Thesis (M.S.)--University of Wisconsin--Madison, 1974. / eContent provider-neutral record in process. Description based on print version record. Includes bibliographical references.

This dissertation critically analyzes control theories of delinquency, but concentrates on Hirschi's version. The bonds of control reduce to two concepts, "belief" and "attachment," since "involvement" and "commitment" appear to be redundant. An analysis of the dimensionality of both belief and attachment is made in order to provide indicators to test control theory, but no adequate empirical means of reduction is found. A review of deterrence and an analysis of the meaning of sanctions suggest that "fear of sanctions" should also be tested in a control framework, but in order to accomplish this it is necessary to make the distinction between cognitive measures of fear and emotional measures of fear. A measure, "anxiety," based on emotional response is tested and located in a passive aversive conditioning framework. Consideration is also given to the institutional referents of "fear of sanctions" and it appears that legal institutions have the least effective sanctions. The test of control theory uses the general linear model with the three general concepts, in blocks of unspecified causal order, regressed on five specific measures of delinquency and three general indices of delinquency. Some support for control theory is found for belief variables across all acts, but attachment has a lower and less consistent effect. The fear of sanction measures are not relevant to all acts, and where they are, it generally is in a direction opposite to that predicted. An argument is made that control theory most likely reduces to existing theories of socialization, and that there is some support for thinking of it in a passive aversive framework of learning.

This thesis looks at the connections between inequality and violence in Venezuela by exploring how people's relationships might mediate or mitigate these connections. It is often assumed that people's relationships can provide motivations for engaging in violence, or that they provide informal social controls that can keep them from violence. Venezuela is an interesting case study because traditional indicators suggest violence might not be related to inequality in this context, justifying a focus on lower-level mechanisms that might be responsible for the often found correlations in different contexts. This thesis shows that historical inequalities provide the distal conditions for the institutionalisation of el malandreo, a Venezuelan gangster identity. Nevertheless, violence between malandros –people that identify with el malandreo– itself is the proximate cause of the deadly violence that holds Venezuela in a venomous grip. The research is based on data collected during a year's fieldwork in the barrios, poorer areas of Venezuela's cities where the majority of violence occurs, of two different cities. I collected both qualitative observation and unstructured interview data, as well as more quantifiable personal network data that were analysed with E-net and SPSS. A large part of the thesis is also based on ethnographic observations as well as interviews with malandros. The findings show that many barrio residents feel disadvantaged and may be motivated to use violence, nevertheless, there is little evidence that there is a lack of informal social control in these areas. Instead, the absence of formal authorities and dense interaction networks open the barrio up to much more ambiguous forms of informal social control. Such observations emphasise that el malandreo can be seen to provide existential meaning as well as informal social control, through violence. Overall, the thesis argues for a relational understanding of the connections between inequality and violence and for seeing violence itself as a form of social control particularly in areas where authority is ambiguous and social networks are dense.

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Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Texas at Austin, 2007. / Vita. Includes bibliographical references.

Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Washington, 2000. / Vita. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 297-308).

Thesis (Ph. D.)--Florida State University, 2006. / Advisor: Marc Gertz, Florida State University, School of Criminology and Criminal Justice. Title and description from dissertation home page (viewed Sept. 20, 2006). Document formatted into pages; contains viii, 194 pages. Includes bibliographical references.

Thesis (Ph.D.)--University of Texas at Dallas, 2007. / Includes vita. Includes bibliographical references.

The purpose of this dissertation is to describe and challenge some of the basic premises, implicit ontological and epistemological beliefs and, by extension, the political values which form the core of the geography of crime. While the discussion concentrates on published research undertaken by geographers, it also introduces relevant research conducted in kindred disciplines utilizing a spatial or environmental perspective (urban sociology and environmental criminology). As a critical theoretical exegesis, the principal focus of the critique is the analytic separation of crime from the control of crime, which characterises much of the geographer's research manifesto. Geographers have tended to study either crime or (much less frequently) the judicial system without any systematic consideration of the impact of the control system on crime patterns. In explaining crime patterns geographers have focused their analyses on the criminal actor or, more commonly, the criminal event. In advocating the advantages of alternatives to the instrumentalist or positivist philosophy guiding the geography of crime, the discussion of interactionist and critical perspectives is designed to show how they facilitate an understanding of the way that control processes exercised by police, the courts, and by elected officials are vital to the explanation of crime patterns. The introduction of these alternative theoretical positions also serves to raise questions about the correctionalist impulse of much of the geography of crime, and its technocratic purpose. The discussion of the philosophical, theoretical and political consequences of research strategies which treat crime and control as analytically separate entities lays the foundation for a geographic perspective on crime in its socio-legal context, for an examination of the effects of criminal justice policy on the actual geography of crime; in short, for an integrated analysis of crime and its control. The effect of the "control environment" is conceptualized at three different levels. The first concerns the influence of various interpretations of official crime statistics on "scientific" images of who the criminals actually are. Conflicting interpretations are reviewed, particularly interactionist and critical perspectives which suggest that maps of crime based on official police statistics may be seriously distorted in a way that geographers have rarely considered; crime maps may be "mental maps" reflecting the selective activity of control agents as much as they represent officially sanctioned criminal behaviour. The second effect of the control environment on criminal behaviour is examined in terms of "ecological labelling", the process through which law enforcement practices may (in part) help shape the "problem" status of various city neighbourhoods or subcultural groups. The third level of analysis concerns the most direct impact of control practice on the configuration of crime. In terms of a geographic perspective at this level of analysis the relationship between crime and control is systematized through the concept of "displacement". Displacement effects are defined as changes of criminal (or related) behaviour in response to changes in legislation, case law, law enforcement policies, or crime prevention programs. In this section the emphasis changes from an analysis of who the criminals are, to an analysis of what certain offenders do (particularly in terms of their adaptive spatial behaviour). A review of research demonstrating the wide-ranging occurrence of displacement phenomena is presented to supplement two empirical vignettes of crime in Vancouver (one on street prostitution patterns, the other on patterns of burglary) which demonstrate the spatial adjustments of offenders to changes in the "control environment". The dissertation concludes by describing the implications of an integrated analysis of crime and control for a philosophical, epistemological and methodological reorientation of the geography of crime. / Arts, Faculty of / Geography, Department of / Graduate

The Dual Effects Model of Social Control suggests that partners can positively and negatively influence the health behaviors of their partner. However, the model fails to consider the impact of control on non-targeted health behaviors, such as sleep. The current study sought to expand this model by including sleep continuity and duration as outcomes related to control efforts targeting diet and exercise. Partner control and objective sleep data were collected via daily sleep diaries and Fitbit Charge HR. Regression models were used to test the direct and indirect effects of control on sleep duration and continuity and the extent to which affective response mediates this relationship. Negative control had a significant effect on negative affect, but not on sleep continuity or duration. Positive control had a significant effect on positive affective response, but the full mediation model was not supported. Recommendations for future research using the proposed model are discussed.