<p> Professionals have a tendency to employ treatment-based approaches or palliative care with little regard for removing the causes of conditions using preventive interventions or behavior-change programming efforts. The purpose of the present study is to investigate the relationship between the parenting style received in childhood and the potential for criminal behavior as an adult in order to aid in preventative interventions to help at-risk youth. The research design of the current study was based on the secondary analysis of data from the NLSY97 data set. One MANOVA was conducted to assess the impacts of parenting style and race on deviant, delinquent, and criminal involvement. A second MANOVA was conducted to assess the impact of parenting style on deviant, delinquent, and criminal behavior over time. When examined separately, total number of arrests and delinquency scores were highest for children of parents with neglecting or authoritarian parenting styles. Total number of arrests and total number of incarcerations were higher for Black respondents than for Hispanic or White respondents, while White respondents had significantly higher mean delinquency scores than Black respondents. A measure of criminal and delinquent behavior was summed across three timeframes; results showed no significant impact of parenting style on any of the three timeframes or on the combined dependent variables. Parenting style is one of the many factors of juvenile delinquency, and it is hoped that this study will inform all individuals interacting with children of the importance of implementing early intervention, awareness, and respect across multi-disciplinarians.</p><p>

Quantitative studies have shown that anti-bisexual, gay, and lesbian (BGL) hate crimes have greater psychological impact on BGL victims than do non-hate-motivated crimes of similar severity (Herek, Gillis, & Cogan, 1999), contribute to psychological distress in BGL people (Mays & Cochran, 2001; Meyer, 1995), and can cause BGL people to remain closeted (D'Augelli, 1992; Pilkington & D'Augelli, 1995). The present study explores the possible mechanisms and sources of the greater impact of hate crimes on BGL victims. In this qualitative research, I investigated the psychological effects of anti-BGL hate crimes through in-depth interviews with 10 BGL people who perceived that they were victims of hate crimes based on sexual orientation bias. Interviewees were 4 lesbian women, 2 bisexual women, and 4 gay men, and 9 of the 10 were White. They ranged in age from 20 to 50 and represented a wide range of degree of sexual orientation disclosure. Each participated in one or two interviews of one to two hours, which were audiotaped, transcribed verbatim, and analyzed thematically, using qualitative analysis software (NVivo) that facilitated coding and sorting of data. Victimization experiences included violent crimes (3), harassment at work and school (2), harassment in the neighborhood (2), and multiple incidents of harassment (3). Results are 10 case studies that elucidate the effects that hate crimes had within the context of each individual's life and history. Each case study presents the participant's coming-out history, and previous traumatic and bias-related experiences, as well as hate-crime experience(s) and perceived sequelae. Three case studies also include accounts of relevant judicial proceedings, and two include reviews of results by the participants. Findings within and across cases are discussed, as well as strengths and limitations of the study and implications for future research. Results suggest factors that may contribute to the relatively more severe psychological impact of hate crimes, including: lesser availability of family support; disruption of BGL identity and coming out processes; intrusion into romantic relationships; damaged expectations of how one will be viewed and treated as a BGL person in the world; a generalized sense of anger about the victimization; and secondary victimization.

The United States prison population has grown seven-fold over the past 35 years. This dissertation looks at the impact this growth in incarceration has on crime rates and seeks to understand why this drastic change in public policy happened. Simultaneity between prison populations and crime rates makes it difficult to isolate the causal effect of changes in prison populations on crime. This dissertation uses marijuana and cocaine mandatory minimum sentencing to break that simultaneity. Using panel data for 50 states over 40 years, this dissertation finds that the marginal addition of a prisoner results in a higher, not lower, crime rate. Specifically, a 1 percent increase in the prison population results in a 0.28 percent increase in the violent crime rate and a 0.17 percent increase in the property crime rate. This counterintuitive result suggests that incarceration, already high in the U.S., may have now begun to achieve negative returns in reducing crime. As such it supports the work of a number of scholars (Western 2006, Clear 2003) who have suggested that incarceration may have begun to have a positive effect on crime because of a host of factors. Most of the empirical work on the question is undertaken at an aggregate level (county, state, or national data). Yet, criminologists (Sampson et al. 2002, Spelman 2005 and Clear 1996, 2007) have long argued that the complex intertwining of crime and punishment is best understood at the neighborhood level, where the impacts of incarceration on social relationships are most closely felt. This dissertation examines the question using a panel of neighborhoods in Tallahassee, Florida for the period 1995 to 2002. I find evidence to support the contention that the high levels of prison admissions and prison cycling (admissions plus releases) is associated with increasing crime rates in disadvantaged neighborhoods. This effect is not found in other neighborhoods. Looking more closely at the issues of race and class, I find that while marginalized neighborhoods experience slightly higher crime rates, they are faced with much higher incarceration rates. In Black neighborhoods in particular, prison admissions are an order of magnitude higher in comparison with non-Black neighborhoods even though underlying crime rates are not very different. If incarceration does not lower crime, then why did prison populations multiply seven-fold? This dissertation argues that mass incarceration is a central institution in the neoliberal social structures of accumulation. Mass incarceration as an institution plays a critical but underappreciated role in channeling class conflict in the neoliberal social structures of accumulation (SSA). Neoliberalism has produced a significant section of the working class who are largely excluded from the formal labor market, for whom the threat of unemployment is not a sufficient disciplining mechanism. At the same time, it has undermined the welfare systems that had managed such populations in earlier periods. Finally, the racial hierarchy essential to capitalist hegemony in the United States was threatened with collapse with the end of Jim Crow laws. This dissertation argues that mass incarceration has played an essential role in overcoming these barriers to stable capitalist accumulation under neoliberalism.

This study examined patterns of comorbidity in 232 girls in state-operated juvenile justice facilities. It was hypothesized that the more depression and/or anxiety a girl reported, the more substance use, family discord, and suicidal ideation she would also report. Simple findings revealed that both depression and anxiety were related to the three dependent variables. However, upon controlling for the relationships among depression, anxiety, and externalizing behaviors, more specific relationships were revealed: depression independently predicted substance use and suicidal ideation; anxiety alone did not predict any of the three dependent variables; and externalizing behaviors independently predicted substance use and family discord. Age, ethnicity, lifetime traumatic events, and levels of delinquency were explored as potential moderating variables, but no interactions were found. The current research helps clarify relationships among the targeted problems, and it provides some initial information for developing multifaceted treatment programs for girls in the juvenile justice system.

Historically, aggression among girls has not been regarded as a problem worth studying due to the cultural assumption that aggression is a male phenomenon. Recently, however, the juvenile justice system has documented increasing rates of violent offending among adolescent girls. Girls now account for one out of four arrests, with non-traditional and/or violent offenses among those showing the greatest increase. Unfortunately, little is known about physically violent girls. The current study sought to advance our understanding of the nature of girls’ aggressive behavior by differentiating girls in the juvenile justice system adjudicated on violent versus nonviolent offenses while attending to racial and ethnic differences. Participants included 242 girls who had been committed to or detained within a Massachusetts Department of Youth Services (DYS) residential facility and referred for a psychological evaluation between the dates of 1996 and 2003. Results indicated that among the entire sample, girls who identified as Black and had a lack of positive parental support were significantly more likely to be classified as “violent” based on their criminal offense histories. Results also revealed significant racial differences in the pathway to violence among White and Black participants. Findings from the current study highlight the importance of treating girls in the juvenile justice system as a heterogeneous group and attending to issues of diversity in future research and interventions.

Florida's Department of Corrections (DOC) currently operates the largest state-run faith-based correctional facilities program in the United States. In these facilities, the state sequesters inmates from the larger inmate population and both subsidizes and encourages inmate religiosity as part of its larger efforts to prevent future criminal behavior and to reduce the likelihood of prison recidivism. While almost half of the correctional departments in the United States offer similar faith-based correctional facilities, Florida's are notable for several reasons. First, Florida's DOC led the vanguard in the larger movement to create faith-based correctional facilities, as in 1999 it became the second correctional department (after Texas) to create an in-prison faith-based dormitory. The DOC quickly expanded this program to create a total of sixteen faith-based correctional facilities, where it houses roughly five percent of its inmate population. Florida's faith-based correctional facilities are also notable because DOC administrators repeatedly modified the program to adhere to the constitutional guidelines that regulate partnerships between religion and government. Contrary to popular discourse regarding the relationship between religion and state, the United States Supreme Court has ruled that America does not have a complete separation of church and state. Instead, over the past seventy years, the Supreme Court repeatedly concluded that the government can fund religion under certain circumstances and conditions. The courts often modified and clarified previous rulings, but the central premise has not changed—government can partner with religion. To adhere to these rulings, Florida's DOC repeatedly altered its faith-based correctional facilities. What began as an explicitly Protestant in-prison faith-based dormitory evolved into religiously pluralistic correctional facilities open to members of all religions and to inmates with no religious commitments whatsoever. Roughly sixteen years after the DOC created its first faith-based correctional facility, no one has challenged their constitutionality. Even the facilities' critics tacitly admit that they that appear to adhere to constitutional law. As a result of their due diligence, the administrators of Florida's DOC provided a model for other correctional departments who want to create similar programs. Florida's faith-based correctional facilities are the subject of this dissertation. More specifically, this dissertation explores the various historical factors that convinced the administrators of Florida's DOC that they should create faith-based correctional facilities. To this end, it situates Florida's faith-based correctional facilities within the larger contexts of mass incarceration, the impulse to foster religious pluralism, the trend to empower religious social service providers, and neoliberal economics. This story begins in the wake of the Civil War, when the State of Florida created its first state prison. This prison is important because it solidified government-funded religion as the default form of inmate rehabilitation in Florida's prisons. Almost 150 years later, that has not changed. Quite the contrary, Protestant religiosity permeates Florida's DOC, which is arguably the last branch of government to disestablish itself from religion. The dissertation then identifies relevant developments in the twentieth century that combined to create the problem of mass incarceration, which the proponents of faith-based correctional facilities believe only they can solve. In contrast, this dissertation suggests that a common theology underlies both mass incarceration and faith-based correctional facilities. / A Dissertation submitted to the Department of Religion in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy. / Summer Semester 2015. / June 30, 2015. / Includes bibliographical references. / Amanda Porterfield, Professor Directing Dissertation; Stephen Tripodi, University Representative; Michael McVicar, Committee Member; Martin Kavka, Committee Member.

While a very few death penalty studies find that the death penalty has the deterrent effect on homicides, the majority of the studies do not find. These contrasting and inconclusive findings raise an important question as to why the death penalty has little or no deterrent effect on homicides. As Phillips and Hensley (1984) pointed out, failure to find solid evidence of the deterrent effect may occur for one of two reasons: (1) either a deterrent effect can theoretically exist, but it does not actually exist, or (2) the methods used to find the deterrent effect are not sophisticated enough to reveal it. Theoretically, the deterrent effect of the death penalty could be achieved quickly and last only for a very short period of time (Andenaes, 1952; Phillips and Hensley, 1984). It is plausible that the deterrent effects of executions become strongest when the number of newspaper and television coverage of execution reaches its peak one day before and after an execution. However, as several researchers have repeatedly suggested that most of the past studies have employed annual and monthly homicide data (Donohue and Wolfers, 2005; Hjalmarsson, 2009; Katz, Levitt, and Shustorovich, 2003). In short, the main methodological limitation of the previous studies is that use of annually aggregated crime data may miss any deterrent effect in studies of the death penalty on homicides that are short-lived, that the number of killings deterred is too small to be detected excessively long temporal units such as years or months. The primary goals of this research were (1) to test whether an execution reduce murders on given day in the given state, (2) to assess whether an publicized execution has a deterrent effect on homicides on the given day in the given state, and (3) to determine whether the results of the analyses 1 and 2 remain consistent with temporal, regional, demographic and non-capital punishment variations. Data are collected from the Mortality Detail Files including the exact dates of homicides from January 1, 1979 through December 31, 2006. This study reveals a statistically significant deterrent effect of executions on homicides on the day of an execution. Some remote significant deterrent effects of execution on the days 5 and 6 afterward could not be interpreted as genuine deterrent effects because this pattern of the deterrent effects has nothing to do with the patterns of newspaper and television coverage of executions. However, this study find no evidence indicative of the deterrent effects of publicized execution on homicides. In addition, this study finds no evidence of a brutalization effect of executions on homicides. In summary, the evidence suggests that executions do cause the homicide rates to drop, but only to a very small degree. It appears that, in the aggregate, the small number of executions carried out in a typical year in the United States has very little impact on the recent declines in the number of homicides. The robustness tests confirm the earlier findings, leading to the overall conclusion that executions do affect the behavior of prospective killers, but only for a very brief period of time in a modest way. / A Dissertation submitted to the College of Criminology and Criminal Justice in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy. / Spring Semester 2016. / April 14, 2016. / death penalty, deterrence, execution, homicide / Includes bibliographical references. / Gary D. Kleck, Professor Directing Dissertation; David W. Rasmussen, University Representative; William D. Bales, Committee Member; Theodore G. Chiricos, Committee Member.

ABSTRACT Worldwide variations in homicide have been subject to debate, specifically in why these variations may occur. This cross-national study makes use of data for 60 developed and developing nations from the World Values Survey data in attempt to account for worldwide homicide variations for the years 2009-2014. Doing so provides a unique test of Messner and Rosenfeld's Institutional Anomie Theory. First, this study examines whether belief in the "American Dream," or monetary success, in combination with weak commitment to legitimate means of achievement, significantly increases world-wide homicide rates. Empirical results show that strong belief in monetary success is related to rates of homicide, but this relationship is not conditioned by weak commitment to legitimate means to achieve it. Additionally, in examining belief in monetary success and weak commitment to legitimate means to achieve it, partial support is found for the idea that the criminal justice system can help to attenuate the positive relationship between belief in monetary success in conjunction with weak commitment to legitimate means to achieve it and homicide, with the outcome of decreased homicide rates. This finding can be attributed to the fact that the criminal justice system serves "keep order" functions such as imprisonment and high police presence. In a related vein, partial support is found for the notion that the military can help weaken the positive relationship between belief in monetary success in conjunction with weak commitment to legitimate achievement means and homicide. Like the criminal justice system, the military plays a pivotal role in keeping order of its citizens by instilling self-control and discipline, which may vary by nations worldwide. / A Dissertation submitted to the College of Criminology and Criminal Justice in partial fulfillment of the Doctor of Philosophy. / Spring Semester 2016. / March 17, 2016. / American Dream, Crime, Cross National study, Homicide, Institutional Anomie Theory, Monetary Success / Includes bibliographical references. / Theodore Chiricos, Professor Directing Dissertation; David Gussak, University Representative; Marc Gertz, Committee Member; Eric Stewart, Committee Member.

With the increase in incarceration rates starting in the 1980s, scholars are beginning to examine the unintended consequences of incarceration on families. While much attention has been given to effects of parental incarceration on child delinquency and criminal justice system involvement, far less attention has been given to child health outcomes over the life course. This study utilizes the National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent to Adult Health (Add Health) and latent growth curve analysis to examine the effects of parental incarceration on specific health related outcomes and overall health in adolescence and young adulthood, taking the gender of the child and the timing of parental incarceration into consideration. Findings suggest that parental incarceration negatively impacts specific health related outcomes, though these effects manifest differently for men and women. Overall, parental incarceration negatively impacts self-rated health, suggesting that while the mechanisms or pathways that parental incarceration works through may differ for men and women, the result is poorer global or overall health for both groups. Timing of parental incarceration is also important, with those experiencing parental incarceration in early childhood (between ages 0 and 5) showing the most consistently negative outcomes. / A Dissertation submitted to the Department of Sociology in partial fulfillment of the Doctor of Philosophy. / Fall Semester 2016. / November 15, 2016. / BMI, drug, health, incarceration, lifecourse, timing / Includes bibliographical references. / Miles G. Taylor, Professor Directing Dissertation; Sonja Siennick, University Representative; Kathryn Tillman, Committee Member; Amy Burdette, Committee Member; Daniel Tope, Committee Member.

To address the primary problem of racial profiling by police, many states have passed legislation that require police departments to collect demographic data on those with whom the officer comes into contact; these data are later evaluated by supervisors. The problem lies in the possibility for police officers to disengage, or depolice, when faced with data collection policies that may be viewed as lessening the officer's discretion. It was this potential to depolice as related to policy interpretation that formed the conceptual framework for this study. As a result, implementation of racial profiling policies may negatively impact the very minorities they are designed to protect. The purpose of this exploratory study was to identify and analyze the possible correlationship between statutory racial data tracking, the frequency of racial profiling discussion, the officer's time in policing, and history of disciplinary procedures for violating profiling policy in the decision to either stop or not stop a motorist when the race of that motorist is observed to be that of a racial and ethnic minority. A forward stepwise logistic regression was utilized to analyze data collected from a sample of 176 police officers in the Midwest recruited through police organizational contacts. The results showed the only significant predictor in a police officer's decision to stop or not stop a minority motorist was the presence of a state statute requiring the collection of racial profiling data. This information can be useful to administrators and policy makers in addressing allegations of racial profiling. Understanding the influence of mandated racial profiling data collection policies on police officer behavior offers potential explanation when analyzing individual officer minority contact ratios, and may prompt policy revision to effect equal treatment of all citizens regardless of race or ethnicity.