Digital Commons Network^™

“I’M The Greatest”: Pride, Impression Management, And Denial Of Coercive Control And Physical Abuse By Perpetrators Of Intimate Partner Violence, Benjamin Reissman, Kendra Doychak M.A., Angela Crossman Ph.D., Chitra Raghavan Ph.D.

Student Theses

Coercive control and physical abuse are two prominent forms of intimate partner violence (IPV), often accompanied by with impression management to conceal such behavior. However, intrinsic motives for engaging in impression management by male IPV offenders are not well-known. The present study makes use of archival data from 85 heterosexual men in a batterer treatment program to gauge how pride, shame, and guilt may relate to impression management and reported IPV. Admission to shame and guilt appear to be correlated with and predictive of both forms of reported abuse, along with the absence of impression management. This implies that internalized …

Individual’S Self Awareness Of Mental Illness: The Effects On Implicit Bias, Microaggressions, And Racial Discrimination, Sarah Zoubaa

Student Theses

The purpose of the current study is to understand the factors that impact how persons experiencing subclinical psychological symptoms or an undiagnosed but clinically significant psychological problem perceive individuals who been diagnosed with mental illness. Previous literature has investigated the experiences of discrimination among those with mental health problems, but not their attitudes and behavior towards individuals among their in-group. It was hypothesized that individuals with an emerging mental health problem will have higher rates of implicit bias and perpetrate more microaggressions towards those with a mental illness in order to remove themselves from a group that is associated with …

Optimizing A Method For Dna Recovery While Preserving Latent Prints On Paper, Niti Dalal

Student Theses

Paper evidence is commonly encountered in cases of kidnapping, threatening letters, extortion, and bank robbery, and the optimal workflow between latent print processing and DNA collection is of interest to the forensic community. The overall aim of this project was to achieve optimal amounts of DNA for typing without destroying the fingerprint. The first study compared two collection techniques—tape-lifting by Scotch Removable Poster Tape and dry swabbing with FLOQSwabs— using prints deposited in defined locations. Samples were processed for DNA and developed with 1,2-indanedione. The second aim was to determine if visualizing print locations with fingerprint powder prior to DNA …

Island Of Harm Reduction, Trevor T. Boyer

Capstones

New York City's Rikers Island has a medically assisted treatment (MAT) program for detainees who are addicted to opioids, providing buprenorphine or methadone. For many locked up there, though, Rikers is only a way station before a trip upstate to prison. Even now, over 30 years after its treatment program began, only six other correctional facilities in New York offer pilot opioid treatment programs, which are available only to limited segments of their respective populations.

So for those taking medication in the form or methadone or buprenorphine on Rikers Island pretrial and awaiting sentencing, they're tapered off their doses to …

Urbanely Chained: Issues Within A City, Esther Shittu

Capstones

Each city in the United States bears its own burdens. In New York, one glaring burden is transportation, the second is the criminal justice system that seems to be packaged into one main facility: Rikers Island. The video and animation below explore these two issues. In Urbanely Chained: 219 West, the problems are examined within the scope of a television news magazine show. In Urbanely Chained: Gladiator Island History, the deep-rooted history of Rikers is explored.

Every month, students in the Craig Newmark Graduate School of Journalism produce a news magazine show that highlights different human interest stories. As a …

Detection Of In Utero Cannabis Exposure By Umbilical Cord Analysis, Jiyoung Kim

Student Theses

According to 2018 National Survey on Drug Use and Health, 7.1% of pregnant women smoked marijuana in the past month in 2017. Although this prevalence is expected to increase as a growing number of states and countries are now considering legalization, there are scarce data on effects of in utero cannabis exposure. For the monitoring of fetal cannabis exposure, two methods are employed; self-report and the analysis of biological matrix. Due to inaccuracy of self-report, the analysis of neonatal matrixes such as meconium, hair, and urine is perferred. Although umbilical cord is becoming a useful objective tool to detect in …

Revolution In Crime: How Cryptocurrencies Have Changed The Criminal Landscape, Igor Groysman

Student Theses

This thesis will examine the ways in which various cryptocurrencies have impacted certain traditional crimes. While crime is always evolving with technology, cryptocurrencies are a game changer in that they provide anonymous and decentralized payment systems which, while they can be tracked in a reactive sense via the blockchain, are seen by criminals as having better uses for them than traditional fiat currencies, such as the ability to send money relatively fast to another party without going through an intermediary, or the ability to obscure the origin of the money for money laundering purposes. Every week there are new cryptocurrencies …

Analysis Of Synthetic Opioids In Postmortem Blood, Vitreous Humor, And Brain Tissue, Rachel K. Chesser

Student Theses

In the United States, the use of new synthetic opioids (e.g. fentanyl and derivatives) has become an increasing health issue with thousands of overdose deaths being observed since 2013. With the high mortality rate associated with these substances, postmortem analyses and interpretation of synthetic opioids has become extremely important. However, due to the novelty of these compounds, the available data is limited and provides challenges to toxicologists. The focus of this project was to examine the postmortem distribution of new synthetic opioids in blood, vitreous humor, and brain tissue. New methods were developed and validated to quantify 13 synthetic opioids …

The Bully And The Beast: Correlations Between Psychopathic Traits And Bullying In A Sample Of University Students, Nascha Streng

Student Theses

Bullying is a concept mostly investigated in children, teenagers, and adults within the workplace. While there is research on bullying in college in general, gaps in the literature remain considering how personality characteristics in bullies relate directly to psychopathy and specific psychopathy traits. Although the literature suggests bullies have a tendency towards psychopathic traits such as violence, impulsivity, egocentricity, manipulativeness, rule-breaking, and intolerance, researchers have yet to assess the connection between college students who bully and psychopathy. The research on psychopathy suggests that those high on psychopathic traits may be more prone to use bullying as an apathetic means to …

A Leak In The Pipeline: College In Jail From The Participants’ Perspective, Kathy Mora

Student Theses

Offering college-level coursework to people in correctional facilities has proven to be a good investment in reducing recidivism and violence, however, how incarcerated students evaluate ‘prison to college pipeline’ programs, and how they access education after release is less understood. This study is a participant-observation approach with semi-structured surveys of a college class in Rikers Island that aims to answer the question: How do incarcerate students describe their experience with college in jail and their post-release plans to continue their education? This study uses 25 surveys of persons who participated in a college program in Rikers Island. A significant theme …

Differences In Psychopathy And Associated Traits By Police Officer Rank, Rosanne Libretti

Student Theses

Most psychopathy research focuses on its manifestation in forensic populations, however these results may not generalize onto noncriminal, or “successful,” psychopaths. Lykken (1995) conjectured that socialization may enable “heroes,” like law enforcement, to utilize the interpersonal and affective aspects of psychopathy in a manner that benefits society. Previous research (Falkenbach et al., 2018a) suggests that psychopathy and its correlates differ between police recruits and individuals in the community. It is necessary to continue this work with other groups in the police force to see if the patterns found in these studies generalize to veteran officers who have worked in law …

Bumbling In The Dark: The Effect Of The Dark Triad, Online Dating, And Gender On Risky Sexual Behaviors, Rebecca Boudreau

Student Theses

The Dark Triad is used to describe three distinct yet related personality traits: psychopathy, narcissism, and Machiavellianism, which share several characteristics such as manipulation, exploitation, emotional coldness, and lack of empathy. The Dark Triad has been associated with several negative behaviors including infidelity and risky sexual behavior, however most of the current research focuses only on males high on the Dark Triad traits. The present study seeks to expand the literature by studying how the Dark Triad traits and online dating usage relate to the composite score of risky sexual behaviors. Further, we seek to examine if gender moderates this …

Association Of Exposure To Police Violence With Prevalence Of Mental Healthsymptoms Among Urban Residents In The United States, Jordan E. Devylder, Hyun-Jin Jun, Lisa Fedina, Daniel Coleman, Deidre Anglin, Courtney Cogburn, Bruce Link, Richard P. Barth

Publications and Research

Importance Police violence is reportedly widespread in the United States and may pose a significant risk to public mental health.

Objective To examine the association between 12-month exposure to police violence and concurrent mental health symptoms independent of trauma history, crime involvement, and other forms of interpersonal violence exposure.

Design, Setting, and Participants This cross-sectional, general population survey study of 1221 eligible adults was conducted in Baltimore, Maryland, and New York City, New York, from October through December 2017. Participants were identified through Qualtrics panels, an internet-based survey administration service using quota sampling.

Exposures Past 12-month exposure to police violence, …

Risk Factor And High-Risk Place Variations Across Different Robbery Targets In Denver, Colorado, Nathan T. Connealy, Eric L. Piza

Publications and Research

Purpose

Risk Terrain Modeling (RTM) has been effectively used to spatially diagnose risk for crimes such as robbery, aggravated assault, and gun violence. An important contribution is to consider how risk differs across individual crimes and different target types. This study tests four different robbery target types in unique models to examine the potential for variation across significant risk factors and high-risk locations.

Methods

Using the online diagnostic software RTMDx, individual robbery models were run for four robbery target types in Denver, Colorado: commercial (businesses), carjacking (driver/vehicle), residential (home/dwelling), and street (pedestrians). A conjunctive analysis of case configurations was also …

Dreamers And Values: An Urban And Suburban Community College Comparison, David A. Caicedo

Publications and Research

Although previous research on the role of post-secondary education in the lives of undocumented youth has offered insight regarding demographics, educational achievement, measures of well-being, and generational trajectories, less is known about these young immigrants’ values and beliefs regarding themselves, their relation to others, their futures, and the potential influence of their social surroundings on these values. The intersecting perceptual beliefs between self and higher education were investigated among 7 Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) participants in 2 U.S. community colleges and were hypothesized to reflect two social environments: an urban (New York) and a suburban (New Jersey) setting. …

‘Affluent’ Justice: The Role Of Ses In Sentencing Severity, Sonia Pappachan

Student Theses

Imprisonment is the harshest punishment the law can give a defendant; it has considerable consequences on the incarcerated, during and after. Therefore, the sentencing phase of the criminal proceedings should be fair and balanced. However, the literature and researches that have explored the biases in sentencing found that there is a disparity in sentencing due to the characteristics of both the victim and the defendant. The current study used a sample of 209 online survey participants to explore the effect of the socioeconomic status of the victim and defendant on sentencing length. Participants reviewed a vignette of a criminal offense …

Virtual Special Issue: Contemporary Theories Of Women And Gendered Public Administration And Policy Administrative Theory & Praxis (Introduction), Nicole Elias, Maria J. D'Agostino

Publications and Research

Introduction by the authors to Virtual Special Issue: Contemporary Theories of Women and Gendered Public Administration and Policy Administrative Theory & Praxis.

Something Old, Something New: Historicizing Same-Sex Marriage Within Ongoing Struggles Over African Marriage In South Africa, Michael W. Yarbrough

Publications and Research

This article examines contemporary struggles over same-sex marriage in the daily lives of black lesbian- and gay-identified South Africans. Based primarily on 21 in-depth interviews with such South Africans drawn from a larger project on post-apartheid South African marriage, the author argues that their current struggles for relationship recognition share much in common with contemporaneous struggles of their heterosexual counterparts, and that these commonalities reflect ongoing tensions between more extended-family and more dyadic understandings of African marriage. The increasing influence of dyadic understandings of marriage, and of associated ideals of romantic love, has helped inspire same-sex marriage claims and, in …

Mixed News About Youth Violence In Recent Fbi Crime Data, Jeffrey A. Butts

Publications and Research

FBI crime data displayed a slight increase in violent crime rates between 2016 and 2017. Media reports on this variation did not always mention that violent crime rates are still near a 35-year low. This databit shows the rates of youth arrested for violent crimes between 1982 and 2017.

Introduction To Sociology Zero-Cost Syllabus, Mateo Sancho Cardiel

Open Educational Resources

This syllabus will help you to create your OER Introduction to Sociology course. The course is designed in order to create connections with the news, with classic and contemporary cinema and with hot topics in our everchanging society, making it a useful tool to engage students beyond the conventional approach to the content.

Forensic Analysis Of Fiber Dyes Via Surface-Enhanced Raman Spectroscopy, Mircea A. Comanescu

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Fibers are a common piece of evidence found at crime scenes that may become a link between the scene and a suspect, or allow for the reconstruction of certain crime events. Although a big portion of fibers are still white cottons, the advancement of commercial fiber production and dyeing in the past century led to an increase in types of synthetic fibers and dye applications that can be found and used in forensic analyses. Nonetheless, the fiber evidentiary value is not fully explored, as for the most part, the separation and analysis of the dye on the fiber is not …

A Preliminary Program Evaluation Of A Narrative Therapy Intervention For Persons Incarcerated For Violent Crime, Brooke C. Greene

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

The Longtermers Project is a fifteen-session group therapy intervention that has been run in three prisons in New York state, two men’s facilities and one women’s, since 2010. The Coming to Terms curriculum, designed specifically for work with this population by Kathy Boudin and her partners at the Osborne Association, a non-profit organization that provides assistance to formerly and currently incarcerated persons in New York state, asks participants to think, write, and speak about their lives in general and particularly about the incident crime for which they were incarcerated. Now that the program has run for several years and a …

The Social Construction Of Protest: Print Media Coverage Of The 2004 Republican National Convention And The 2011 Occupy Wall Street Protests In New York City, Kirsten Christiansen

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Majoritarian democracies are founded on the idea that the governance of society will reflect the needs and desires of the majority of the people and that all citizens are given a voice. Public protest activity is one of the ways in which social movement organizations as claims-makers can reach an audience to attempt to convince a majority to effect social change. The mainstream news media can disseminate information about protest messages and activity beyond the local. However, the mainstream news media filters information in its own way, influenced in part because of traditional news routines but also potentially by the …

Stereotype Threat And Racial Disparities At The Front End Of The Criminal Justice System, Megan J. O'Toole

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

To avoid initial contact with a racially disparate criminal justice system, Black men in the US must be hyperaware of how others perceive them in public. These efforts may be futile, though, as decades of stereotype threat research suggests that the targets of well-known stereotypes often become so overwhelmed with trying to deflect them that they underperform in relevant situations. Through a series of three online experiments, this research examines whether stereotype threat applies to Black men’s experiences at the front end of the criminal justice system. Results reveal that references to the criminal justice system lead Blacks but not …

On The Front Lines: Managerialism In Substance Abuse Agencies, Jocelyn E. Lewiskin

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Neoliberal economic policies have led to changes within the field of human services in the United States since the mid-1970s. These policies, which seek to reduce the role of thefederal government through tactics such as privatization, continue to be evident across human services organizations today. This policy approach is operationalized through New Public Management (NPM), which is also referred to as ‘Managerialism’, and is characterized by output-orientated, quantitative focused, performance based measures and evidence-based practice. These characteristics have impacted the workforce in human service organizations. Using qualitative semi-structured interviews of front line workers, this dissertation will examine the effects of …

An Examination Of The Relationships Between Stressors, Correctional Burnout, And Job Outcomes, Erin Rogers

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

While most jobs can cause work related stress, correctional workers experience exposure to stressors that often result in a more serious condition known as burnout. The effects of burnout are far more detrimental than average work related stress yet, there is a dearth of knowledge and research on correctional burnout. This study examines how work characteristics relate to correctional burnout (e.g. emotional exhaustion, depersonalization, and a decreased sense of personal accomplishment) and job outcomes (e.g. job satisfaction, organizational commitment, and turnover. It also assesses the relationship between the three aspects of burnout and the three types of job outcomes listed …

Uneven Policing: Low-Level Arrests During Gentrification, Fiscal Crisis, And Suburbanization, Brenden Beck

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

In this dissertation, I analyze trends in low-level policing between 1990 and 2015. I explore how three contextual changes may have shaped policing during this time: gentrification, fiscal crisis, and the suburbanization of poverty and of people of color. I ask four interrelated research questions: How widely did “broken windows” policing, with its emphasis on misdemeanor arrests, diffuse? Do police make more stops and arrests in neighborhoods undergoing gentrification? Do local governments experiencing revenue shortfalls cut their criminal justice functions to save money, or do they increase them to reassert social order? Did the suburbanization of poverty and of people …

Beyond The Binary: Gender Identity And Mental Health Among Transgender And Gender Non-Conforming Adults, Chassitty N. Fiani

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Despite increasing endorsement of non-binary gender identities among TGNC (transgender or gender non-conforming) populations, research regarding TGNC experiences often over-emphasizes pathology relative to positive psychology and reinforces binary conceptualizations of gender (exclusively male/female). TGNC individuals face increased rates of depression, suicide risk, anxiety, substance abuse, HIV/AIDS, homelessness, victimization, and negative police interactions. These disparities are exacerbated by discrimination, lack of culturally competent resources, and internalized stigma. Despite these negative experiences and increased risks, TGNC individuals hesitate to seek treatment and/or police assistance due to fears of discrimination, cultural incompetence, and/or re-victimization. To address these gaps, the present investigation utilized a …

The Impact Of Defendant Gender And Attractiveness On Juror Decision-Making In A Sexual Offense Case, Georgia M. Winters

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

In recent years, instances of educator sexual assault against students have flooded the media. In particular, female teachers who abused students have seized the public’s attention as they are often portrayed as attractive and a sexual fantasy. This portrayal can then impact the way society perceives these sexual assaults. Importantly, however, it is not known whether this perception influences the prosecution and sentencing of these cases. The current study examined the impact of gender and attractiveness of a teacher, as well as gender of the student victim, on juror decision-making in a teacher/student sexual assault case. Using a 2 (Teacher …

Against Criminalization And Pathology: The Making Of A Black Achievement Praxis, Charles M. Green Sr.

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Utilizing 29 in-depth semi-structured interviews, the life-course narratives of Black male scholars who, as victims of varying manifestations of structural violence, have “beat the odds” academically. Findings suggest that Black men and boys benefit from positive, racially-informed socialization that assists in the development of an internalized identity that (a) acts as a protective and resistant barrier against some of the impediments of institutional racism, (b) operates as a counter-criminogenic influence, and (c) facilitates educational resilience. Criminogenic Resistance Theory (C.RT) is presented as an alternative conceptualization of the process by which Black boys resist the criminogenic influences of structuralized violence.