PhD, University of Cincinnati, 2021, Education, Criminal Justice, and Human Services: Criminal Justice

Environmental criminology and empirical research suggest that certain facilities and characteristics of the street network facilitate crime opportunities. These facilities are often referred to as potentially criminogenic facilities because the routine activities associated with their specific functions are thought to create crime opportunities. However, some scholars have contended that it is not the type of facility, but the traffic generated by them, that is responsible for their associations with crime. A separate body of research has linked the betweenness of streets, or their usage potential, to elevated crime levels, suggesting that busier streets are associated with more crime opportunities. This dissertation seeks to determine whether the density of facilities, a proxy for busyness, or specific types of facilities are the more robust predictor of robberies in Cincinnati, OH. The current study also assesses how the betweenness of streets influences the relationship between facilities and robbery. In addition, the potential interrelationship between facility density, street block betweenness, and robberies is examined using a path model. Results suggest that the busyness of facilities appears to be a more robust predictor of robberies than their individual types, but a handful of individual facilities were linked to elevated robberies even after accounting for the business of streets. The path model indicates that 1) facility density and betweenness are both positively associated with robberies, 2) betweenness is linked to a higher density of facilities, and 3) a significant portion of the effect of betweenness on robberies is indirectly transmitted through facility density.

Committee: Cory Haberman Ph.D. (Committee Chair); Lucia Summers (Committee Member); Christopher Sullivan Ph.D. (Committee Member); Ben Feldmeyer Ph.D. (Committee Member) Subjects: Criminology

PhD, University of Cincinnati, 2020, Education, Criminal Justice, and Human Services: Criminal Justice

OBJECTIVES. This study addresses a shortcoming in the facility measurement approach used in some studies of crime and place. That is, researchers tend to treat facilities as though they have a homogenous crime risk despite research indicating there is significant variation in crime across facilities. In this study, I propose and examine a series of eight empirically rooted alternative measures of risky facilities. I assess what, if any, impact each has on the outcomes of models of robbery and theft at street blocks in Cincinnati, Ohio, as compared to the more commonly used homogenous risk measure. METHODS. To compare facility risk measures, I use a series of nearly identical negative binomial regressions to model the effects of sixteen facility types on robbery and theft at street blocks. Models vary only in their operationalization of facility risk. I use model comparison statistics (AIC, BIC) to determine if any of the proposed facility risk variables offer an improved model fit over the homogenous facility crime risk approach. For those that result in an improved fit, I assess model coefficients and significance to determine if the conclusions differ meaningfully from those derived from the homogenous facility crime risk approach. RESULTS. Of the eight proposed measures, only the continuous measure created using calls for service within a 500ft buffer area offered an improved model fit, and only for robbery. The conclusions drawn from the proposed measure regression results largely mirrored those of the homogenous facility count regression results. A number of other models that did not have an improved fit were impacted by multicollinearity, possibly due to the presence of co-located facilities with shared addresses. CONCLUSION. A continuous crime risk variable created using calls for service data within an approximately one block buffer area of facilities may act as an acceptable alternative measure of facility robbery risk in future studies of crime (open full item for complete abstract)

Committee: Cory Haberman Ph.D. (Committee Chair); Martin Andresen Ph.D. (Committee Member); John Eck Ph.D. (Committee Member); Pamela Wilcox Ph.D. (Committee Member) Subjects: Criminology

PhD, University of Cincinnati, 2020, Education, Criminal Justice, and Human Services: Criminal Justice

Crime hot spots are the result of offenders repeatedly perceiving and exploiting criminal opportunity at the same location. Theory supports the notion that offenders interact with their proximal environment; in fact, some have suggested proximal offenders condition the criminogenic effects of some types of facilities. Empirical tests have failed to clearly integrate measures of offenders and criminal opportunity in explanations of crime concentrations. The current dissertation integrated measures of likely offenders, from information on formally incarcerated persons, and criminal opportunity to explain concentrations of robbery and theft from auto across street blocks in Cincinnati. In addition, it tests whether exposure to offenders conditioned the effects of criminogenic facilities. Overall, findings show exposure to likely offenders is important to account for in explanations of crime concentrations. Not only do the likely offender measures have significant main effects, but they interact with some criminogenic facilities to create higher crime counts, beyond the independent effects of likely offender and facility measures.

Committee: Cory Haberman Ph.D. (Committee Chair); Elizabeth Groff Ph.D. (Committee Member); Edward Latessa Ph.D. (Committee Member); Christopher Sullivan Ph.D. (Committee Member) Subjects: Criminology

PhD, University of Cincinnati, 2019, Education, Criminal Justice, and Human Services: Criminal Justice

Architectural journalist Jane Jacobs is arguably one of the most influential figures in urban social sciences and city planning. Yet, she has received minimal attention in the criminological literature. I argue this stemmed from her ideas being linked to those of Oscar Newman. However, these initial interpretations of her ideas—namely that street safety is achieved through surveillance by residents—do not appear to take her contextual examples into account. This mistake is important because it obscures a vital source of social control in urban environments. In this dissertation I examine Jacobs' work and argue that she regarded shopkeepers (i.e., place managers) as the primary source of informal social control. While past interpretations assume Jacobs had a resident-focused explanation of crime, I propose that she had an owner/manager-focus in her writing. From this I unite her work with recent theories of place management into a Neo-Jacobian perspective of place and neighborhood crime. The theory highlights how deliberate decisions and actions taken by property owners and government agencies give rise to neighborhood crime. I then test the theory with three studies using a mixed methods approach. The first study examines the mechanisms of property ownership and neighborhood crime through qualitative interviews in Walnut Hills, a neighborhood in Cincinnati, Ohio that is currently under redevelopment. Next, I conduct a time series analysis to examine how place-based redevelopment influences neighborhood crime in the same neighborhood. The last study tests the notion that there are at least two distinct crime generating processes operating within neighborhoods and that each possess different causal mechanisms. The results suggest that people external to neighborhoods can wield immense control within neighborhoods through property ownership. Moreover, the political decisions that impact the economic vitality of businesses can have a strong influence on crime. How (open full item for complete abstract)

Committee: John Eck Ph.D. (Committee Chair); J.C. Barnes Ph.D. (Committee Member); Kate Bowers Ph.D. (Committee Member); Pamela Wilcox Ph.D. (Committee Member) Subjects: Criminology

PhD, University of Cincinnati, 2018, Education, Criminal Justice, and Human Services: Criminal Justice

Opportunity theories of crime emphasize the importance of crime specificity, the tendency for crime to spatially cluster, and the influence that certain types of places have on the micro-level spatial distribution of crime events. Research using this theoretical framework overwhelmingly supports these assertions. However, much of this research falls short due in part to the choice of dependent variable. For instance, some research ignores the importance of crime specificity by using crime indices, which fail to account for the intricacies of criminal opportunity among crime types. Research focusing on individual crime types, such as robbery, also fail to account for within-crime type heterogeneity. Some newer research accounts for this by using disaggregated crime types, such as street, commercial, or residential robberies. That being said, how researchers define their dependent variable may influence their results and conclusions about the link between crime and place. The current study examines how sensitive spatial patterns of robberies are to different operationalizations of robbery. This study used Cincinnati Police Department robbery data from 2014 through 2016 (N = 4,066) which were then coded by Haberman et al. (forthcoming) to account for differences in victim-offender interaction and spatial environment. Using three different operationalizations of robbery, the following research questions were answered: (1) How, if at all, do different types of robbery spatially cluster? (2) Is the spatial clustering of robbery sensitive to its operationalization? (3) Is the relationship between potentially criminogenic places and robbery sensitive to its operationalization? The results suggest (1) all measures cluster spatially at small units of analysis; (2) while located in spatially proximate areas, differences were seen among the robbery measures and their clusters in terms of their makeup, where they were located, and how many clusters were formed; and (3) all m (open full item for complete abstract)

Committee: Cory Haberman Ph.D. (Committee Chair); Nicholas Corsaro Ph.D. (Committee Member); John Eck Ph.D. (Committee Member); Kenneth Novak Ph.D. (Committee Member) Subjects: Criminology

Master of Arts (MA), Ohio University, 2018, Sociology (Arts and Sciences)

According to the Wildlife Land Trust (2015) more than one million animals are illegally killed each year. This criminal activity, known as poaching, threatens the survival of targeted species, as well as the biodiversity of the ecosystems to which they belong, the livelihood of local communities, and even national security. Considering the unprecedented rates across the globe, the urgency to find solutions has intensified. Although efforts have been predominately led by wildlife conservationists and biologists, given the anthropocentric nature of poaching, in this paper I call for an interdisciplinary approach incorporating an environmental sociological perspective and analysis. Grounded in social conflict theory and green criminology, I explore various forms of inequality to examine the ecological, economic, and social contexts in which poaching occur. Furthermore, I utilize symbolic interactionism to investigate how the construction of these factors may influence the participation in and perpetuation of this illegal activity. While there are countless species affected by poaching, I specifically analyze the poaching of one of the most emotive megafauna and largest living land animal, the African elephant (Loxodonta africana and Loxodonta cyclotic) (Blanc, 2008). Using a mixed methods approach comprised of multiple regression analysis and textual content analysis, I evaluate secondary data from the thirty-seven African countries in which these species inhabit. Findings reveal that agricultural land proportion, gross domestic product, female literacy, democracy, and male unemployment are significant predictors of poaching. The results of this research seek to inform national anti-poaching policy and practice, as well as international collaboration and activism to comprehensively address this complex criminal offense whose consequences transcend species, boundaries, and time.

Committee: Stephen Scanlan (Committee Chair) Subjects: Sociology

Master of Arts (MA), Ohio University, 2015, Sociology (Arts and Sciences)

Few empirical studies have explored serial rape and little work has been done to develop a sociological profile of serial rapists and their victims. Creating sociological profiles of serial rape offenders and their victims allows us to identify individuals with opportunities to offend as well as those at an increased risk of victimization. The current paper uses a qualitative analysis of newspaper accounts in order to construct a sociological profile of the con-style serial rapist. These profiles were constructed for each of the four types of con that were identified in the data. A total of 403 newspaper articles were coded and 221 con-style serial rapists were included in the current analysis. The resulting sociological profiles can be used to inform policies which protect high-risk victim populations as well as decrease offenders' opportunities to commit serial rape.

Committee: Thomas Vander Ven (Committee Chair); Kelly Faust (Committee Member); Christine Mattley (Committee Member) Subjects: Criminology; Sociology

PhD, University of Cincinnati, 2010, Education, Criminal Justice, and Human Services: Criminal Justice

Understanding crime events is critical to theory and practice. Increasingly, some criminologists have pointed to the utility of understanding crime events for understanding both offenders and how crime can be prevented. Nevertheless, there remains today a strong bias toward studying offenders in criminological research even though research indicates that criminological knowledge of the causes of criminality is highly problematic (Weisburd and Piquero, 2008). So there is reason to suspect that criminologists may also know little about crime events. A handful of studies have tried to shed light on this suspicion, but these studies are limited. To directly address this concern, I developed an assessment process that is systematic, replicable and theory-driven to measure what we do and do not know about specific crime events. I used this process to review studies of residential burglary and personal robbery from nine journals over 30 years to answer three research questions: How much do criminologists know about these crime events? Are certain journals more useful for understanding them? And, to what extent do criminologists study specific burglary and robbery events? In response to the first question, my findings suggest that criminologists know very little about these crime events, as compared to what theory would expect them to know. In response to the second question, my findings suggest that environmental criminology journals, compared to traditional criminology journals, are more likely to publish crime event studies. And in response to the third question, my findings suggest that criminologists seldom study specific burglary and robbery events, and show few signs of changing. I discuss the limitations of my findings and their implications for research and policy.

Committee: John Eck PhD (Committee Chair); Rob Guerette PhD (Committee Member); Bonnie Sue Fisher PhD (Committee Member); James Frank PhD (Committee Member) Subjects: Criminology

PhD, University of Cincinnati, 2008, Education : Criminal Justice

Environmental criminology suggests that crime problems can be conceptualized as problems of repeat victims, repeat offenders, or repeat places of crime. There have been considerable theoretical and empirical developments in environmental criminology to examine problems of repeat victimization and repeat places of crime. Repeat offender problems, however, have received less attention within this paradigm. In particular, the application of handlers to serious repeat offender problems has been neglected. This dissertation explores whether environmental criminology and handlers can be used to explain and prevent serious repeat offending problems. To address this, a model of handler effectiveness is proposed to identify the characteristics which influence the likelihood of crime prevention through handling. This model is then used to explore the possibility of using handlers to control a specific crime problem, street group violence. In addition, the implications of engaging handlers as a crime prevention strategy are discussed. Specifically, hypotheses are proposed regarding the circumstances under which displacement and diffusion of benefits are most likely to occur. The ethical implications of engaging handlers through encouragement and coercion are explored, and a set of ethical guidelines are proposed. Various methodological issues associated with studying handlers are also discussed. In closing, this dissertation examines how the concept of handling relates to other criminological theories, and suggests future directions for research in environmental criminology.

Committee: John Eck Dr. (Committee Chair); Pamela Wilcox Dr. (Committee Member); Robin Engel Dr. (Committee Member); David Kennedy (Committee Member) Subjects: Criminology