This research examines the content and process involved in developing criminal profiles. To assess the material typically included in profiles and the way that the conclusions are developed, a qualitative analysis of the content of profiles was undertaken. This included, among other things, the characteristics offered, their prevalence, and the most common characteristics by profiling method. A further quantitative study was undertaken employing Multidimensional Scaling (MDS) which revealed three general themes in the advice given. These included Crime Scene, Internal Offender and Offender Characteristic facets, each of which was comprised of features suggestive of that facet. For example, the Crime Scene facet typically described offender actions and their interpretation at the physical location of the criminal event, such as staging and methods of control.The study employed a sample of 49 profilers reflective of the four main schools of thought; Criminal Investigative Analysis (CIA), Investigative Psychology (IP), Diagnostic Evaluations (DE) and Behavioural Evidence Analysis (BEA). CIA profiles were greatest in number with a sample size of 19. There were 14 BEA profiles and 8 each of DE and IP profiles. Together, there were in excess of 3000 individual variables ranging from age, sex and race to employment, geography, mental illness and risk.Results indicate that the vast majority of profilers employ either research or personal belief in forming their opinions, and that physical evidence is used the least in justifying a profiler’s opinion. However, when considering the individual methods, BEA placed the greatest reliance on physical evidence and its interpretation according with the forensic science philosophy of the method. CIA, the method used by the FBI, produced the most characteristics of the sample at 312 across 19 profiles, followed by BEA at 166 characteristics across 14 profiles. IP and DE profiles, with a sample size of eight each, had 90 and 61 characteristics respectively.Beyond these findings, the implication of the research will be discussed and some future direction for this research and the field in general will be provided. These areas include education, training, the scientific method and professionalisation. This thesis will also canvass the issue of whether profiling is an art or a science with particular reference to the research results and the existing literature that has bothered to address this issue.

<p>Few studies have historically assessed the surges and troughs of public perception regarding juvenile offenders across over a century of legislative and social change. Furthermore, a minority of juvenile crime investigations have holistically examined the interplay between changing demographic conditions (notably, economic stability, racial composition and crime rates) with its accompanying ideological shifts. Through a theoretical emphasis on social constructionism and moral panic theory, this dissertation illuminates the cyclical nature of juvenile justice reform and illustrates that panics regarding juvenile offenders are more closely related to fears regarding the maintenance of power and the insecurity that comes with historical change than with an authentic threat of juvenile crime. Over 9,000 records in The New York Times, Congressional record, and Supreme Court decisions were coded and analyzed to reveal three chronological partitions of the social construction of youthful offenders: (1) the 1890s-1930s during which the most destabilizing force to those in positions of power revolved squarely around urbanization, industrialization, and the waves of immigration from Eastern and Southern Europe; (2) the 1930s-1970s during which faith in juvenile offender rehabilitation was replaced with punitive policies stressing deterrence and an increased focus on the "problem" of racial minorities; (3) the 1970s-present which demonstrates the declining discussion of race in print media and legislative debates even as its effects in sentencing and prosecution grow in strength. This dissertation illuminates the ways in which insecurity and panic breed violence and expounds upon that notion to specify that how the violence manifests itself, whether through punitive policies or interpersonal crime, depends on the resources available and the historically-situated social norms. Over time, however, the explicit racial hostility in rhetoric and policy has been replaced with an evasion the recognition that race undoubtedly affects both juvenile justice policies as well as their implementation. In order to combat the inevitable instability that accompanies historical change, a resurgence of dialogue acknowledging the connection between race and juvenile justice is urged.</p> / Dissertation

<p> Contrary to conventional wisdom, the structural determinants of transnational and domestic terrorism are not necessarily synonymous. A domestic terrorism event population was derived by applying definitional criteria to the University of Maryland's Global Terrorism Database. Economic, political, systemic, and social structural determinants were tested with a negative binomial regression on 194 states between 1970 and 2010. Results suggested an inverse U relationship between wealth and the incidence of terrorism. Interestingly, short term economic growth had the opposite effect. It depressed terrorism. Political regimes were categorized into three different types - autocracies, anocracies, or democracies. Autocracies were the least susceptible to terrorism. Anocracy was the regime type most conducive to terrorism. Democratic regimes occupied the middle space. They suffered more terrorism than dictatorships but less than anocratic regimes. Cold War bipolarity systemically encouraged terrorism compared to the unipolarity of the post-Cold War era, suggesting superpower rivalry manifested in more terrorist violence. Social tension effects varied depending on type. Linguistic fractionalization increased the incidence of violence. Paradoxically, ethnic fractionalization impeded terrorism. Religious fractionalization had little impact on terrorism. Among control variables, population and a history of terrorism were directly related to terrorism. Mountain terrain and urbanization were not significantly related to it.</p>

Thesis (Ph.D.)--University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, 2009. / Source: Dissertation Abstracts International, Volume: 70-06, Section: A, page: . Adviser: Antonia Darder. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 156-165) Available on microfilm from Pro Quest Information and Learning.

<p> Targeted U.S. domestic sex trafficking of Native peoples has been documented since the time of Custer (Deer 2010, Smith 2005, Smith 2003). According to a few, geographically specific studies this practice continues today (Juran, et al 2014, Minnesota Indian Women's Sexual Assault Coalition 2011, Pierce and Minnesota Indian Women&rsquo;s Resource Center 2009). The Trafficking Victims Protection Act of 2000 (TVPA), it&rsquo;s subsequent reauthorizations and the Violence Against Women&rsquo;s Act (VAWA) 2013 reauthorization have encouraged activists in Indian Country, defined broadly, to believe that a change is possible within the system if they continue to raise the issue. But what if that strategy is flawed? Despite increasing awareness, it is clear that the United States policy environment has not yet experienced any significant change since the introduction of anti-trafficking law in 2000&mdash;especially for Native America. Using a tribal, feminist, critical race perspective alongside Native Nation (re)Building theory and a grounded, interdisciplinary focus, this study explores prominent public policy perceptions about how widespread the targeted domestic sex trafficking of Native peoples is in the United States. The first of its kind, this study reaches across broad geography and perspectives to locate synergies and ruptures that may also present opportunities for Native self-determination in creating effective Indian Country solutions. It also offers United States public policy suggestions helpful in addressing anti-trafficking legislative inefficiencies beyond Indian Country generally.</p>

The relationship between perpetrator and target, as a factor in school peer sexual harassment, has been particularly neglected (Stein, 1999). This relationship spans nonromantic and romantic interest between peers. This paper focuses on peer relationship, as a dimension of overlap and intersection between peer school sexual harassment and dating violence. My project is a qualitative interview-study of the sexual harassment experiences of eighteen 13 to 20-year-olds, particularly where there is romantic interest involved between harasser and target. The study's findings show school sexual harassment and teen dating violence to overlap and intersect in the areas of behavior (physical or nonphysical), relationship (romantic or nonromantic), and location (more private to more public places at or away from school). Important contextual information about school sexual harassment revealed by the data includes: (1) school sexual harassment occurring in all peer relationships, including dating and ex-dating relationships, (2) patterns of school sexual harassment behavior that resemble obsessive control in stalking and dating violence, (3) the protracted or violent nature of the harassment (like dating violence), and (4) the high levels of upset and injury experienced by the target (similar to dating violence). My results suggest that peer relationship context is critical to understanding significant aspects of peer sexual harassment, including the power and gender dynamics which underlie the behaviors, and to revealing its similarities and overlap with dating violence.

No description available.

Findings that Hispanic youth are at greater risk for delinquency than their Anglo American counterparts, have been used to suggest that traditional Hispanic cultures tolerate or even promote delinquency (Thom, 1997). However, when Hispanic youth are assessed by acculturation level, those most closely connected to the Hispanic culture of origin are at least risk for delinquency (Buriel, Calzada, & Vasquez, 1982; Fridrich & Flannery, 1995). The present study of 527 Mexican American high school students from two-parent families investigated how acculturation may function to minimize the risk for delinquency. Results indicate that Mexican American adolescents' reduced affiliation with Mexican culture is related to lower levels of the traditional Hispanic cultural value of familism and that familism is related to parent-adolescent processes linked to a reduced risk for delinquency, specifically parent-adolescent attachment and parental monitoring. Results also suggest that familism mediates the relationship between acculturation and delinquency through its effect on parent-adolescent processes related to a reduced risk for delinquency. Some gender differences were noted in follow-up analyses. For girls, only maternal monitoring was significantly related to a reduced risk for delinquency. For boys, only mother-son attachment was related to a reduced risk for delinquency. These findings are consistent with a causal model in which decreasing levels of familism help to explain the relationship between acculturation and delinquency to the extent that familism promotes parent-adolescent processes that are related to a reduced risk for delinquency, and suggest that traditional Mexican cultural values function as a protective factor for Mexican American youth and not as a risk factor. Furthermore, traditional gender role values may play a role in explaining the relationship between family processes and a reduced the risk for delinquency for Mexican American adolescents. This study suggests that relevant traditional Hispanic cultural values should be considered in designing and executing delinquency prevention and intervention programs aimed at Hispanic youth.

A growing body of scientific literature suggests that when individuals are asked to write about personally upsetting experiences, significant improvements in physical health are found. However, some attempts to replicate these findings and establish causal relationships between disclosure and health have yielded inconsistent results. Thus, in an effort to implement a narrative therapy utilizing a less typical sample, Pennebaker's self-guided writing therapy was utilized as an intervention for incarcerated women who had experienced traumatic events. Volunteer participants were randomly assigned to either the traumatic (experimental) or trivial topic (control) writing group, and were asked to write on these topics daily for four days. Objective medical utilization data was collected for the 12 weeks pre-intervention through 12 weeks post-intervention, and was supplemented by participant self-report measures. Institutional misconduct data was also collected for this period. No decreases in medical utilization or institutional misconduct were found. However, a significant increase in mental health utilization was demonstrated by the treatment group following the intervention. Implications of these findings and suggestions for future research in this area are discussed.

Youth-perpetrated domestic violence is one type of family violence that has lacked rigorous investigation (Paulson, Coombs, & Landsverk, 1990). Although recognized as a social problem for approximately 40 years, scant attention has been devoted to treating this problem. Only recently have researchers begun to explore the characteristics and dynamics within youth-instigated parent abuse (Livingston, 1986; Lystad, 1986; Monahan, 1981). This project seeks to add to the font of knowledge of youth-to-parent domestic violence. Social learning, stress, and family systems theories were used to form an integrative framework which identified individual and family deficiencies in anger management, stress reduction, and communication skills. This program modified and condensed Neidig and Friedman's (1984) couples conflict containment program into a family-focused treatment regimen of four, two-hour weekly group sessions, with family interview sessions pre- and post-treatment. The three areas of deficiencies were addressed within treatment. Specifically, this research evaluated the effectiveness of a family therapy group program for domestically violent adolescents and their single mothers. Conditions anticipated to change as a function of treatment were measured at intake and again at program closure. The outcome variables were measured by self-report scales on the youths' and parents' psychological and physical acts of abuse, and the youths' and parents' self-reported anger. The clinician completed a measure assessing the youths' psychosocial and emotional functioning pre- and post-treatment, also. Simple factorial analyses of variance reflected significant reduction in youth physical abuse, youth psychological abuse, parent physical abuse, parent psychological abuse, and youth multidimensional functioning scores for the treatment groups, as compared to the waiting list control group. Overall, this program demonstrated modest levels of effectiveness. It was successful in reducing psychological and physical violence for both parents and youth, and in improving the youths' psychosocial and emotional functioning. It did not, however, reduce anger for either youth or parent. These findings suggest that while anger may still be an issue for these families, acting it out in violence against one's family member can be deterred by teaching alternative methods of anger expression and stress management, and intrafamily communication.