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Community violence can have lasting impacts on populations that experience it, including but not limited to, financial damages, property damage, and psychological trauma. Therefore, exploring mechanisms of violence prevention is increasingly important, especially within the context of multicultural societies. This research does just that by approaching community violence prevention from an interdisciplinary perspective, including aspects of public health, political science, criminology, and sociology. This dissertation explores the interfaith organization InterFaith Leadership Council of Metro Detroit and those in the organization's network. It considers how interfaith leaders, through activism and dialogue, can contribute to community violence prevention. By applying the social ecological model and social disorganization theory, this research considers how to prevent community violence through building social capital, collective efficacy, and community capacity. This inquiry also utilized the social determinants of health to describe how violence and violence prevention is linked to community health. This dissertation uses qualitative data, including interviews, document analysis, and field notes to explore the mechanisms by which interfaith leadership can prevent community violence, specifically gang violence and violent extremism. / Doctor of Philosophy / Community violence can have lasting impacts on populations that experience it, including but not limited to, financial damages, property damage, and psychological trauma. Therefore, exploring methods of violence prevention is increasingly important. This dissertation uses qualitative data to explore community violence prevention in Metro Detroit as carried out by the InterFaith Leadership Council and its broader network. Included in this dissertation are insights from interviews, document analysis, and field notes. All this data informs the research and attempts to address how the question of how the interfaith community in Metro Detroit is working to prevent community violence. This research utilizes the social ecological model and social disorganization theory as its overarching framework for analysis. The analysis examines interfaith relationships, collective efficacy, and community capacity. This research also frames violence and violence prevention within the context of the social determinants of health in an attempt to identify the factors that affect violence and violence prevention.

This study examined whether religiosity, parental and adult support coping would moderate the influence of neighborhood risks and friends' drug use upon drug refusal efficacy and drug use among African American adolescents. One hundred and thirteen African American urban adolescents (77 females and 36 males) aged 11-17 (M=14.17) participated in this study. This study used the God Support and Religious Support scales to assess religiosity; the parental support coping subscale of the Wills Coping measure; Center for Substance Abuse Prevention's Special Event Drug Refusal Efficacy and Friends' Drug use scales; the Exposure to Neighborhood Risk Scale; and a one-item measure of adult support coping from the Wills' Coping measure. Hierarchical regression analyses revealed that religiosity moderated the effects of neighborhood risks upon tobacco and alcohol refusal efficacy. Higher levels of religiosity were associated with lower levels of marijuana use, higher levels of parent support coping, and higher levels of alcohol and tobacco refusal efficacy. These findings suggest that religiosity may protect against drug use risk factors and enhance drug refusal efficacy among African American adolescents. Implications of these findings are discussed.

This study investigates both space and time aspects of neighborhood crime distributions using social disorganization as a theoretical framework in the City of Richmond, VA. Neighborhood crime, in this study, might be considered as any type of index crime aggregated to neighborhood level. For the purpose of the present study, however, neighborhood crime only includes "homicide" categorized as an index crime in the Uniform Crime Report (UCR). Homicides in neighborhoods have been realized as rare events, and have become problematic to establish robust statistical models in the literature. With the focus of neighborhood homicide, this study questions the consistency of Social Disorganization Theory (SDT) by the longitudinal research setting. It, therefore, constructs and verifies seven hypotheses (residential mobility, race/ethnic heterogeneity, family disruption, socio-economic status, population density, youth, and vacancy) to test SDT, while it establishes and further confirms its main hypothesis "Neighborhood homicide increase is likely to be associated by the increase in neighborhood social disorganization over time."This study constructs a longitudinal research design with 10 years, uses Census 1990, Census 2000 and homicide data (From the City of Richmond Police Department) as secondary data. Nonetheless, this study uses only two main census decennial years to calculate the other years' structural covariates by the linear interpolation technique such that this study is able to include additional years to construct the essential difference models. Population includes all neighborhoods in the City of Richmond such that this study works with entire population, but no sampling procedure. As an analytical strategy, this study constructs eleven different binomial logistic regressions, whereas it constructs multinomial logistic regressions as difference models to verify the main hypothesis for neighborhood homicide. Once this study realizes clustered neighborhoods with respect to experiencing homicide hotspot(s), it constructs a stepwise multiple regressions model to explore the most important social disorganization variables for the most problematic neighborhoods.In terms of findings, the most important social disorganization variables attributed to homicide distribution in the City of Richmond are: The low SES (Socioeconomic Status), residential mobility, vacancy, population density (across only the concentrated neighborhoods), and family disruption.Accordingly, this study has successfully contributed to the literature around SDT, social crime prevention, and spatially integrated crime policy analysis.

The reported number of hate crimes in New Jersey continues to remain high despite the enforcement of laws against perpetrators. The purpose of this correlational panel study was to test Shaw & McKay's theory of social disorganization by examining the relationship between demographic diversity and hate crime rates. This study focused on analyzing the relationship between the level of diversity, residential mobility, unemployment, family disruption, proximity to urban areas, and population density in all 21 New Jersey counties and hate crime rates. The existing data of Federal Bureau of Investigations' hate crime rates and the U.S. Census Bureau's demographic diversity, operationalized as the percentage of Whites over all other races, and social disorganization from 21 between the years 2007 through 2011, for a total sample size of 105 cases of reported hate crimes. Results of the multiple linear regression analysis indicate that ethnic diversity did not significantly predict hate crimes (p = 0.81), residential mobility (p < 0.001), and population density (p < 0.001) had positive effects on hate crime rates. Concentrated disadvantage (p = 0.01), characterized by the number of reported unemployment rates, had a negative effect on hate crime rates. The results of the study supported social disorganization theory in reference to residential mobility and population density. Law enforcement agencies can use the results of this study to combat hate crimes in areas with a high level of residential mobility and population density.

The present study expands the range of theoretical perspectives and empirical questions that have occupied the recent literature on homicide and suicide. The study examines county-level predictors for homicide and suicide in all sixty-seven counties in Florida. The current examination identifies which county-level variables are most closely related to each other, which variables explain the greatest amount of differences within the Florida counties, as well as which variables are most significantly correlated with the homicide and sucide rate by county. Additionally, the variables included in the present research are driven by the theorectical perspectives of social disorganization and anomie/strain theory. Using principal components regression the present study found that Income, Education, and Poverty, Infant Mortality, and Domestic Violence were predictors of homicide. Using the same components to explore the suicide rate, the research found that Age and Divorce were positively associated with suicide. In contrast to homicide, infant mortality rates were negatively associated with suicide rate in Florida counties.

Our criminal justice system works very hard to prevent criminals from harming other individuals; however, unfortunately mistakes happen. One wrongful conviction is one too many. There are multiple factors that can be assumed to be the cause of wrongful convictions. However, due to the lack of directly related research, the determents are not well established. The following research addresses wrongful convictions as a result of public defender representation. Through the process of theory construction, the research uses critical race theory and social disorganization theory to show the relationship between court appointed representation and wrongful convictions. A new theory is also established that is referred to as the partial load reduction theory. This theory establishes the relationship that exists between wrongful convictions and public defender representation and provides solutions as well as new avenues for future research.

Till följd av att cannabisförsäljningen tillfört konflikter och varit en grundläggande orsak till ökat antal dödsskjutningar i Sverige de senaste åren, råder det därmed ingen tvekan om att det krävs satsningar för att minska cannabisförsäljningen och dess skadliga konsekvenser. Dessutom handlar en del av de globala hållbarhetsmålen i FN:s Agenda 2030 om att främja den sociala hållbarheten genom att bland annat öka tryggheten och säkerheten i den byggda stadsmiljön. Denna studie syftar på att undersöka de platser som attraherar cannabisöverlåtelse, dvs. langning, i stadsmiljön, för att kartlägga när, var och vid vilken situation som brottet förekommer. Detta för att sedan kunna ge förslag till förbättringar för utformandet av platsen för att förhindra cannabisöverlåtelse och skapa en trygg miljö för alla. I och med detta syftar arbetet till att få en ökad förståelse kring sambandet mellan säkerhet och den fysiskt utformade stadsmiljön. För att kunna uppnå syftet med studien grundar sig den kvalitativa formen av studien på data från svenska polismyndigheten där ett urval på 25 brottsplatser i Stockholms län undersöktes under kvällstid. Väl på plats fylldes en mall i löpande, kallad Trygga Platser Mallen, samtidigt som områdena fotograferades. Vidare sammanställdes och analyserades resultatet från fallstudien med underlag av olika trygghets- och säkerhets principer samt teorier. Denna studie är avgränsad och berör endast 25 brottsplatser inom Stockholmsregionen där samtliga cannabisöverlåtelser skett under kvälls-och nattetid mellan klockan 18–01.  Resultatet av studien visar att det är många miljöfaktorer som samspelar på en miljö där cannabislangning sker. Den visar att de omständigheterna på kvällstid som möjliggör cannabisöverlåtelse är i huvudsak att det blir svårare att synas, vilket gör det lättare att sälja cannabis på en del platser. Dessutom stänger de flesta verksamheter under kvällen, vilket minskar flödet kraftigt och den naturliga övervakningen försämras. På mikronivå, visar resultatet att de fysiska egenskaper som underlättar utförandet av cannabislangning är vägar, gångvägar och grönska. Vägarna kan öka tillgängligheten och mobiliteten till platsen. Dessutom ger gångvägar även en möjlighet för möte mellan potentiella kunder och cannabisförsäljare. Vidare blir grönskan ett hinder för den formella och naturliga övervakningen. Dock finns det förbättringar som kan tillämpas på den fysiska miljön för att förhindra cannabislangning. Men i huvudsak skulle det krävas en kombination mellan brottsprevention genom urban design och specifika lösningar som riktas mot en förbättring av den sociala sammanhållningen i olika områden, vilket kan vara att fler offentliga mötes-och aktivitetsplatser skapas under dagens alla timmar. I grund och botten krävs det djupare kunskap av dessa platser som är särskilt utsatta för droghandling för att kunna skapa säkrare miljöer för samtliga medborgare i dagsläget och framöver. Kandidatarbetet avslutas med en kritisk diskussion av metoden och rekommendationer för framtida studier presenteras. / In the past few years, dealing cannabis has led to conflicts, and had a significant role in the increased numbers of fatal shootings in Sweden. Hence, measures to solve the issue are undoubtedly needed to prevent these consequences. Additionally, part of the global sustainability goals in the UN's Agenda 2030 is about promoting social sustainability by, among other things, increasing the safety and security of the urban environment. The aim of this study is to examine the places in the urban environment that attract the dealing of cannabis to map when, where, and in what situation the crime occurs. Consequently, the possibility of identifying different changes to the environmental design enables the prevention of crime and promotion of safety.  To achieve the purpose of the study, a sample of 25 crime scenes in Stockholm County were examined during the evening and night, based on data from the Swedish police authority. Once in place, a template, called “Trygga Platser Mallen” (Safe Places Template), was filled in on an ongoing basis, while the physical environment was photographed at the same time. The results were then compiled and analyzed based on various safety and security principles, as well as theories. The study is delimited and therefore only contains 25 crime scenes in the Stockholm region. Also, the cannabis exchange at those places occurred during the evening between 6 pm and 1 am.  The results of the study show that there are many environmental factors that interact in a setting where dealing cannabis takes place. In essence, cannabis crime is strongly linked to the social interaction between people. However, the physical aspect facilitates the execution of the crime. The results show that the conditions of the environment in the evenings enable cannabis dealing because dealers are less likely to be seen, making it easier to sell. Additionally, most businesses close during the evening, which greatly reduces the flow of people, and the natural surveillance deteriorates. At a micro level, the results show that the physical properties that facilitate cannabis dealing are streets, walking paths, and greenery. The reason is most likely due to the streets increasing the accessibility and flow to these places. Moreover, walking paths provide an opportunity for cross paths between potential customers and dealers. Furthermore, the greenery obstructs formal and informal surveillance.  However, there are approaches to prevent the dealing of cannabis, such as combining methods for crime prevention through urban design and focusing on the improvement of social cohesion in different areas. An example would be to create spaces that encourage social interactions and activities at all hours of the day. Essentially, it is necessary to gain a deeper knowledge of the places that attract the dealing in cannabis to create safer spaces that discourages crime. Lastly, this project ends with a critical discussion of the methods and mentions recommendations for future studies.