Digital Commons Network^™

White Faces In A Black Movement: Why Their Voices Matter, Chauncey L. Alcorn

Capstones

This story follows the lives of two white activists in New York's Black Lives Matter movement. It examines the largely ignored impact white activists have had on the BLM movement and also explores the history of white activists in the abolitionist and Civil Rights movements. The climax details a highly-publicized spat between rival Black Lives Matter organizations that happened during a Dec. 4 protest to commemorate the one-year anniversary of Officer Daniel Pantaleo's non-indictment in Garner's death. My main character, a white male, was blamed for causing the rift and was asked to step down from his leadership position in …

Beyond The Mato Oput Tradition: Embedded Contestations In Transitional Justice For Post-Massacre Pajong, Northern Uganda, David-Ngendo Tshimba

Journal of African Conflicts and Peace Studies

Human beings to a great extent are what community stories narrate about them. This paper is informed by an ethnological field research carried in one of the remotest villages of Mucwini Sub-county in Kitgum district, northern Uganda, scrutinizes people’s stories as they echo concerns about justice from different perspectives of victimhood in the aftermath of a Lord’s Resistance Army-commanded massacre which claimed the lives of 56 people in a night, the majority of whom (21) were from the Pajong clan. After a decade, all direct violent confrontations have no doubt ceased, however, the search for peace still is utterly skewed …

The Role Of Entertainment Media In Perceptions Of Police Use Of Force, Kathleen Donovan, Charles Klahm Iv

Political Science Faculty/Staff Publications

Scholars have long noted the importance of the media in shaping citizens’ attitudes about crime and justice. Most studies have focused on the impact of news and particularly local TV news, yet Americans spend far more time watching entertainment media. We examine the portrayal of police misconduct in crime dramas, and how exposure to these portrayals affects perceptions of the police. We find that viewers of crime dramas are more likely to believe the police are successful at lowering crime, use force only when necessary, and that misconduct does not typically lead to false confessions. In contrast, perceptions regarding the …

Incentives To Incarcerate: Corporation Involvement In Prison Labor And The Privatization Of The Prison System, Alythea S. Morrell

Master's Projects and Capstones

The United States has the highest incarceration rate in the entire world. The United States accounts for approximately 5% of the world’s population, yet it accounts for 25% of the world’s prisoners. Not only does the United States mercilessly incarcerate its own citizens, it disproportionately incarcerates African American and Latino men. This fact on its own is disturbing; however, when it is coupled with the fact that corporations profit from and lobby for an overly aggressive and ineffective criminal justice system, makes these statistics even more horrendous. Private prison companies such as Corrections Corporation of America and GEO Group admit …

Nevada Legal Services: The Legal Services Corporation Restrictions And The Diminishing Capacity Of Access To Justice For The Poor, William Todd Ashmore

UNLV Theses, Dissertations, Professional Papers, and Capstones

The lofty idea of equal justice for all is not the reason legal aid began in the United States. Legal aid was born from the indignation over injustices committed against the poor. Unable to afford an attorney, the poor could not effectively assert their rights within the criminal and civil justice system. Without access to justice through the courts, the extralegal activities required to defend oneself and exact justice such as personally forcing an employer to pay rightful wages, are deemed criminal in most cases. By providing legal resources to the poor, legal aid not only brought order to society …

Climate Change And Interpersonal Violence: A "Global" Estimate And Regional Inequities, Dennis Mares, Kenneth W. Moffett

SIUE Faculty Research, Scholarship, and Creative Activity

This study estimates the predicted impact of climate change on levels of violence in a sample of 57 countries. We sample western and non-western countries and perform a multilevel ARFIMA regression to examine if warmer temperatures are associated with higher levels of homicide. Our results indicate that each degree Celsius increase in annual temperatures is associated with a nearly 6% average increase in homicides. Regional variation in this predicted effect is detected, for example, with no apparent effects in former Soviet countries and far stronger effects found in Africa. This variation indicates that climate change may acutely increase violence in …

Immigration Federalism As Ideology: Lessons From The States, Lina Newton

Publications and Research

Over the last decade states passed hundreds of immigration bills covering a range of policy areas. This article considers the recent state legislative surge against scholarly treatments of immigration federalism, and identifies the symbolic politics in state lawmaking. The analysis combines a historical treatment of key court decisions that delineated boundaries of state and federal immigration roles with a legislative analysis of over 2200 immigration bills passed between 2006 and 2013, to identify the numerous ways in which national immigration policy shapes state measures. It argues that recent laws must be considered against symbolic federalism which privileges state sovereignty and …

Nationalism And The Rule Of Law: Lessons From The Balkans And Beyond, Joseph L. Derdzinski

International Dialogue

The “classic” debate in contemporary comparative politics is over what matters more in shaping political behavior: culture or institutions. The clear answer is that both are important, it’s just that their relative import depends to a large degree on contextual, temporal factors. Iavor Rangelov seeks to straddle—or bridge?—the two theoretical orientations, demonstrating the iterative lives between institutions and society. Rangelov addresses the eternal (or, at least, for the past couple of decades) question: do institutions really matter in emerging democracies? Or, do other intrinsic factors determine democracy’s course? Privileging the rule of law, Rangelov, through three cases from the Balkans, …

Institutionalizing Freedom As Nondomination: Democracy And The Role Of The State, David Watkins

Political Science Faculty Publications

This article critically examines neo-republican democratic theory, as articulated by Philip Pettit, with respect to its capacity to address some of the pressing challenges of our times. While the neo-republican focus on domination has great promise, it mistakenly commits to the position that democracy—the primary tool with which we fight domination—is limited to state activity. Examining this error helps us make sense of two additional problems with his theory: an overestimation of the capacity of legislative bodies to identify sufficient responses to practices of domination, and the potential conflict between avoiding state domination of the general citizenry and avoiding state …

Road To Recovery: Recidivism And The Mclean County Drug Court, Julia Neaves

Student Research – Stevenson Center

This study explores the effectiveness of the McLean County Drug Court at reducing time to recidivism using survival analysis techniques. Data on 146 drug court participants was collected using the county’s proprietary case management systems. Findings suggest that length of drug court programming significantly reduces time to recidivism. Unfortunately, black offenders and offenders with prior criminal history were found to return to the prison system more rapidly than other groups, suggesting that drug court programming may not be addressing the greater systemic issues present in the criminal justice system. These findings collectively inform policy recommendations provided to county administrators and …

How South Africa’S Collective Memory Of The Anc’S Armed Struggle Has Shaped Political Allegiances And National Identity In Modern South Africa, Will Corvin

Independent Study Project (ISP) Collection

This paper focuses on how certain narratives from the ANC’s armed struggle are “lived out” through modern South Africans’ political allegiances and concepts of national identity. This article starts by discerning which strands of history the popular narrative of the armed struggle fails to adequately acknowledge. From there, the research analyzes how those forgotten narratives have impacted South Africans’ faith in the ANC government and path toward becoming a reconciled, rainbow nation. The data indicates that a more inclusive narrative of the ANC’s armed struggle is necessary for the country to attain its goals of becoming a nonracial, reconciled democracy …

'Hope For Every Addicted American' An Opioid Epidemic In The Age Of Ethopolitics: Implications For U.S. Drug Policy And Governing Problematic Subjects, Elizabeth Newcomer

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

The United States is in the midst of an unprecedented drug epidemic instigated by overprescribed pain relievers and cheap, accessible heroin. Beyond its immense scope, what makes this opioid epidemic distinctive is a widespread awareness of its effects among privileged populations and a political consensus that it cannot be effectively addressed with existing, punitive drug policies. Building upon analyses of the drug addict identity and policy change as well as critical addiction studies, I critically examine the discourses of the opioid epidemic, considering their impact on U.S. drug policy since 2000 and analyzing the implications of these changes for governing …

The Development Of The Eu's Counter Terrorism Policies In The Post 9/11 Era, Sinem Cevik

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

European security is shaped by major events. In this perspective, the attacks of 9/11 and the bombings which took place in Madrid and London are marked as turning points in the EU's counter terrorism history. It was only after 9/11 that counter terrorism became a strategic priority for the EU and the Union started to develop extensive policies to tackle the threat of terrorism. Responding to terrorism threats is crucial for the EU's existence as an area of security and prosperity. Thus, the EU has been creating a complex and multidimensional counter terrorism approach through the implementation of wide-ranging instruments …

Avoiding The Escalation Of Homelessness Through Public Policy, Peter Goldstein

Scholarly Horizons: University of Minnesota, Morris Undergraduate Journal

This paper examines public policies related to homelessness in America.

Trailblazers And Those That Followed : Personal Experiences, Gender, And Judicial Empathy., Laura P. Moyer, Susan B. Haire

Faculty and Staff Scholarship

This paper investigates one causal mechanism that may explain why female judges on the federal appellate courts are more likely than men to side with plaintiffs in sex discrimination cases. To test whether personal experiences with inequality are related to empathetic responses to the claims of female plaintiffs, we focus on the first wave of female judges, who attended law school during a time of severe gender inequality. We find that female judges are more likely than their male colleagues to support plaintiffs in sex discrimination cases, but that this difference is seen only in judges who graduated law school …

Corporate Complicity In Human Rights Violations Under International Criminal Law, Danielle Olson

International Human Rights Law Journal

This paper examines the main legal elements of corporate criminal responsibility for involvement in serious human rights violations, focusing specifically on the mens rea, or mental element requirement of a crime. It analyzes in detail what it means for a business to be complicit, the degree of knowledge corporations and their officials must have to be implicated in accomplice liability, and a case study demonstrating the consequences of such liability on corporations.

An Empirical Test For Overrepresentation Of Black Youth Arrests In Mississippi, Ashley R. Mcknight

Honors Theses

The objective of this study is to empirically test for black youth overrepresentation at the initial contact (arrest) stage of the juvenile justice system. In 2002, an amendment was made to the Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention Act of 1974 which called for states to monitor disproportionate minority contact at all levels of the juvenile justice system. Arrest data from the Bureau of Justice Statistics has been gathered to determine the rate and percentage at which black youth are arrested compared to white youth. More so, youth population statistics are acquired from the U.S. Census and are converted to percentages. …

Keeping Pace: The U.S. Supreme Court And Evolving Technology, Brian Thomas

Politics Summer Fellows

Contemporary mainstream discussions of the Supreme Court are often qualified with the warning that the nine justices are out of touch with everyday American life, especially when it comes to the newest and most popular technologies. For instance, during oral argument for City of Ontario v. Quon, a 2010 case that dealt with sexting on government-issued devices, Chief Justice John Roberts famously asked what the difference was “between email and a pager,” and Justice Antonin Scalia wondered if the “spicy little conversations” held via text message could be printed and distributed. While these comments have garnered a great deal of …

Unintended Consequences Of Cigarette Prohibition, Regulation, And Taxation, Jonathan D. Kulick, James E. Prieger, Mark A. R. Kleiman

School of Public Policy Working Papers

Abstract Laws that prohibit, regulate, or tax cigarettes can generate illicit markets for tobacco products. Illicit markets both reduce the efficacy of policies intended to improve public health and create harms of their own. Enforcement can reduce evasion but creates additional harms, including incarceration and violence. There is strong evidence that more enforcement in illicit drug markets can spur violence. The presence of licit substitutes, such as electronic cigarettes, has the potential to greatly reduce the size of illicit markets. We present a model demonstrating why enforcement can increase violence, show that states with higher tobacco taxes have larger illicit …

Governing New Jersey: Reflections On The Publication Of A Revised And Expanded Edition Of 'The Governors Of New Jersey', Michael J. Birkner

History Faculty Publications

New Jersey’s chief executive enjoys more authority than any but a handful of governors in the United States. Historically speaking, however, New Jersey’s governors exercised less influence than met the eye. In the colonial period few proprietary or royal governors were able to make policy in the face of combative assemblies. The Revolutionary generation’s hostility to executive power contributed to a weak governor system that carried over into the 19th and 20th centuries, until the Constitution was thoroughly revised in 1947. Before that date a handful of governors, by dint of their ideas and personalities, affected the polity in meaningful …

The Temporary Permanence Of Syrian Refugees In Jordan, Charles Edward Davidson

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

In the wake of the 2011 Syrian Civil War, hundreds of thousands of refugees fled to neighboring Jordan. The government of Jordan received them and along with NGOs from around the world, provided for some of their most basic needs including food, education and healthcare. In the summer of 2014 I travelled to Amman and Mafraq, Jordan in order to learn more about the work being done among the Syrians by non-governmental organizations (NGOs). What I found was a variety of short-term aid projects designed by the NGOs to meet the various needs of the refugees. I learned of no …

Upholding The Inartful Drafting Of Obamacare, Donald Roth

Faculty Work Comprehensive List

Posting about ­­­­­­­­a recent challenge to the national Affordable Care Act (ACA) from In All Things - an online hub committed to the claim that the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus Christ has implications for the entire world.

http://inallthings.org/upholding-the-inartful-drafting-of-obamacare/

Editor's Note, Padraig O’Malley

New England Journal of Public Policy

In this edition of the journal several articles address a range of important, and in some cases too often overlooked policy issues, too broad in scope for their conclusions and recommendations to be encapsulated adequately in a brief paragraph. Their diversity, however, highlights a key characteristic of the New England Journal of Public Policy – that of being open to publishing articles that have insightful bearings on how public policy is addressed, not only in the New England states, but throughout the country and in the international community – a community of nations increasingly interdependent with constraints on national sovereignty …

Protecting The Stranger: The Origins Of Us Immigration Regulation In Nineteenth-Century New York, Brendan P. O'Malley

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

From 1847 to 1890, a state authority--not a federal one--oversaw the entry of most immigrants arriving in the United States. The New York State Board of the Commissioners of Emigration supervised the landing of over eight million newcomers in nation's busiest entry point, the Port of New York, during the second half of the nineteenth century. Most were processed at the Board's Castle Garden Emigrant Depot in Battery Park, which opened in 1855. This study demonstrates why and how New York State developed a complex regulatory regime well before the federalization of immigration authority in 1882.

The establishment of this …

Transitional Justice In Sri Lanka: Rethinking Post-War Diaspora Advocacy For Accountability, Mytili Bala

International Human Rights Law Journal

Sri Lanka’s 26-year civil war against the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam came to a bloody end in May 2009, amidst allegations of war crimes and crimes against humanity on both sides. Since then, Tamils in the diaspora, long accused of funding the war, have become vocal proponents for war crimes accountability. Some might label certain forms of diaspora advocacy as “lawfare” or “long-distance nationalism.” However, these labels fail to account for the complex memories and identities that shape diaspora advocacy for accountability today. In order for Sri Lanka to move forward from decades of conflict, transitional justice mechanisms to …

The Palermo Protocol: Why It Has Been Ineffective In Reducing Human Sex Trafficking, Christina A. Seideman

Global Tides

This paper analyzes why the UN’s efforts against human trafficking, specifically regarding the Palermo Protocol, have been ineffective in preventing the spread of, and reducing, the human sex trafficking network. It concludes that the broad wording of the Palermo Protocol and the UN’s lack of ability to enforce its legislation, along with statistical irregularities due to self-reporting problems, have made the Palermo Protocol ineffective, and that destination countries (countries that victims are trafficked to) have a large share of the burden to create effective legislation against trafficking. Proposed solutions include holding Palermo Protocol signatory countries accountable to change their legislation, …

The International Criminal Court In Crisis: Is Local Outreach The Route To Stability?, Taylor J. Kilpatrick

Undergraduate Honors Theses

The International Criminal Court is at the forefront of the international transitional justice realm today. Despite its omnipresence, there is a seemingly ceaseless succession of arguments against the Court. As this disapproval abounds, it effectively obscures the specific issues at hand. The strain on the interaction between global and local levels of justice within the scope of the ICC arguably underscores the entire crisis situation. More specifically, there is a seemingly unbridgeable distance, both physical and cultural, between the entity of the ICC and the local communities it purportedly serves. This paper seeks to address the absence of local narratives …

Drug Violence And Public (In)Security: Mexico's Federal Police And Human Rights Abuse, Dominic Pera

Undergraduate Honors Theses

Violence in Mexico, with dramatic political, social, and economic consequences on both Mexican and US populations, has risen dramatically in the past decade. Research has shown that the Mexican military is largely responsible for human rights abuses in Mexico. This paper will seek to answer why there are so many human rights abuses committed by the Federal Police, as public security is a police role and its deterioration threatens lives, security, and the rule of law. This paper will look at what scholars have said about the causes of police violence and public insecurity. Some say that history is responsible, …

Crime Media, Punitiveness, And Fear, Robert Roussel

Student Scholar Symposium Abstracts and Posters

This paper focuses on public opinion of crime salience and punitive attitudes, looking specifically at how crime-news consumption affects such attitudes. Sensationalized local TV news has become heavily focused on crime and accidents in recent decades, and many researchers claim that heavy consumption of local crime news lead one to overestimate crime rates. Not only do people perceive that there is more crime, but they often feel a personal threat to their safety, and consequently advocate more severe criminal justice policies. Even if it does lead people to erroneous beliefs, the quasi-sanctity of freedom of the press in the U.S. …

The Fire This Time: Assessing The Scalability Of Supportive Service Programs For Young Men Of Color, A Case Study, Ronald James-Terry Taylor

Renée Crown University Honors Thesis Projects - All

After spending the spring 2014 semester teaching at an urban high school in New York City, I began to question specifically what could be done to better support my students; specifically the young men and boys of color. By serving as a volunteer in the Empowering Males Leadership Class (EMLC) during the spring of 2014, I developed an interest in understanding (1) how the program was effective in servicing young men and boys of color and (2) how the interplay between federal programs and local implementation was characterized. This analysis is a hybrid of political science and policy implementation analysis, …