With the various studies that point to racial disparities at different levels of the United States' criminal justice system, it is necessary to uncover all places within the system where racial disparities might exist. Understanding that Black inmates are disproportionately represented within the prison system led to the hypothesis that Black inmates receive harsher punishments than White inmates when they violate a rule while in prison. A cross-sectional study, "Survey of Inmates in State and Federal Correctional Facilities, 2004," which was available through ICPSR, was used in order to test the hypothesis. The data were collected from October 2003 through May 2004. For the current study, only inmates who had committed armed robbery, aggravated assault, or murder were in the sample. After the modification of the variables comprised of race, rule violations, and punishment type, the sample size was 652. First, an OLS regression was used in three models, which showed that major rule violations had a significant effect on the type of punishment an inmate received, but race did not. Second, age groups were employed to run an OLS regression within each of the four age groups. This revealed that major rule violations had a significant effect on the type of punishment an inmate received in four of the age groups, but race was not significant in any of the models. Implications and possible explanations regarding these findings are discussed.

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In view of the vast numbers of individuals with co-occurring mental health and substance use disorders within the offender population, the scarcity of research on the potential exacerbating effects of co-occurring disorders on prisoner misconduct is surprising. With a sample of 1,470 incarcerated women offenders in Pennsylvania, this study examined prisoner misconduct among four distinct groups: 1) inmates with co-occurring disorders, 2) those with mental illness only, 3) inmates with substance use disorders only, and 4) prisoners with no mental health or substance use disorders net the effects of other factors demonstrated in prior studies to influence institutional misconduct. Results suggested that female prisoners with mental health and co-occurring disorders were significantly more likely than those with no disorders to be charged with prison misconduct . Co-occurring disorder inmates were also more likely to be charged with both minor and serious misconduct compared to inmates with no disorders. The results of this study suggest that menttal health and co-occurring disorders may hinder the ability of some female offenders to successfully assimilate to the prison environment as evidenced by higher rates of institutional misbehavior. Practice and policy implications are discussed / Criminal Justice

The purpose of this dissertation is to introduce and empirically test a new theoretical perspective for assessing board effectiveness. Although the ability-motivation models provide a fruitful foundation in developing the characteristics that influence directors' job effectiveness, there are limitations this these models. First, the directors' ability and motivation dimensions are not clear, as existing conceptualizations are fungible and provide little clarity for theoretical and empirical research. Second, the ability-motivation models overlook several characteristics that are known to influence job performance but do not fit within the current dimensions. Finally, the current studies implicitly assume that all directors on the board have the same opportunity to monitor and advise in every domain. Therefore, I integrate the corporate governance literature on board effectiveness and the social psychology literature on job performance and propose that boards' effectiveness is a function of individual directors' capacity, engagement, and opportunity. This dissertation offers several contributions. First, I propose a theoretical model that illuminates and extends the core dimensions (i.e., capacity, engagement, and opportunity) of directors' effectiveness. The core dimensions of the model in my dissertation provide a much-needed conceptual clarity and coherence to the constructs that influence directors' effectiveness, which supports the development of stronger theory of directors' effectiveness. Second, by exploring the role of opportunity, I challenge one major assumption of the corporate governance field that all directors on the board have the same responsibility to monitor and advise in all domains. Third, the dissertation begins to shed light to the 'black box' of boards of directors by exploring how boards might enable directors to exert their full potential regarding their board functions. / Doctor of Philosophy / Board of directors are considered by practitioners as one of the most important corporate governance mechanisms to monitor and advise the CEO and other executives of the firm. Nonetheless, boards often fail in fulfilling these roles. This is exemplified by the constant news regarding organization misconduct and strategic failures. Therefore, the question of when and how directors can effectively perform their board's duties remain answered. In my dissertation I propose that directors must have high levels of capacity, engagement, and opportunity at the same time in order to monitor and advise effectively. Specifically, I emphasize the importance of appropriately matching directors to a position in which they can leverage their capacity and engagement. Boards are pressured to constantly evaluate their capabilities; thus, boards might use the insights of this study to appropriately evaluate and adjust the responsibilities of their directors. Furthermore, investors might use our proposed model to externally evaluate if the boards of the firms in which they are investing are structured in a way that they can mitigate misconduct which could greatly impact their investment outcome. Finally, policy makers can rely on these criteria (capacity-engagement-opportunity) to create board regulations to improve monitoring effectiveness.

In its new democracy, South Africa is busy making endeavours to transform and correct the wrongs and problems of the past. In the process it is vital that obstacles to development such as corruption in the public sector should be uprooted as they inhibit quality service delivery and further damage the name of the public service.<br /> <br /> This study compares anti-corruption strategies in South Africa&rsquo / s Western and Eastern Cape provinces, in particular by looking at both the achievements and limitations that have been experienced. The focus area is the provincial administrations in both provinces. In order to contextualise the evaluation of the anti-corruption strategies pursued by the two provincial administrations, the study also includes an examination of the role of provinces in general in combating corruption.<br /> <br /> The research methods employed include a detailed survey of documentation published by the provincial governments&rsquo / anti-corruption agencies, as well as reports by civil society organizations focusing on corruption in the public sector. The study also draws on semi-structured interviews conducted with key stakeholders in the two provinces.<br /> <br /> The study concludes by summarizing the successes and limitations of the two provincial administrations in dealing with corruption. A number of practical recommendations are provided to strengthen the future design and implementation of anti-corruption strategies.<br /> The empirical research for this research report was carried out in 2003 before the national and provincial elections of 2004.

The other study distinguishes the effects of political connection and governmental intervention on firm value. The event study of 371 scandals from 1997 to 2004 confirms the hypothesis that governmental intervention is the de facto reason. Scandal firms controlled by the state sustain less negative cumulative abnormal returns than non-state controlled firms, because the market expects that those state controlled scandal firms will surely receive governmental bailout or support while those non-state controlled ones not. For state controlled samples, the degree of political connection does not produce any significant effect on the market reactions. For non-state controlled scandal firms, however, closely politically connected firms have more negative CAR than loosely politically connected ones. This is because the governments get away from the scandal firms in trouble, and those non-state controlled firms that once gained the governmental intervention via political connection suffer more as the support withdraws. The results highlight the effect of governmental intervention on the firm valuation, and address a misconception that political connection is the source of firm value. / The thesis includes two empirical studies concerning corporate scandals in China. One investigates the intra-industry effect of 356 scandals from 1997 to 2004. The empirical results show that contagion effect and competitive effect are conditioned by degree of industry competition and ownership type of scandal firms. Because state controlled firms dominate in most industries and share common characteristics as the legacy of planned economy, their scandals can typically reveal the industry wide information on poor corporate governance problem. In highly competitive industries, the negative information of state controlled scandal firms spills over to state controlled peers, creating net contagion (negative) effect. In low competitive industries, contagion effect is offset by competitive effect that mainly stems from non-state controlled rivals. Comparatively, non-state controlled scandal firms, because of their marginal status in the market, do not produce evident externality in the industry. This study supports the hypothesis of informational contagion effect, and contrasts with the traditional view that scandals are idiosyncratic. The conclusions in previous studies are biased because they fail to consider the role of ownership on intra-industry effects. / Zhang, Peng. / "August 2007." / Adviser: Larry H. P. Lang. / Source: Dissertation Abstracts International, Volume: 69-08, Section: A, page: 3259. / Thesis (Ph.D.)--Chinese University of Hong Kong, 2007. / Includes bibliographical references (p. 109-113). / Electronic reproduction. Hong Kong : Chinese University of Hong Kong, [2012] System requirements: Adobe Acrobat Reader. Available via World Wide Web. / Electronic reproduction. [Ann Arbor, MI] : ProQuest Information and Learning, [200-] System requirements: Adobe Acrobat Reader. Available via World Wide Web. / Abstracts in English and Chinese. / School code: 1307.

In its new democracy, South Africa is busy making endeavours to transform and correct the wrongs and problems of the past. In the process it is vital that obstacles to development such as corruption in the public sector should be uprooted as they inhibit quality service delivery and further damage the name of the public service.<br /> <br /> This study compares anti-corruption strategies in South Africa&rsquo / s Western and Eastern Cape provinces, in particular by looking at both the achievements and limitations that have been experienced. The focus area is the provincial administrations in both provinces. In order to contextualise the evaluation of the anti-corruption strategies pursued by the two provincial administrations, the study also includes an examination of the role of provinces in general in combating corruption.<br /> <br /> The research methods employed include a detailed survey of documentation published by the provincial governments&rsquo / anti-corruption agencies, as well as reports by civil society organizations focusing on corruption in the public sector. The study also draws on semi-structured interviews conducted with key stakeholders in the two provinces.<br /> <br /> The study concludes by summarizing the successes and limitations of the two provincial administrations in dealing with corruption. A number of practical recommendations are provided to strengthen the future design and implementation of anti-corruption strategies.<br /> The empirical research for this research report was carried out in 2003 before the national and provincial elections of 2004.