Michael G Turner

University of North Carolina at Charlotte | UNC Charlotte

Although evidence exists that bully victimizations are related to a range of negative outcomes later in the life course, existing research has largely ignored the timing of the victimization experience. Using data from the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth 1997, the present study uses propensity score matching to investigate the adult consequen...

While there is evidence that gang membership impacts an individual’s gun carrying proclivities, existing research has largely focused only on males and at-risk youth. The present study investigates the role of gang membership, peer gang membership, and delinquency on whether individuals carry a firearm using data from the National Longitudinal Surv...

Bullying is a significant public concern. The purpose of the present study is to investigate whether being repeatedly victimized by a bully during childhood and adolescence is associated with gun carrying in adolescence and adulthood. Using data from the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth 1997, we found that just over one fourth of the responden...

Purpose Whereas past research has examined the effect of individual-level and neighborhood-level predictors of bullying victimization separately, the current study examines their effects collectively. Methods Middle and high school students (n = 1972) in randomly selected classes within a Southeastern school district completed a battery of self-re...

In this study, we examine race, sex, and self-reported arrest histories (excluding arrests for minor traffic violations) from the 1997 National Longitudinal Survey of Youth (NLSY; N = 7,335) for the period 1997 through 2008 covering cumulative arrest histories through ages 18 and 23. The analysis produces three key findings: (1) males have higher c...

PurposeVictims of bullying are susceptible to a variety of detrimental consequences. It remains unclear, however, whether the type of bullying victimization and the gender of the victim matter as they relate to two mental health consequences: (1) depression, and (2) suicide ideation.Methods We examined the effects of the bullying victimization expe...

We consider the problem of estimating the incidence of residential burglaries that occur over a well-defined period of time within the 10 most populous cities in North Carolina. Our analysis typifies some of the general issues that arise in estimating and comparing local crime rates over time and for different cities. Typically, the only informatio...

Identity-based crimes are considered to be one of the most significant and growing problems of the last 20 years due to the significant economic harm these offenses pose for victims. The increased use and availability of personal information through on-line outlets has significantly increased the risk of identity-based fraud, although few have cons...

To estimate the cumulative proportion of youth who self-report having been arrested or taken into custody for illegal or delinquent offenses (excluding arrests for minor traffic violations) from ages 8 to 23 years. Self-reported arrest history data (excluding arrests for minor traffic violations) from the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth 1997...

To study criminal decision making, researchers commonly present hypothetical offending scenarios to participants and record their self-reported intentions to offend (SRIO). These SRIO scores are treated as an indicator of participants’ predisposition to commit the act described in the scenario. Drawing from the field of clinical measurement, the cu...

The study of delinquent peers has remained at the forefront of much criminological research and theorizing. One issue of particular importance involves the factors related to why people associate with and maintain a sustained involvement with delinquent peers. Although efforts have been made to address these questions, relatively little attempt has...

Purpose Gottfredson and Hirschi, in A General Theory of Crime, argue that the primary source of self-control is parental socialization. Specifically, parents who fail to supervise their children, to recognize their child's deviant behavior, and to punish such behavior are more likely to raise children with lower levels of self-control. Recent empir...

Although research has explored the effects of protective factors on fostering resiliency within individuals, the same level of inquiry has not emerged investigating the causes of why high-risk organizations are resilient to serious violent delinquency. One type of organization that seems particular appropriate for research inquiry is the school. Us...

Sexual harassment of college students may lead to more serious forms of sexual assault. Few studies have investigated sexual harassment predictors framed within competing theoretical perspectives. In this study, the literature is extended by examining (a) three types of sexual harassment on a college campus, (b) the nature of reporting, and (c) whe...

Investigating the causes of why individuals desist from, or are resilient to, delinquency, crime, and other problem behaviors has captured the interests of scholars. Within the context of criminology, much of this research focused on resiliency against offending; that is, understanding how and why some individuals within high-risk environments do n...

Missing data problems are a ubiquitous challenge for criminology and criminal justice researchers (Brame and Paternoster 2003). Regardless of whether researchers are working with survey data or data collected from official agency records (or other sources), they will inevitably have to confront data sets with gaps and holes. As a result, researcher...

Understanding the causes of why individuals desist from or are resilient to delinquency and drug use has become a salient social concern. Much research has centered on the effects that protective factors possess in fostering resiliency but that research has not fully explored how the effects of protective factors might vary across gender. Using a s...

Bullying has emerged as a salient problem in the school environment. Using a sample of 2,437 middle-school students from a metropolitan Virginia area, we explore the impact of school bullying victimization on delinquent involvement and substance use. The analysis is guided by general strain theory (GST). Consistent with GST, bullying victimization...

Research has consistently suggested that individuals from high-risk environments who experience multiple risk factors are most susceptible to becoming delinquent. A substantial portion of these individuals, however, are resilient to the pressures within high-risk environments and thus do not become delinquent. While past research has identified pro...

Research examining Moffitt's dual taxonomy theory of offending has generally supported the idea that neuropsychological deficits interact with disadvantaged familial environments to predict life-course-persistent offending. Most research, however, has neglected to investigate the power of this interaction across different neighborhood and racial co...

Research Summary: We provide the results of a 1997 national-level study of stalking among college women. Over an approximately seven-month period, 13.1% of the women reported being stalked. Although physical harm was not common, the incidents typically lasted two months, involved frequent contact by offenders, and prompted victims to take protectiv...

Researchers investigating Gottfredson and Hirschi's General Theory of Crime primarily concentrated their efforts on the relationship between an individual's self-control and involvement in crime and/or analogous behaviors. Much less research examined the potential sources of an individual's self-control. In this study, an argument was developed for...

An established finding in criminology is that most adolescents engage in delinquency. Still, studies continue to identify a small group of individuals who refrain from delinquency even when it is normative for their same-age peers. Moffitt’s developmental taxonomy provides some reasons for delinquency abstention, but research has been slow to asses...

Several empirical studies have attempted to estimate the effect of low self-control on criminal and "analogous" behaviors. Most of these studies have shown that low self- control is an important feature of the cause(s) of crime. Although research is begin- ning to emerge that targets more specifically the "roots" of self-control via parental social...

Several empirical studies have attempted to estimate the effect of low self-control on criminal and "analogous " behaviors. Most of these studies have shown that low self-control is an important feature of the cause(s) of crime. Although research is beginning to emerge that targets more specifically the "roots " of self-control via parental sociali...

There has been ongoing debate on how women are counted when they do not acknowledge as rapes experiences that are characterized by the key components of rape. This article explores this methodological issue by using a two-stage measurement strategy with behaviorally specific screen questions to gather information on incidents of sexual victimizatio...

Beginning with Koss, Gidycz, and Wisniewski’s pathbreaking study, the sexual victimization of female college students has emerged as salient research and policy concern. Building on this earlier work, we used a national, random sample of 4,446 female college students to focus on an issue of continuing importance: the level and determinants of victi...

Gottfredson and Hirschi's General Theory of Crime contends that low self-control interacts with opportunity to produce criminal and analogous behaviors. Although several theoretical and empirical attempts have been aimed at assessing the general theory, researchers have been slow to examine one of the central postulates of the general theory: the s...

Evidence exists documenting the relationship between maternal cigarette smoking and offspring criminal behavior. Although efforts to understand this relationship in a theoretical framework have only recently emerged, attempts made have been grounded in Moffitt's developmental taxonomy of antisocial behavior. Specifically, maternal cigarette smoking...

Existing research on the criteria used by juvenile court judges in choosing dispositions is limited in two respects. First, the predictor variables included in most investigations have been limited either in number or in the quality of their measurement. Second, research has not focused on sentencing decisions for serious offenders. Using a factori...

This paper adds to a growing body of research which explores the relationship between aggressive police strategies and serious crime. For one month, police enforced disorder crime in a small section of one community. An interrupted time series analysis was utilized to evaluate the effects of this intervention on robbery and aggravated burglary in a...

Previous research has shown that the public endorses rehabilitation as a core goal of corrections. Over the past decade, however, the campaign to get tough on crime has grown in strength. In this context, the question emerges as to whether support for rehabilitation has diminished or maintained its hold on public thinking. The authors address this...

Based on a factorial design survey of 237 Hamilton County (Cincinnati), Ohio, residents, we assessed not only whether respondents preferred, but also “tolerated” or viewed as acceptable, community-based sanctions. Rating vignettes in which the offender engaged in either burglary or robbery, a slight majority of the respondents favored a sentence in...

In the recent movement to pass “three-strikes-and-you're-out” laws, policymakers often cite opinion polls that ostensibly show widespread public support for these initiatives. Our community survey, however, reveals that support for three-strikes laws is high when citizens are asked broad single-item questions, but diminishes greatly when citizens a...