ASU Electronic Theses and Dissertations
This collection includes most of the ASU Theses and Dissertations from 2011 to present. ASU Theses and Dissertations are available in downloadable PDF format; however, a small percentage of items are under embargo. Information about the dissertations/theses includes degree information, committee members, an abstract, supporting data or media.
In addition to the electronic theses found in the ASU Digital Repository, ASU Theses and Dissertations can be found in the ASU Library Catalog.
Dissertations and Theses granted by Arizona State University are archived and made available through a joint effort of the ASU Graduate College and the ASU Libraries. For more information or questions about this collection contact or visit the Digital Repository ETD Library Guide or contact the ASU Graduate College at gradformat@asu.edu.
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- All Subjects: criminology
- Creators: Hepburn, John R.
- Creators: Tasca, Melinda
Addressing this gap in the literature, this study provides the first rigorous empirical examination of the inmate-level characteristics that influence punishment outcome following guilty institutional misconduct proceedings. Guided by criminal sentencing literature, the inmate- level characteristics are divided into groups of legal factors, quasi-legal factors, and extra-legal factors. Representing a significant advancement beyond prior research, this study operationalizes punishment outcome in two ways – as an interval-level ordered sanction severity scale and as individual punishment categories. A series of multivariate models with sample selection corrections are estimated to model the direct and interactive effects of the legal, quasi-legal, and extra-legal inmate characteristics on punishment outcome.
Results of the fully-saturated direct effects models reveal a consistent pattern across both operationalizations of the punishment outcome. The legal factor of misconduct offense and the prosocial behavior quasi-legal factors of working a prison job and program involvement are significantly related to punishment outcomes. The quasi-legal factor representing criminogenic risk and the extra-legal factors of inmate gender and race/ethnicity are not significantly related to punishment outcomes. When the direct effects models re-estimated on samples split by inmate gender and race/ethnicity, however, the extra-legal factors of gender and race/ethnicity condition the effects of some of the legal and quasi-legal factors on punishment outcome. Results of this study suggest that, holding constant the effect of legal misconduct-related factors, disparities exist in post-disciplinary sanctioning based on inmate race/ethnicity and gender.
Based on these findings, recommendations are made to restructure leadership training to emphasize relational leadership skills that positively influence staff to act in accordance with agency desires and more closely follow policy guidelines. It is also recommended that future studies consider including aggregated demographic variables in studies of misconduct in order to capture cultural/environmental influences that may otherwise be missed, and should avoid overuse of composite variables, in particular institution security level.
parents has focused largely on the trauma that results from losing a parent to incarceration. Little research has been dedicated to examining the pre-existing trauma and negative life experiences these children are exposed to prior to parental incarceration. Using cross-sectional data on children (N = 1,221) from a representative study of Arizona Department of Corrections inmates, the present study examines the relationships among children who have contact with Child Protective Services (CPS) prior to parental incarceration and: (1) parental substance abuse, (2) exposure to violence and (3) parental mental illness. Nearly a quarter of all children whose inmate parents were interviewed were contacted by CPS before experiencing parental incarceration. Children whose inmate parents reported being unemployed or less involved in the lives of their children and children who were reportedly exposed to violence were significantly more likely to have been contacted by CPS prior to experiencing parental incarceration as were younger children. The children of incarcerated mothers were more likely to have been contacted by CPS than were the children of incarcerated fathers. This effect remained even after controlling for additional parent, child and family risk factors for CPS contact such as prior history of incarceration and race.