Criminology & Criminal Justice Theses and Dissertations
Permanent URI for this collectionhttp://hdl.handle.net/1903/2758
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Item Control, Learning, and Vulnerability: An Interactional Approach to Engagement in Violent Extremism(2017) Becker, Michael Henry; Dugan, Laura; Criminology and Criminal Justice; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)In criminological research, scholars present learning and social control theories as competing explanations for criminal behavior. While this has extended to specific offenses and analogous behaviors, it has less frequently been related to ideologically-motivated extremist behavior. This study considers the explanatory power of these two schools of criminological thought as they predict individual participation in violent ideologically motivated extremist behaviors using a recently collected individual-level dataset. A combination of Multivariate Imputation through Chained Equations (MICE), Exploratory Factor Analysis, and logistic regression is used to examine the relationship between theoretical measures and the probability of violent extremist behavior. Ultimately, this thesis finds: (1) having stronger social bonds is associated with a lower probability of violent ideologically motivated behavior, (2) the social learning of violence is associated with a higher probability of violent ideologically motivated behavior, and (3) these relationships depend somewhat upon the ideological milieu of the individual.Item Public Communication as Counter-Terrorism: An Examination of Zero-Sum Counter-Terrorism Assumptions(2017) Fisher, Daren Geoffrey; Dugan, Laura; Criminology and Criminal Justice; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)Terrorist groups from around the globe rely on a range of communication tactics to rally support to their political movement, including publicly directed discourse ranging from public talks to online publications. Thus far, the criminological literature has focused primarily on efforts embodied in law and policy to make terrorism harder to commit. Based on the zero-sum assumption that any losses for a terrorist group result in gains for a government, this perspective suggests that terrorism may only be reduced through deterrence or by diminishing the relative capacity of terrorist organizations. In contrast, this dissertation argues that public communications are a relatively inexpensive, readily available, and less oppressive means to potentially reduce terrorism. Seeking to identify the role that government public communications have played in existing counter-terrorism strategies, this dissertation examines US public communications regarding terrorism delivered by US Presidents and their Press Secretaries between 1970 and 2014. Drawing upon the 6,001 transcripts of presidential communications concerning terrorism during this period, a series of structural equation models are employed to estimate the impact of the quantity and sentiment of presidential communications concerning terrorism on subsequent terrorism aimed at US targets. Findings from these models suggest that the frequency of presidential communications regarding terrorism is consistently related to reductions in terrorism targeting the US in the following month. The frequency of terrorism communications is related to decreases in both domestic and international terrorism, but is also related to increases terrorist casualties between 1970 and 2014. After accounting for the sentiment in these models, support primarily emerged that communicating negative sentiment reduces terrorism in line with restrictive deterrence theory. Key differences in the impact of both the frequency and sentiment of terrorism communications between presidential administrations are also identified, suggesting that influences were more prominent for Presidents such as Carter and George W. Bush. Finally evidence that public approval moderates the impact of presidential communications on domestic terrorism is provided, with presidents with approval ratings in the lowest 25% netting the largest decreases in terrorism but greatest increases in terrorist casualties through their communications.Item Strategic vs. Opportunistic Looting: The Relationship Between Antiquities Looting and Armed Conflict in Egypt(2016) Fabiani, Michelle Rose Dippolito; McGloin, Jean; Dugan, Laura; Criminology and Criminal Justice; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)Antiquities are looted from archaeological sites across the world, seemingly more often in areas of armed conflict. Previously, the relationship between antiquities looting and armed conflict has been assessed with qualitative case studies and journalistic evidence due to a lack of data. This study considers the relationship between antiquities looting and armed conflict in Egypt from 1997 – 2014 with a newly collected time series dataset. A combination of Lag-augmented Vector Autoregression (LA-VAR) and Autoregressive Distributed Lag Models (ARDL) is used to look at both the overall relationship between these two phenomena and their temporal ordering. Ultimately, this thesis finds that: (1) antiquities looting and armed conflict have a positive statistically significant relationship, (2) there is stronger support for antiquities looting preceding armed conflict than for the reverse temporal ordering, and (3) this relationship varies by type of conflict.Item The Impact Of Natural Disasters On Kurdish Terrorism In Turkey 1987-2011: The Importance Of Adequate Government Responses To Natural Disasters(2014) Fisher, Daren Geoffrey; Dugan, Laura J; Criminology and Criminal Justice; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)Natural disasters and terrorism present major challenges in their aftermath to a state and its populace, and help to define the identity of nations (Flynn, 2008). Destructive in their own right, previous research has argued that natural disasters also provide the catalyst for acts of terrorism (Berrebi and Ostwald, 2011), complicating the role that state actions hold in response to a natural disaster. Responses to natural disasters by a state however vary (Perry and Lindell, 2003), and this thesis posits that the response to a natural disaster presents a unique situation for a state, through perceived adequacy of its response, to alter the rational incentives for a group to engage in subsequent terrorism. Using Turkey between 1987 and 2011 as a case study, these data suggest that the perceived adequacy of a response to a natural disaster is inversely associated with ethno-nationalist terrorism within Turkey in the following month.Item THE UTILITY OF DETERRENCE-BASED SANCTIONS IN THE PREVENTION OF VIOLENCE AGAINST ABORTION PROVIDERS: TESTING A BLENDED MODEL OF DETERRENCE AND BACKLASH(2012) Bartholomew, Brad; LaFree, Gary; Criminology and Criminal Justice; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)The American abortion debate has existed since the early 19th century; however, the previous four decades have born witness to fundamental changes within the abortion opposition movement. Beginning in the 1970s, activists started to focus more of their attention on abortion providers. Soon thereafter, the traditionally peaceful protest activities of the activist movement began to share space with acts of harassment, arson, bombings, assaults, and even assassination. Today, abortion provider-related crime has become an unwelcome staple within the broader pro-life movement. In an attempt to prevent future attacks, state and federal legislatures have enacted a series of protection laws designed to raise the penalties associated with crimes against abortion providers. Despite the recent proliferation of these laws, their impact on abortion provider-related crime has seldom been the subject of rigorous empirical research. In this dissertation, I aim to address this shortcoming by using zero-inflated negative binomial regression modeling to present the first longitudinal test of the relationship between protection laws and abortion provider-related crime using incident-level data from 1975 to 2008, collected during a year-long research project at The National Consortium for the Study of Terrorism and Responses to Terrorism (START). The results of this study offer considerable support for the backlash hypothesis and the notion that traditional deterrence-based policy is often demonstrably unsuccessful in the prevention of this particular type of crime. Additionally, the findings suggest that not all protection laws are created equal with respect to their impact on crime. While state laws prohibiting minor forms of anti-abortion crime are shown to produce a backlash effect for crimes of harassment and vandalism, other types of state protection laws were shown to have no effect on crime whatsoever. Furthermore, the presence of the highly visible FACE Act is shown to generate similar increases for both major and minor crime types.Item THE CRIMINAL CONDUCT OF RADICAL ENVIRONMENTAL AND ANIMAL RIGHTS GROUPS: A RATIONAL CHOICE PERSPECTIVE(2010) Carson, Jennifer Varriale; LaFree, Gary; Criminology and Criminal Justice; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)In this dissertation, I examine whether members of radical environmental and animal rights groups are deterred by legal sanctions, morality, both, or neither. From a rational choice framework, I hypothesize that members of these groups weigh costs and benefits and act based on expected utility. I measure an increase in costs through three federal sentencing acts targeted at reducing the criminal behavior of these groups and hypothesize that this legislation decreased the total, serious, and ideologically-specific activity of extremists. I also contend that two terrorist events, the nearly fatal tree-spiking of George Alexander and the assassination of Hyram Kitchen, also increased the costs of criminal conduct for members of radical eco-groups. I evaluate interviews with twenty-five activists and analyze a database of 1056 incidents through both time-series and series hazard modeling. The interviews yield support for the rational choice perspective, particularly in regards to micro-level considerations of legal sanctions and morality. My quantitative findings indicate that the legislation was influential, albeit varying in direction by the method employed. Specifically, the time-series models yield significant increases in the frequency of criminal conduct after the legislation, while the series hazard analyses demonstrate a decrease in the hazard of an attack. I also find that the two major terrorist events did not significantly impact the criminal conduct of these groups. I conclude that members of radical environmental and animal rights groups are rational actors whom consider the moral evaluation of a given act and are susceptible to an increase in costs as measured through legislative efforts, but not as operationalized as a response to high profile attacks.Item Alternatives to punishment: Counterterrorism strategies in Algeria(2009) Lesniewicz, Amber Lee Stoesser; LaFree, Gary D; Criminology and Criminal Justice; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)Rational choice theory has been one of the key theories used to explain the effectiveness of counterterrorism policies (Dugan, LaFree & Piquero, 2005; Enders & Sandler, 1993; 2003; Frey, 2004; LaFree, Dugan & Korte, 2009). These investigations have examined policies focused on increasing the costs of committing political violence, such as criminalization, increased police presence, and government strikes. However, few investigations have looked at policies that increase the benefits of not committing political violence such as negotiations and amnesties. In this study, I investigate the effectiveness of counterterrorism policies that seek to increase the benefits of not committing terrorism. I use Algeria as a case study and examine three counterterrorism policies between 1994 and 2004. One of the policies is a traditionally deterrent policy that increases the consequences of committing terrorism while the two other policies represent alternatively deterrent policies that increase the benefits of not committing terrorism. To analyze these policies, I use ARIMA modeling (N=120 months) and the Global Terrorism Database to determine whether each policy led to a significant change in overall attacks and the proportion of fatal attacks. While researchers have found mixed results when studying the effectives of traditional deterrence counterterrorist measures (Dugan, LaFree & Piquero; Enders & Sandler, 1993; Enders, Sandler & Cauley, 1990; LaFree, Dugan & Korte, 2009), I found that the Civil Concord Act, an amnesty program, as well as the Rome Platform, a negotiation policy, were related to a significant reduction in terrorism in Algeria.Item EXPLORING TRENDS IN THE TARGETING OF VIOLENCE IN IRAQ THROUGH THE LENS OF CONFLICT THEORY: MARCH 2003 TO MAY 2006(2008-08-27) Foster, David Robert; LaFree, Gary; Criminology and Criminal Justice; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)Elements from Weber's Conflict theory are combined with a focus on legitimacy in order to predict the effects that major social and political events have on political violence in the Diyala province of Iraq. Using 39 months of time-series data from Diyala in an ARIMA analysis, this research determines the effects of eight major events on the targeting of violence across Diyala as well as against four specific target sectors: law enforcement, government, military and civilian. This research finds mixed support for conflict theory, although a clearer picture emerges when findings are summarized by target sector, hypothesis and by event. This model is particularly effective at explaining trends in political violence directed against civilian targets. Despite the suboptimal data used, this research provides support for conflict ability to offering insight into the causes and course of political violence in a nation undergoing rapid social and political change.Item FEAR AND DARKNESS: ANTI-ABORTION TERRORISM AND THE UNITED STATES SUPREME COURT(2006-08-30) Bartholomew, Brad; Paternoster, Raymond; Criminology and Criminal Justice; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)Relative deprivation theory (Davies, 1962) suggests that acts of anti-abortion terrorism result from the general widening of the gap between the individual's goals and expectations to a point of intolerance, whereas rational choice theory (Cornish and Clarke, 1986) sees such acts as the product of the individual's cost/benefit analysis. This thesis endeavors to improve upon our knowledge of the causal mechanisms associated with anti-abortion terrorism, within the context of relative deprivation theory and rational choice theory using a macro-level research design. The results of this study suggest certain Supreme Court decisions have a significant influence on whether some within the pro-life community view the use of violence as an appropriate method of protest. Additionally, the results suggest that anti-abortion offenders make decisions according to a rational, cost/benefit analysis. This suggests that policy makers may effectively reduce the number of anti-abortion attacks by raising the penalties associated with the crime.