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

Based on Gottfredson and Hirschi's (1990) general theory of crime, research has shown that low self-control is a consistent and significant predictor of criminal behavior, with general effects across diverse contexts and populations. Starting with the path-breaking work of Schreck (1999), this perspective has been used to explain not only criminal involvement but also crime victimization. Research for two decades has revealed that low self-control has general effects on victimization across both domestic and international contexts. Extant international studies of the theory, however, have been undertaken in nations similar in culture and economy to the United States. To address this limitation, the current project tests the generality thesis of low self-control in the notoriously private and under-studied country of Saudi Arabia. Because its culture, values, and social structure vary greatly from those of the United States, demonstrating significant effects of low self-control in Saudi Arabia would speak strongly to the general effects of low self-control, regardless of social context. Notably, beyond the low self-control perspective, lifestyle-routine activity theory (L-RAT) has demonstrated significant predictive ability in explaining victimization. Given L-RAT's prominence, the current project also examines the effects of L-RAT measures on the victimization experiences of Saudi youths. These analyses thus assess the robustness of low self-control as a source of victimization while controlling for respondents' lifestyles. The data for this study are drawn from a secondary dataset from a collaborative study by American and Saudi scholars. The data were collected in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia, which is a city of 3 million residents. The sample includes 500 males and 500 females in grades 10th through 12th, who were surveyed across eight different schools. The survey collected responses on a range of behaviors and experiences, from delinquent involvement to (open full item for complete abstract)

Committee: John Wright Ph.D. (Committee Chair); Francis Cullen Ph.D. (Committee Member); Cheryl Lero Jonson Ph.D. (Committee Member); Pamela Wilcox Ph.D. (Committee Member) Subjects: Criminology

PhD, University of Cincinnati, 2014, Education, Criminal Justice, and Human Services: Criminal Justice

This dissertation was a study of employee theft within small businesses focused upon understanding how these acts affect the owners and managers of small businesses, as well as understanding their perceptions of this problem. The problem of employee theft has received scholarly attention from multiple academic disciplines, and is also a common topic of discussion among business owners and managers, as well as within industry associations. However, employee theft occurring specifically within small businesses has received much less empirical attention, and almost no attention has been given to how these acts affect the owners and managers of small businesses. This study was an attempt to fill these gaps by studying the problem of employee theft within small businesses from the perspective of the owners and managers of those businesses. This study used a mixed-methods process of data collection, which required the collection and examination of quantitative and qualitative data obtained from a sample of small business owners and managers within the greater Cincinnati, Ohio metropolitan area. This study focuses mainly upon how elements of guardianship within the business influence opportunity structures for employee theft. However, when explored from the perspective of the owners and managers of small businesses, this examination of business guardianship also touches upon issues of target suitability and offender motivation. In total, this study provides important and unique information about a topic of importance to many academic disciplines, while also providing useful information for the actual owners and managers of small businesses. This study of employee theft within small businesses represents a valuable contribution to both researchers and practitioners interested in better understanding a serious problem that has the potential to threaten small businesses in the United States.

Committee: Michael Benson Ph.D. (Committee Chair); Francis Cullen Ph.D. (Committee Member); John Eck Ph.D. (Committee Member); Suzanne Masterson Ph.D. (Committee Member) Subjects: Criminology

PhD, University of Cincinnati, 2023, Education, Criminal Justice, and Human Services: Criminal Justice

Criminologists also have investigated the racial and ethnic disparities in criminal outcomes in offending, criminal and victimization. However, the focus has been on White and Black populations and neighborhoods, and, more recently, to Hispanic/Latino populations. Other racial minorities -- Asian, Native Americans and Native Indian, Hawaiian Pacific Islander, multiracial, and all others -- are often either excluded in the studies or considered as a homogenous group, despite significant variances between these groups. Furthermore, disparities in victimization across racial/ethnic groups have received limited attention from scholars, hindering the development of effective crime prevention programs tailored to different racial/ethnic groups. This also results in a lack of understanding of victimization disparities and the lack of development and discussion of victimology theories on these disparities. In light of these issues, this dissertation aims to examine gaps in victimization rates and risks across diverse racial groups in the United States, using a nationally representative sample, and to propose routines activities that may decrease victimization risks among racial/ethnic minorities. This study first reviews literature on the racial/ethnic disparities in crime victimization and explanations based on routine activity theory. Then, I propose an alternative explanation for the disparities. Based on the review, the disparities in victimization rates and risks among the groups are estimated using 5 years of NCVS data (2017-2021). With the same data, the impact of routine activities on different racial/ethnic groups is tested using descriptive and difference-in-differences tests. The proposed hypothesis of shielded routines is tested using a qualitative pattern matching method, in a case study of Korean immigrants and Americans in Cincinnati, OH, US. The analysis of annual victimization rates reveals notable differences across various racial and ethnic groups (open full item for complete abstract)

Committee: John Eck Ph.D. (Committee Chair); Min Xie Ph.D. (Committee Member); Brittany Hayes Tsygansky Ph.D. (Committee Member); J.Z. Bennett Ph.D. (Committee Member) Subjects: Criminology

PhD, University of Cincinnati, 2014, Education, Criminal Justice, and Human Services: Criminal Justice

Empirical studies have established that Blacks and Latinos are the most violently victimized of all racial/ethnic groups in the U.S., but the mechanisms that underlie these victimization disparities are not well understood. This dissertation builds an integrated model to draw attention to culturally-driven differences across racial/ethnic groups regarding criminal opportunities. It tests three alternative hypotheses developed from lifestyles and routine activities theory (LRAT)—mediation, moderation, and context—that may explain the disparities. First, it assess whether criminal opportunities mediate the effects of race/ethnicity on violent victimization. Second, it tests whether the strength and direction of the race/ethnicity–violent victimization relationship is contingent upon race/ethnicity. Finally, it investigates contextual effects that could explain away the relationship between race/ethnicity and violent victimization as an artifact of the residential concentration of minorities in high-risk neighborhoods. Using data from the Project on Human Development in Chicago Neighborhoods (PHDCN), the results revealed that Black and Hispanic adolescents were twice as likely as their White counterparts to be violently victimized, and these disparities remained after controlling for demographic characteristics and prior victimization. As to the hypothesized sources of these disparities, there was mixed evidence regarding the mediation hypothesis, because although criminal opportunity measures were significantly related with violent victimization, they failed to eliminate the victimization disparities. As to the moderation hypothesis, while the relationship between guardianship and violent victimization was contingent upon race/ethnicity, these effects did not equalize youth's differential risks. Finally, the analysis revealed weak support to the context hypothesis, as none of the neighborhood-level indicators of criminal opportunities significantly affected (open full item for complete abstract)

Committee: Bonnie Sue Fisher Ph.D. (Committee Chair); Nancy Rodriguez Ph.D. (Committee Member); Christopher Sullivan Ph.D. (Committee Member); Pamela Wilcox Ph.D. (Committee Member) Subjects: Criminology

Master of Arts (MA), Ohio University, 2014, Sociology (Arts and Sciences)

Serial rape, while being one of the most serious crimes in nature, is also one of the least researched. Previous studies suggest that a majority of sexual offenders have multiple victims, but have used mixed definitions of serial rape and small sample sizes. This study aims to create a sociological definition of serial rape and uses newspaper articles spanning seven decades to find reported cases of the crime across the United States. Using a sample of 1,037 offenders, an offender profile was created, as well as a visual representation of the crime across time.

Committee: Thomas Vander Ven Dr. (Advisor) Subjects: Criminology; Sociology

PhD, University of Cincinnati, 2005, Arts and Sciences : Geography

An agent-based crime event and crime pattern simulation model is developed in this research. The purpose of the simulation model is to provide a computational laboratory for environmental criminologists to study the interactions among offenders, targets, controllers, and crime places. The simulation model also aims to provide a useful tool for teaching crime event theories. Routine activity theory and crime pattern theory are the theoretical foundations of the simulation model. Agent-based modeling coupled with cellular automata addresses the complex crime event process of street robbery. A type of spatial autonomous agent is developed with a wayfinding capability on the urban street network. The wayfinding algorithm is based on a reinforcement learning algorithm. Offender agents, target agents and police agents are developed based on the spatial autonomous agent, which can be released on a street network to execute their routine activity schedules. The interactions among offender agents, target agents, police agents, and crime places create crime events and crime patterns for analysis. Offender agents and target agents can learn from their past offending/victimization experience and change their spatial behaviors. The crime event and crime pattern simulation model is tested to be able to generate credible spatial, temporal, victimization, and offending patterns. The simulation model is then applied to examine the effect of agent adaptations on spatial crime patterns, offending patterns and victimization patterns. The power-function distributions of crime events among crime places and offender population are examined as emphases. Targeted for MS Windows desktop, the RA/CA/ABM computational laboratory is implemented using Visual C++. The computational laboratory has a graphic user interface that allows users to customize the simulation model, control the simulation process, visualize agent movement and crime patterns during the simulation, and query agent properties (open full item for complete abstract)

Committee: Dr. Lin Liu (Advisor) Subjects: Geography

PHD, Kent State University, 2011, College of Education, Health and Human Services / School of Health Sciences

The purpose of this study was to analyze the relationship between skateboarding and substance use among a cohort of adolescent male skateboarders residing in two metropolitan regions in the Eastern United States. The tenets of the individual level routine activity theory (Osgood, Wilson, O'Malley, Bachman, & Johnston, 1996), provided the theoretical foundation for this study. The routine activity theory suggests activities that combine: (a) socializing with peers, (b) freedom from adult supervision, and (c) a lack of structure provide an environment uniquely conducive for problem behavior including substance use. Using a location-based intercept protocol, a purposive sample of 124 male skateboarders in grades 9–12 was recruited from 14 skate parks and street skating spots. Skateboarding involvement and substance use data were collected using a self-administered, 45-item instrument. Objective measures of skateboarding included time spent skating, primary skating location, and skating with peers. Subjective measures assessed leisure identity and enduring involvement with skateboarding. Current (within the previous 30 days) alcohol, tobacco (cigarette smoking), and marijuana use data were analyzed as dichotomous variables (has used/has not used) in chi square tests and Generalized Linear Modeling (SPSS). Findings revealed no statistically significant relationship between involvement in skateboarding and current alcohol, tobacco, and marijuana use among this sample of skateboarders. Spending more or less time skating was not found to significantly interact with the relationship between skateboarding involvement and substance use. These findings did not support the supposition that involvement in skateboarding was associated with substance use, as the theoretical and evidentiary literature suggests.

Committee: Cynthia W. Symons D.Ed. (Committee Co-Chair); Kele Ding Ph.D. (Committee Co-Chair); Christine Balan Ph.D. (Committee Member) Subjects: Criminology; Health Education; Recreation

PhD, University of Cincinnati, 2012, Education, Criminal Justice, and Human Services: Criminal Justice

Though there has been considerable research into urban crime, there is little criminological research and theoretical development on central business districts despite the fact these areas are critical in the functioning of cities. In fact, studies often exclude them because of the lack of residential population from which to draw statistical inferences. As a result, theories of urban neighborhoods may have little applicability to central business districts; therefore, little is known about the processes used to control crime and disorder in central business district neighborhoods. The purpose of this study is to address the gap in the crime literature by developing a framework, based in environmental criminology, that will enable researchers to examine central business district crime control processes. The central business district of Cincinnati is used as a single-site case study to determine the framework's ability to identify those crime control processes most likely to work in central business districts and to identify those that do not. Data are drawn from official crime statistics for the City of Cincinnati, other official documentations, direct observations, and interviews with central business district business owners and residents. Findings suggest this framework is appropriate for identifying crime control processes within central business districts. The results of this study will advance our knowledge of effective crime prevention strategies in areas where issues of ownership and crime control are less clear-cut.

Committee: John Eck PhD (Committee Chair); Tamara Madensen PhD (Committee Member); James Frank PhD (Committee Member); Pamela Wilcox PhD (Committee Member) Subjects: Criminology