Digital Commons Network^™

Identifying Program Needs Of Women Detainees In A Jail Environment, Jeanna Michele Rodda

Theses and Dissertations

Since the 1980s, the population of incarcerated women has been steadily increasing. Approximately 200,000 women are incarcerated in prisons and jails in the United States (Clarke, Phipps, Tong, Rose, and Gold, 2010). There is an increasing level of comorbidity among the population of incarcerated women, with the majority requiring mental health, physical health, substance abuse and pregnancy services at the time of their incarceration or soon afterwards. Incarcerated women face a number of challenges; they are cut off from their primary support system and their children. Their physical health deteriorates, they lack appropriate coping skills, and often experience withdrawal symptoms. …

How Secular Should Democracy Be? A Cross-Disciplinary Study Of Catholicism And Islam In Promoting Public Reason, David Ingram, David Ingram

Philosophy: Faculty Publications and Other Works

I argue that the same factors (strategic and principled) that motivated Catholicism to champion liberal democracy are the same that motivate 21^st Century Islam to do the same. I defend this claim by linking political liberalism to democratic secularism. Distinguishing institutional, political, and epistemic dimensions of democratic secularism, I show that moderate forms of political and epistemic secularism are most conducive to fostering the kind of public reasoning essential to democratic legitimacy. This demonstration draws upon the ambivalent impact of Indonesia’s Islamic parties in advancing universal social justice aims as against more sectarian policies.

Gender-Responsive Policy Development In Corrections: What We Know And Roadmaps For Change, Erica King Msw, Jillian Foley Mppm

Justice Policy

Lack of gender-informed policy creates challenges for correctional practitioners. When there is a gap between training that is evidence-based and gender-informed and what is written in policy, staff may find themselves hindered in their attempts to work toward establishing a gender-responsive environment. This policy bulletin, released in February 2015 and based on survey data and focus groups with women, is an initial step to determine the existence of gender-informed policy within correctional agencies. The findings of this bulletin provide an overview of the current state of gender-responsive policies for women and define a focus for future research, training and technical …

Documenting Mass Rape: Medical Evidence Collection Techniques As Humanitarian Technology, Jaimie Morse

Genocide Studies and Prevention: An International Journal

Aim: Emerging global networks of human rights activists, doctors, and nurses have advocated for increased collection of medical evidence in conflict-affected countries to corroborate allegations of sexual violence and facilitate prosecution in international and domestic courts. Such initiatives are part of broader shifts in human rights advocacy to document human rights violations using rigorous, standardized methodologies. In this paper, I consider three principal forms of medical evidence to document sexual violence and their use in these settings: the patient medical record, the medical certificate, and the sexual assault medical forensic exam (commonly known as the “rape kit”).

Methods: Combining archival …

Book Review Essay: Sarah Wilson, The Origins Of Modern Financial Crime: Historical Foundations And Current Problems In Britain, Claire Nolasco, Aneta Spaic

Criminology and Criminal Justice Faculty Publications (Archived)

Book review essay on Sarah Wilson's The Origins of Modern Financial Crime: Historical Foundations and Current Problems in Britain.Routledge, 2014.

Risk Assessment Of Sexually Abusive Clergy: Utility Of Sex Offender Risk Instruments With A Unique Offender Subgroup, Anthony Perillo

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Sex offender risk instruments provide empirically based outlooks on recidivism risk and often serve as a critical part of sex offender management. If applied to unrepresented offender groups, these instruments may offer inaccurate pictures of risk and hinder efforts to reduce sexual violence. With little research available on sexually abusive clergy prior to the abuse scandal of the early 2000s, sexually abusive clergy are one group not represented in the research used to develop risk measures. An understanding of the validity of current risk assessment practices with sexually abusive clergy is critical and timely, as changes to the handling of …

From Intent To Effect: Richmond, Virginia, And The Protracted Struggle For Voting Rights, 1965–1977, Julian Maxwell Hayter

Jepson School of Leadership Studies articles, book chapters and other publications

Twelve years after the ratification of the Voting Rights Act of 1965 [VRA], Richmond, Virginia elected a historic majority black city council. The 5-4 majority quickly appointed an African American lawyer named Henry Marsh, III to the mayoralty. Marsh, a nationally celebrated civil rights litigator, was not only the city’s first black mayor, but the council election of 1977 was also Richmond’s first since 1970. In 1972, a federal district court used the VRA’s preclearance clause in Section 5 to place a moratorium on council contests. This moratorium lasted until the Supreme Court and the Department of Justice determined whether …

The Effectiveness Of Motivational Interviewing On Intimate Partner Violence Clients, Chelsea Drake

Sociology & Criminal Justice Theses & Dissertations

The criminal justice response to perpetrators of intimate partner violence (IPV) is often a rehabilitative group treatment called Batterers Intervention Programs (Bl). This thesis assesses the effects of motivational interviewing (Ml) on clients ordered to local probation for IPV. Records were collected on IPV offenders enrolled in BI, within a small city in the Southeast Criminal Justice Agency. The pre-MI data were gathered from 2006, and post-MI data from 2007-2008 after the implementation of Ml. This thesis focuses on the use of MI as an intervention to enhance clients' motivation to change. This research is guided by questions that involve …

Is Burglary A Violent Crime? An Empirical Investigation Of Classifying Burglary As A Violent Felony And Its Statutory Implications, Phillip Kopp

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Under the common law, burglary is defined as a crime committed against the property of another, and is listed as a property offense for purposes of statistical description by the Uniform Crime Reports (UCR) and the National Crime Victimization Survey (NCVS). However, burglary is prosecuted and sentenced as a violent crime under habitual offender laws at the federal level, and can be regarded as violent in state law, depending on varied circumstances. Using a mixed methods approach, the current study compared state and federal burglary and habitual offender statutes to an empirical description of the offense. First, a comprehensive content …

Assessing Young Males' Perspectives On The Cultural Competency Of Juvenile Justice Staff And Predicting Psychosocial Functioning, Crystal Catherine Rodriguez

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

The theory of symbolic interactionism explains how social interactions influence behavior. In this study, it is reasoned that culturally sensitive interactions may be associated with adjudicated youth behavior. The purpose of this project is to (1) examine the differences in adjudicated male youths' perceptions of the level of cultural competency in juvenile justice staff members and (2) to identify whether staff members' cultural competency is related to self-restraint, distress, and delinquent behavior in adjudicated male youth. Utilizing a cross-sectional design, adjudicated youths enrolled in a variety of re-entry and transitional programs were surveyed. Youths retrospectively assessed the cultural competency of …

Committed To The Cause? Violent And Financial Criminal Behaviors Of Domestic Far-Rightists, Ashmini G. Kerodal

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This study used factor analysis, logistic and multinomial logistic regression analysis to evaluate the effects of an individual's level of commitment to far-right extremism on his / her criminal offending behavior. Agnew's General Strain Theory (2001, 2005), Cloward and Ohlin's Differential Opportunity Theory (1960) and Simi and Futrell's (2010) concept of free / movement spaces were used to address the three research questions: (1) What effect did individual level stressors, significant others, and negative interactions with government officials have on membership in a far-right group, (2) What effect did individual level stressors, significant others, membership in an extremist group, and …

A Study Of Twenty Two Caliber Long Rifle And Nine Millimeter Parabellum Bullet Ricochet From Common Substrates, Peter Diaczuk

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Determining the angle at which a bullet will successfully ricochet is essential information when a shooting investigation involves indirect fire. In this research, determining the critical angle and its variance was measured for six substrates, two calibers and two bullet types. This information provides the forensic scientist with fundamental data required for the scientific reconstruction and assessment of a shooting scene. Depending upon the bullet's design, the substrate, and the angle of impact, a bullet may fail to ricochet upon impact, or the bullet will ricochet. Knowledge of bullet behavior with common substrates provides valuable information for scientific investigation of …

A Critical Corporate Profile Of Li & Fung, Robert J.S. Ross, Dana Patterson, Brendon Yadegari, Chris Wegemer

Mosakowski Institute for Public Enterprise

Behind the prominent Brand names and Retail stores of global supply chains are intermediaries who provide services to large volume buyers. A key feature of the global apparel industry is complex supply chains with many contractors and subcontractors and intense competition among factories – induced by the buyers – to reduce cost and increase speed. Over the past two decades, scholars have noted the dramatic increase of market power of international retail corporations gained at the expense of the fragmentation of centers of production. Enter Li & Fung, a Hong Kong based firm which is the largest sourcing agent in …

The Original Intent Of The Wire Act And Its Implications For State-Based Legalization Of Internet Gambling, Michelle Minton

Occasional Papers

Recognizing the growing threat of organized crime, then U.S. Attorney General Robert F. Kennedy sought to get the “bankrollers and kingpins” by introducing the Federal Wire Act in 1961, which sought to target the mob’s most profitable racket—bookkeeping on horseracing and sports gambling by prohibiting such gambling on the nation’s communication system at the time (telephone and telegraph). More than 30 years later members of Congress sought to use the Wire Act to stop the rise of casino-style gambling on the Internet. However, the scope of the Wire Act has been disputed among lawmakers, courts, and federal agencies. In 2011 …

A Content Analysis Of Backpage.Com Advertisements In Louisville, Kentucky., Theresa C. Hayden

Faculty and Staff Scholarship

Backpage.com and Craigslist are replacing the street corner as a crime source for buying and selling of sex. “To reduce commercial sexual exploitation and enforce existing trafficking laws, communities must first recognize the extent of the problem within their local area (Janson, Mann, Marro, & Matvey, 2013, 99). In a population density study conducted in 15 major U. S. cities, it was found that males over 18 years of age who buy sex online ranged from 0.6% in San Francisco to 21.4% in Houston (Roe-Sepoqitz, Hickle, Gallagher, Smith, & Hedberg, 2013). Researchers in the Greater Cincinnati area found a high …

Foundation For An Independent Tomorrow: Treatment Effects Of The Stages Of Employment Job Readiness Program On Program Completion And Employment Outcomes For Ex-Offenders, Michael Hammer, Stephanie Pocchia, Stacy Howell

UNLV Theses, Dissertations, Professional Papers, and Capstones

Foundation for an Independent Tomorrow (FIT) is a local not for profit organization that seeks to assist residents of Southern Nevada by providing workforce development services (e.g., interviewing skills, job searching techniques, resume assistance) to increase a program participant’s opportunities to obtain and maintain employment. FIT is currently being federally funded through the Department of Labor’s Workforce Investment Act (WIA) grant, with a specific goal of serving the re-entry, or ex-offender, population. This population presents with a very unique set of barriers to obtaining employment, and in order to combat these barriers, FIT created the Stages of Employment job readiness …

The Tattoo: A Mark Of Subversion, Deviance, Or Mainstream Self-Expression?, Jocelyn Camacho

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

While an estimated one-third of the United States population has a tattoo, tattoos are still seen as a sign of deviance. The appearance of the first tattoos in the United States were relegated to the bodies of the lower classes and outcasts of society. Over the past few decades tattoos have migrated on to the celebrity skin of today's pop culture icons. In the past twenty years, tattoos have moved from deviant subcultures to the mainstream, and yet are still considered to be a mark of the disfavored factions of society. The dominant culture continues to regard the bearers of …

An Examination Of University Speech Codes’ Constitutionality And Their Impact On High-Level Discourse, Benjamin Welch

College of Journalism and Mass Communications: Theses

The First Amendment – which guarantees the right to freedom of religion, of the press, to assemble, and petition to the government for redress of grievances – is under attack at institutions of higher learning in the United States of America. Beginning in the late 1980s, universities have crafted “speech codes” or “codes of conduct” that prohibit on campus certain forms of expression that would otherwise be constitutionally guaranteed. Examples of such polices could include prohibiting “telling a joke that conveys sexism,” or “content that may negatively affect an individual’s self-esteem.” Despite the alarming number of institutions that employ such …

Lorain Police Department: A Study To Improve Patrol Deployment, Philip M. Stinson, Steven L. Brewer Jr, John Liederbach

Criminal Justice Faculty Publications

The Lorain (OH) Police Department requested research assistance from the Ohio Consortium of Crime Science (OCCS) for the purpose of evaluating and revising the current patrol districts and the allocation of resources within the districts. The OCCS is an association of researchers from universities and state agencies working together to provide evidence-based solutions to the real-world problems faced by local criminal justice agencies. The goal of the project was to evaluate and revise the current police districts and the allocation of resources within those districts. The first objective in support of the project goal was to assess calls for service, …

Prison, Perceptions, And Policy: Authoritarianism And Attitudes Toward Sexual Assault Victims In U.S. Correctional Facilities, Amy Michelle Magnus

UNLV Theses, Dissertations, Professional Papers, and Capstones

Existing research on sexual victimization in correctional facilities has expanded since the enactment of the Prison Rape Elimination Act (PREA) of 2003. Previous literature suggests that the prevalence of sexual victimization in prisons is unknown, yet the known ramifications of reported sexual assaults are serious for both the individuals involved and the institution. Government policies such as the Prison Rape Elimination Act (PREA) of 2003 attempt to address the issue of sexual violence in U.S. correctional facilities. Limitations of PREA, however, derive from a lack of clear distinction between coerced and consensual behavior and how these ideas manifest and co-exist …

Physical Child Abuse And Cultural Differences In Reporting, Emily Frances Reed

UNLV Theses, Dissertations, Professional Papers, and Capstones

Previous research using both National Child Abuse and Neglect Data System (NCANDS) data and other sources has found that biases do exist with regard to racial differences. The current study will build on past research of biases in the Child Protective Services (CPS) involvement and reporting. This study uses a secondary data set, the 2009 NCANDS dataset; which consists of child specific data of all investigated reports of maltreatment to state CPS agencies. This research seeks to determine if there are disparities in cases reported to and substantiated by CPS as reflected by race (Black, White, & Hispanic children) and …

Attitudes And Perceptions Toward Sex Tourism In Las Vegas, Carolyn Willis

UNLV Theses, Dissertations, Professional Papers, and Capstones

The purpose of this study is to explore attitudes and perceptions as they relate to the consensual and non-consensual aspect of sex and tourism. This practice of engaging in sexual activities, aligned with the tourism industry, is referred to as `sex tourism', `romance tourism', or `prostitution tourism'. This has evolved into a global phenomenon where sex has become a commodity in many tourist destinations. Previous research available from Asia, Europe, the Caribbean, and Central America will be used to demonstrate similar patterns in transnational motivations and practices by looking at concepts, perceptions, legality, and potential exploitation as it relates to …

Examining Student Perceptions: Ethics And Misconduct In Today's Police Department, William Andrew Davis

Master's Theses

Police ethics and decision making are issues of concern to both academic scholars and police leaders. While previous studies have focused on perceptions of police officers, little research has focused on the perceptions of young people about police ethical decision-making. This study aims to capture such perceptions from a cohort of college students majoring in criminal justice. Students from an undergraduate criminal justice program (n=263) were surveyed to determine their attitudes toward various ethical components of police work, including the prevalence of misconduct and the impact of a college education on ethical decision-making. Moreover, the effect of successful completion of …

Putting The Microscope On Crime Labs: The Effects Of Evidence Complexity And Laboratory Type On Jurors' Perceptions Of Forensic Evidence, Miliaikeala S.J. Heen

UNLV Theses, Dissertations, Professional Papers, and Capstones

An experiment was conducted to test the effects of evidence complexity and laboratory type on jurors' perceptions of forensic evidence. The study specifically focused on three types of labs: public labs, private labs, and "corporate labs." Public labs are managed by a federal, state, or local law enforcement agency, where evidence is usually analyzed internally at an agency. Private labs are those that have been formed as private businesses to provide services to federal, state, and local crime labs with overflow work. Corporate labs are managed by major retail corporations, and primarily service the needs of their store businesses, but …

The Corrections System Must Make More Accommodations For The Needs Of Motherhood During Incarceration And The Parole Period, Susan Bloom

Theses & Dissertations

While the overall prison population has experienced an unprecedented growth period over the past thirty years, no segment has grown at a faster rate than the female population. Since the majority of female inmates in this country are mothers, it is imperative that the corrections system addresses the unique needs of this subset. This thesis investigates problems women face during the pregnancy period, while in labor and delivery, while their progenies are infants, children and adolescents and reunification issues during the parole period.

Police Officer Job Satisfaction And Officer-Sergeant Educational Levels: A Relational Demography Perspective, Sung Uook Lee

Theses and Dissertations

One immediate component of officers' work environment that has the potential to have a significant influence on officers' job satisfaction is front-line supervision. Frontline supervisors have been found to impact officers' attitudes in general (Engel, 2000). Additionally, Van Maanen (1983) found that supervisors may impact officers by rewards or punishment. Although it has been researched that supervisors impact officers' attitudes or behavior (Terrill, 2001; Davis & Mateu-Gelabert, 1999), Walker (2007) concluded that there is still little research on the impact of supervisors on officer job satisfaction. As aforementioned in this thesis, police officers' job satisfaction has largely been studied in …

Research Brief: "Expedited Citizenship For Sale: Estimating The Effect Of Executive Order 13269 On Noncitizen Military Enlistments", Institute For Veterans And Military Families At Syracuse University

Institute for Veterans and Military Families

This study utilized empirical data to analyze the impact of Executive Order 13269, a recruiting strategy enacted by former president George W. Bush that provides expedited citizenship to non-citizens who join the U.S. military, and it found that there was no overall effect of the Executive Order on the number of non-citizen enlistments into the military. In practice, non-citizens interested in U.S. citizenship should consider military enlistment as an alternative to the typical path to citizenship, and both non-citizen and citizen veterans should familiarize themselves with the plethora of resources available to them. In policy, the Department of Defense might …

Translator, Traitor: A Critical Ethnography Of A U.S. Terrorism Trial, Maya Hess

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Historically, the role of translators and interpreters has suffered from multiple misconceptions. In theaters of war, these linguists are often viewed as traitors and kidnapped, tortured, or killed; if they work in the terrorism arena, they may be prosecuted and convicted as terrorist agents. In United States v. Ahmed Abdel Sattar, a/k/a "Abu Omar," a/k/a "Dr. Ahmed," Lynne Stewart, and Mohammed [sic] Yousry, 02 Cr. 395 (JGK) (S.D.N.Y. 2003), Yousry, an Arabic linguist and scholar of Middle Eastern history, was labeled such an agent, his work as translator/interpreter construed as material support to terrorism, and his expertise recast as dangerous …

Bureaupathology And Organizational Fraud Prevention: Case Studies Of Fraud Hotlines, Chelsea Ann Binns

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This dissertation examined the effect of organizational bureaucracy on fraud hotline performance. Fraud hotlines are used to receive anonymous fraud tips from employees in all sectors to prevent and detect fraud. This work contributes to the research on fraud hotlines, which today is very light. This work also examined individual hotline performance against organization theory, which is absent in the literature. The literature also doesn't include studies using social media data to determine organizational climate. This work contributes to that literature by providing a collective case study examination of the fraud hotlines in six organizations. Their hotline performance was examined …

Ecology Of Terrorism: Cross-National Comparison Of Terrorist Attacks, Katharine A. Boyd

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

The term terrorism is used to describe a large range of behaviors conducted by a wide variety of groups. Terrorist groups differ in ideology, size, financial support, group longevity, and the number of alliances with other terrorist groups. Relatedly, terrorist groups conduct different number of attacks with varying intents to cause fatalities using diverse forms of violence. This study uses ecological theory to contextualize terrorist violence as a product of terrorist group traits in relation to the environmental context. It is hypothesized that terrorist violence is associated with group traits in relation to the varying political, social, and religious contexts …