Law Commons^™

Just A Girl In A Man’S World: Factors Affecting Women In Leadership In Law Enforcement, Gina Barras Holland

University of New Orleans Theses and Dissertations

Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) statistics from 2013 revealed that of about 477,000 sworn law enforcement officers at the local level in the United States, only 12% are women; and only 6.2% of those who hold intermediate-level rank are women (U.S. Department of Justice, Bureau of Justice Statistics, Local Police Department, 2013: Personnel, Policies, and Practices, 2015). Although legal mandates have afforded women career opportunities in law enforcement, those mandates have not provided protection within the structures of law enforcement agencies regarding achieving high ranking positions. Women are more likely than men to remain in lower-ranking positions throughout their entire …

College Students’ Perceptions Of Law Enforcement And Legal Careers, Courtney Alley

Undergraduate Honors Theses

Recent events have given attention to the public perception of criminal justice field in the United States. Although there has been much political debate about problems in the criminal justice field, attention should be turned to the prospective employees who will soon be seeking out these debates: college students seeking to enter the criminal justice field. The current study did that through survey data obtained from 112 students enrolled in criminal justice courses at East Tennessee State University during the Fall 2020 semester. Analysis revealed much about student interest in various criminal justice occupations, their perceived ability to perform the …

The Influence Of Active Shooter Incidents In K-12: Principals Perceptions Of Armed Personnel And Tactical Police Capabilities In New Jersey District Factor Group (I) Public School Districts, Adela Ames-Lopez

Seton Hall University Dissertations and Theses (ETDs)

In the wake of increased shootings in schools, safety concerns are in the forefront of school administrators’ concerns. This study is a replication of a dissertation published in 2016 as well as some components of a research study published in 2014. The 2014 study examined elementary principals in an urban public-school district in Paterson, New Jersey, within District Factor Group (A), whereas the 2016 study examined suburban public-school districts in New Jersey’s District Factor Group (GH) with a median household salary ranging between $86,000 and $105,000. An interview study was utilized for this qualitative research design to assist in determining …

Metaphysics & Morals In Canadian Criminal Justice: A Pragmatic Analysis Of The Conflict Between Neuroscience And Retributive Folk Psychology, Sarah Greenwood

LLM Theses

The retributive justification of Canadian criminal law contains several assumptions about human nature that conflicts with what neuroscience has established regarding human behavior and the function of rationality. Interdisciplinary discourse on this conflict between law and neuroscience has unnecessarily implicated the free will debate and is further stagnated by epistemic cultural differences between the two disciplines. To avoid these roadblocks, this thesis applies the methodological principles of pragmatic philosophy. Rather than asking which description of human nature is true, pragmatic inquiry focuses on the difference either would make in practice. This analysis reveals that retributive folk psychology in practice causes …

Understanding The Perceptions Of Supervision And Supervisory Behavior Of Patrol Precinct Patrol Supervisors In A Goal-Oriented Police Department, Jerry L. Garcia

Seton Hall University Dissertations and Theses (ETDs)

This research was focused on understanding the perceptions of patrol precinct Patrol Supervisors, within the New York City Police Department, as they relate to supervision of Police Officers in a goal-oriented police department, and whether there is a connection between this perception and a supervisors behavior.

In 1994, policing in the New York City Police Department had shifted to a predictive approach to law enforcement. Police Officers were now given performance objectives to achieve. Patrol Supervisors were given the responsibility to ensure that Police Officers met those objectives, and were held strictly accountable for it. Since accountability was now placed …

A Delphi Study Of Actions Needed For Active Shooter Preparedness To Lower The Number Of Casualties And Injuries During Active Shooter Incidents At K-12 Schools, Michael Maley

Dissertations

Purpose: The purpose of this Delphi study was to identify specific actions that experts perceive are needed for active shooter preparedness for educational facilities, to lower the active shooter incident casualties and injuries in the U.S. K-12 schools. The study also examined the degree of importance for the identified specific actions needed for active shooter preparedness at educational facilities and those actions most likely to be implemented.

Methodology: The research design for this study is utilizing the Delphi technique that provides a systematic process in collecting data of opinions from a panel of experts. The Delphi study includes collecting …

Psychopathy And Police Officers: A Cross-Sectional Analysis Of The Relationship Between Psychopathic Traits And Police Work Across Temporal Factors, Hunter N. Moore

Student Theses

It’s estimated that psychopathic personalities constitute about 1% of the general population but is seen at elevated rates in particularly stressful and harsh environments (Babiak & Hare, 2006; Hare, 1996). A career in law enforcement is one known to be uniquely stressful (Lucas et al., 2012), and the trauma from their career seems to be having an impact on their personality (Wills & Schuldberg, 2016). While psychopathy traits have been reported in police officers (Próchniak, 2012), these traits have yet to be assessed as a function of time. The current study explores these relationships by assessing psychopathy traits, as measured …

Pre-Report Review Of Body-Worn Camera Footage: An Examination Of Stakeholder Beliefs, Laypeople’S Judgments Of Officer Credibility, And The Consequences For Memory, Kristyn A. Jones

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Aim: This dissertation examines people’s beliefs about police officer access to body-worn camera footage, people’s judgments of officer credibility as it relates to video footage, and the consequences that review of footage has on reporting accuracy.

Rationale: With escalating police-civilian tensions in 2014, American police departments adopted body-worn camera programs. A majority of departments have policies allowing officers unrestricted access to camera footage. Because officers fear that inconsistencies between reports and videos could result in suspicion of officer deceit, they argue that officers should have access to footage before writing their reports to ensure reports match the footage. Yet, because …

Evaluation Of United States Federal Oil Spill Policies: Deepwater Horizon Vs. Bouchard B120, Quinn Relihan

Honors Theses

ABSTRACT

RELIHAN, QUINN An Evaluation of United States Federal Oil Spill Regulations:

Deepwater Horizon vs. Bouchard B120. Department of Environmental Science, Policy and Engineering, June 2020.

Advisor: ILENE KAPLAN

The purpose of this study is to compare and contrast the background, impacts and treatment of two major oil spills and investigate the appropriateness of existing environmental policies and any need for new and/or different policies. The study traces the growth of relevant policy development and looks at historic and contemporary policy changes and applies this to the in-depth examination of the Bouchard B120 and the Deepwater Horizon spills.

Policy recommendations …

Multigenerational Perceptions Of The Law Enforcement Work Environment, William K. Akin

Ed.D. Dissertations

Leaders struggle to address shifting characteristics between generational cohorts in a multigenerational workforce. Research has shown that law enforcement culture supports an antiquated approach to leadership and that popular generational stereotypes are not consistent with behaviors in the workplace. This research was designed to help the law enforcement community understand generational values, beliefs, and work ethics, and to recommend ways to reduce generational stereotypes, address employee shortages, and improve the overall connection to their communities. The Copenhagen Psychosocial Questionnaire II was used in an online survey to anonymously collect data from 441 law enforcement participants within the Baby Boomer, Generation …

Law Enforcement, Public Opinion, The Media, And Its Effects, Aaron Borcyk

Theses/Capstones/Creative Projects

The United States Bureau of Labor Statistics estimates that, in 2018, law enforcement workers made up about .8% of the country’s workforce. Given that they make up such a large percentage of the workforce plus the extreme public visibility of the profession by nature, law enforcement is a highly discussed topic. After the controversial officer-involved shootings of Michael Brown, Walter Scott, and Freddie Gray between 2014 and 2016 the credibility and integrity of law enforcement came into question. Law enforcement is depicted on many media platforms in many different ways; The current research leverages qualitative data obtained from in-depth oral …

Public Perceptions Of Police Militarization: A Nuanced Understanding Of Public Support For Police Practices, Leobardo Lopez-Cristobal

UNLV Theses, Dissertations, Professional Papers, and Capstones

In recent years, there has been heavily publicized incidents of police use of military weapons and tactics, which has raised concerns regarding the militarization of police. More famously, in 2014, Ferguson police utilized military weapons and tactics to quell the masses after the police shooting of Michael Brown incited protests and riots. Despite an overall decrease in incidents of police use of force and deadly shootings, individual dramatic events of police militarization paint a picture of a militarized police force. This coincides with an overall increase in military equipment transfers (e.g., weapons, vehicles) to police agencies in the United States. …

Detention Of Asylum-Seekers: Comparison Of The Asylum And Detention Practices In United States And Sweden, Yuliia Pohorilets

International Studies (MA) Theses

Refugees are both an urgent humanitarian issue and the subject of much political debate in the U.S. and Europe. This research paper compares and contrasts the asylum process in US and Sweden. It analyzes the similarities and differences in their refugee policies and how asylumseeker rights are undermined or supported in the detention centers. The research discusses the historical origin of the contemporary asylum/immigration policies, international standards on detention, their implication, and key contemporary policy trends in US and Sweden. The selection of US and Sweden was not random. Both countries are highly influential in different ways in shaping global …

Digital Forensic Readiness: An Examination Of Law Enforcement Agencies In The State Of Maryland, James B. Mcnicholas Iii

Masters Theses & Doctoral Dissertations

Digital forensic readiness within the law enforcement community, especially at the local level, has gone mostly unexplored. As a result, a current lack of data exists that examines the digital forensic readiness of individual agencies, the possibility of proximity relationships, and correlations between readiness and backlogs. This quantitative, crosssectional research study sought to explore these issues by focusing on the state of Maryland. The study resulted in the creation of a digital forensic readiness scoring model that was then used to assign digital forensic readiness scores to thirty (30) of the one-hundred-forty-one (141) law enforcement agencies throughout Maryland. It was …

The Present And Future Law Enforcement Workforce: A Generational Comparison Of Motivators For Entering And Remaining In The Profession, Nicole Cain

Doctor of Education (Ed.D)

Recruitment and retention are persistent issues within the law enforcement organizations because positions are remaining vacant and fewer people are attracted to the profession. The purpose of this research study was to understand the differences between generational cohorts and specifically the millennial generation’s motivation for entering and remaining in the law enforcement profession, as well as their satisfaction with their career choice. This quantitative, non-experimental research study utilized a survey method to address six research questions. A convenient, purposive sample consisting of sworn police officers from one mid-size law enforcement agency located in central Florida represented the study’s data source. …

Clergy & Police A Semiotic Analysis Of Clergy On Patrol, Ricardo Estevan Reyes

Communication & Theatre Arts Theses

The Clergy On Patrol (COP) program is a collaboration between the Norfolk Police Department and community faith leaders of the Norfolk Urban Renewal Center. This study analyzed themes and patterns in the communicative relationship between police and clergy members, using a semiotic approach and the scholarship of intergroup communication. Additionally, an added secondary analysis of media coverage helped focus the results of the study using themes. This thesis merged the two semiotic analyses to examine a style of community policing that has lacked a closer eye.

This thesis guided itself by the argument that clergy-police collaborative programs structure …

Human Capital Loss In Law Enforcement, Anthony J. Deprospo

Seton Hall University Dissertations and Theses (ETDs)

Employees are an organization’s most valuable asset. Unfortunately, law enforcement as a whole has been faced with an epidemic of staff retention, which includes police officers. Police departments, such as New Jersey Transit and across the country, have had to deal with police officers’ voluntary separation. Since its inception, the NJ Transit Police Department has had a long history of struggling to keep staff, and turnover within the department has an impact on expenses, resources, ridership, and taxpayers. Not only are police officers valuable, but they are also very costly (Wareham et al., 2015). Recruiting and hiring costs tend to …

Job Stress Effects On Job Satisfaction And Attrition In 9-1-1 Call Centers, Damarys Jaile Gilligan

Theses and Dissertations

In 9-1-1 call centers across the nation the personnel shortage has become a crisis. The nature of the job of a 9-1-1 telecommunicator is stressful due to the high volume of emergency calls. This applied dissertation was designed to learn if there is a relationship between job stress, burnout levels, and job satisfaction in 9-1-1 telecommunicators. This was a nonexperimental quantitative survey research with a correlational approach. The population was a nonprobability convenience sample recruited through the Survey Monkey Audience platform. Data was collected at one point in time. A total of 37 participants took part in the study. All …

Law Enforcement Officers As Victims Of Felonious Killings And Assaults: An Analysis Of The Predictors Of Lethality And The Likelihood Of Officer Assault Or Death, Gabriella Mercado

Theses and Dissertations

This study was designed to explore the predictors of lethality for the outcome of police officer assault with injury and felonious death. Recent news has focused on police brutality and their excessive use of force. Conversely, the inverse relationship has not received much focus. To explore the aforementioned relationship, data from the LEOKA program on 1,375 officers who were feloniously killed or assaulted with serious injury between the years of 2008 and 2017 were examined to determine the statistical significance between several predictor variables and the outcome variable.

Binary logistic regression was used to answer the research questions posed by …

The Impact Of Bankruptcy, Duty Related Stress And Policing In Detroit, Sarah Markel

Department of Conflict Resolution Studies Theses and Dissertations

Urban police officers are regularly exposed to trauma and duty-related stress. The City of Detroit’s highly publicized bankruptcy proceedings reached finality in December 2014 but led to an additional layer of stress via financial uncertainty to Detroit police officers. The officers already experience high critical incident exposure rates and organizational tension/instability. While certain types of stressors (critical incident, organizational and family/personal) have been extensively researched and are largely anticipated within law enforcement agencies, the bankruptcy resolution, which included wage, pension, and medical insurance losses, may have compounded issues within the department. This research project used a mixed method case study …

Law Enforcement And Community Relations With Their Public, Garrett Fleming

Williams Honors College, Honors Research Projects

The Community Policing Model, despite being one of the most revered strategies used by police departments to interact with the general public, has presented several significant problems that trouble today's police officers. Its effectiveness toward improving the police-community relationship has come into question, justifying further research. However, this analysis must be completed in a multitude of geographical areas to show whether or not community policing is effective for the various demographics in those specific areas. This paper explores the effectiveness of the Community Policing Model as it is implemented by police departments in Northeast Ohio. An in-depth analysis on the …

Revenue Policing, Social Control, And Neoliberalism, Nathaniel Graulich

Master's Theses and Doctoral Dissertations

A variety of studies have examined the role of economic structures in policing. These inquiries offer insight into revenue-based law enforcement activities but are simultaneously limited by blind spots in theorization. Reviewing these studies, it is apparent the criminal justice system can and is used to gain revenue for a multitude of public and private organizations. Furthermore, it is clear this is not a new phenomenon in the United States. Nor is the disparate impact of criminal justice activity on segments of U.S. society such as poor or homeless citizens, minority populations including black and latinx populations, and LGBTQ+ communities. …

A Qualitative Study: Black Male College Students’ Perceptions Of Campus Law Enforcement Officers On A College Campus, Junelle M. Bennett

Graduate Research Theses & Dissertations

Black males are often the recipients of police brutality, criminal stereotyping, and inequitable treatment in higher education. This qualitative study examined the experiential narratives of 15 Black male college students’ perception towards law enforcement officers. The data was collected via one-on-one interviews, concluded with a focus group, and then presented in narrative forums. The participants’ feelings, attitudes, or beliefs about themselves as Black males significantly contributed to their inherent identification of the cultural challenges associated with law enforcement officers. The participants’ personal and vicarious life experiences prior to enrolling into higher education were significant to the authentic comprehension of the …

Blue Lives Memorialized: Collective Memory And The Production Of Ideology And Injustice In American Policing, Douglas Hyatt Peach

Online Theses and Dissertations

Police memorials are physical objects in public spaces, objects which seed our own cultural and personal ideologies, beliefs, and behaviors and which command our collective attention. Using qualitative research methodology, this visual ethnography looks at the unique and inherent power of police memorialization through the 2015 death of officer Daniel Ellis of the Richmond, Kentucky police department and the subsequent actions of the surrounding community and state officials. The purpose of this study was to document the widespread visual culture and iconography associated with memorialization, including the origin and placement of physical memorials made in honor of Ellis, thin blue …

Unh Students’ Attitudes Toward University Of New Hampshire Police, Angela R. Hurley

Honors Theses and Capstones

This study examines undergraduate students from the University of New Hampshire attitudes towards campus police, specifically how student experience with campus police affects their attitudes toward them. There were a total of 113 respondents from the University of New Hampshire that answered an online survey. The survey looked specifically at the relationship between students' experience and attitudes towards UNH police, hypothesizing that students who had perceived fair encounters with campus police would be more likely to contact them in an emergency and have more positive attitudes toward them . Multivariate analysis shows perceptions of witnessing an interaction and being approached …

Higher Education And Police Officers: The Effects On Citizen Complaints, Evan D. Brown

All Graduate Theses, Dissertations, and Other Capstone Projects

This study was conducted to examine the effects that different levels of education may have on the number of citizen complaints filed against police officers. There are many literature articles pertaining to the education of police officers but few studies have been conducted to measure the specific effects of higher education in law enforcement. The analysis in this paper will show relationships between higher education of police officers and if it has a relationship with the number of officer complaints.

Unpacking The Untapped Potential Of First-Line Supervisors : Sergeants' Role In Managing Police Discretion, Danielle Leigh Reynolds

Legacy Theses & Dissertations (2009 - 2024)

The operational uncertainties for police work—e.g. isolation, ambiguity, contextually contingent decision-making—force police departments to push discretion down to its lowest level employees. Consequently, officers are expected to exercise independent thought and judgment in response to the challenges confronted. Yet public criticism of police often breeds from officers’ “poor” decisions and the inordinate amount of discretion they are granted. Police organizations rarely experience crises for failing to control crime, rather it is failure to control police discretion that most often threatens a department’s legitimacy. Consequently, police departments rely on supervision to limit, constrain or shape officers’ discretion so that it mirrors …