Digital Commons Network^™

Suffer The Little Children To Come: The Legal Rights Of Unaccompanied Alien Children Under United States Federal Court Jurisprudence, Claire Nolasco, Daniel Braaten

Criminology and Criminal Justice Faculty Publications (Archived)

This article analyses United States (US) federal court jurisprudence to determine the legal rights of unaccompanied alien children (UAC) in various stages of immigration enforcement proceedings. After briefly discussing statistics on UAC in the US, it explains the legal context of US laws governing unaccompanied minors. Through examining 40 cases decided by the 12 US Circuit Courts of Appeals and various federal district courts, the article specifies how these courts interpreted and expanded on the procedural legal rights of UAC upon apprehension by immigration officials, during placement or detention decisions of the Office of Refugee Resettlement (ORR), prior to voluntary …

This Isn’T About You: A Comment On Smith’S Pagans And Christians In The City, Andrew Koppelman

San Diego Law Review

Andrew Koppelman’s contribution to the 2019 Editors’ Symposium: Pagans and Christians in the City.

Stop, Question, And Frisk: A Tool Of Racial Control In New York City, Justice D. Evans

Student Theses

Broken Windows policing through the utilization of Stop, Question, and Frisk has been widely used by the New York City Police Department (NYPD) since the 1990s, as guaranteed by landmark Supreme Court Case Terry v. Ohio (1968). As a result, hundreds of minority citizens have been the victim of routine stops for minor offenses through this aggressive police tactic. This study utilizes 2017 NYPD Stop, Question, and Frisk Data to determine whether broken windows policing, through stop, question, and frisk, operates as a mode of racial control for African Americans in New York City. Through the utilization of chi-square analyses, …

Killing Silence: A Path To Increasing Homicide Solvability In Urban Communities, Dennis Thornton

LSU New Orleans Theses and Dissertations

Relatively low rates of homicide solvability results in law-abiding citizens being forced to co-exist with known murderers, which is detrimental to a community’s psyche. This condition happens disproportionately in neighborhoods where crime is high, cohesiveness among its members is weak, and the citizen/police relationship is little or non-existent. This research sought to understand this phenomenon by asking,” How can murder solvability rates improve in marginalized communities?” and employing four theoretical lenses. Using the city of New Orleans as a case study and holding Social Disorganization Theory constant, Spiral of Silence, Habitus, and Dramaturgy were utilized in an attempt to understand …

Simultaneous Determination Of Fourteen Antipsychotic Drugs In Whole Blood By Solid Phase Extraction And Liquid Chromatography Tandem Mass Spectrometry, Theresa M. Dawe

Student Theses

Anti-psychotic drugs are commonly prescribed to patients to treat several mental conditions, such as bipolar, schizophrenia, and manic-depressive disorder. The analysis of anti-psychotic drugs in blood is a common practice in clinical and forensic toxicology, to monitor drug treatment (therapeutic drug monitoring) or to explain the cause of the impairment or intoxication in human performance and in postmortem cases. However, most of the current studies have been performed in plasma, and a limited number in blood. We developed and validated a method to confirm and quantify a panel of commonly prescribed anti-psychotic drugs in whole blood using solid phase extraction …

Fight, Flight, And Free Will: How Knowledge Of Biopsychosocial Effects Of Trauma Influence Free Will Beliefs And Punishment For Juvenile And Adult Offenders, Rachel Lazar

Student Theses

Justifications for punishment are generally grounded in retribution or consequentialism. Retribution presupposes a belief in free will, claiming that offenders freely and rationally choose to commit a criminal act, and are therefore deserving of punishment. Consequentialism does not necessitate a reliance on free will, and views punishment as means to a valuable end. In recent years, neuroscientific research has challenged the notion of free will, providing one pathway for a public shift away from retribution and towards consequentialism. However, methods by which to instill this doubt in laypeople are still being discovered. To date, no studies have attempted to instill …

Terrorism In The 2020s: Examining The Global Threat Landscape, Landon W. Swearngin

Graduate Theses/Dissertations

This thesis uses quantitative and qualitative research methods to (1) explore the global trends and trajectories of terrorism, (2) identify emerging strategic challenges, and (3) outline an opportunity analysis for U.S. counterterrorism strategy. Collectively, this project provides a strategic forecast for terrorism in the 2020s, demonstrating that terrorism is becoming increasingly dangerous, dynamic, and difficult to defeat.

Reviewing The Literature On Staff Misconduct And Specific Responsivity, Ernest M. Oleksy

The Downtown Review: An Interdisciplinary Journal Written and Peer-Reviewed by Mandel Honors College Students at Cleveland State University

Incarceration is a trying time for inmates as they are punished for crimes they committed while free in society. Beyond the legitimate punishment of being imprisoned, inmates may face illegitimate punishment at the hands of prison staff, ranging from ridicule to physical and sexual violence. Apart from the obvious corruption and immorality involved in staff misconduct, such deviance can also result in a dampened responsivity to reentry programming efforts that strive to keep inmates out of prison. In this literature review, I investigate, summarize, and synthesize the corpus that is relevant to how staff misconduct can be a negative specific …

Decomposition Of Pig Carcasses At Varying Room Temperature, Jacqueline Abad Santos

Themis: Research Journal of Justice Studies and Forensic Science

The goal of this study is to assess the qualitative scoring of decomposition scales with statistical analysis while also determining which indoor environment will decompose the fastest. When comparing the three indoor environments, water decomposition appears to be the fastest, but the method of analysis for this study determines that using decomposition scales to analyze such environments may produce statistically insignificant results. For this study, piglets were put in a dry steel tub, a water filled steel tub, and a suitcase. These were recorded using photographs for 25 days and then scored using decomposition scales. The total score was divided …

Scientific Evidence Admissibility: Improving Judicial Proceedings To Decrease Erroneous Outcomes, Leica Kwong

Themis: Research Journal of Justice Studies and Forensic Science

In the United States, Federal Rules of Evidence 702, the Frye and Daubert standards govern the admissibility of scientific evidence in the courtroom. Some states adopted Frye while others adopted Daubert, causing varying judicial outcomes. The verdicts in some cases may be erroneous due to a nationally used standard. Frye has broad criteria of requiring scientific evidence to be generally accepted. While Daubert contains more requirements for the evidence to be admissible, such as peer review, publication, and scientific principles. Daubert, alongside FRE 702, provides a thorough guideline for trial judges who have the gatekeeping role to decide admissibility aiming …

Physical Match: Uniqueness Of Torn Paper, Marilyn Aguilar

Themis: Research Journal of Justice Studies and Forensic Science

In the forensic science field, it is generally accepted that all tears and fractures are unique; however, there is limited scientific evidence to support this. This study tests the claim that all tears are unique, focusing on paper. One-hundred Office Depot brand 3” x 5” blank, white index cards were torn in half by hand. Six halves were randomly removed; the remaining 94 halves were mixed and then matched by a novice using end-match analysis. The removal of the 6 random halves left 44 matching pairs. Of the remaining halves, all 44 pairs were correctly matched. The results show that …

Novice Ideas: Handwriting Comparisons Conducted By An Untrained Individual, Maia Lister

Themis: Research Journal of Justice Studies and Forensic Science

Forensic analysis of questioned documents includes chemical analyses of paper and ink as well as handwriting comparisons. Several elements affect handwriting analyses, including the presence of discriminatory factors that can individualize a handwriting sample and whether the handwriting has been disguised. Five handwriting samples were gathered from six individuals comprising of one reference, three natural unknowns, and one disguised sample per person. A novice conducted analyses on every collected sample and conducted comparisons of the reference sample to the unknown and disguised samples in an attempt to correctly source the unknown and disguised samples. The novice showed a high level …

Justifying Justice: Six Factors Of Wrongful Convictions And Their Solutions, Colby Duncan

Themis: Research Journal of Justice Studies and Forensic Science

There have been over 300 post-conviction DNA exonerations in the history of the United States. While this number may initially seem significant, there is still an unfathomable population of wrongfully convicted prisoners who have yet to be considered for retrials. Unaddressed wrongful conviction cases highlight the unacceptable weaknesses in the U.S. justice system, weaknesses that include poor investigative tactics and the acceptance or allowance of inaccurate and unreliable evidence. This paper will dutifully analyze the causes that lead to wrongful convictions and amply discuss potential solutions, all of which includes eyewitness misidentification, improper forensics, false confessions, informants, government misconduct, and …

The Effect Of Lineup Size On Eyewitness Accuracy, Alyssa Baumann

Augsburg Honors Review

The research investigated the impact of the number of members in a police lineup on eyewitness identification. Participants attempted to identify the perpetrator from either a sequential or simultaneous lineup. The number of members in the lineup differed between 6 members and 12 members, simultaneous or sequential lineup presentation, and target-present or target-absent. In the target-present condition, the research was concerned with correct identifications. Thus, the 6 member simultaneous lineup should yield the most correct identifications. The 12 member simultaneous lineup should yield the second highest. The 6 and 12 member sequential lineup presentation should yield fewer correct identifications because …

Developing And Validating A Fast And Accurate Method To Quantify 18 Antidepressants In Oral Fluid Samples Using Spe And Lc-Msms, Sanghee S. Shin

Student Theses

Antidepressant drugs are one of the most widely used medicines for treating major depressive disorders for long time periods. Oral fluid (OF) testing offers an easy and noninvasive sample collection. Detection of antidepressants in OF is important in clinical and forensic settings, such as therapeutic drug monitoring and roadside testing for driving under influence. We developed and validated a comprehensive liquid chromatography tandem mass spectrometry method for 18 antidepressants (amitriptyline, bupropion, citalopram, clomipramine, cyclobenzaprine, desipramine, desvenlafaxine, doxepin, duloxetine, fluoxetine, imipramine, mirtazapine, nortriptyline, paroxetine, sertraline, trazodone, trimipramine, venlafaxine) in oral fluid collected by Quantisal® oral collection devices. 0.5 mL of Quantisal® …

Multiple Contacts Of Drug Contaminated Fingermarks And Their Analysis With Raman Microspectroscopy, Victoria Deprimo

Master's Theses

This thesis research aimed to determine if substrate, enhancement technique, and multiple contacts affect the detection and identification of drugs in fingermarks using Raman Spectroscopy. It has the potential to be of great importance in forensic science as fingermarks are one of the most important traces left behind at crime scenes and illicit drugs are a significant criminal justice problem. Thus, being able to associate illicit drugs with a specific fingermark has great potential for forensic science, as it can put the drugs in the hands of a specific individual.

The ridges of fingerprints trap trace amounts of material that …

The Antebellum Development Of The Penitentiary Debate In South Carolina, Florence Gregorie Sloan

Student Scholarship

The early 19^th century was marked by reform movements aimed at alleviating poverty, reducing crime, decreasing illiteracy, and providing better care for the mentally ill. In the United States, as in Europe, the debate over prison reform arose from the growing public fear that the stability of social institutions and values was crumbling, especially because lawlessness abounded across the country in the Jacksonian era.[1] Reformers sought a way to save and preserve the established social order, and reformers found their cure-all solution in the establishment of penitentiaries, which were institutions that sought to transform the criminal into an …

Examining Witness Testimony In Domestic Homicides, Hana Chae

Student Theses

The present study investigated the effects of varying witness testimony on mock jurors’ perceptions of a case where a woman utilizes self-defense as a reason for killing her husband during a domestic dispute. A 3 (expert witness) x 3 (child witness) design was used to examine the effects of two different forms of expert testimony (Battered Woman Syndrome [BWS] & Social Agency [SA]) and its interaction with presence of child witness [age 5 & age 8]. Jury eligible participants (N = 245) were recruited from Amazon Mechanical Turk (MTurk). It was hypothesized that the presence of an expert witness would …

Evaluating The Educational Impact Of Ballot Measure 11 Workshops & Youths’ Perceptions Of Justice, Ginger Ruddell

Student Research Symposium

In 1994 the State of Oregon passed Ballot Measure 11, which allows for the mandatory minimum sentencing for several types of felonies. This measure also allows for juveniles as young as 15 to be subjected to this mandatory sentencing. Due to the severity of this measure, several youth agencies throughout the state of Oregon became concerned about the consequences of mandatory sentencing on youth, and decided to create educational workshops to allow more awareness of Ballot Measure 11 sentencing. Portland Opportunities Industrialization Center (POIC), is the front runner for this workshop. Their goals are to educate/raise awareness, prevent contact with …

“Using Crowd-Sourced Data To Explore Police-Related-Deaths In The United States (2000–2017): The Case Of Fatal Encounters”, David Klinger, Brian Finch, Audrey Beck, D Burghart, Richard Johnson, Kyla Thomas

Criminology and Criminal Justice Faculty Works

Objectives: We evaluated the Fatal Encounters (FE) database as an open-source surveillance system for tracking police-related deaths (PRDs). Methods: We compared the coverage of FE data to several known government sources of police-related deaths and police homicide data. We also replicated incident selection from a recent review of the National Violent Death Reporting System. Results: FE collected data on n = 23,578 PRDs from 2000–2017. A pilot study and ongoing data integration suggest greater coverage than extant data sets. Advantages of the FE data include circumstance of death specificity, incident geo-locations, identification of involved police-agencies, and near immediate availability of …

God, I Hope This Part Of My Life Is Over: A Focused Ethnography Of A Correctional Youth Facility’S Therapeutic Climate, Eric Meyer

Theses & Dissertations

Although all prisons have the same goal of isolating offenders from society, the precise strategies used vary from one jurisdiction to the next. Some prisons use means of punishment to gain inmate compliance. Other prisons concentrate their limited resources on rehabilitation. Contained within the following pages are details of a focused ethnography that was completed in a state correctional youth facility that housed males between the ages of 15 and 21 years, all of whom were convicted of violent crimes. This study had the objective of exploring the climate of therapy in this correctional youth facility where rehabilitative programs were …

Opioid Withdrawal Post Incarceration, Samantha Spampinato

CURCE Annual Undergraduate Conference

This literature review attempts to provide a more complete understanding of the increasing opioid concern and its detrimental effects from withdrawal in incarcerated individuals. Opioid-related fatal overdoses will significantly decrease with the implementation of opioid treatment in jails and prisons nationwide. The incarcerated populations that are typically affected by Opioid Use Disorder (OUD) include about 8.5% of Hispanics and Whites, and about 7.4% of Blacks. One solution involves Medication-Assisted Treatment (MAT) with the use of opioid agonists, such as methadone and buprenorphine-naloxone. These medications offer a slow release of dopamine and can reduce the patient’s opioid withdrawal effects. However, fewer …

Broadly Speaking - May, 2019, Nova Southeastern University

Broadly Speaking

No abstract provided.

For-Profit Prisons: How Lobbying Has Affected The Way America Houses Prisoners, Jacob F. Israel

Political Science Theses and Capstones

There seems to be limited research and understanding as to why for-profit prisons exist in the United States. The initial selling points used to sell private prisons to states and counties were that they would reduce recidivism and cost. Recent peer-reviewed studies have found, however, that neither are the case. This could lead one to ask why for-profit prisons are still used in America. That is what I hope to answer in this research paper. After research and analysis of campaign donations by the two largest for-profit prison corporations (collected from the National Institute on Money in State Politics) and …

Improving Information Sharing: Local Fusion Centers And Their Role In The Intelligence Cycle, Alexis Spall

Master in Management for Public Safety and Homeland Security Professionals Master's Projects

Abstract

My Master’s Project focuses on local fusion centers and the need for improved information sharing practices among law enforcement partners. After the tragic event of September 11^th in 2001, the Department of Homeland Security and the Department of Justice recognized a communication gap between law enforcement agencies and a lack of effective information sharing efforts. Fusion centers play a significant role in supporting both criminal and terrorist investigations due to their ability to act as a conduit between various law enforcement partners. Due to their important responsibilities as information sharing hubs that provide valuable analysis and dissemination of …

Detection Of Larval Aggregations Using A Drone Mounted Thermal Imaging Camera, Megan Descalzi

Master's Theses

When a body’s temperature reaches ambient temperature after death, remote detection of the body can become difficult. At this point, useful search tactics include the use of cadaver dogs, search parties and aerial imaging devices, all of which can be costly and time-consuming for every day law enforcement use. This study investigated the potential of a novel search technique in which a small, unmanned aerial system (drone) mounted with a forward-looking infrared radar (FLIR) was utilized to detect decomposing animal carcasses via the heat generated by associated Diptera larval aggregations. Hot water baths were utilized as analogs for larval aggregations …

Mapping Sex Offenders And Treatment Centers In Relation To Social Disorganization, Amber Amin

Master's Theses

Research shows that the clustering of Registered Sex Offenders (RSOs) is connected to social disorganization. Residential patterns disrupt the reintegration of the RSO population. Utilizing data from Queens and the Bronx, NYC, this study examines RSO clustering in the two boroughs and explores the proximity of community resources to RSO addresses that may assist reintegration. Using data from the New York Megan’s Law and census data for Queens and Bronx Counties, maps were created to study the residential patterns of RSOs. The results show clustering of RSOs in areas with variables pertaining to high social disorganization and a lack of …

Lethal Use Of Force: Insights Into Mental Illness, Robert A. Ryan

Student Theses

Fatal use of force incidents involving police officers in the United States have recently seen widespread media attention, emotionally charged rhetoric, and calls for reform. The present study examines police use of force encounters with the mentally ill given the significant proportion of incidents and wanting body of literature. The objective of this study is to examine fatal police interactions to test whether those displaying signs of mental illness in encounters with law enforcement are more dangerous than those not displaying signs of mental illness. Open source data from the Washington Post were used from 2015 to 2018 (n=3942) due …

From Standardization To Formality: Unintended Consequences Of Police Standardization Reform Of Law Enforcement In China, Lianhan Zhang

Maurer Theses and Dissertations

According to social construction theory, cases are not objective entities waiting to be discovered or revealed; they cannot exist without case-makers. Construction of a case is a subjective process of choosing, increasing, decreasing, selecting, and reshaping. Therefore, a natural gap exists between the constructed and the real world. This dissertation delves into the gap, not from the existing angle of selectiveness, but from the angle of compliance. The study uses empirical data to try to answer the following question: Since the police standardization reform of law enforcement—at least parts of them—aim at controlling the evidence-collecting process and at improving the …

Comparing The Effects Of Racial Segregation On Homicide Trends In Two Major Us Cities, Taylor Sullivan

Criminal Justice

This study focuses on the effects that racial segregation has on homicide rates. Using two major cities that have similar demographics, Chicago, Illinois and Los Angeles, California, this paper studies homicide rates at checkpoints over a span of time while also recording poverty rates and racial isolation. The Uniform Crime Report put out by the Federal Bureau of Investigation will provide data about homicides in the two cities for the respective years. Racial segregation is still an incessant issue throughout the country and causes issues through three major factors, economy, culture, and politics. These issues cause tension between minority and …