Law Commons^™

A Historical Comparative Analysis Of Executions In The United States From 1608 To 2009, Emily Jean Abili

UNLV Theses, Dissertations, Professional Papers, and Capstones

The death penalty has been a contested issue throughout American history. The United States has been executing offenders since Jamestown became a colony in 1608 (Allen & Clubb, 2008). Since that time, many issues have been raised about the death penalty including whether or not it is moral, discriminatory, or a deterrent.

This study examines the history of executions, including lynchings, in the United States from 1608 to 2009 using a variety of sociological theories on law and society. Some of the research questions that guide this project are:

* What is the nature of change in the relative prevalence …

An Examination Of Cities' Resilence To Violent Crime: A Contextual Analysis Of Victim-Offender Convergence, Vanessa Hatch Woodward

Dissertations

In his 2012 Presidential Address to the American Society of Criminology, Robert Sampson purported that causality can only be reached when social science researchers accept that individual actions are dependent on social context. He referred to this as contextual causality and argued that future research needed to focus on how to measure and/or reoperationalize community measures of crime.

There were three primary goals of this study. First was to provide a better understanding of victim-offender convergence in time and space (Cohen & Felson, 1979) within incidents of violent crime. In order to meet this goal, 90 city agencies’ incident and …

Testing Orthodox Utilitarian And Extrajudical Determinants Of Incarceration In The U.S. At The State-Level, 1980-2005, Pavel V. Vasiliev

UNLV Theses, Dissertations, Professional Papers, and Capstones

This project is a theory-driven secondary data analysis of state-level incarceration trends in the U.S. between 1980 and 2005. I replicate and advance Smith's (2004) study of the relationship between the socioeconomic, demographic, political, electoral, and criminal justice factors and incarceration rates at the state level. The purpose of this project is to determine the empirical validity of the major explanations of the incarceration trends in the U.S. I advance Smith's (2004) study using important novel elements. First, I extend the scrutinized historic period by a decade by compiling time-series data for 1980-2005. Second, I employ a more sophisticated analytic …

What Are The Key Competencies, Qualities, And Attributes Of The African American Municipal Police Chief?, Patrick Oliver

Faculty Dissertations

The purpose of this dissertation was to identify and understand the dimensions of leadership of those African Americans, who are effective as the chief executive officer (CEO) of a municipal law enforcement agency, and thereby to educate and inform both those aspiring to be police chiefs and those presently serving as police chiefs, particularly African Americans. Four content areas were examined to gain a better understanding of the research question: (1) Police executive leadership literature; (2) African American leadership; (3) The trait theory of leadership; (4) emotional intelligence. Study participants were all African American police chiefs with the expertise and …

Gender Discrimination In The Workforce, Natalie Hays, Katherine Morrow

Social Sciences

No abstract provided.

Team Policing Revisited: A Quasi-Experimental Evaluation In Las Vegas, Nevada, Natalie Nicole Martinez

UNLV Theses, Dissertations, Professional Papers, and Capstones

In 1967, the President's Commission on Law Enforcement and Administration of Justice recommended team policing, which involves the decentralization of patrol officers and investigators to the same, defined geographical area, as a way to more effectively organize police officers and improve crime control. Despite initial enthusiasm from police officers and administrators, team policing quickly faded from use during the 1970s because its design was incompatible with the centralized model of policing prevalent at that time. However, the implementation of community-oriented policing, which promotes various organizational changes and the use of problem-focused strategies, has changed police departments in recent years and …

Who We Are: Incarcerated Students And The New Prison Literature, 1995-2010, Reilly Hannah N. Lorastein

Honors Projects

This project focuses on American prison writings from the late 1990s to the 2000s. Much has been written about American prison intellectuals such as Malcolm X, George Jackson, Eldridge Cleaver, and Angela Davis, who wrote as active participants in black and brown freedom movements in the United States. However the new prison literature that has emerged over the past two decades through higher education programs within prisons has received little to no attention. This study provides a more nuanced view of the steadily growing silent population in the United States through close readings of Openline, an inter-disciplinary journal featuring …

Psychopathy And Sentencing: An Investigative Look Into When The Pcl-R Is Admitted Into Canadian Courtrooms And How A Pcl-R Score Affects Sentencing Outcome, Katie Davey

Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Repository

Little is known about how and when the Psychopathy Checklist Revised (PCL-R) is being introduced into Canadian Courts or how it affects sentencing outcomes. Using the Lexis-Nexis Quicklaw Academic Database to retrieve judge’s sentencing decisions, all 274 cases with PCL-R information for Canadian courts were included in this study. It was hypothesized correctly that PCL-R information would most often be introduced in Long Term Offender (LTO) and Dangerous Offender (DO) applications as well as sentencing cases for murderers and sex offenders. The 274 cases were then reduced to 37 cases in order to focus on sentencing without Dangerous Offender or …

Examining The Role Of Race, Gender, And Class In African-American Police Perceptions In Rural Kentucky, Paul Maxwell Blackhurst

Online Theses and Dissertations

Prior research has consistently demonstrated the role of race in understanding racial and ethnic differences in perceptions of the police. This research has overwhelmingly shown that Blacks and Latinos hold lower levels of trust and confidence in the police than do Whites and other racial minorities. The increased skepticism of the police expressed by minority citizens is commonly associated with racial profiling and documented racial disparities in police behavior. Although policing research has empirically demonstrated the influence of race on perceptions of the police, few studies have explored police perceptions from a rural context. By employing the Citizen's Attitudes Towards …

A Deconstruction Of Dexter: An Analysis Of Noble Cause Corruption Within A Crime Drama, Alyssa Lawrence

Online Theses and Dissertations

The literature on corruption within law enforcement typically addresses factors such as brutality, dishonesty, accepting bribes, and using falsified evidence. This research project examines noble cause corruption (NCC), an area that scholarship has ignored until the last ten years. NCC is defined by Crank and Caldero (2007) as using illegal means to achieve good ends. Although NCC is not a new phenomenon it has become of greater focus in television and movies. Many recent television shows have represented NCC in a positive light, almost disguising it as if it were not present. Therefore the topic of this paper is not …

Police Deception: A Survey Of Eku Students, Jason Anthony Nicholson

Online Theses and Dissertations

Abstract

Police deception has been both good and bad for society. Deceptive interrogation is an effective method of gaining confessions and convictions. It is also dangerous in that it raises the potential for false confessions, damages police-citizen relationships, damages case strength, and encourages lying in other aspects of policing. The purpose of the study was to gauge the opinions of students regarding deceptive interrogation by police. A survey was administered to a purposive sample of undergraduates at Eastern Kentucky University. The survey asked questions regarding the students' level of approval toward different scenarios of police deception. It also asked some …