Title from title page of PDF (University of Missouri--St. Louis, viewed February 22, 2010). Includes bibliographical references (p. 192-201).

This thesis investigates the functions and roles of victim support groups and their leaders in Northern Ireland. In doing so, this thesis employs social capital theory as a conceptual apparatus for understanding leadership roles and the functions of victim support groups. This thesis is the product of a qualitative case study of victim leaders in Northern Ireland. The data was collected through qualitative semi-structured interviews with victim support group leaders and policymakers. In the findings chapters of this thesis, a typology of leadership emerges from the data, revealing three distinct types of leaders – Shepherds, In Loco Parentis and Social Innovators – that help explain the roles of victim leaders and the reasons why they engage in certain types of group activities over others, specifically, activities which contribute to bonding, constriction or bridging social capital. The findings reveal that one of the main roles of victim leaders centers around the bonding and bridging of social capital in their groups. Consequently, around 80 percent of victim support groups were found to be bonding, whereas only 20 percent of groups were bridging. Moreover, around 20 percent of victim support groups were engaged in dysfunctional bonding, possibly leading to constriction. These findings have negative implications for the social inclusion of victims, as well as the social cohesion of wider society. This thesis argues that the reasons why victim groups bond, bridge or constrict is directly related to two factors: the type of leadership employed in each group and government policies and funding strategies that reinforce exclusivity and fail to encourage bridging. This thesis also makes significant contributions to the scholarly literature on Northern Ireland’s victims, government policy and social capital theory. The conclusion of this thesis argues that social capital theory and constrict theory both fail to fully explain the roles of victim groups and their leaders because the conceptualizations of these theories do not take into account the effects of leadership in groups and social trust that has been traumatized by protracted political violence. Thus, this thesis re-conceptualizes social capital theory and constrict theory by adding traumatized trust and leadership as important variables which help explain the roles of victim support groups and their leaders in divided and transitional settings. Finally, this thesis offers suggestions for policymakers and victim leaders on a social capital strategy that aims to increase positive forms of social capital and discourage constriction.

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Efforts to explain the causes of victimization have been limited to the pioneering work of von Hentig, a few post hoc explanations of research findings, and scattered references to victim provocation. Victimologists have not only demonstrated little concern with the causes of victimization, they have also failed to give sufficient attention to the offender in their discussions of victimization. Explanations of victimization are necessarily related to theories on the causes of deviant behavior and changes of the offender since the offender's behavior is the direct cause of victimization. A review of the literature on victimization, the etiology of deviant behavior, and the operation of the legal system reveals that six different hypotheses about the causes of victimization have been advanced. These hypotheses predict that the probability of victimization is determined by: (1) exposure to offenders; (2) social distance from offenders; (3) economic attractiveness; (4) high status; (5) legal risk; and (6) physical intimidation. The image of the deviant and/or the motivations to deviate implied by each hypothesis are explored. Predictions from the six hypotheses are tested on questionnaire data from a middle class suburban high school in the Southwest. As expected, the research findings are most consistent with the predictions of the exposure hypothesis. The more exposed a student is to offenders, the greater the probability that he or she has suffered a theft or property destruction victimization both at school and elsewhere. The causes of both provoked and true personal victimization at school are also investigated. Exposure to offenders affects the probability of both true and provoked threat victimizations at school. However, high status and/or social distance from offenders also seem to play a role in true threat victimizations. Similar processes may be important in explaining attack victimizations at school.

The purpose of this study was to examine control beliefs and their role in the different ways victims cope with burglary. Two studies were conducted. In the first study, participants were college students who had been burglarized within the previous year. The volunteers were men and women between the ages of 19 and 37 (N=61). The participants completed Levenson's (1981) locus of control scale. The following week, in order to assist recall, the participants viewed a 2-minute video that depicted a residential burglary in progress. Immediately following the video, they completed a coping measure, situational appraisals of control measure, and importance of outcome measure. The second study was a conceptual replication of the first study and therefore followed the same procedures. However, in order to assess locus of control prior to victimization, participants were male and female college students (N=102) who had never been burglarized (experimentally induced victims). Zero-order correlations, discriminant analysis, and hierarchical multiple regression were used to examine the main, mediating, and moderating effects of locus of control, importance of outcome, situational appraisals of control, and gender on coping functions. Because previous research has found gender differences in reaction to criminal victimization, i t was hypothesized that the influence that gender has on coping results from an individual's locus of control orientation. It was also expected that the direction or strength of the locus of control and coping relation would be influenced by an individual's gender and by how much importance he or she attached to the victimization experience. In both the victim group and experimentally induced victim group, emotion-focused coping was significantly predicted by gender, locus of control, importance of outcome, and situational appraisals of control. However, problem-focused coping was significantly predicted by gender, locus of control, importance of outcome, and situational appraisals of control for the victim group only. Locus of control did not influence the gender and coping relation. The results indicated that in both groups men who held strong powerful others locus of control beliefs used less emotion-focused coping. In contrast, in the burglary victim group, women who held strong powerful others locus of control beliefs used more emotion-focused coping. However, there was no relationship between powerful others locus of control beliefs and emotion-focused coping for women in the experimentally induced victim group. For experimentally induced victims, both men and women with high chance locus of control beliefs used more emotion-focused coping. In both groups, importance of outcome did not moderate the locus of control and coping relation. Implications of these results and suggestions for future research are discussed.

<p>According to modern standards, the narratives about Hagar in Genesis 16 and 21 are stories of abuse, as many feminist commentators have pointed out. Some of them, however, argue that the narrator condones what happened to Hagar, seeing it as perfectly normal. This thesis aims to investigate whether and how Hagar was abused according to the narrator of Genesis 16 and 21: 8-21.</p>

Mémoire numérisé par la Division de la gestion de documents et des archives de l'Université de Montréal

The main objective of this thesis is to present an analysis of the issue of hate crimes and the manner in which the Canadian criminal justice system is currently addressing this problem. In doing so, certain inherent concerns with the current Canadian criminal legislative response to hate crimes will be highlighted and discussed in detail. / More precisely, the introduction of how recent Canadian criminal legislation has dealt with hate crimes will serve as the basis for the consideration of two of the main areas of concern as they relate to the effective application of hate crime legislation, namely the areas of prosecutorial discretion and evidentiary burden. The detailed survey of these two areas will provide the reader with a greater understanding of the dynamics behind the factors that currently hinder the potential effectiveness of hate crime legislation in Canada and will ultimately allow for the consideration of possible solutions.

Search Frictions, Unemployment, and Housing in Cities: Theory and Policies We propose an urban search-matching model with land development. We characterize the steady-state equilibrium and then discuss the issue of efficiency. We find that the transportation and housing policies are more efficient if the unemployment rate is low, while the entry-cost policy is more efficient if the unemployment rate is high. Land Development, Search Frictions, and City Structure This paper analyzes the interactions between labor and housing (and land) markets in a city. Unemployment, the spatial structure of a city, land development, housing demand, prices of housing and land are all endogenously determined. Then, we characterize two different spatial configurations. To better understand how two equilibria are affected by land and labor market parameters, we implement a comparative steady state analysis. We further explored the effects of policies. Search for Jobs or Crimes? This paper develops a competitive search model where unemployed workers allocate their time between the search for legal jobs and opportunities for committing crimes. We analyze the effects of labor market policies and crime policies. We show that the market equilibrium is socially inefficient when there is crime. We also find that workers' individual choice of years of education is less than the socially efficient one. Rural-Urban Migration in Developing Countries: Labor Market Institutions and Policies The paper studies rural-urban migration under different labor market institutions in developing countries. Specifically, we consider two types of labor market institutions where workers in urban firms are unionized or not. We find that unionization of workers raises unemployment, urban wages, and rural employment, reduces rural wages and urban employment and increases inequality between the rural and the urban sector. We also compare two institutions under different policies.

Previous research has explored the impact on individuals following hate crime victimization, including prevalence estimates in the lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender/transsexual (LGBT) community. Past research, however, has been limited in its scope when exploring the impact of the hate crime event on the overall mental health of the survivor often examining only one measure of functioning. The current project aims to fill this gap by analyzing measures of posttraumatic symptoms, depression, stress and dissociation, collected on a sample of 30 LGBT individuals who have experienced hate crime victimization. In addition to clinical features, this study also analysed identity, openness about LGBT identity and coping behaviours. Results indicated that social support, identity and coping impact recovery from hate crime victimization. The effect of these factors differed over time (within one month of the hate crime) and up to as much as five years later (within the month of the interview).