Prior research on the role of gender in perceptions of crime and sentencing has focused primarily on judicial outcomes (i.e., empirical differences in male/female sentencing), and some theorists have proposed the chivalry thesis to explain differential outcomes for male and female offenders. Although a prominent theory, the empirical validity of the chivalry thesis has been under scrutiny for decades. In light of this, I argue that gender differences in sentencing can be understood through examination of sexist attitudes and beliefs, and how these sexist attitudes and beliefs interact with characteristics of the offense and the offender to influence perceptions of crime and appropriate sentencing. To test this assertion, 671 respondents were assessed according to their sexist attitudes along both the benevolent and hostile dimensions of sexism, as well as to their perceptions of a series of violent, white collar, and property crime vignettes. Sexism scores were hypothesized not only to share significant associations with respondent's perceptions of crime, but also to interact with the type of crime committed and the gender of the offender to influence respondent's perceptions of the crimes in the vignettes. Results based on ordered logistic regressions suggest that both benevolent and hostile sexist attitudes interact with the type of crime committed and the gender of the offender to influence perceptions of crime seriousness, and sentence severity. Furthermore, when controlling for type of crime and sexist attitudes, female offenders tended to be given harsher ratings than men for violent and property crimes. When controlling for crime type and the gender of the offender, respondents with higher benevolent sexism scores perceived violent and property crimes to be more serious and thought sentencing should be more severe than either non-sexists, or respondents with higher hostile sexism scores. Finally, hostile sexists gave the harshest ratings for white-collar crime vignettes. Implications for existing theories and future studies are discussed.

Rates of female incarceration rose steadily during the last two decades of the twentieth century. The consequences of increased female incarceration are far reaching, not only affecting the women and their families during the period of incarceration, but also resulting in continued collateral consequences after their release. While considerable attention has been paid to the role of the war on drugs as a causal of growth at the national level, there has been scant research that examined other possible causes of variation in female incarceration rates over time at the state level. This research investigates state variation in changes in female incarceration rates between 1979 and 2001, along with changes in potentially important political, social, cultural, and economic factors. This analysis confirms the importance of broadening the scope of variables used when attempting to theorize explanations for female incarceration. It has also highlights the importance of the intersection of gender and race in determining female incarceration rates. Moreover, it has points to the importance of historically sensitive research methods to provide a clearer understanding. Finally, it shows that a combination of social, political, cultural, and economic factors determine the use of incarceration as a means of formal social control of women in the U.S.

This study seeks to determine if the neighborhoods more available for sex offenders to legally reside can be characterized as more economically distressed and socially unstable than the neighborhoods that are less available for such offenders to legally reside. A secondary aim id to examine the relationship between census tract availability and the number of service providers located within census tracts to determine if more available census tracts contain fewer service providers than less available census tracts. Results indicate mixed results in terms of the relationship between neighborhood availability, economic distress, and community stability and these results vary across counties and estimation methods. The results suggest that residency restriction legislation can have divergent consequences. It may be the case in some jurisdictions that those areas characterized as more available to sex offenders may actually be more organized, but this does not mean that this is necessarily where offenders are living. The intent of this study is to examine the effects of residency restriction legislation in and of itself, not the effects of informal community processes seeking to rid communities of registered sex offenders. These findings suggest that the legislation itself may not be the cause of the residential patterns among registered sex offenders reported in previous research. Socially disorganized densely populated areas are those most likely to have a greater number of schools and parks and thus a greater amount of restricted area. Thus, if sex offenders were to abide by residency restriction legislation they may actually find themselves residing in more organized areas, with more legal availability yet perhaps less practical availability.

This study focuses on the corporate welfare provided by the US government to corporations despite their high profits and argues that the significant and negative consequences to the federal and state tax bases of such welfare make it a state corporate crime. Failure to stabilize or rollback corporate welfare initiatives has resulted in a significant decrease in the percentage of federal and state revenue that comes from corporate tax contributions. I use structural equation modeling to analyze the consequences of corporate welfare initiatives on the federal tax base and the California state tax base. Drawing insights from an integrated theory of state-corporate crime developed by Kauzlarich and Kramer (1998), I examine various forms of deviance and collusion between corporations and the federal government. Specifically, this study explores this collusion on two levels: the structural and organizational levels. That is, I focus on the period before, during and after the implementation of corporate welfare initiatives and the organizational environment of the two groups involved. This study reveals that the federal government facilitated state corporate crime in this case by continuing to provide tax breaks, investment incentives, and loans to corporations despite the high yield in corporate profits, declining corporate tax contributions, high delinquency rates on loans, and the continuous outsourcing of jobs. Because of the lack of government oversight, or deregulation, corporations were able to take advantage of the tax-exempt restructuring offered by the Tax Reform Act of 1986 and Revenue Act of 1987, and tax credits beginning with Economic Recovery Act of 1981. This resulted in social harms that were associated with declining tax contributions to state and federal governments, namely a growing deficit, cutbacks in vital social services, and an increased tax burden among individual taxpayers.

For the last two decades, social disorganization and collective efficacy have been two of the main tenants of criminological thinking. Although gaps in these theories have been pointed out during the past decade, these theories persisted in the criminological literature. Further, these theories have been used as the bases for models of intervention, prevention, and suppression to reduce crime and juvenile delinquency. These programs have had mixed results because they do not account for previously mentioned gaps. Thus, until we improve upon the current theory criminology will not be effective at explaining or reducing criminal behavior.

This dissertation takes attempts to take a step towards addressing these gaps, and including the implications of these gaps in the statistical analyses presented here. These critiques include the role of the built environment and deviant places (Stark 1987); social and economic capital within poor communities (Venkatesh 2000; Patillo-McCoy 1998); and individual perceptions of public safety (Glassner 2010).

Findings in this dissertation show that these factors influence criminal behavior more than classical measures of social disorganization and structural disadvantage. Additionally, this study finds that informal groups, and illicit activities play a role in social control and supplementing the local economy.

This study suggests that more research is needed in the area of social ecology and criminal behavior which takes into account these critiques. Specifically, more research is needed on the interaction between individual perception of social space and factors occurring within that space. Additionally, more thought needs to be put into urban and community planning to address the role of deviant spaces within the urban space.

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