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- All Subjects: criminology
- All Subjects: Crime prevention
- Genre: Academic theses
- Creators: Sweeten, Gary
- Creators: White, Michael D.
- Member of: Theses and Dissertations
- Status: Published
Description
Gangs present a wide array of consequences, both for society as a whole and for gang members themselves. Addressing factors that influence gang membership is of critical importance; however, very little research to date has sought to understand the relationship between spirituality, religion, and gang membership, instead focusing on general deviance. The goal of the present study is to bridge this gap by addressing two research questions: 1. what is the relationship between spirituality and gang membership? And 2. what is the relationship between formal religious participation and gang membership? In order to answer these questions, the current study utilizes Pathways to Desistance, a longitudinal study of adjudicated youth and young adults in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania and Phoenix, Arizona. Logistic regression indicates that spirituality, not formal religious participation, is associated with decreased odds of gang membership in the first two years following adjudication. In addition, increased levels of antisocial peer deviance are significantly associated with increased odds of gang membership. Together, these results indicate that reorienting gang members away from their deviant peers, fostering new, prosocial connections, and encouraging spiritual ideas such as personal closeness to a higher power and feelings of spiritual support may help decrease their odds of continuing participation in gang life. These findings support the continuation of faith-based gang treatments, but do not support formal religious practices (such as church services) as a focus of these treatments. Future research should collect original data, including qualitative interviews about gang members’ perceptions of and relationship with religion and spirituality, as well as utilize Pathways to Desistance in its full seven-year capacity in order to further understand the nuances of this relationship.
ContributorsLoomis, Katelyn (Author) / Decker, Scott H. (Thesis advisor) / Sweeten, Gary (Committee member) / Young, Jacob Tn (Committee member) / Arizona State University (Publisher)
Created2019
Description
Police use of excessive force is under constant scrutiny. Recent high-profile killings of unarmed Black individuals have bolstered calls for reform regarding police use of force. De-escalation has been recommended as a solution to help police reduce their use of force and help repair community relations. However, there is much that we still do not know about de-escalation: What is it exactly? What are de-escalation tactics? Which are considered the most effective? By examining a group of peer-nominated top de-escalators in the Tempe (AZ) Police Department, this dissertation serves to uncover the black box of de-escalation. This in-depth case study of top de-escalators is presented in three parts. Part 1 utilized data from an officer perception survey (N=101). The perceptions of the officers were categorized into three groups: 1) the importance of de-escalation tactics, 2) the frequency of these de-escalation tactics, and 3) the perceptions of de-escalation training. The results in Part 1 highlight which tactics top de-escalators view as most important and which tactics they report using more frequently. Additionally, differences between the top de-escalators and their peers were examined. In Part 2, the author utilized data via systematic social observation of body-worn camera footage (N=228 coded interactions). The behaviors of the officers were categorized into three groups: 1) objectively observable de-escalation tactics, 2) “to-do’s” tactics, and 3) “do not’s” tactics. This phase of the study examined what de-escalation tactics top de-escalators were observed using most frequently (or least) and how they differed from their peers. In Part 3, the author utilized data from a social network question that was administered alongside the officer perception survey (N=64). This phase of the research examined if top de-escalators were perceived as more influential than their peers regarding de-escalation. The empirical, methodological, theoretical, and practical implications of these findings are also discussed.
ContributorsMora, Victor Javier (Author) / White, Michael D. (Thesis advisor) / Young, Jacob T.N. (Committee member) / Telep, Cody (Committee member) / Arizona State University (Publisher)
Created2023
Description
This study utilizes the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms, and Explosive (ATF) eTrace data provided by the Crime Gun Intelligence Unit of Phoenix Police Department to examine firearms recovered from January 2016 to September 2019. The purpose of the study is to examine how firearm characteristics differ between gang members and non-gang members with the intent of identifying the types of firearms to target in a supply-side enforcement approach towards reducing gun violence. Specifically, this study examines the type of dealer the firearm was sold from, the state from which the original purchase of the firearm was traced to, the quality of the firearm as determined by its manufacturer, and the age of the firearm as determined by the number of days between its first original purchase and its recovery by law enforcement. Findings indicate that the odds of a firearm being recovered from a gang member significantly decreases when the firearm is older than three years and has a medium-sized caliber.
ContributorsGutierrez, Melissa Anne (Author) / Katz, Charles M (Thesis advisor) / Sweeten, Gary (Committee member) / Scott, Michael S (Committee member) / Arizona State University (Publisher)
Created2022
Description
Recent times have seen a steady growth in studies about gangs and their membersin prison. Despite the increased interest on gangs in prison, there is much to learn about
their members. Specifically, emerging research indicates that gang members disengage
from their gangs while in prison, however, explanations for why members leave have
been limited to individual level factors. Little is known about how the gang context
influences the process of disengagement in prisons. Further, despite disengaging from
their gangs, former members continue to be at a higher risk for recidivism upon release,
when compared to non-gang members. The current body of literature fails to explicate the
mechanisms that increase a former member’s risk for recidivism. Accordingly, this
dissertation seeks to advance the literature by asking three primary questions: 1) Does
gang organization matter for disengagement from gangs in prison?; 2) Do reentry
experiences differ by gang membership status—current, former and non-gang member?;
3) Do reentry experiences impact reintegration outcomes? Data from the LoneStar Project—a multi-wave study that explores thetrajectories, associations and reentry among 802 gang and non-gang involved inmates
released from Texas prisons—are used. Regression models are estimated to assess the
effects of the gang organization on disengagement and to compare the reentry and
reintegration experiences of current, former and non-gang members. The results indicate
that gang organization is important for disengagement in prison. Further, upon release,
former gang members show no differences in their reentry and reintegration experiences
when compared to non-gang members. Former members, however, show higher levels of
motivation for change and better mental health 1 month after release, when compared to
current members. Additionally, current gang members are found to have the lowest levels
of psychological reintegration 9 months after release. These differences are found to be
mediated by levels of motivation for change and mental health at 1 month after release.
The findings are discussed in light of their implications for continued theoretical
development, future empirical research and the creation of public policy concerning gang
members
ContributorsKhade, Natasha B (Author) / Decker, Scott H (Thesis advisor) / Sweeten, Gary (Committee member) / Wright, Kevin (Committee member) / Arizona State University (Publisher)
Created2021
Description
From a criminological life-course and developmental perspective, military service acts as a positive life event for most individuals. For others, it can serve as a catalyst for maladaptive life-course outcomes, including criminal justice system involvement. However, despite the well-documented negative risks of military service on veteran life-course outcomes and the increased prevalence of veterans in the justice system, relatively little inquiry exists that investigates first-hand accounts of the life-course experiences of veterans enmeshed within the criminal justice system. This dissertation begins to fill this gap by exploring the life-course experiences of justice-involved veterans in three separate, yet interconnected ways: (1) trajectories of deviance across the life-course and the impact of military service on deviance (Chapter 2); (2) the relationships between military service, mental health, and negative life-course outcomes (Chapter 3); and (3) the daily experiences of justice-involved veterans, including who they spend time with, what they spend time doing, and how these factors impact emotion (Chapter 4). This work is one of the few to utilize qualitative inquiry to better understand the relationship between military service and trajectories of deviance for justice-involved veterans, and is the first to use ecological momentary assessment (EMA) methodology to examine the daily experiences of justice-involved veterans. Findings suggest that the role of military service as a turning point is nuanced, and for many the military directly impacted both deviance and mental health outcomes. Further, emotionality of these veterans is quite variant over time, while social togetherness and engagement in activity show to be impactful on emotional well-being. Overall, this dissertation expands the understanding of the role of military service in the life-course, and provides an in-depth look into the daily and life-course experiences of justice-involved veterans, ultimately giving voice to the veterans themselves to articulate their own experiences and needs.
ContributorsTerpstra, Brice (Author) / White, Michael D (Thesis advisor) / Sweeten, Gary (Thesis advisor) / Telep, Cody (Committee member) / Mulvey, Philip (Committee member) / Arizona State University (Publisher)
Created2024
Description
From a theoretical and policy perspective, little is known about the life-course development of lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, and queer (LGBTQ+) people in criminology. In particular, turning points for LGBTQ+ people have not received much theoretical discussion or testing. The lack of theoretical discussion persists even though LGBTQ+ people are overrepresented in the criminal legal system. To address this gap, the current dissertation seeks to queer the life-course perspective in criminology. This dissertation takes stock of the relevancy of traditional turning points (marriage and employment) for LGBTQ+ people, examines through a critical lens the cis- and hetero-normative construction of life-course and theoretical criminology, and theorizes turning points specific to LGBTQ+ people. This dissertation draws on scholarship from various disciplines to present and test an interdisciplinary framework that theorizes three queer turning points: (1) the coming-out process (Chapter 2), (2) family reaction to LGBTQ+ identity (Chapter 3), and (3) establishing a chosen family (Chapter 4). This study is among the first to collect original data via life history interviews with 25 formerly incarcerated LGBTQ+ people to offer comprehensive and in-depth examinations into the relationships between the coming out process, family reaction to LGBTQ+ identity, and chosen family on offending and desistance trajectories. Collectively, findings indicate that these queer turning points are significant life experiences that shape the development and offending/desistance trajectories among formerly incarcerated LGBTQ+ people. In particular, these queer turning points are linked to increases and decreases in offending across the life-course, which are highly contextualized by generational and structural factors. In addition, this work explores how coming out, family reaction, and chosen family shape interactions with the criminal legal system among LGBTQ+ people. Overall, this dissertation expands the queer perspective within life-course criminology through the lens of queer turning points and can shape future policies that meet the needs and best support LGBTQ+ people.
ContributorsMorgan, Skyler (Author) / Fox, Kathleen A. (Thesis advisor) / Wang, Xia (Committee member) / Sweeten, Gary (Committee member) / Arizona State University (Publisher)
Created2023
Description
Criminological theories have long incorporated personality traits as key explanatory factors and have generally relied on assumptions of trait stability. However, growing evidence from a variety of fields including criminology, psychology, and neurobiology is demonstrating that personality traits are malleable over the life-course, and substantial individual variation exists in the developmental patterns of personality traits over time. This research is forcing criminologists to consider how and why “enduring” individual characteristics may change over the life course in ways that are meaningfully related to offending. Two traits that have been consistently linked to offending and conflated in key criminological theories (i.e. Gottfredson and Hirschi’s self-control theory), impulsivity and sensation seeking, have recently been shown to be independent personality traits with different normative maturational timetables and biological underpinnings. This dissertation extends this work by examining developmental patterns of impulsivity and sensation seeking and social sources of variation in these traits with the Family and Community Health Survey, a longitudinal data set that consists of approximately 900 African American youth and their families followed from late childhood to their late-twenties. Multiple longitudinal modeling methods are employed (hierarchical linear modeling and group-based trajectory modeling) to address this research agenda. Results from this dissertation lead to four broad conclusions. First, and in support of existing research, there is substantial variability in developmental trajectories of impulsivity and sensation seeking. Average developmental trajectories of these traits greatly mask the degree of individual variability in developmental patterns that exists. Second, social factors are significantly associated with levels of impulsivity and sensation seeking. Socio-environmental experiences characterized by hostility and unsupportiveness are generally associated with elevated levels of impulsivity and sensation seeking while socio-environmental experiences characterized by warmth and supportiveness are associated with lower levels of impulsivity and sensation seeking. Third, sex differences in developmental patterns of impulsivity are nonexistent while sex differences in developmental patterns of sensation seeking are significant. Finally, with few exceptions, predictors of trait levels operate in a general fashion such the same factors typically explain both male and female trait levels and produce similar effects on impulsivity and sensation seeking.
ContributorsHannula, Kara Valentina (Author) / Sweeten, Gary (Thesis advisor) / Decker, Scott (Committee member) / Fine, Adam (Committee member) / Arizona State University (Publisher)
Created2019
Description
Problem-oriented policing (POP) dynamically addresses unique community issues in a way that allows police departments to be cost-effective and efficient. POP draws upon routine activities and rational choice theories, at times incorporating elements of crime prevention through environmental design. A recent systematic review found POP to be hugely popular, but not rigorously assessed or implemented. In 2009, the Glendale, Arizona Police Department and researchers from Arizona State University received funding through the Bureau of Justice Assistance’s (BJA) Smart Policing Initiative (SPI) to target crime at convenience stores through a problem-oriented policing approach. The Glendale SPI team devised an approach that mirrored the ideals put forth by Goldstein (1990), and provided a thorough undertaking of the SARA model. A comprehensive response plan was developed with several proposed responses, including: intervention with Circle K leadership, suppression, and prevention at the six highest-activity stores. Despite a thorough POP implementation, the initial descriptive evaluation of the Glendale SPI reported positive effects on crime, but left questions about the intervention’s long-term impact on convenience store crime in Glendale, Arizona. The policy and theoretical influence of the initiative warrants a more rigorous evaluation. Supplanting the original assessment, a difference in difference model, negative binomial regression, and relative effect size are calculated to ascertain the SPI’s long-term effects on target and comparison stores. Phi and weighted displacement quotient are calculated to determine the existence of displacement of crime or diffusion of benefits. Overall, results indicate support for the project’s effectiveness on crime reduction. Further, none of the six intervention stores experienced crime displacement. Five of the six stores, however, experienced a diffusion of benefits in the surrounding 500-yard area; that is, a crime reduction was observed at the intervention stores and in the surrounding areas of five of these stores. Disorder and property crimes at the targeted stores were most affected by the intervention. One of the intervention stores did experience an increase in violent crime, however. Future studies should strengthen the methodological design when evaluating POP projects and seek to flesh out more precisely the crime control effects of unique problem-oriented strategies.
ContributorsDario, Lisa M (Author) / White, Michael D. (Thesis advisor) / Spohn, Cassia C. (Committee member) / Sweeten, Gary (Committee member) / Arizona State University (Publisher)
Created2016
Description
This dissertation integrates concepts from three bodies of literature: police use of force, neighborhood/ecological influence on police, and police culture. Prior research has generally found that neighborhood context affects police use of force. While scholars have applied social disorganization theory to understand why neighborhood context might influence use of force, much of this theorizing and subsequent empirical research has focused exclusively on structural characteristics of an area, such as economic disadvantage, crime rates, and population demographics. This exclusive focus has occurred despite the fact that culture was once an important component of social disorganization theory in addition to structural factors. Moreover, the majority of the theorizing and subsequent research on police culture has neglected the potential influence that neighborhood context might have on officers’ occupational outlooks. The purpose of this dissertation is to merge the structural and cultural elements of social disorganization theory in order to shed light on the development and maintenance of police officer culture as well as to further specify the relationship between neighborhood context and police use of force. Using data from the Project on Policing Neighborhoods (POPN), I address three interrelated research questions: 1) does variation of structural characteristics at the patrol beat level, such as concentrated disadvantage, homicide rates, and the percentage of minority citizens, predict how an officer views his/her occupational outlook (i.e., culture)?; 2) do officers who work in the same patrol beats share a similar occupational outlook (i.e., culture) or is there variation?; and 3) does the inclusion of police culture at the officer level moderate the relationship between patrol beat context and police use of force? Findings suggest that a patrol beat’s degree of concentrated disadvantage and homicide rate slightly influence officer culture at the individual level. Results show mixed evidence of a patrol beat culture. There is little support for the idea that characteristics of the patrol beat and individual officer culture interact to influence police use of force. I conclude with a detailed discussion of the methodological, theoretical, and policy implications as well as limitations and directions for future research.
ContributorsShjarback, John (Author) / White, Michael D. (Thesis advisor) / Wallace, Danielle M. (Committee member) / Katz, Charles M. (Committee member) / Arizona State University (Publisher)
Created2016
Description
Since the 1990s, stop and frisk activities have been a cornerstone of the New York Police Department (NYPD). The manner in which the NYPD has carried out stop, question, and frisks (SQFs), however, has been a focal point of discussion, resulting in public outrage and two major lawsuits. Recently, the Federal District Court Judge ruled that the NYPD was engaging in unconstitutional stop-and-frisk practices that targeted predominately Black and Latino New Yorkers. Questions surrounding the NYPD’s SQF practices have almost exclusively focused on racial and ethnic disproportionality in the rate of stops without necessarily considering what transpired during the stop. This study will fill that void by examining the prevalence and nature of use of force during those stops, along with testing the minority threat hypothesis. By combining micro-level measures from the NYPD’s 2012 “Stop, Question, and Frisk” database with macro-level variables collected from the United States Census Bureau, the current study examines police use of force in the context of SQF activities. The results should help judges, policy makers, police officers, and scholars understand the nature of police use of force in the context of SQFs.
ContributorsMorrow, Weston (Author) / White, Michael D. (Thesis advisor) / Wallace, Danielle M (Committee member) / Wang, Xia (Committee member) / Fradella, Henry F. (Committee member) / Arizona State University (Publisher)
Created2015