<p> The school-to-prison pipeline is a phenomenon that is occurring in public schools across the country. This study investigates if the presence of a School Resource Officers (SRO) has an effect on the rate of expulsions experienced in schools. My data is from a secondary data set from the 2009-2010 School Survey on Crime and Safety. I use the presence of an SRO or security personnel, percentage of white student enrollment, school urbanicity, and percentage of students that score below the 15th percentile on standardized tests as independent variables. My dependent variable is expulsion rates for disobedient behavior. I create one model using OLS regression to run the dependent variable against all of the independent variables. The results yielded that the presence of security personnel or an SRO has increased the rate of expulsions due to disciplinary infractions. I also found that race decreased the expulsion rate; this means that as the percentage of white students goes up, the expulsion rate goes down. These findings suggests that the disproportionate amount of African Americans in this country&rsquo;s prison system could be starting in our school systems.</p>

<p> The purpose of this study is to examine the relationship between socioeconomic status (SES) and delinquent behavior among African American youth. First, this study explores whether SES influences parental monitoring, parent-child attachment, deviant peer associations, and strain among African American adolescents from varying socioeconomic status backgrounds. Next an assessment was conducted to decipher whether theoretical construct variables from foundational criminological theories rooted in social control, strain, and social learning are valid predictors of delinquency among African American adolescents from varying SES backgrounds. Finally, a statistical framework was created to test whether parenting, deviant peers, or strain moderates the relationship between SES and delinquency. </p><p> This study uses simple linear and a hierarchical linear regression to examine the relationship between SES and delinquency while taking into account potential interactive effects of parenting practices, deviant peer associations, and strain experienced by African American adolescents. The results from this study reveal that no direct, statistically significant relationship exists between SES and delinquency for African American adolescents. However, SES plays an important role in influencing parental monitoring, parent-child attachment, deviant peer association, and strain variables. In addition, some of the theoretical construct variables from social control, social learning, and strain theories are strong predictors of delinquent behavior among African American adolescents from varying SES backgrounds. These results offer partial support for social control, strain, and social learning theories.</p><p>

The purpose of this study was to access a research population of self-identified student perpetrators of ethnoviolence in order to learn more about their motivations, their perspectives of self and others, and their considerations for making moral decisions. The study design was quantitative and qualitative in nature and relied on both statistical analysis and ethnographic field study methods. The research procedures consisted of three basic phases: theoretical applications, perpetrator sample identification, and in-depth interview administration and analysis. A perpetrator screening survey was developed based on an Ethnoviolence Severity Scale Model and administered to a class size sample of 340 students of which 306 responded. Survey findings indicated a surprisingly high percentage of students (27.2%) admitted to committing ethnoviolent behaviors across the severity model. A significant number of students also admitted to both verbally (36.3%) and physically threatening (18.0%) others on the basis of race or ethnicity. In addition, 15.0% were physically involved in an actual hate fight and 6.0% injured someone over an issue of race or ethnicity. The survey also yielded several statistically significant relationships based on gender as well as Greek membership and the perpetration of both multiple and individual acts of ethnoviolence. Using a weight-based scoring system, 8 survey respondents were selected for in-depth interviewing (6 perpetrators and 2 non-perpetrators). Using two schemes for coding responses developed by Lyons (1983), the predominant Relational Component for self-definition among perpetrators was Separate/Objective (91.4%). As a group, perpetrators were 11 times more likely to use this mode, whereas, non-perpetrators were 18 times more likely to use the Connected one. These findings indicate that the majority of perpetrators see themselves as separate versus connected to others and view relationships as part of obligations or commitments with societal duty and principles to uphold. In addition, the perpetrator subjects were found to consistently use (greater than 80%) the Morality as Justice versus Care construct when considering moral problems. Across conflict types, perpetrators were 3.3 times more likely to use the moral ideological concepts of rights and fairness versus the concepts of situational response and interpersonal relationships in their considerations for making moral decisions.