Matching Items (16)
Description
The number of girls in the juvenile justice system is rising; they make up the fastest-growing demographic within the juvenile justice system. Yet regardless of their rising numbers, current treatment plans, screening tools, and diversion programs do not adequately address the mental health problems that girls are six times more likely to experience than boys. Internalized suffering in the form of depression, mood disorders, and anxiety are significantly more prevalent for girls than for boys. Girls are also more likely to be suicidal and at risk of sexual exploitation and abuse. Despite the need for interventions and treatment options that consider these gender-related differences, there is limited research on this subject. The present study explores whether mental illness, substance use, and treatment influence criminal activity. Further, it examines how gender influences these relationships. Through use of logistic regression and data from the 2004 National Household Survey on Drug Use and Health (NSDUH), the present study finds that mental illness, substance use, and treatment influences criminal activity. Furthermore, gender influences these relationships. The present study's findings indicate elevated risks of criminal involvement for youths using alcohol and marijuana, especially for males. Further, there are higher risk factors for becoming criminally involved for males who get into a serious fight at school or work. Therefore, those caring for youths, especially male youths, need to pay attention to any signs of alcohol and or marijuana use and intervene sooner rather than later.
ContributorsIsabella, Jeri Morgan (Author) / Spohn, Cassia (Thesis advisor) / Fine, Adam (Thesis advisor) / Yan, Shi (Committee member) / Arizona State University (Publisher)
Created2022
Description
Legal socialization examines how people acquire their views about the law. A key tenet within this field is that fair interactions with nonlegal authorities, such as teachers, influence people’s legal values (i.e., the ubiquity hypothesis) which subsequently influences how people judge legal authority later in life. This study uses data from the New Hampshire Youth Survey to test the ubiquity hypothesis. Participants completed measures of how procedurally just their teachers were in general, as well as the procedural justice of their least and favorite teachers. Approximately 45 days later, they participated in an experiment where they read a vignette describing an interaction between a police officer and a young adult. Participants read vignettes where the officer either did or did not give a voice to the young adult and did or did not behave in a neutral manner. After reading the vignette, participants were asked to judge the procedural justice and legitimacy of the officer. The results indicated students’ judgments of the officer’s procedural justice were not influenced by prior experiences with teacher procedural justice. Judgments of officer legitimacy, on the other hand, were associated with teacher procedural justice, specifically participant’s least favorite teacher. These results indicate a more nuanced view of the ubiquity hypothesis than has been portrayed by legal socialization scholars whereby prior experiences with nonlegal authority affect some legal judgments but not others.
ContributorsPerea, Angel Luis (Author) / Trinkner, Rick (Thesis director) / Fine, Adam (Committee member) / Barrett, The Honors College (Contributor) / School of Criminology and Criminal Justice (Contributor)
Created2023-05
Description
Justice involved youth are an extremely important and vulnerable population. This alone makes understanding the systems they interact with even more vital due to the power those systems may have in the development of youth’s lives. Research suggests that social relationships impact youth development (Bronfenbrenner, 1977), including for justice-involved youth (Drake et al., 2014). However, gaps in literature exist in assessing multiple adult relationships for youth and measuring self-efficacy rather than probational success. The current study addresses these gaps in the literature with a sample of youth on probation (N = 889). Data came from two sources: self-report surveys from youth and official record data from the jurisdiction’s risk/needs assessment tools. Paired t-tests were administered to test the comparative levels of support between youth and the adults in their lives. It was found that youth and probation officer support had the strongest correlation. Then, linear regressions were utilized to assess relationship quality and youth self-efficacy. It was found that probation officer relationship quality was strongest in correlating to youth self-efficacy. Multiple regressions were also administered to analyze the moderation impact of probationary officer relationship quality and school employee relationship quality in relation to parent relationship quality. No statistically significant results were found. Findings suggest the importance of proximal relationships to youth and the critical importance of the probationary officer relationship to youth who are on probation.
ContributorsWeber, Lex (Author) / Fine, Adam (Thesis director) / Cross, Allison (Committee member) / Barrett, The Honors College (Contributor) / School of Criminology and Criminal Justice (Contributor) / School of Politics and Global Studies (Contributor)
Created2023-05
Description
Background: ACEs has been associated with stress and violence in prior research. More research is needed to set up gender differences between males and females displaying violence and stress in response to ACEs. Objectives: This study investigated the effects of ACEs and gender on exhibited frequencies of violence and stress within youth. Methods: This study used descriptive statistics and regression to examine the relationships between gender and aces on violence and stress using data from the Arizona Youth Survey (AYS). Interactions were included to evaluate if gender moderated the effect of ACEs. Results: Analyses showed that ACEs significantly impacted youths’ engagement in violence and experiences of stress. Additionally, boys engaged in more violence while girls experienced increased stress. Interaction effects were not substantial as compared to the main effects of ACEs and gender. Conclusion: Given the results, youth interventions should focus on the overall impact of ACEs, regardless of gender.
ContributorsPark, Deborah (Author) / Pardini, Dustin (Thesis director) / Fine, Adam (Committee member) / Barrett, The Honors College (Contributor) / School of Criminology and Criminal Justice (Contributor)
Created2023-05
ContributorsPark, Deborah (Author) / Pardini, Dustin (Thesis director) / Fine, Adam (Committee member) / Barrett, The Honors College (Contributor) / School of Criminology and Criminal Justice (Contributor)
Created2023-05
ContributorsPark, Deborah (Author) / Pardini, Dustin (Thesis director) / Fine, Adam (Committee member) / Barrett, The Honors College (Contributor) / School of Criminology and Criminal Justice (Contributor)
Created2023-05
Description
This thesis expands on Procedural Justice Theory (PJT), which argues that all else equal, judgments of fairness are most strongly motivated by process and relational factors of an interaction. This includes neutral, consistent, and transparent decision-making as well as respectful and dignified interpersonal treatment. The bounded authority perspective argues that judgments of fairness are also influenced by evaluations of police respecting the boundaries of their authority and not overstepping into domains under personal jurisdiction. This study tests this argument using an online convenience sample (n =1048) recruited from Prolific Academic. Respondents completed surveys at three time points between April and June of 2020 that included measures of procedural justice, distributive justice, bounded authority, and overall fairness judgments of the police. Across all three waves, results showed that procedural justice, distributive justice, and bounded authority had strong positive associations with police fairness. Procedural justice had a significantly stronger association than either distributive justice or bounded authority, while the latter factors were not significantly different. I discuss the implications for our criminal justice and directions for future research as well the need for a representative sample and use of experimental design to clarify the impact of bounded authority concerns.
ContributorsHutchings, Gail (Author) / Trinkner, Rick (Thesis director) / Fine, Adam (Committee member) / Barrett, The Honors College (Contributor) / School of Politics and Global Studies (Contributor) / School of Social and Behavioral Sciences (Contributor)
Created2022-12
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
Although child welfare services are anticipated, in part, to lessen the negative
influence of maltreatment on childhood and adolescent development, there is evidence
that involvement in the foster care system negatively affects adolescent substance
use. Within the literature, limited empirical research has emerged in regard to this issue.
The present study aims to fill this critical gap in the literature by examining the
association between baseline biological, psychological, and social risk and protective
factors on adolescent involvement in substance use, and frequency of substance use, over
a period of 24 months for foster care involved youth. Furthermore, the present study
compares substance use behaviors between youth with differing experiences of
maltreatment subtypes and severity levels. Data come from VOYAGES, a longitudinal
study of older adolescents in the custody of the Missouri Children’s Division for foster
care services. The current analysis reports on those youth who completed both the
baseline and the final interview (N=323). Key findings include significant associations
between baseline peer substance use, lowered levels of school commitment, mentorship,
and familial support with later adolescent substance use. Overall, the existence of
numerous individual risk factors far outweighs the potential of protective factors
buffering against subsequent substance use in the current study. The foster care system,
although well-intentioned, potentially barricades individuals from successfully navigating
through adolescence and early adulthood without engaging in risky behaviors such as
substance use. Given the high prevalence of substance use among those placed in the
care of the foster care system, prevention efforts for this population requires an improved
understanding of psychosocial risk and protective factors.
influence of maltreatment on childhood and adolescent development, there is evidence
that involvement in the foster care system negatively affects adolescent substance
use. Within the literature, limited empirical research has emerged in regard to this issue.
The present study aims to fill this critical gap in the literature by examining the
association between baseline biological, psychological, and social risk and protective
factors on adolescent involvement in substance use, and frequency of substance use, over
a period of 24 months for foster care involved youth. Furthermore, the present study
compares substance use behaviors between youth with differing experiences of
maltreatment subtypes and severity levels. Data come from VOYAGES, a longitudinal
study of older adolescents in the custody of the Missouri Children’s Division for foster
care services. The current analysis reports on those youth who completed both the
baseline and the final interview (N=323). Key findings include significant associations
between baseline peer substance use, lowered levels of school commitment, mentorship,
and familial support with later adolescent substance use. Overall, the existence of
numerous individual risk factors far outweighs the potential of protective factors
buffering against subsequent substance use in the current study. The foster care system,
although well-intentioned, potentially barricades individuals from successfully navigating
through adolescence and early adulthood without engaging in risky behaviors such as
substance use. Given the high prevalence of substance use among those placed in the
care of the foster care system, prevention efforts for this population requires an improved
understanding of psychosocial risk and protective factors.
ContributorsCraig, Tyleia O (Author) / Roosevelt, Stacia S (Thesis advisor) / Chamberlain, Alyssa W (Committee member) / Fine, Adam (Committee member) / Arizona State University (Publisher)
Created2019
Description
Academic deviance is a potentially detrimental behavior for students and universities alike in that it causes credit to be given to individuals where it is not due. Furthermore, it is a common occurrence, with around half of college students admitting to engaging in this behavior at least once. Therefore, the purpose of this study is to investigate the relationship between perfectionism, strain, and academic deviance. In doing this, this study uses data from a primary data collection effort in Arizona State University, with a final sample of 696 students, to answer three research questions: Are there differences in the likelihood of engaging in academic deviance by maladaptive perfectionists, adaptive perfectionists, and non-perfectionists? Are there differences in the perceptions of the wrongness of academic deviance between maladaptive perfectionists, adaptive perfectionists, and non-perfectionists? Are there differences in how context dependent maladaptive perfectionists, adaptive perfectionists, and non-perfectionists view academic deviance the wrongness of academic deviance? Ordered logistic regression are used to access these research questions. Results suggest that neither perfectionism nor strain were a significant factor in determining the likelihood that a participant would engage in an academically deviant behavior, or how wrong they believed that behavior to be. However, perfectionism did seem to have a mild impact on how context dependent individuals felt the wrongness of their behaviors, meaning that if the cause of the strain was due to the professor’s actions, students viewed academic deviance as less wrong, and self-control explained at least part of this effect. Strain, on the other hand, did not have a significant effect. Overall, the results suggest some legitimacy to the use of general strain theory to explain the potential relationships, given the relationship between perfectionism and context dependency. Additionally, the results support policy implications designed to reduce maladaptive thoughts and subsequently academic deviance, such as cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT). Future research should examine the link between perfectionism and other types of academic strain.
ContributorsAllen, Savanna Marie (Author) / Pizarro, Jesenia (Thesis advisor) / Fine, Adam (Committee member) / Young, Jacob (Committee member) / Arizona State University (Publisher)
Created2020