Criminology and Criminal Justice Commons^™

Communities In Conflict: A Critical Look Into Police And Deaf Interactions In Central Kentucky, Savannah Sublette

Online Theses and Dissertations

The purpose of this study is to examine historical and social patterns of audism, as expressed through criminal justice institutions, within local communities in central Kentucky. Previous research has pointed to patterns of discrimination by surveying either police or deaf and hard of hearing (DHH) people. By conducting research with members of both populations, the present study is able to explore the respective experiences and opinions on various topics, including knowledge of the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA), criminal justice policy and procedure, and the interaction techniques utilized by law enforcement. Themes and patterns emerge showing the disconnect between a …

New Directions In State Crime: A Queer Criminology Perspective, Haley Elizabeth Bates

Online Theses and Dissertations

While recent decades have seen an expansion of state crime literature, the scholarship has been slow to integrate new criminological perspectives. The field is aware of state-perpetrated harms committed against queer and gender non-conforming individuals, yet there are limited works that explicitly frame the state as a criminal actor. This paper argues for the integration of queer criminology into the field of state crime to elevate harms against the LGBTQ+ community into academic awareness. Case studies demonstrating direct state violence in Russia’s Chechen Republic and indirect state violence against trans women in the United States are included to highlight the …

Capital Punishment And Race Disparities In The Modern Era: An Empirical Analysis, Trevor Myers

Online Theses and Dissertations

Dissimilarities by race-of-defendant and race-of-victim have received ample attention in capital punishment literature, predominately in regard to death sentencing. Much less attention has been provided to the intersection of race and gender-of-victim with utilization of execution data, and research has failed to adequately address this topic in a historical context. In this exploratory study, I seek to identify multivariate correlates of executions involving characterizations of defendant race as well as victim race x gender characterizations since 1977. More specifically, I use multivariate analyses to examine possible predictors of executions elucidated defendant race x victim race and gender amalgamations. Among the …

'Savages','Animals' And 'Criminals':Capitalism, Racial Threat And The U.S Long War On Immigration, Rossana Alejandra Diaz

Online Theses and Dissertations

From mass shootings targeting specific ethnic, racial and religious communities to detention centers for immigrant children, it is imperative to ask of such violent contemporary phenomena: "how did we get here? How is this possible in a place like the United States?" The purpose of this study is to begin to address such questions by analyzing the historical legacy of dehumanizing narratives towards immigrants, and by querying how that history may shape and inform contemporary manifestations, illustrated by the rhetoric stemming from the Trump administration. Examining examples of such rhetoric through ethnographic content analysis of President Trump’s speeches and social …

Prison Siting In Appalachia: Carceral Expansion, Neoliberalism, And Environmental Harm, Macey Logan Hall

Online Theses and Dissertations

Since 1991, 14 state and federal prisons have been built in Appalachia with a recent proposal for a federal prison to be constructed in Letcher County, KY. Contradicting the narrative that Appalachia remains separated from the national economy, the ills of carceral growth are apparent throughout the region. This study examines the proposal to build a federal prison in Letcher County, KY. The purpose of this study is to gain further insight into the impact that the carceral state, including its promise of economic development, has on environmental harm and land exploitation in the region. The proposed federal prison would …

Testing The Marshall Hypothesis: A Survey Among Justice And Safety College Students, Kimberly Alice Barrett

Online Theses and Dissertations

In his concurrence with the Supreme Court ruling in Furman v. Georgia (1972), Justice Thurgood Marshall postulated that levels of support for capital punishment are associated with the amount of knowledge about the death penalty process. He suggested that exposure to information about capital punishment produces sentiments in opposition to capital punishment except in instances for which support is based on retributive beliefs. These notions have become known as the Marshall Hypothesis and have been empirically tested among a variety of populations. The research presented in this thesis adds to that body of literature by testing these ideas among a …

Pacifying The Visual: Police Reform And The Promise Of Body Worn Cameras, Ivan Benitez

Online Theses and Dissertations

Reform is a political tool, long used to ensure the continuation of specific police practices and the police institution itself. Promising increased transparency and accountability and hence legitimacy, Body Worn Cameras (BWC) purport to show the facts of police work and critical incidents precisely as they happened. Invoking and relying upon the objective truth of the image, policy makers, academics and some police themselves see BWCs both as a panacea to arrest police misconduct and a way to guard against spurious allegations. However, placing them in the long history of police reform, BWCs are also usefully understood as a form …

Serial Killers In Popular Media: A Content Analysis Of Sensationalism And Support For Capital Punishment, April Nicole Pace

Online Theses and Dissertations

Serial murder has been a popular media phenomenon across the United States since the 1980s, and media representations of serial killers may significantly influence public opinion as well as impact capital punishment policies. This content analysis examined the portrayal of one dozen different serial killers using 120 online media reports which included articles published between the 1970s to present day. Results of the analysis showed serial killers were often sensationalized and portrayed in biased ways by popular media, with little attention afforded to academic theories. Support for capital punishment was also prevalent. These findings have implications for policy makers seeking …

Exploring And Understanding Differences Between Deliberate And Impulsive Male And Female Burglars, Amber N. Sanders, Joseph B. Kuhns, Kristie R. Blevins

EKU Faculty and Staff Scholarship

Relying on rational choice theory, we compare burglars’ varying levels of offense planning to understand differences among types of burglars. Surveys were collected from a sample of incarcerated male and female burglars in three states. Participants answered questions detailing aspects of a burglary including motivations, target selection, deterrents, and techniques. Comparisons were made between 119 deliberate (32%) and 257 impulsive (68%) burglars. Deliberate burglars focused on obtaining cash, whereas impulsive burglars were more motivated by drug habits. Impulsive burglars were more easily dissuaded from a target when multiple obstacles are present. Burglars consider how many obstacles they may have to …

Rape Culture, Victim Blaming, And The Role Of Media In The Criminal Justice System, Lily K. Thacker

Kentucky Journal of Undergraduate Scholarship

Rape culture and the practice of victim blaming are inherently linked phenomena, and both are prevalent in American society. The existence of a rape culture which normalizes sexual violence and blames rape victims for the attacks against them strongly affects the American criminal justice system, influencing both the outcomes of rape trials and the treatment of rape victims. In particular, the media’s methods of discussing and portraying rape are examined as primary sources for the perpetuation of rape culture, and the effects of these media representations of rape on the outcomes of real rape trials are also examined. The problematic …

Who Taught You To Hate Yourself?: The Racially Coded Language Of Professionalism And Its Detriment To The Black Community, Alexys Jones

Online Theses and Dissertations

It is said that the Unites States is a post-racial society where race doesn't matter and colorblind rhetoric is used as a defense mechanism for perceived or committed discriminatory acts toward black people. In theory, color-blind ideology would help to eliminate racism by treating people equally without regard to race or ethnicity. In practice, colorblindness completely ignores the historical context of race in this country. Under the ideology of colorblindness, overt racism is translated into cultural criminalization. Laws and policies that are seemingly non-sinister nonetheless target the black population by using non-descript language and images associated with blackness. Research has …

The Mcdonaldized Death Penalty: Neoliberalism, Governmentality, And American Capital Punishment, Ryan Phillips

Online Theses and Dissertations

An extensive literature examines the modern era (1976-present day) of American capital punishment. Some has focused on why the institution persists despite abolition from the rest of the Western world. An example of this is Steiker and Steiker (2016) who argue that judicial rationalization of capital law has helped to legitimate and thus sustain the modern death penalty. However, no work attempts to understand capital punishment or its persistence in America in regards to neoliberalism. To address this void in understanding, I conceptualize Ritzer's four tenets of McDonaldization (predictability, calculability, efficiency, control) as a representation of market rationality, which neoliberalism …

Anonymity, Cybercrime, And The Connection To Cryptocurrency, Jesse D. Bray

Online Theses and Dissertations

Cybercrime currently poses a significant threat to the infrastructure of the United States. It can exploit vulnerabilities within the Critical Infrastructure or (CI) systems that are increasingly interconnected. Although the increased interconnectedness allows for easier and more efficient communication it creates vulnerabilities that did not exist ten years ago. A lack of a standardized definition of cybercrime has made it increasingly difficult to create policy that will allow for more efficient interagency cooperation and concrete laws regarding cybercrime. Cybercrime thrives on the anonymity of the Internet with the use of specific browsers, The Onion Router for example, to access information …

A Mediacentric Examination Of The Corporate Psychopath, Pamela Martha Brooks

Online Theses and Dissertations

The psychopathic personality disorder is an extraordinarily complex and multidimensional phenomenon. While its study has primarily focused on criminal and forensic populations, many researchers are broadening the scope of psychopathy research to include those in the corporate world. This, after striking similarities were revealed between the personalities of corporate leaders and clinically diagnosed psychopaths. One profession that may be attractive to psychopathic personalities is the media, specifically television and radio. This exploratory study utilized a blend of original and archival data. Calculated effect sizes were used to examine the existence of personality facets among three groups of media professionals and …

Chaos Criminology: A Critical Inquiry, Adrienne Leigh Mccarthy

Online Theses and Dissertations

There has been a push since the early 1980’s for a paradigm shift in criminology from a Newtonian-based ontology to one of quantum physics. Primarily this effort has taken the form of integrating Chaos Theory into Criminology into what this thesis calls ‘Chaos Criminology’. However, with the melding of any two fields, terms and concepts need to be translated properly, which has yet to be done. In addition to proving a translation between fields, this thesis also uses a set of criteria to evaluate the effectiveness of the current use of Chaos Theory in Criminology. While the results of the …

Carving A New Notch In The Bible Belt: Rescuing The Women Of Kentucky, Molly Dunn

Online Theses and Dissertations

In recent years, the trafficking of women and girls for sexual exploitation has become a major focus on the local, national, and global level. This is despite research, which has identified labor trafficking to be a significantly larger issue across the globe. The purpose of this research is to identify how human trafficking has come to be defined in Kentucky by examining how prominent local actors guide the state’s anti-trafficking movement. Through interactions with non-profit organizations, law enforcement, and concerned citizens, factors and forces that may shape the public’s conception of human trafficking were examined. While the stated goal of …

Everybody Matters: A Mixed-Methods Analysis Of Support Services Available To Survivors Of Human Trafficking In Central Kentucky, Arika Morgan Bow

Online Theses and Dissertations

This research is designed to identify service and capacity gaps that exist and need to be addressed in Central Kentucky to improve the provision of social services for survivors of human trafficking. Relying upon in-depth interviews with individuals from different organizations/agencies (e.g., social service providers, federal and local law enforcement agencies, human trafficking task forces) in Central Kentucky that work on human trafficking and with survivors, this research provides a comprehensive picture of the social services available to survivors of human trafficking, including the need for additional services. This research offers an analysis of the capacity gaps that exist, making …

The Formation And Deployment Of Swat In The Ivory Towers, Paul Grant

Online Theses and Dissertations

The purpose of this study is to investigate the formation of SWAT teams on college campuses and some of the reasoning behind their deployments. The study provides an overview of the early formation of SWAT, policing in a college setting and finally the creation of such teams that began in municipal policing but have migrated into campus law enforcement.

Data for this study was collected using a 20 question survey sent to college campuses that are members of IACLEA or International association of college law enforcement administrators. The return rate was 37% and the surveys were analyzed using SPSS version …

Intimate Partners In Crime: Utilizing Life Course To Examine Female Criminality, Emily Ann Hayden

Online Theses and Dissertations

Employing a life-course framework, this research examines how various relationship typologies expands Sampson and Laub’s (2003) discussion of ‘marriage’ as a crucial mechanism involved in desistence. Moreover, recent contributions to life-course theory has identified a void in the literature in regards to how ‘turning points’ operate within female offenders. As such, this research fills those gaps by re-conceptualizing relationship typologies and focusing on the similarities between marriage and relationships. Two research questions are explored: If marriage is a turning point for crime, do non-marital relationships have a similar effect? If so, do different qualities and typologies of relationship status provoke …

Destroying Blackness One Body At A Time: Examining The Mediated Representations Of Lynchings Past And Present, Bethany Callan Nelson

Online Theses and Dissertations

This thesis explores the politics of racial violence in America. Lynchings have served as a means for controlling black communities since the end of the Civil War. For southerners, the model of the plantation economy had to be followed during industrialization in order to maintain social and economic hierarchies. This paper examines numerous aspects of lynchings and their legal justifications as foundational to modern police and vigilante killings. A critical race virtual ethnography was conducted to explore the similarities and differences between historical lynchings and the recent killings of black men in the media. I have outlined that there are …

5-0 Is Not Coming To Save You: Examining The Lack Of Police Intervention In Lgbtq Intimate Partner Violence, Lucais Wallen

Online Theses and Dissertations

Intimate partner violence (IPV) has garnered a lot of attention by the criminal justice system, the media and, academia. Intimate partner violence laws have seen drastic changes over the past hundred years often coupled with the changes of culture and society. Though intimate partner violence surely warrants that attention, the growing and important issue of lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, and queer (LGBTQ) intimate partner violence has largely been ignored. The ongoing struggle of LGBTQ community for equality has not as of yet been a catalyst for drastic legal change. Utilizing narratives from victims of intimate partner violence from around the …

Green And Grey: Water Justice, Privatization, And Resistance, William Mcclanahan

Online Theses and Dissertations

Since its initial proposal in the 1990s, `green criminology' has focused on environmental crimes and harms affecting non-human and human life, ecosystems, and the planet as a whole. Describing global trends toward privatization of water supply systems and the criminalization of several water conservation activities and tactics, this paper employs theoretical perspectives offered by green, cultural, and critical criminologies, focusing on overt resistance to water privatization and oppressive regulations governing rainwater storage and residential water recycling. Taking a critical theoretical perspective, this paper examines water access and autonomy, individuals and groups openly resisting the criminalization of household water reuse and …

Predicting Staff Sexual Misconduct In Female Housing Units: Individual Versus Social Climate Factors, Hannah Mae Robbins-Johnson

Online Theses and Dissertations

Staff sexual misconduct in prison has received increased attention since passage of the Prison Rape Elimination Act. As part of a larger investigation of violence and conflict in women's correctional facilities, over four thousand women prisoners from 15 facilities and 80 housing units rated the kinds of inmate and staff problems they felt existed in their housing units, including staff sexual misconduct. Due to the data being nested in housing units, we utilized multilevel regression analyses that regressed staff sexual misconduct scores on a range of individual and social climate variables. Social climate variables were found to be more influential …

Social Class And Capital Punishment: A Theoretical And Empirical Analysis, Jennifer L. Tilley

Online Theses and Dissertations

While it is generally assumed that virtually all persons executed in the United States are poor, the social class - execution link has not been well documented or theorized in the literature. Far more research has analyzed the relationship of race and gender to execution. Using data on executions carried out in Texas between 2000 and 2012, individuals sentenced to death from the Supreme Court's Gregg decision through 1997 in Tennessee, narrative case studies, and a content analysis of state-defined mitigating circumstances, this study provides both detailed documentation of the social class characteristics of those executed, as well as a …

Tensions Of Violence, Social Harm, And Profit: An Examination Of The National Football League, Jonathan Anthony Felden

Online Theses and Dissertations

The subject of sport and leisure is prominently unchartered territory within criminology. The National Football League provides a unique opportunity for scholarly exploration as the sport is predicated on violence and preserves existing systems of inequality. Stemming from the defining late modern characteristics of risk management and actuarial justice, the topics of injury and harm within the sport have been brought to light by lawsuits against the league claiming that the corporation knew of the dangers of mild traumatic brain injuries (MTBI) and actively attempted to subvert this knowledge. This paper employs an amalgamation of theories and research to comprehensively …

Exploring The Responsibilities Of Wildlife Law Enforcement Officers: An Examination Of Citations Issued By Kentucky Conservation Officers, Conrad Morgan Lanham

Online Theses and Dissertations

Conservation officers are law enforcement agents whose primary responsibility is the enforcement of statutes regarding wildlife. Several bodies of research have noted the expansion of law enforcement capabilities and responsibilities of conservation officers to include the enforcement of general laws that fall outside the conservation officers' original mandate. The purpose of this study is to explore the work roles of contemporary conservation officers in Kentucky. Using data from citations issued by Kentucky conservation officers from 2006 to 2011, this research examines patterns of wildlife violations, boating violations, and general violations across time and space. Comparisons of these types of violations …

Bankster's Paradise: The Importance Of Discourse In Creating A Haven For Criminogenic Banks In The United States, Maria Jacqueline Bordt

Online Theses and Dissertations

This work examines the ways in which language can contribute to a cultural climate in which white-collar crime is no longer considered "deviant," but rather is considered part of a normally functioning political economy. The 2012 money laundering case involving HSBC is examined in conjunction with the rhetoric of popular financial counselor Dave Ramsey. This research seeks to define how language involving the accumulation of capital is equated with virtuousness, thus constructing a myth about the criminality inherent to "legitimate" capital enterprises.

The Heroin Problem: Learning From Past Experiments In Narcotic Maintenance, Ashley Marie Phillips

Online Theses and Dissertations

The following paper examines the ongoing political, legal and cultural debate regarding heroin maintenance in the U.S. that emerged after the passage of the Harrison Act. Moreover, it focuses on the United States' very brief experimentation with narcotics maintenance clinics from 1914-1924 and why the clinic system was ultimately dismantled by the Treasury Department. This paper also highlights the U.S. public policy debate that emerged as early as the 1950s and continues today to develop heroin maintenance trials.

The Upper Big Branch Mine Explosion: Occupational Hazard Or Preventable Tragedy; A Look At State-Corporate Crime, Cassandra Tate

Online Theses and Dissertations

Corporate crimes, defined as "illegal and harmful acts committed by officer and employees of corporations to promote corporate interests," have a greater impact on society than many street crimes. Corporate crime includes a range of white-collar crimes that affect employees and consumers. White-collar and corporate crimes are often ignored by the media unless there is involvement in some high profile scandal. There tends to be a paucity of research associated with coal industry related corporate crimes. This includes personal and death related events in the coal mining industry. This was evident in the 2010 explosion at the Upper Big Branch …

Revulsion And Palatability: The Staying Power Of Death Penalty Rituals - Last Meals And Beyond, Angie Wheaton

Online Theses and Dissertations

The United States has a rich history surrounding capital punishment, and execution rituals are central to this history. The death penalty regime has evolved from a primarily private-based justice system to the state-carceral capital punishment system we have today. This thesis uses three historical eras as the framework for analyzing methods of executions and the rituals that surround them. Throughout each period, rituality has helped cushion the revulsion that is inherently present when taking the life of a human being. If revulsion is not managed, the legitimacy of capital punishment can be questioned. The apex of the capital punishment legitimacy …