Criminology & Criminal Justice
Permanent URI for this communityhttp://hdl.handle.net/1903/2227
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Item Expanding the Impact of Peer Networks: Pathways to Turning Points(2007-12-13) O'Neill, Lauren; McGloin, Jean M; Criminology and Criminal Justice; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)Scholars highlight the importance of both adolescent peers and prosocial life events in explanations of continuity and change in deviant behavior. Thus far, research has evaluated the pathway to desistance by focusing on what happens to one's trajectory after experiencing prosocial adult activities, including the role of adulthood friendships. This research shifts the focus to an earlier stage of the process and combines these two research realms to investigate the influence of one's adolescent peer network on shaping the pathway to marriage, educational achievement, and job stability. Using data from the National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent Health allows this investigation to evaluate the level of deviance within one's peer group as well as the conditioning effect of network characteristics (e.g. density, centrality, popularity, attachment, and involvement) on peer deviance, while controlling for background characteristics. This research finds that the level of deviance in a peer network is particularly detrimental for educational attainment. Deviant peers also play a significant role in shaping educational expectations. The results do not, however, find peers to be influential for marriage and employment outcomes. The analyses show minimal support for the conditioning effect of network characteristics and highlight the importance of considering background characteristics in conjunction with these more dynamic influences. Lastly, the results draw attention the fact that these processes do not operate uniformly and that the pathways to prosocial adult outcomes sometimes vary by gender and race. Theoretical and policy implications are also discussed.Item Prosecutors Offering Charge Reductions: Relying on Facts or Stereotypes?(2005-05-06) O'Neill, Lauren; Paternoster, Ray; Criminology and Criminal Justice; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)This research expands attribution theory and focal concerns perspective, usually applied to judicial decision making, to address prosecutorial charging decisions within the Federal Court System. This study investigates whether the extralegal factors of age, gender, race, and ethnicity permeate the decision of prosecutors to offer charge reductions. This research seeks to uncover differential processing through comparisons across sub-samples of individuals in order to see if the influences of these extralegal factors vary through interactions with both legal and extralegal factors. The analyses are conducted on a binary dependent variable representing the decision to offer a reduction and a continuous dependent variable reflecting the magnitude of the charge change. The results find support for differential processing based on extralegal variables, and support for the importance of some interactions. This research lends credence to the use of attribution theory and focal concerns for understanding prosecutorial charging decisions.