This study draws upon original data to identify protective factors of resilience among Indigenous college students who experience victimization with the goal of facilitating safety and health. The data draws from 16 interviews and 95 surveys with Indigenous college students about their victimization, including their experiences with the global issue of Missing and Murdered Indigenous Peoples (MMIP). This research uses a decolonizing methodology, a trauma-informed approach, and a human-centered design while incorporating aspects of community-based participatory research with Indigenous populations. Many participants experienced at least one form of victimization (82%), and nearly all (94%) were aware of the MMIP crisis. Interviews revealed that MMIP had an emotional, psychological, and social impact on students regardless of their relationship with a victim. Participants identified several protective factors that enhanced their resilience, including reclaiming identity, reciprocity, taking healing actions, self-reflection, taking healthy risks, having goals, being with their community and their family, and having courage and strength. These findings provide support for five culturally appropriate university policy recommendations to enhance Indigenous students’ resilience through culturally-competent programming, evaluation, and training.

From a theoretical and policy perspective, little is known about the life-course development of lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, and queer (LGBTQ+) people in criminology. In particular, turning points for LGBTQ+ people have not received much theoretical discussion or testing. The lack of theoretical discussion persists even though LGBTQ+ people are overrepresented in the criminal legal system. To address this gap, the current dissertation seeks to queer the life-course perspective in criminology. This dissertation takes stock of the relevancy of traditional turning points (marriage and employment) for LGBTQ+ people, examines through a critical lens the cis- and hetero-normative construction of life-course and theoretical criminology, and theorizes turning points specific to LGBTQ+ people. This dissertation draws on scholarship from various disciplines to present and test an interdisciplinary framework that theorizes three queer turning points: (1) the coming-out process (Chapter 2), (2) family reaction to LGBTQ+ identity (Chapter 3), and (3) establishing a chosen family (Chapter 4). This study is among the first to collect original data via life history interviews with 25 formerly incarcerated LGBTQ+ people to offer comprehensive and in-depth examinations into the relationships between the coming out process, family reaction to LGBTQ+ identity, and chosen family on offending and desistance trajectories. Collectively, findings indicate that these queer turning points are significant life experiences that shape the development and offending/desistance trajectories among formerly incarcerated LGBTQ+ people. In particular, these queer turning points are linked to increases and decreases in offending across the life-course, which are highly contextualized by generational and structural factors. In addition, this work explores how coming out, family reaction, and chosen family shape interactions with the criminal legal system among LGBTQ+ people. Overall, this dissertation expands the queer perspective within life-course criminology through the lens of queer turning points and can shape future policies that meet the needs and best support LGBTQ+ people.

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.

When children allege sexual abuse, there is rarely medical evidence or eyewitnesses, making their testimony in trial a primary factor in assessing their credibility. However, little is known about what may be unclear to jury members making verdict decisions. In some districts, jury members are allowed to ask questions of the child witness at the end of their testimony. The current study utilizes a sample of trial transcripts from Maricopa County, Arizona where children ages 5-17 years old have alleged some form of sexual abuse; a jurisdiction where jury members are permitted to ask written questions. Cases were analyzed to assess: 1) if jury questions were asked and how often these questions occurred, 2) what content they asked about, and 3) whether occurrence or frequency of jury questions related to case characteristics (i.e. child age, child-perpetrator relationship, severity of abuse, frequency of abuse). It was hypothesized that 1) juries would ask questions mostly about the dynamics of abuse and disclosure, 2) these questions would primarily clarify information previously discussed by attorneys during direct- and cross-examination (instead of asking new inquiries that went undiscussed during testimony), 3) there would be more jury questions as child age increases and 4) more serious cases (based on case characteristics) would have more jury questions. Results were mixed. Jury members often asked about the dynamics of abuse and disclosure (abuse details, statements regarding abuse, the child’s subjective reactions), but case characteristics of child age, child-perpetrator relationship, and severity of abuse did not have a relationship with the presence of jury questions. However, cases where children alleged multiple instances of abuse were more likely to receive jury questions, which may allude to the misconception that children would disclose abuse right away and not let multiple instances occur. Although the sample size is small for generalization, it is an important first step for future research to further examine jury questions, improve attorney questioning techniques, and better educate the general public about the dynamics of child sexual abuse cases.