virtual currencies pose a challenge for monitoring and combating money laundering. However, there is uncertainty of the exact threats that virtual currencies poses to the U.S. anti-money laundering regulations. The purpose of this study is to examine the evolution of virtual currencies, clarify the threats that virtual currencies pose to U.S. anti-money laundering regulations, and determine if it is possible for the U.S. Government to regulate and monitor the use of virtual currencies to deter economic crime. </p><p> The methods of research for this study include a literature review of scholarly articles, case studies, statistical analysis, and Internet research from reputable sources. The results of this study will show that the primary reasons virtual currencies pose a threat to U.S. anti-money laundering regulations is due to the anonymity and decentralization of its structure. Any recent attempts at regulating these transactions have been met by the development of third party software that aids criminal organizations in circumventing new regulations. Unless there is a unified effort from world governments to understand how the currencies operate, understand the threats that they create, and to implement new and unique regulations specific to virtual currencies, then virtual currencies will remain the preferred decentralized payment method of most criminal organizations. </p><p> Keywords: Economic Crime Management, Capstone Project, Professor Raymond Philo, Crypto-currency, Bitcoin.</p>