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Upper middle and upper class Trinidadians are equally though differently entangled in the effects of global, regional and local processes of crime, risk and fear as their counterparts from lower classes. A recent rapid increase in violent crime and particularly a five-fold increase in murder rates in under ten years has caused a shift in lifestyle patterns and are imagining of social, public and private space in the country. Upper class groups conjure and employ an image of a classed and raced 'bad man' who is held responsible for increases in crime and gang violence and is the locus for anxieties for fears for personal safety and the future of the nation. My research shows that upper middle and upper classes increasingly assert, re-create and negotiate their class position with reference to changing informal rules of 'safe' behaviour and movement in reference to this conjured 'bad man'. Home spaces are created and fortified against those construed as 'risky'. Informal rules of appropriate 'safe' behaviour are negotiated and emerge through endless talk of crime. This talk re-imagines and reifies nearly all lower classes as 'risky' and the conclusions of this talk invariably lead to greater attempted isolation of upper classes from lower classes. National elections in 2007 and 2010 point to a potential long-term shift away from racialized voting patterns, even as racialized and classed stereotypes flourish. Recent successes of an ostensibly non-racial third political party point to new electoral paradigms and indicate that increases in crime and fear of crime supercede more simplistic racebased allegiances. A paradox, between upper class attempts at increased isolation from crime and continued re-imagining of markers of classed and racialized difference on the one hand, and a perhaps historic change in voting patterns away from long held notions of racial difference on the other hand weave throughout this dissertation and point to the ways in which understandings of risk and crime can influence social change. / Thesis / Doctor of Philosophy (PhD)

Gottfredson and Hirschi's (1990) General Theory of Crime has received extensive attention over the past decade. This dissertation explores the scope and limitation of the theory by testing a wide variety of behaviors against the causal effect of low self-control. Utilizing the attitudinal scale developed by Grasmick et al. (1993), self-control and involvement in fifteen different criminal, deviant, and risk-taking behaviors was measured to test the key aspect of Gottfredson and Hirschi's theory. The sample consists of 450 students from a research university and a liberal arts college. Analysis of the scale reliability reveals more support for the construct validity found in other studies. Furthermore, each of the six sub-components of the self-control scale are tested against each of the behavior indices to further assess scales limitations. In addition to self-control, gender, race, and parental education are used as control variables in the analysis to test the possible variation of the association between self-control and deviance throughout the population. The finding from this research provide more caution to Gottfredson and Hirschi's theory. The behaviors analyzed in this study are only modestly associated with low self-control. Furthermore, gender has a strong impact on all three behavior types leading to the conclusion that self-control is not the sole causal variable in determining who will commit crime and deviance. Race and parental education were not significantly related to the behaviors studied, but the sample is homogeneous in regards to these two variables. / Ph. D.

As an approach to solve the crime problems affecting all the citizens of this country, South Africa adopted the sector policing concept. This approach is also seen as a means of bringing the community and the police closer by appointing sector commanders who do community liaison and problem-solving work in the geographically demarcated sectors. Sector policing is not a strategy on its own, as stated in the Final Draft National Instruction of Sector policing of 2003, the connection between sector policing and community-policing philosophy is very clear. Sector policing it described as a practical manifestation of community policing. The key elements of sector policing are its geographic focus, problem-solving methodologies and community consultation. On 13 July 2009, it (sector policing) became an official policing instrument in the country. The sanctioning of sector policing proposed that in the nine (9) South African provinces, 45 police stations (5 stations per province) implemented sector policing and the remainder had to be implemented before the end of 2012. As of now (2014), the assumption could be made that all police stations in South Africa implemented this strategy. Therefore, it should now be imperative to analyse the implementation in a specific area, for instance Soweto, where it had been in existence for a while, as well as to determine its effectiveness in this area. The results of the study summarily indicated that the efficiency and effectiveness of sector policing in Soweto is predominately reliant on sectors demarcation into manageable sizes and the provision of adequate and sufficient resources. / Police Practice / M. Tech. (Policing)

Behavioural case linkage (BCL) is a procedure that can be used to identify linked crime series, which contain two or more crimes committed by the same person, thereby helping the police to detect and prosecute repeat offenders who are responsible for a disproportionate amount of crime. However, despite the potential benefits of BCL, there are also damaging consequences if crimes are incorrectly linked. Consequently, research has started to test if and how this procedure can work in the most efficient and reliable way. But, the extant literature has a number of important limitations, particularly in terms of (1) generalisability (i.e., there have been few attempts to replicate findings across geographical locations and time periods), (2) ecological validity (i.e., the methodology used to test BCL is not representative of how the procedure is used in practice), and (3) methodology (i.e., there is a lack of research to systematically compare the various methodological/statistical approaches to BCL). The primary aim of this thesis was to address these three important limitations. In terms of generalisability, this thesis has tested the extent to which previous BCL research on residential burglary, commercial robbery, and car theft can be replicated in new geographical locations and time periods. In terms of ecological validity, a number of new methodologies have been developed and tested that reduce the gap between research and practice in BCL by allowing both non-serial and unsolved offences (as well as solved, serial offences) to be included when testing the principles of BCL, and also for these principles to be tested with crime series that contain several different types of offence. In terms of methodology, novel methodological approaches have been compared with the ‘traditional’, status quo methodology for researching the BCL principles, thereby ensuring that the findings reported in this thesis can be compared with previous work. This thesis, therefore, has important implications for theory, research, and practice and the findings are discussed in the context of these. Future research directions are also outlined.

The purpose of my thesis is to analyse and focus on the very actual topic of the Internet and computer criminality. The reason I chose this topic for my research is growing development of technology resulting in the evolution of new types of crimes, which need to be regulated by the law. The thesis is composed of six chapters, each of them dealing with different aspects of the cybernetic criminality. Chapter one is introductory and mainly focuses on the definition of the basic terminology used in the thesis, like computer systems, data, computer crime, internet crime and most importantly cybercrime. Chapter two gives a brief historical background to the relationship between the evolution of the information and communication technology and the appearance of the cybernetic crime. Chapter three discusses on the specifics of the cybercrime by the means of description of the typical cybercriminal, his motives, and his victims and last but not least of the possible prevention measures. The last part of this chapter concentrates on problems resulting from the transnational nature of cybercrime, which creates jurisdictional issues. Chapter four is subdivided into three main parts and provides an outline of the relevant International legislation in the field of cybercrime. Part one deals with the main...