While sexual assault is a crime that frequently occurs, public perceptions tend to greatly differ from the reality of the act. Sexual assault is the most underreported crime in the United States. This is perhaps due to the negative stigma that surrounds victims of sexual assault and the presence of rape myths in society today. Perceptions of sexual assault can vary depending on the relationship between the victim and the offender and the presence of physical evidence, if any, that was collected at the scene of the crime. This study uses data on sex crimes reported to the Los Angeles Police Department and the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department in 2008, to address the following research questions: How are sexual assault cases prosecuted when the offender is a stranger vs. non-stranger to the victim? Does physical evidence play a role in the charging decisions of stranger vs. non-stranger cases? Data are analyzed using logistic and multinomial regression. Findings show that there is little to no significance among victim-offender relationship and charging decision, but this varies among different evidence types. Implications of this study and areas of future research are discussed.

Children who experience ACEs are more susceptible to engaging in illegal acts later in adulthood. Despite the frequency of ACEs within the prison population, the criminal justice system continues to employ a punitive ideology in its operations instead of addressing the ACEs that lead people to commit illegal acts. Many defendants in this study had prior charges and/or were confirmed to have previously served some amount of time in an incarceration facility before they appeared in court to be tried again. The criminal justice system is sometimes referred to as a “revolving door” because it describes the high recidivism rate and how many released ex-offenders return to jail a few years after their release. Every single defendant in the study had current and/or previous drug charges or a history of substance abuse, which goes to show how much the criminal justice system needs to change the way it approaches substance use disorders if the goal is to reduce recidivism. A punitive approach to substance abuse and addiction is ineffective when people who have experienced a multitude of ACEs are released from prison just to return to the same environment that they were arrested from.

When questioning children during courtroom testimony, attorneys are instructed to use questions that are short and simple to address children’s cognitive abilities; however, this typically leads to anaphora. Anaphora occurs when a word is substituted for a previously mentioned word, phrase, or concept. For example, the pronoun “he” in “Bill is moving to New York. He is very excited.” indicates an anaphora since the word “he” replaces the name Bill. When asked a question that includes a pronoun-specific anaphora, the respondent must use cognitive skills to refer back to the initial referent. This likely means that as the number of conversational turns between the initial referent and the end of the reference increases, there will be more probable miscommunications between children and attorneys in cases of alleged Child Sexual Abuse (CSA). In this thesis, I analyzed 40 testimonies from cases of alleged child sexual abuse (5-10 years old, 90% female), located attorney use of pronoun anaphora, backward reference distances, and identified probable misunderstandings. I identified 137 probable misunderstandings within 2,940 question-answer pairs that included pronoun anaphora. Attorneys averaged 4.1 questions before clarifying the referent (SD = 10.14), sometimes extending up to 146 lines, leading to considerable backwards referencing. The distance between the anaphora and referent had a significant effect on misunderstandings, where each additional Q-A pair made misunderstandings more likely to occur. To reduce misunderstanding, attorneys should avoid pronoun anaphora of excessive length that require children to backward reference.

Prior research on sentencing and case processing has primarily focused on post-conviction outcomes and the relationship between sentencing outcomes and defendant- related characteristics such as race and gender. The research on pre-conviction outcomes not only is much smaller than the sentencing literature, but also largely neglects victim characteristics, especially in samples that include non-violent offenses. Drawing on the blameworthiness attribution theoretical perspective, the current study examines how certain victim characteristics, including race, gender, and criminal history, may influence certain stages of the judicial process. Additionally, the current study tests whether cases with person victims as opposed to business as victims are handled differently. Four court decisions were examined in this study: the filing decision, the decision to transfer the case to a lower court, the decision to find a defendant guilty, and the decision to sentence a defendant to prison. While legal characteristics were the most prominent predictors in these analyses, the study found that when victims were Black or Hispanic, cases were less likely to be filed and end in a guilty adjudication.

Despite the constitutional right to trial, the vast majority of defendants waive this right and enter a guilty plea. There are many factors defendants consider when entering a plea, with the coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic being the newest factor that may impact defendant decision making. Previous research has found that both innocent and guilty participant defendants were more likely to plead guilty when provided information on COVID-19 outbreaks. Additionally, innocent defendants ranked concerns related to COVID-19 higher than guilty defendants in driving their plea decisions. As the pandemic continues to evolve, so do the various policies and tactics used to reduce transmission rates. This thesis expands on previous work by employing an experimental plea simulation on a college sample to see how varying levels of COVID-19 mitigation strategies in a jail setting impact plea decision making. Varying levels of COVID-19 mitigation efforts on their own did not significantly impact plea decision making; however, presenting COVID-19 related information did increase the willingness to accept a guilty plea more generally. Given the possibility of innocent defendants pleading guilty, this thesis demonstrates the importance of reforming the application of pretrial detention and calls for more oversight into plea negotiations.

The number of girls in the juvenile justice system is rising; they make up the fastest-growing demographic within the juvenile justice system. Yet regardless of their rising numbers, current treatment plans, screening tools, and diversion programs do not adequately address the mental health problems that girls are six times more likely to experience than boys. Internalized suffering in the form of depression, mood disorders, and anxiety are significantly more prevalent for girls than for boys. Girls are also more likely to be suicidal and at risk of sexual exploitation and abuse. Despite the need for interventions and treatment options that consider these gender-related differences, there is limited research on this subject. The present study explores whether mental illness, substance use, and treatment influence criminal activity. Further, it examines how gender influences these relationships. Through use of logistic regression and data from the 2004 National Household Survey on Drug Use and Health (NSDUH), the present study finds that mental illness, substance use, and treatment influences criminal activity. Furthermore, gender influences these relationships. The present study's findings indicate elevated risks of criminal involvement for youths using alcohol and marijuana, especially for males. Further, there are higher risk factors for becoming criminally involved for males who get into a serious fight at school or work. Therefore, those caring for youths, especially male youths, need to pay attention to any signs of alcohol and or marijuana use and intervene sooner rather than later.

The vast majority of criminal cases are settled through guilty pleas, instead of jury trials, in the United States. While plea bargaining and charge reductions have a tremendous impact on sentencing outcomes, empirical research on plea bargaining and charge reduction is rare, especially at the federal level due to limited data availability. With a unique dataset on charging and sentencing decisions in three federal District Courts, this dissertation seeks to investigate the predictors of charge reduction decisions and the impact of plea bargaining on sentencing outcome, with a particular focus on disparities in prosecutorial discretion based on defendants’ race/ethnicity, gender, age and employment status.

Scholars have found that firearm-related deaths are the third leading cause of death in 2019 overall among U.S. children and teens between ages 1 and 19, surpassing the number of deaths from other diseases including the flu and heart disease. Despite this, recent scoping reviews have highlighted the limited knowledge in the field surrounding the impact of risk factors for firearm homicide victimization for children and teens at the situational- and community-level. Those that have researched children and teen firearm violence have focused mainly on individual-level risk factors and largely ignored situational and community-level factors, such as the impact of the presence of domestic violence and other interpersonal conflicts within the home. Moreover, researchers who have examined risk factors and correlates for firearm homicide have yet to include gun laws as a covariate of firearm homicide in conjunction with individual, situational, and other structural factors. Given the clear need to remedy these gaps in our understanding of firearm homicide, in this dissertation, I seek to examine what the correlates are for children and teen firearm victimization and how these two age groups differ. Children and teen victims are examined in the context of risk factors at the micro-, situational, and macro-level. I examine three research questions: What are the significant individual and situational variables for firearm homicide among children and teens? How do the individual and situational covariates of firearm homicide differ for children relative to teens? Controlling for differences in state and year, what are the most salient covariates of firearm homicides involving children relative to teens? Findings from this dissertation demonstrate the importance of the disaggregation of homicide typologies. Differences were discovered at the individual and situational levels for child and teens. The results of this dissertation demonstrated that firearms were less likely to be used in incidents involving child victims. Further, race, sex, gang-involvement, engagement in delinquency, and the victim-offender relationship were particularly important for predicting the likelihood of a child or teen being killed in a homicide. When compared to teens, children were more likely to be killed with a non-firearm weapon within the home by a family member. In the multilevel models, individual and situational level factors were the most salient predictor of firearm homicide among children and teens during the study time period. Results of the multilevel models showed that states that had laws requiring a permit to purchase a firearm and domestic violence restraining order (DVRO) firearm laws outside of the automatic prohibition of a DVRO subject from possessing a firearm had a decreased likelihood of the firearm being used in a child or teen homicide.

Over the last few decades, specialized courts have received an increasing amount of research attention. The existing literature mostly supports drug courts and demonstrates their effectiveness in reducing recidivism and substance abuse, more generally (Belenko, 1998; Bouffard & Richardson, 2007; Gottfredson, Najaka, & Kearley, 2003). Whether the drug court model “works” across offender subgroups remains an open empirical question. The current study uses data originally collected by Rossman and colleagues (2003-2009) for the Multi-Site Adult Drug Court Evaluation (MADCE) to examine the effect of drug court participation on recidivism among unique offender subgroups. First, a context-specific risk score is used to examine recidivism outcomes. Second, offender subgroups are statistically created using latent class analysis (LCA). Recidivism outcomes are then assessed by subgroup, with these results compared to the initial measure of risk. Both analyses are performed using the full sample of drug court participants and the comparison groups. Finally, the third model uses a split sample analysis by court participation to explore the full effects of drug court. The findings of the present study contribute to the theoretical literature and help inform future policy regarding risk assessment and the treatment of offenders in drug courts.