UMD Theses and Dissertations

Permanent URI for this collectionhttp://hdl.handle.net/1903/3

New submissions to the thesis/dissertation collections are added automatically as they are received from the Graduate School. Currently, the Graduate School deposits all theses and dissertations from a given semester after the official graduation date. This means that there may be up to a 4 month delay in the appearance of a given thesis/dissertation in DRUM.

More information is available at Theses and Dissertations at University of Maryland Libraries.

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2014 - 20162

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    Police Legitimacy in Sub-Saharan Africa
    (2016) Behlendorf, Brandon Paul; LaFree, Gary; Criminology and Criminal Justice; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)
    Is fairness in process and outcome a generalizable driver of police legitimacy? In many industrialized nations, studies have demonstrated that police legitimacy is largely a function of whether citizens perceive treatment as normatively fair and respectful. Questions remain whether this model holds in less-industrialized contexts, where corruption and security challenges favor instrumental preferences for effective crime control and prevention. Support for and against the normative model of legitimacy has been found in less-industrialized countries, yet few have simultaneously compared these models across multiple industrializing countries. Using a multilevel framework and data from respondents in 27 countries in sub-Saharan Africa (n~43,000), I find evidence for the presence of both instrumental and normative influences in shaping the perceptions of police legitimacy. More importantly, the internal consistency of legitimacy (defined as obligation to obey, moral alignment, and perceived legality of the police) varies considerably from country to country, suggesting that relationships between legality, morality, and obligation operate differently across contexts. Results are robust to a number of different modeling assumptions and alternative explanations. Overall, the results indicate that both fairness and effectiveness matter, not in all places, and in some cases contrary to theoretical expectations.
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    What Matters: An Analysis of Victim Satisfaction in a Procedural Justice Framework
    (2014) Fisher, Cortney; Simpson, Sally S; Criminology and Criminal Justice; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)
    The discipline of criminology and criminal justice tends to focus on the offender. However, the victim's cooperation with authorities, which often begins with a willingness to report the crime, is central to a successful investigation and prosecution. Yet, the crime victim exists today on the outskirts of the criminal justice system, limited in their role by the same authorities that need them to help. Despite increasingly retributive policies toward offenders, victims remain as unsatisfied with the criminal justice system as they were prior to the policy changes. This study explores the different policies and practices of criminal justice system actors that contribute to satisfaction for the victim. Using Ordinary Least Squares (OLS) regression, elements of procedural justice are examined to determine if providing victims with procedure and a consistent sense of process creates satisfaction. Procedural justice is then examined in conjunction with distributive justice to determine if there are independent or interactive effects between the two. Study participants included 1,308 victims of violent crime, who experienced a range of violent crimes. Victim satisfaction was measured as a scale variable, averaging the victim's level of satisfaction across four distinct periods of the criminal investigation and prosecution. As expected, components of the system that granted the victim representation and a sense of accuracy in the process created a higher level of satisfaction for the victim. Also as expected, these variables remained important to the victim's satisfaction even when distributive justice variables were included. Unexpectedly, however, the variables that measured ethicality were unrelated to the victim's satisfaction, nor was sentence severity. Theoretical and policy implications, as well as directions for future research, are offered. Study limitations, including the limited generalizability of the sample, also are discussed.