Matching Items (7)
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- All Subjects: criminology
- Genre: Masters Thesis
- Creators: Wright, Kevin A.
- Member of: ASU Electronic Theses and Dissertations
- Member of: Theses and Dissertations
- Status: Published
Description
Social learning theory has enjoyed decades of supportive research and has been applied to a wide range of criminal and deviant behavior. Still eluding criminological theorists, however, is a meaningful understanding of the causal processes underlying social learning. This lack of knowledge is due in part to a relative reluctance to examine value transmission as a process in the contexts of mentorship, role modeling, and social learning. With this empirical gap in mind, the present study seeks to isolate and classify meaningful themes in mentorship through loosely structured interviews with young men on the periphery of the criminal processing system. The purposive sample is drawn from youth in a Southwestern state, living in a state-funded, privately run group home for children of unfit, incarcerated, or deported/undocumented parents. The youth included in the study have recently passed the age of eighteen, and have elected to stay in the group home on a voluntary basis pending the completion of a High School diploma. Further, both the subjects and the researcher participate in a program which imparts mentorship through art projects, free expression, and ongoing, semi-structured exposure to prosocial adults. This study therefore provides a unique opportunity to explore qualitatively social learning concepts through the eyes of troubled youth, and to generate new lines of theory to facilitate the empirical testing of social learning as a process. Implications for future research are discussed.
ContributorsCesar, Gabriel T Gilberto (Author) / Pratt, Travis C. (Thesis advisor) / Wright, Kevin A. (Committee member) / Ready, Justin T. (Committee member) / Arizona State University (Publisher)
Created2012
Description
Correctional officers are increasingly being trained in evidence-based practices and the willingness of officers to implement what they have learned is crucial for organizational reform. Most of the literature in this area has examined officer attitudes about rehabilitation and punitiveness. Left out are additional characteristics, such as self-control, that may affect an officer’s receptivity to learn and implement new techniques. The present study examines officer receptiveness to motivational interviewing using 280 surveys administered to correctional officers tasked with both delivering and supervising program delivery to inmates within the Arizona Department of Corrections. Three broad questions are asked: 1) Are officer attitudes about punishment associated with receptivity toward implementing rehabilitative techniques? 2) Are officer levels of self-control associated with receptivity toward implementing rehabilitative techniques? and 3) Is the association between officer attitudes toward punishment and receptivity toward implementing rehabilitation techniques moderated by officer self-control? The results suggest that punitiveness and self-control both have statistically significant direct effects on correctional officer receptivity to training and that self-control does not moderate the relationship between punitiveness and receptivity to training. However, these findings could be due to limitations in the present study’s sampling and statistical methods. Policy implications and future research are discussed.
ContributorsSmith, Wesley Thomas (Author) / Wright, Kevin A. (Thesis advisor) / Young, Jacob T.N. (Committee member) / Telep, Cody W. (Committee member) / Arizona State University (Publisher)
Created2018
Description
While there is a good amount of research focused on sex offenders as a whole, only a limited number of studies examine variations within these offenders, how people view the variations, and why their opinions may differ. This study focuses on the interconnections among gender norms, rape myth acceptance, and the perception of sex offenders by administering an online student survey. The survey measured rape myth acceptance and adherence to traditional gender roles to see how they affected perceptions of sex offenders. Perceptions were measured using vignettes that were varied by gender and the situation described. Results showed that higher rape myth acceptance would decrease the blameworthiness of the offender, that the offender was seen as more blameworthy when the offender was a male, and that women tended to see the offender as more blameworthy than men did. The type of sexual situation did not have an impact on blameworthiness, nor did adherence to gender roles. The findings support past research that suggests that rape myth acceptance can impact people’s opinions about offenders in sexual situations and specifically that these opinions differ depending on the gender of the offender. With some offenders being viewed as more blameworthy than others, it is necessary to examine sex offense laws to see how they may disproportionately affect some offenders and implement harsher punishments than the public may deem necessary.
ContributorsArenas, Lauren (Author) / Spohn, Cassia (Thesis advisor) / Fradella, Henry F. (Committee member) / Stolzenberg Roosevelt, Stacia (Committee member) / Arizona State University (Publisher)
Created2018
Description
Legal cynicism, a concept that reflects how individuals feel about the law, can be linked to different theoretical traditions. However, inconsistencies in the way legal cynicism is operationalized abound. This study aimed to develop a more complete and psychometrically-sound measure of legal cynicism. Factor-analytic procedures were used on a sample of 502 undergraduate university students to create the scale and to test its directional accuracy. Using promax-rotated principal-axis factor analysis, a 4 dimensional factor structure emerged—legal apathy, legal corruption, legal discrimination, and low legal legitimacy. The 21-item scale has a high level of internal consistency (Cronbach’s α = .85; mean inter-item r = .58). Results from ordinary least squares regression models confirmed that the multidimensional legal cynicism scale is significantly correlated with criminal offending (β = .34, p < .001), net of low self-control and demographic characteristics.
ContributorsGifford, Faith (Author) / Reisig, Michael D. (Thesis advisor) / Wang, Xia (Committee member) / Wright, Kevin A. (Committee member) / Arizona State University (Publisher)
Created2015
Description
Corrections has a rich history centered around rehabilitation and its obtainability, and has seen the pendulum swing back and forth between rehabilitative and punitive policies. Currently, there is an emphasis on evidence-based practices which provides a unique opportunity to assess gaps in the rehabilitation literature as a means to ensure that rehabilitative-oriented policies are part of the forefront of corrections. One notable gap in the corrections and rehabilitation literature is that research has not assessed what influences meaningful participation in rehabilitative programming during incarceration. Past research has acknowledged that there is an inmate code, characterized heavily by hypermasculinity, that negatively influences behavior during incarceration, yet research has not examined whether this code influences engagement in rehabilitative programming. The current study seeks to address this gap by examining the inmate code, specifically hypermasculinity, as a barrier to rehabilitation during incarceration through in-depth interviews with five incarcerated individuals from a large Southwestern correctional facility. Findings, limitations, and future research suggestions are discussed.
ContributorsMorse, Stephanie Jean (Author) / Wright, Kevin A. (Thesis advisor) / Telep, Cody W. (Committee member) / Young, Jacob T.N. (Committee member) / Arizona State University (Publisher)
Created2017
Description
Whether through scaring incarcerated people straight or encouraging rehabilitation through treatment, most people hope that, one way or another, incarceration will alter an individual’s path towards a better life. Current forms of incarceration are not achieving this goal and instead inflict undue amounts of pain (Crewe, 2011; Sykes 1958). In times of deprivation and isolation, some people have found ways to not only persevere, but to thrive. Though these individuals are not commonly the focus of criminal justice literature, there is much value in shifting attention to people thriving in prison including the opportunity to gain knowledge on the multi-faceted nature of well-being broadly and the rehabilitation of incarcerated people more specifically. The current study uses structured interview data from 386 men serving time in a medium-security prison unit to explore the correlates of life satisfaction among people in prison. To identify contributing factors to well-being during incarceration, logistic and multinomial regressions analyze variation in the life satisfaction scores of these incarcerated men. The results from these analyses suggest that perceptions of life meaning, generativity, flourishing, and age are all positively associated with thriving in prison and frequency of experiences with incarceration are not related, positively or negatively, to life satisfaction. This study provides some support to current well-being literature and also introduces complexities to the existing knowledge regarding the relationships between demographics such as race or relationship status, and well-being.
ContributorsSutton, Madison Murphy (Author) / Wright, Kevin A. (Thesis advisor) / Telep, Cody (Committee member) / Young, Jacob T.N. (Committee member) / Arizona State University (Publisher)
Created2021
Description
While incarceration can be detrimental for inmates, the children of prisoners can suffer from behavioral issues, poor school performance, and a higher risk of crime and delinquency across the life-course. Separation from one's family is part of what makes
incarceration a punishment, but what can be done to ensure that this punishment has the least harmful effect on children? Prison visitation presents an intriguing opportunity to lessen the potential harms of parental incarceration. Using data from the Arizona Prison Visitation Project (APVP), the current study focuses on inmates who were parents to minor children and seeks to determine: 1) do different types and different amounts of prison contact (in-person, phone, and mail) correlate with changes in the quality of parent-child relationships and 2) does a change in parent-child relationship quality correlate with a change in child behavior. The results from the analysis suggest that visitation and mail contact are associated with positive increases in parent-child relationship quality.
Also, positive changes in parent-child relationship quality were associated with a decrease in the odds of children having behavioral problems during incarceration. This study provides some support for the ability that prison contact can have to increase relationship quality, which in turn, may decrease the presence of behavioral issues in the children of incarcerated parents. Future directions in policy should consider measures to subsidize or refund contact costs, encourage contact between parents and their children, and involve children in in-prison programming designed to improve contact and relationships between parents and their children.
incarceration a punishment, but what can be done to ensure that this punishment has the least harmful effect on children? Prison visitation presents an intriguing opportunity to lessen the potential harms of parental incarceration. Using data from the Arizona Prison Visitation Project (APVP), the current study focuses on inmates who were parents to minor children and seeks to determine: 1) do different types and different amounts of prison contact (in-person, phone, and mail) correlate with changes in the quality of parent-child relationships and 2) does a change in parent-child relationship quality correlate with a change in child behavior. The results from the analysis suggest that visitation and mail contact are associated with positive increases in parent-child relationship quality.
Also, positive changes in parent-child relationship quality were associated with a decrease in the odds of children having behavioral problems during incarceration. This study provides some support for the ability that prison contact can have to increase relationship quality, which in turn, may decrease the presence of behavioral issues in the children of incarcerated parents. Future directions in policy should consider measures to subsidize or refund contact costs, encourage contact between parents and their children, and involve children in in-prison programming designed to improve contact and relationships between parents and their children.
ContributorsHaverkate, Danielle L. (Author) / Wright, Kevin A. (Thesis advisor) / Stolzenberg, Stacia N. (Committee member) / Young, Jacob T.N. (Committee member) / Arizona State University (Publisher)
Created2017