Digital Commons Network^™

Immigration And Naturalization Internship With Catholic Charities, Lizbeth Zamora-Torrijos

Undergraduate Research and Engagement Symposium

This presentation will describe the journey interns go through with the Immigrant Survivors Project Specialists. Over the course of the 2023 Fall Semester my work entailed of assisting with advocacy on behalf of victims of domestic violence, violent crimes, and sexual assault. Including writing and/or translating victims' personal statements for declarations of character, or qualifying crimes, which are crucial in the immigration process. Interns were required to investigate, interview, and research applicants as well, and this work could entail; taking fingerprints for FBI background checks; writing executive case summaries; reviewing and summarizing medical, court, and police records, helping maintain database …

Opportunities Unshackled: The Effect Of Educational & Vocational Programming On Prison Life, Hannah Eure

Undergraduate Research and Engagement Symposium

This study examines the impact of educational and work opportunities on

incarcerated individuals’ prison experience. Using data from the John Howard

Association’s (JHA) ‘Measuring the Quality of Prison Life Survey’ (MQPL)

distributed to all Illinois Department of Corrections (IDOC) facilities, we

examine prisoner perceptions of well-being, security, professionalism, and

harmony to understand the quality of life in prison better. When comparing

groups, we found a statistically, significant positive relationship between

participation in educational and vocational programming and higher reported

scores for all domains. Throughout this experience, we deepened our

understanding of Illinois prison culture and informed JHA's prison advocacy

work.

Cook County Community Survey: Gender And Restorative Justice, Madeline Grace

Undergraduate Research and Engagement Symposium

This presentation explores the connections between gender and public opinion on restorative justice practices. In particular, it looks at how opinions about restorative justice practices may vary based on the gender of the respondent and the gender of the perpetrator. During the Fall 2023 semester, I worked with my advisor to craft questions on these issues for the CCCS, which was fielded this January. Through this experience, I was able to deepen my knowledge of a variety of factors that may influence broader opinions about criminal justice issues.

Lessons Learned From Washington D.C. Criminal Courts, Anthoine Godin

Undergraduate Research and Engagement Symposium

During Spring of 2024, Anthoine participated in Loyola’s Washington D.C. program interning for DC Witness. DC Witness is a non-profit media website that strives to hold the D.C. Superior Court system to a higher degree of transparency by reporting on cases daily and keeping a detailed database updated after. As a media intern, Anthoine would sit in on various non-fatal shooting and homicide cases and take notes on proceedings. This presentation details his experience and some of the observations and lessons he drew from being so close to the criminal justice system for four months.

The Clinical Profile Of Psychopathy, Patrick Carabell, Patrick J. Carabell

Undergraduate Research and Engagement Symposium

People with psychopathy are characterized as callous, non- empathic, manipulative, impulsive, and crime prone. The definition of psychopathy is imprecise, and the condition is not recognized as a mental disorder in the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual (DSM-5-TR). This project examines research on the spectrum of traits and behaviors that constitute psychopathy. We compare psychopathy with antisocial personality disorder and other similar clinical profiles in terms of how such anomalies are assessed, managed, and treated in different settings. We posit that the further codification of psychopathy as a diagnosable disorder could help in identifying interventions and treatments for this condition.

Immigration And Naturalization At Catholic Charities, Abigail Alvarez

Undergraduate Research and Engagement Symposium

I am an intern for the Immigration and Naturalization Program at Catholic Charities. This program provides assistance to immigrants who are currently seeking legal assistance in their immigration process. As an intern, I have been assisting victims of domestic violence and assault by writing and translating their personal statements. These statements are crucial to their application because they determine whether the applicant obtains legal status or not. I am also in charge of reviewing cases and making sure that prior documentation (police reports and applications) reflects the new documentation. I work alongside very skilled lawyers, who have kindly guided me …

An Experiment On Why You Are Vulnerable To Online Phishing Scams, Madeline Moran, Anna Hart

Undergraduate Research and Engagement Symposium

Phishing is a cyber-attack that uses deception to obtain personal identifiable information from individuals or corporations. These attacks are disguised as trustworthy sources, such as a bank, and convey an urgent situation that the recipient ‘must’ address thorough providing PII. Recipients are told to click on a link that provides a fraudulent website to enter PII and/or download malicious malware. Phishing attacks were the number one reported internet scam in 2022 and accounted for $52 million reported loss [1]. The total amount lost to these scams increased by 48% [1] suggesting that scammers are adapting their phishing scams to increase …

The Emergence Of Crisis Services Within Police Departments, Daria Komeza

Undergraduate Research and Engagement Symposium

I am completing my internship at Arlington Heights Police Department with their Police Crisis Worker. Crisis Services are in higher demand and being implemented in more police departments and federal agencies than ever before. This program holds many roles, but one of the most crucial is having direct interactions with those facing obstacles due to mental health illnesses. I hope this presentation helps to spread awareness about the rise of mental health calls, as well as what this rapidly growing field of Crisis Services provides to the communities and why it should be implemented in all departments.

The Criminalization Of Homelessness In Chicago, Emily Porter

Undergraduate Research and Engagement Symposium

Community organizations report that Chicago was experiencing a rise in homelessness before the global pandemic, which pushed more people into a state of homelessness. City leaders admit to needing more resources to address the larger number of people living on the street. History, however, shows that cities often turn towards policies the criminalize the homeless when the “problem” becomes more visible, overwhelming public spaces and spreading into wealthier spaces thereby threatening local revenues and electoral security of officials. In this study, we will examine the occurrence of these types of crime and spatial differences in the communities where these “crimes'' …

Interning For A Criminal Defense Attorney In Chicago, Nicole Pysz

Undergraduate Research and Engagement Symposium

My experience as a legal intern for Massarello Law, LLC, a private criminal defense law firm in Chicago, IL.

Interning With A Criminal Defense Attorney In Chicago, Nicole Pysz

Undergraduate Research and Engagement Symposium

My experience working as a legal intern for Massarell Law, LLC and what I learned.

Susceptibility To Phishing And Victims’ Views Of Love, Romance And Red Flags: Economic And Psychological Coercion In Virtual Space, Anna Hart

Undergraduate Research and Engagement Symposium

Romance scams have increased 50% since 2019 and have cost victims about $304 million dollars in the last year (Federal Trade Commission, 2/10/2021). Romance scams also cause emotional distress (Buchanan & Whitty, 2014; Cross, Dragiewicz & Richards, 2018), with distress increasing for lonely victims and those who also were deceived into giving money. There is very little research on how an individual’s definitions of love and knowledge about potential ‘red flags’ in relationships contribute to becoming a victim of romance scams and monetary loss due to these scams. This study addresses this gap.

Content Analysis Of Cook County Correctional System News Coverage By The Chicago Sun-Times, Gwen Madden

Undergraduate Research and Engagement Symposium

After the globalization of the Black Lives Matter movement in 2020, large-scale discourse on criminal justice system operations and mobilization for criminal justice reform has become increasingly prevalent in online spaces. The average online news consumer is more likely to form an opinion purely based on an article’s headline rather than the article’s content as well. This study’s content analysis aims to document and categorize the headline representation of Cook County Correctional System operations by popular local news source The Chicago Sun-Times. Cook County Corrections hosts one of the world's largest singular jail sites in Cook County Jail, and Chicago …

Illinois Access To Justice Project, Katherine Woziwodzki

Undergraduate Research and Engagement Symposium

The two lead agencies for the A2J initiative – The Resurrection Project (TRP) and the Westside Justice Center (WJC) – have led the efforts to collect and organize the programmatic data from the many community partners. In the Winter of 2021, the Center for Urban Research and Learning (CURL) at Loyola University Chicago began a collaborative research partnership with TRP, WJC, and the entire network of A2J agencies with the broad goals of a) developing a system and process to best harness the data currently being collected and to b) begin to develop an evaluative understanding of the impacts of …

Rethinking Recidivism, Grace Higbie, Beck Hansman, Michael Willner, Charlie O'Gorman

Undergraduate Research and Engagement Symposium

Prisons are as old as civilization, yet the way incarceration looks has changed over time. One of the biggest changes is the increase of the number of people in prison, influenced significantly by the long-term rise in recidivism, or the tendency for a convicted criminal to reoffend and be re-imprisoned for a similar crime. If more people cycle in and out of the system, then prison populations rise which strains the entire justice system. This paper seeks to address recidivism in two countries with differing rates and approaches to imprisonment: the United States and Norway. We hope to provide actionable …

U.S. District Court Internship - Judicial Privacy Act Project, Johnny Khuu

Undergraduate Research and Engagement Symposium

This presentation goes over my experience as an intern for the United States District Court Northern District of Illinois with a focus on the Judicial Privacy Act project. This presentation has a voice over that can only be played through Microsoft PowerPoint.

Mellon Unpaid Academic Internship Award Presentation- Carolyn Dickey, Mocsa, Carolyn Dickey

Undergraduate Research and Engagement Symposium

I was awarded the Mellon Unpaid Academic Internship Award for my work as an Marketing Intern at MOCSA. This presentation highlights some accomplishments and events I have been apart of during my internship.

Social Justice Internship During A Pandemic, Blake Everson

Undergraduate Research and Engagement Symposium

The presentation is about complications of current status of pandemic and how to navigate by keeping a positive trajectory about even the smallest of things I have been able to accomplish by being a social justice intern.

The Effects Of Racial Centrality On Stereotype Threat, Kendall Cathleen Redwood

Undergraduate Research and Engagement Symposium

I explore non-verbal manifestations of stereotype threat and observe whether racial centrality moderates stereotype threat. Black female-identifying students varying in racial centrality will be assigned to a stereotype threat activation or control condition, then defend themselves in a hypothetical crime. Coders will rate their behaviors and perceived culpability from their statements. Black individuals in the stereotype threat condition will display more non-verbal behaviors and be perceived as more guilty than those in the control. Black individuals higher in racial centrality will rate as more guilty than those with lower centrality. I predict an interaction effect between racial centrality and stereotype …

Violent Crime And Youth Resilience, William Donnelly

Undergraduate Research and Engagement Symposium

This study investigated the relationship between violent crime, future expectations and beliefs about aggression, moderated by perceptions of neighborhood cohesion and gender on Black and Latinx adolescents residing in high risk communities. Federal crime data based on zip codes were used. It was hypothesized that youth exposed to higher rates of violent crime would experience lower future expectations and higher beliefs about aggression and that youth with positive perceptions of neighborhood cohesion would experience a less salient relationship between violent crime, aggressive beliefs, and future expectations. The results did not support the hypotheses, as there were no main effects.

The Relation Of Authoritative School Climate With Emotion Regulation And Social Competence In High School Adolescents, Grace Ann Fitzgibbons

Undergraduate Research and Engagement Symposium

Over the years, school disciplinary approaches have been largely punitive, with increased suspensions and expulsions for minor disruptive behaviors stemming from a zero-tolerance culture (Smith, 2015). One alternative to this style of discipline, is authoritative school climate. Its emphasis of structure and support has shown positive effects academically and behaviorally, but it is less clear how it affects emotional and interpersonal outcomes for youth (Cornell et al., 2016). The current study expands upon these positive influences of authoritative school climate and how it can ultimately affect emotion regulation and socialization in adolescents. Participants completed questionnaires, such as the Discipline Structure …

Crime In Chicago: Red Light Violations And Its Association With Violent Crime, John Schweizer, Michael Esson, John Leininger, Nathan Langhauser, Nick Goble

Undergraduate Research and Engagement Symposium

This paper examines red light camera traffic violations and violent crime, specifically assault and battery, in the city of Chicago, IL. Using cluster analysis, a data mining technique that identifies groups within a dataset, and crime data from the Chicago Data Portal, we searched for crime correlations among different police districts in Chicago. The results found here could give Chicago crime-fighters and government officials insight into the occurrences of overall crime as they work to prevent it.