Black and Hispanic students in the United States are suspended at a higher rate and lag behind White students academically. This project study examined student achievement and behavior in an alternative to suspension (ATS) program at a Midwest U.S. high school. The purpose of this mixed methods, concurrent embedded strategy study was to determine if participation in the ATS program decreased disciplinary referrals and improved student performance. This study was guided by social control theory, which suggests that when students are disengaged in the school environment, student/teacher and peer relationships are damaged and students turn toward delinquent behavior. The study sample included 22 students who were referred to the program in 2012-2013, 12 of whom attended the ATS program and 10 (the control) who did not. Quantitative data were analyzed through chi-square analysis, nonparametric Mann-Whitney U and independent t test, and qualitative data were analyzed for emerging themes. The quantitative results showed no significant relationships between student participation in the ATS program, the number of referrals received, and academic performance, and no significant difference in referrals by ethnicity. The qualitative analysis showed six themes describing the program's structural aspects: program structure, goals and vision, parental involvement, staff support, student gains in behavioral and social skills, and collaborative elements. A curriculum plan was created to proactively support 9th graders as they enter high school. These results and the curriculum plan promote positive social change by informing school personnel of the benefits of being proactive in addressing student achievement and discipline through support programs and other interventions, increasing the graduation rate and reducing the current school-to-prison pipeline.

Thesis (Ph.D.)--Indiana University, 2008. / Title from screen (viewed on August 27, 2009). Department of DEPT, Indiana University-Purdue University Indianapolis (IUPUI). Advisor(s): Margaret Adamek, William H. Barton, David Westhuis, G. Roger Jarjoura, Jeffrey Anderson. Includes vita. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 161-184).

Upon assuming the presidency of the Republic of Korea in 2013, Park Geun-hye announced her administration’s priority to address the country’s “Four Social Evils”—sexual violence, domestic violence, school bullying, and unsafe food products. As part of this initiative, the ROK national government urged police officers to implement anti-bullying campaigns and curb school violence. This study examined the effects of Stand By Me: Bullying Prevention and Bystander Empowerment, an anti-bullying presentation conducted by a ROK police officer for an audience of South Korean high school students in spring 2016. The study employed a nonequivalent groups design with a designated treatment group and comparison group, but was limited to a posttest survey only. The focus of the study was whether a police-administered bullying prevention presentation had an effect on Korean high school students’ attitudes toward bullying and their willingness to intervene to stop bullying, and was examined using independent-samples t tests and Mann-Whitney U tests. The relationship between moral approval of bullying and bystander intervention willingness was also examined, as well as the relationships between other key variables and bystander intervention willingness. These relationships were examined via regression analysis. The study yielded statistically significant findings indicating that students who were administered the Stand By Me presentation were less likely to support bullying and more likely to be willing to intervene in bullying incidents compared to students who did not participate in the presentation. Moral approval of bullying had only a minor impact on bystander intervention willingness, whereas perceived peer support, self-esteem, and informal social control had a greater influence on students’ inclination to intervene. Due to the limited scope of this project, it is recommended that future studies and evaluations conducted on Stand By Me and other anti-bullying programs in South Korea utilize more rigorous research designs that incorporate pretesting and random assignment. Nevertheless, given the paucity of empirical research on police anti-bullying initiatives in the ROK, one of the overarching goals of this study is to encourage further dialogue on preventing bullying, one of the endemic ‘social evils’ plaguing today’s youth, in South Korea and around the world, and the appropriate role of law enforcement in this arena.

Indiana University-Purdue University Indianapolis (IUPUI) / No longer is the family the only unit of care for children and their education; schools are now the primary unit of education and are responsible for at least 6-8 hours of student connectedness. Yet, one in every 100 US students is truant. Among students ages 14-17, the number of truants is one in 10. In one township in Indiana, one in every three students is a chronic truant. Understanding why children disengage from school before reaching the compulsory attendance age of 16 is essential. This study explored the relationship of schools’ social bonding opportunities and principals’ perceptions of students’ social bond on rates of chronic truancy in middle schools. Chronic truancy was defined as 10 or more absences reported to the Indiana Department of Education during the 2006-2007 school year. Methods. A cross-sectional online survey consisting of 81 items was administered using Survey Monkey™. The list of participants was generated from the Indiana Department of Education’s online database of middle and junior high schools in Indiana. Of the 429 principals invited to participate, 144 responded. The final sample consisted of 99 public schools. Secondary data was used to compare school demographic characteristics. Results. Using multiple regression analyses, the results showed that schools’ social bonding opportunities and principals’ perceptions of students’ social bonding in middle school were positively but not significantly related to rates of chronic truancy. The variables in the model of best fit accounted for 16% of the change in rates of chronic truancy. Principals reported doing well at creating opportunities for students to attach and be involved in school but that they needed to improve on building relationships to effectively increase social bonding in their middle schools. Conclusions. Student success is dependent on not only what the student brings to the school environment but what the school environment provides to the student. Creating an environment for students to thrive and succeed relies on the opportunities for social bonding in the middle school. Truancy prevention and school engagement is a shared responsibility.

Sports have been proposed as a means of reducing participation in delinquency. One criminological theory that would support this hypothesis is Travis Hirschi's social bond theory. The involvement element of that theory proposes that engaging juveniles in non-delinquent activities reduces engagement in delinquency. However, the relationship between sports and delinquency has not been adequately tested. Data from the first wave of the National Youth Survey were examined by ordinary least squares regression to determine if there was evidence supporting school sponsored sports programs as a means of reducing delinquency. No evidence was found to support the research hypothesis. Involvement in sports actually was associated with an increase in some types of delinquency, though the slope of the regression line was very slight. This study was a piece of evidence bringing into question the legitimacy of the involvement element in social bond theory.

I Sverige har brottslighet och kriminalitet blivit ett utbrett samhällsproblem som diskuteras flitigt i den politiska – och mediala debatten. Politikernas svar på den ökade gängkriminaliteten tenderar ofta att hamna i en diskussion om att skärpa straffen, slopa ungdomsrabatten och ge polisen fler maktmedel för att bekämpa brottslighet än att arbeta förebyggande med målgruppen. Syftet med litteraturstudien är att undersöka vilka konsekvenser före detta kriminella möter när de har gjort valet att bryta med sin gamla livsstil, och att identifiera olika hinder som påverkar deras möjligheter att återanpassas till att bli fungerande medborgare. Betydande forskning från USA visar på att skärpta straff och långa fängelsevistelser är verkningslöst ifall syftet är att minska brottsligheten. En relevant fråga att ställa sig är ifall detta verkligen är den rätta vägen att ta? I min litteraturstudie pekar resultatet snarare på att långa fängelsevistelser riskerar skapa en rad följdkonsekvenser på både individ - och samhällsnivå för tidigare dömda personer som leder till att återanpassningen misslyckas. Men vad är lösningen på problemet med den ökade brottsligheten och hur skulle det kunna se ut istället? / In Sweden, crime and criminality have become a widespread societal problem that is frequently discussed in the political - and media debate. Politicians' response to the increase in crime often tends to sharpen penalties, cancel the youth discount and give the police more authority. But is this really the right way to go? The purpose of my literature study is to investigate the consequences that former criminals face when they have made the choice to break with their old lifestyle, and to identify the various obstacles that affect their chances of being readjusted to become functioning citizens. Significant research from, among others, the USA, shows that harsher punishment is ineffective if the purpose is to reduce crime. In my literature study, conclusions point rather to the fact that longer prison stays tend to result in aggravating obstacles on both an individual - and societal level that make it harder for the individual convicted person to stop committing crimes and return to a functioning everyday life. But what is the solution to the problem with increased crime, and what could this solution look like instead?

Since the regime collapse in 1991, Albania has been going through a democratization process. In contrast to government attempts to introduce a democratic system according to a western model, blood feuds based on Albanian customary law increased drastically and individuals began to seek their own justice by ignoring state and judicial institutions. The incidence of blood feuds increased exceptionally, not only compared with the situation under the communist regime but the crime rate in general. As a result, the Albanian state has appeared not only as weak and fragile but weaker in comparison with the previous communist regime.<p>Although a great deal of research on vendetta is carried out either in the fields of anthropology or sociology of law, this topic has not been studied by political scientists. As a consequence, studies of vendetta in relation to institutional weaknesses are missing. Thus, one of the contributions of this study will be to fill this gap in the literature by explaining the role of state institutions in the continuation and increase in blood feuds.<p>The Albanian case was chosen as a subject for study as it represents a country which following a harsh communist regime has made attempts at democratization with the aim of joining the European Union, and at the same time is characterized by the strong presence of customary law claiming revenge in cases of homicide, despite interventions by the judicial authorities.<p>Therefore, the aim of this study is to explain the reasons for the increase in blood feuds in Albania from 1991 to 2010 by identifying the structure and agency factors impacting the motivation of individuals to commit murders in the name of vendetta.<p>I will make use of historical institutionalism to identify the increasing returns of vendetta and explore the different factors and processes that trigger and underlie the institutional development of Albanian vendetta over time. Historical institutionalism is an approach to the analysis of the evolution of institutions and their outcomes in terms of formal and informal rules that shape the behavior of actors. Hence, understanding the causation and restraining factors in determining the high rates of blood feuds is indispensable. However, because of the lack of attention that historical institutionalism pays to the structure-agency dichotomy, the tools of criminology and more specifically, elements of ‘social control theory’ are required in this study. This theory enables/permits the study of vendetta by focusing on the motivation of the authors of vendetta, looking at the incidence and the forms of the criminal behavior. In order to explain vendetta and its causes, both fear of punishment (belief) and social bonds (attachment, commitment and involvement) have been taken into account.<p>For this study, both primary and secondary sources were combined, such as expert interviews, archival documents and police data, in order to assess the cases of vendettas brought before the courts, judicial proceedings, and the final sentences handed down.<p>The findings show that the weaker the bonds of trust in institutions such as state institutions and the legal system, the more individuals will be involved in blood feuds. The more trust is placed in institutions the less likely it is that individuals will be involved in vendetta.<p>This research contributes to the literature dealing with institutional change and the study of crime rates in transitional democracies. <p> / Doctorat en Sciences politiques et sociales / info:eu-repo/semantics/nonPublished

This is a Nigerian study, which initially aimed to examine armed robbery culture and the youth subculture. With the employment of subcultural theory, the study became intellectually unviable in explaining the primary data. A replacement was made by seeking recourse to anomie-strain theory and control theory to explain the data. Presently, the main aim of this study is to examine the involvement of youths in armed robbery. Specifically, the study will look at armed robbery from the point of view of offenders and the factors responsible for their crime.Armed robbery is a type of robbery aided by weapon(s) to threaten, force and deprive a person or persons of the right to private, public or corporate belongings. Since the end of the Nigeria civil war (1967-1970), the offence has become a problem in the country, occurring almost on a daily basis in the urban areas more than the rural. Armed robbery can take place in residential homes, commercial places, motorways and any other place the offenders may deem necessary to operate. The current criminal climate has made it possible for armed robbers to engage in interstate criminal operations as well.Methodologically, the research is qualitative, involving semi-structured face-to-face oral interviews (open-ended) with 20 armed robbers in prison custody in Nigeria. There is also an unstructured interview with 4 members of the criminal justice system in Nigeria. The analytical framework employed is interpretive phenomenology, to capture the holistic worldview of the offender sample. Secondary data comes from both the Nigeria Police Force and the Nigeria Prison Service records.Findings are presented under four systematic themes: family circumstances, economic motivations, life course engagement, and situational dynamics in carrying out a robbery. Data reveal the four most significant factors in the hierarchy of response (bad friends, money, poverty and corruption) that may account for the involvement of youths in armed robbery. Since the group of “bad friends” is the main catalyst responsible for the involvement of youths in armed robbery, the thesis concludes that this sample of respondents be regarded as a network of criminals who were strained by the unjust social structure in their native Nigeria. Besides, there is need for a Nigerian criminological theoretical framework that offers an in-depth explanation of crime in the Nigerian society.

Despite the general decline in alcohol use among adolescents, binge drinking in this age group remains a serious public health problem. The overarching aim of this study was to examine the association between family structure and adolescents' binge drinking and to what extent this association is accounted for by differences in parental monitoring. The study utilised data from the Stockholm School Survey 2014, involving 12,540 students in 9th and 11th grade in the Stockholm Municipality, Sweden. The analytical sample was restricted to 10,279 students. Descriptive statistics, cross tabulations with chi-square tests, and binary logistic regression were applied in the analyses. Controlling for sociodemographic characteristics including gender, grade, and parental education, family structure was significantly associated with adolescents' binge drinking, where binge drinking was higher among students in the non-nuclear family structure compared with those in the nuclear family structure. However, the association between family structure and adolescents' binge drinking was not accounted for by differences in parental monitoring. In conclusion, the non-nuclear family structure is a risk factor, but also high parental monitoring is a protective factor in relation to adolescents' binge drinking. Accordingly, the findings of the study may be used as a basis for preventive work.

本研究旨在依據美國犯罪學者赫許（Hirschi ）所發展之「社會控制理論」為架構修 訂台灣地區適用之少年犯罪傾向預測量表，進而考驗少年機車竊盜犯及贓物犯行為相 關因素與正常少年、犯罪少年的差異情形。 在研究方法上，以台灣地區北、中、南三地犯罪少年及正常少年1288名為對象，主要 採自陳式「青少年活活適應量表」及「偏差行為量表」為工具，而以多因子變異較分 析、逐步迴歸分析、區別分析及典型相關分析等統計方法分析資料。 研究結果主要發現：ぇ機車組與犯罪組在依附、投入、抱負、信念及偏差行為等因素 上均有顯著差異。え機車組與正常組在依附、投入、信念及偏差行為上均有顯著差異 ，而在抱負因素上無顯著差異。ぉ預測犯罪傾向以偏差行為效果最佳；而預測偏差行 為，則依次以依附、信念、投入、抱負等因素效果較佳。 根據上述發現，研究者提出減少少年機車竊盜與贓物犯罪事件發生之對策，以期改善 少年犯罪問題的繼續惡化。