This dissertation examines the effects of neighborhood characteristics on Detroit Public School Community District students' attendance rates for the 2018-19 school year. First, I analyze the effects of daylight savings time, relative to school start time, on absences for elementary and middle school students. By observing the natural change in…

Background: While there is growing international evidence pointing to the increased risks of crime perpetration and victimisation for some people with an intellectual disability, the overlap between offending and victimisation (the victim-offender overlap) remains unclear. Method: This study utilised a data linkage methodology of 2600 people with…

The goal of this study was to assess longitudinal, predictive relationships between community violent crime and reactive and proactive aggression. Community violent crime data were gathered from local law enforcement agencies and combined with an existing dataset of at-risk youth. Aggression was assessed by parents using the Reactive and Proactive…

In addition to the potential loss of life, school shootings can evoke feelings of profound fear and anxiety that disturb a community's sense of safety and security. Questions have been raised about whether schools' approaches to addressing student behavior are a factor in school shootings. These approaches include discipline that removes the…

Background: Although the link between substance use and criminal behavior is well-established, associations between the use of specific substances and specific criminal charges remains unclear. That is, there are mixed findings in the literature, and the majority of extant literature focuses only on associations between alcohol and marijuana use…

In response to growing concerns over school violence, crime, and safety, schools continue to implement school crime prevention and reduction policies and programs. Aside from the increased demands on school budgets imposed by new and enhanced school safety programs, two additional factors further complicate matters. First, just as schools vary in…

Background: While there is now considerable evidence in support of a relationship between executive function (EF) and academic success, these findings almost uniformly derive from Western and high-income countries. Yet, recent findings from low- to -middle-income countries have suggested that patterns of EF and academic skills differ in these…

There are no nationally representative estimates of the prevalence of dating abuse-related stalking and harassment. We analyzed data collected from 320 twelve- to 18-year-old U.S. youth. Youth with dating experience were asked whether a dating partner had ever spied on or followed them, damaged something that belonged to them, or gone through…

Leveraging publicly available data about schools" absenteeism from the New Jersey Department of Education, the present study examined how neighborhood-level resource deprivation and violent crime related to chronic absenteeism in Passaic County's elementary, middle, and high schools. Results highlighted geographic disparities in Passaic…

The practice of temporarily removing students from school as a form of punishment (i.e., suspensions) remains quite common. This study uses longitudinal data from a large, urban school district in California to assess whether the use of suspensions improves school safety in the following school year. Additional analyses by student race and…

The Situational Action Theory of crime submits that law-related morality, the ability to exercise self-control, and exposure to criminogenic settings are key predictors of both regular criminality and violent extremism. Indeed, morality and self-control were found to be significantly correlated with violent extremism, and especially right-wing…

This study examined how early adolescents' risk taking propensity and urban stress were linked to their affiliation with risky peers. Participants (n = 297; [X-bar] age = 10.48 years [SD = 0.93 years]; 54% male; 58% Black/African American) completed a brief laboratory-based behavioral risk taking task. They also completed self-report measures of…

Youth, particularly urban minority youth, are exposed to high levels of stressful and potentially traumatic life events that have been linked to a wide array of negative outcomes including internalizing and externalizing problems. Youth perceptions of their interpersonal relationship quality with caregivers and friends were examined as potential…

High levels of school mobility are a problem in many urban districts. Many of these same districts are also dealing with high rates of violent crime. In this study, we use 6 years (2010-2011 to 2015-2016) of administrative data from Baltimore City public elementary school students and crime data from the Baltimore Police Department to examine…

This paper studies the impact of compulsory schooling on violent behaviour and victimization in school using individual-level administrative data matching education and criminal records from Queensland (Australia). Exploiting a legislative increase in the minimum dropout age in 2006, this study defines a series of regression-discontinuity…