Digital Commons Network^™

Recreational Cannabis In Louisiana: Anticipating Potential Risks For Motor Vehicle Safety In The Short And Long Term, Aimee H. Moles, Andrew Burns, Ashley Tillison, Austin L. Matthews

Reports

This document, titled Recreational Cannabis in Louisiana: Anticipating Potential Risks for Motor Vehicle Safety in the Short and Long Term, provides a comprehensive analysis of the potential impacts that cannabis legalization could have on road safety in Louisiana. The document is written to equip policymakers and concerned citizens with the necessary knowledge to navigate the complex landscape of cannabis legalization and its implications for public safety.

Key Objectives and Scope: The primary purpose of this document is to evaluate the potential risks associated with recreational cannabis legalization on motor vehicle safety, drawing on data and experiences from Canada and states …

Aging In Newton: A Community Needs Assessment, Claire Wickersham, Katherine Burnes, Shu Xu, Caitlin E. Coyle

Center for Social and Demographic Research on Aging Publications

This report presents the results of a comprehensive examination of issues relating to aging in Newton. A needs assessment was undertaken to support planning on the part of the City of Newton and the Department of Older Adult Services. Results presented here focus on the characteristics and needs of Newton residents who are aged 60 and older. Data was collected via key informant interviews, focus groups with residents and stakeholders and a mailed survey of residents aged 60 and older. Respondents to the community survey included 2,869 Newton residents, which resulted in a response rate of more than 50%. As …

Never Going To Let You Down: Preventing Predictive Shrinkage Via The Strong-R Assessment Method, Zachary Hamilton, Alex Kigerl, Andrew Peterson, Grant Duwe, John Ursino

Criminology and Criminal Justice Faculty Publications

Widely used sources of crime data, such as the Uniform Crime Reports (UCR) and National Incident-Based Reporting System (NIBRS), provide invaluable information on patterns in reported crime and justice processing. Yet, due to their measurement of crime at the incident level, these data have not been used to determine an individual’s likelihood of justice system involvement. By contrast, in the correctional field, individuals are used as the unit of analysis and common definitions to establish state-level base rates. Used for decades, base rates provide an estimate of justice system involvement, per individual, for a given jurisdiction’s population.

Redefining Missing In The Third Space Of Sovereignty: Collaborative Governance On Idaho's Missing And Murdered Indigenous Persons Policy, Melanie Fillmore

Boise State University Theses and Dissertations

This three-article dissertation addresses how Indigenous and non-Indigenous state and non-state policy actors collaborating on Idaho missing and murdered Indigenous persons (MMIP) policy shift the Integrative Framework for Collaborative Governance (IFCG) policy context to the ‘third space of sovereignty’ (Bruyneel, 2007). In a space of competing narratives of authority across time, and space, paper one addresses how Indigenous and non-Indigenous policy actors are shaped by the “drivers” of collaboration. The second paper addresses three key configurations of collaborative governance regimes. The third paper reassesses the scope of Idaho MMIP through a comparison of MMIP cases in 2021 and 2023 as …

Policing, Power, And Protests: Landscapes Of Surveillance In Private And Public Spaces In Lower Manhattan, Kelly Britt

Publications and Research

No abstract provided.

The Guardian The Month Of August 2024, Wright State Student Body

The Guardian Student Newspaper

News articles from The Guardian for the Month of August 2024. The Guardian is the official student-run newspaper for Wright State University. It has been published regularly since March of 1965.

Essays On Education And Family Economics, Yue Hu

All Dissertations

The dissertation consists of three essays: the first two discuss the effect of American high school vocational education on individuals' labor market and educational outcomes, and the third essay explores the effect of unilateral divorce laws on women's labor force participation rates. In the first chapter, treating vocational class choice as a continuous variable, I used family-fixed effects to investigate the average effect of American high school vocational classes on students' labor market and educational outcomes. The findings indicate that high school vocational classes significantly decrease the likelihood of attending a four-year college but do not significantly affect other educational …

Economic Development In Legacy Cities: Current And Emerging Challenges And Opportunities, Neil Reid, Sujata Shetty, Jane Adade

Midwest Social Sciences Journal

As manufacturing employment has declined in the traditional manufacturing regions over the past decades, many communities have experienced population loss and overall economic decline. Local economic development professionals have had to grapple with long-term structural changes in the economy as well as short-term jolts. To gain insights into the changing landscape of economic development, we interviewed economic development practitioners in Indiana, Michigan, Ohio, and Pennsylvania. The interviews focused on their perception of current and emerging challenges and opportunities with respect to economic development in their respective communities. Having identified the major challenges and opportunities, we asked them to articulate the …

An Ethnography Of Frostbite Among Unsheltered People In Portland: Safety, Governance, And The Manufacture Of Vulnerability, Muireall Brown

University Honors Theses

This thesis provides an applied anthropological ethnography of frostbite among unsheltered people in Portland, Oregon. I conducted the research over the course of three months between May and August 2024 in collaboration with Hygiene4All, a local nonprofit. The research consisted of participant-observation, six semi-structured interviews, and a review of unpublished data from Hygiene4All. I argue that the conceptualization of safety operating within some parts of Portland's governance structures actually makes unsheltered Portlanders more vulnerable to frostbite: governance bodies actively participate in constructing this vulnerability along the lines of disability, isolation, and displacement. I discuss uneven governance and the biopolitical conflicts …

Unraveling Collective Anomalies In Data-Driven Systems: Manifestation, Detection, And Enhancement Implications, Mohammad Bakhsh

Graduate Doctoral Dissertations

This dissertation presents an in-depth investigation into collective anomalies—complex patterns of data that deviate from the norm when considered as a group, rather than individually. It encompasses three pivotal studies that explore the intricacies of identifying and analyzing these anomalies within online customer reviews and urban traffic patterns. The research initially focuses on the subtle shifts in consumer feedback patterns, highlighting the challenges of detecting early signs of collective anomalies. It then advances to the analysis of urban traffic, emphasizing the detection of anomalous trajectory patterns and their implications for urban planning. The final study introduces a spatio-temporal framework to …

The Reallocation Effects Of Domestic Outsourcing, Mayara Felix, Michael B. Wong

Cowles Foundation Discussion Papers

This paper estimates the wage, employment, and reallocation effects of non-core activity outsourcing using Brazil’s unexpected 1993 court-ordered outsourcing legalization. We leverage North-South variation in pre-legalization court permissiveness and compare security guards to less affected occupations. We find that older incumbent security guards were adversely impacted through occupational layoffs, loss of firm-level wage premia, and exit from the occupation. At the same time, increased numbers of younger workers entered the formal sector and became employed at contract firms. On net, legalization increased guard employment by 5%, led by a 50% increase in employment for guards aged 18-24, and had no …

Health Professional Regulation And Provision Of Quality Health Services; Cross Sectional Analysis Of Private Health Care Providers In Wajir County, Kenya, Ali Ahmed Mohamed Qadar, Wanja Mwaura-Tenambergen, Eunice Muthoni, Luke Wahome Kinyua

Population Health, East Africa

Background: Health professional regulatory bodies oversee and enforce standards in healthcare to safeguard patient safety and prevent harm. However, international consistency in these regulations remains limited. The Kenya health sector relies on various bodies to enforce standards among professionals and institutions, albeit constrained by financial and human resources that hinder effective oversight. This study aimed to assess how regulatory practicessuch as licensing, training oversight, inspection of practice, and quality assurance mechanisms- affect the quality of healthcare provided by private providers.

Methods: The study targeted 108 healthcare providers from 36 private health facilities, primarily nurses and clinical officers. A sample of …

Path-Choice-Constrained Bus Bridging Design Under Urban Rail Transit Disruptions, Yiyang Zhu, Jian Gang Jin, Hai Wang

Research Collection School Of Computing and Information Systems

Although urban rail transit systems play a crucial role in urban mobility, they frequently suffer from unexpected disruptions due to power loss, severe weather, equipment failure, and other factors that cause significant disruptions in passenger travel and, in turn, socioeconomic losses. To alleviate the inconvenience of affected passengers, bus bridging services are often provided when rail service has been suspended. Prior research has yielded various methodologies for effective bus bridging services; however, they are mainly based on the strong assumption that passengers must follow predetermined bus bridging routes. Less attention is paid to passengers’ path choice behaviors, which could affect …

Is There A Relationship Between Media Sources And Public’S Perception On Police?, Rio Mancilla

Walden Dissertations and Doctoral Studies

The focus of this research was to understand what type of influence media sources have on the public’s perception of police. To conduct this quantitative research, a survey was distributed to approximately 200 participants who were 21 years of age or older, U.S. citizens, and watched the news regularly or had some interaction with law enforcement. The survey distributed on Survey Monkey included questions pertaining to media consumption and perception of police. The theoretical foundations applied within this research were Gerbner’s cultivation theory, social cognitive theory of mass communication, social procedural justice theory, and social exchange theory. Results reflected that …

News Media Coverage And Framing Of Human Trafficking In The United States, Chloe Junkerman

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

This study examines what makes mainstream news media representations of human trafficking cases newsworthy, and how news media choose to frame sensationalized human trafficking stories. While there have been several notable studies examining news media framing of human trafficking as a social issue more generally, prior research has yet to empirically investigate how the news media cover specific human trafficking cases, thus overlooking what types of attributes make cases newsworthy. This is an important gap in research as the types of cases that get covered, or ignored, by news media, and how stories frame various aspects of these crimes, informs …

Threat And Hazard Identification And Risk Assessment (Thira) Guidance For Railroads, Frances L. Edwards, Daniel C. Goodrich

Mineta Transportation Institute

Climate change creates new challenges for all critical transportation infrastructure, especially for railroads with an open system that is continuously exposed to the elements. A Threat and Hazard Identification and Risk Assessment (THIRA) is a necessary first step for an organization to understand the challenges and develop strategies for adaptation to them. In many cases, the railroad sector is uniquely positioned to mitigate greenhouse gas emissions through mitigation steps. This guide will assist railroad risk managers and emergency managers to evaluate the risks and determine how best to respond to them through preparation, mitigation, or adaptation. The THIRA is the …

Vaccines At The Intersection Of Religion And Politics, Charles Downey

Master's Theses

Vaccine hesitancy – a delay in acceptance or refusal of vaccines despite their availability – is a rising threat to global health and has increased in recent years in higher income countries. This is a complex phenomenon with the potential to undo decades of progress toward eradicating communicable diseases. The recent COVID-19 pandemic introduced a new wave of vaccine hesitancy, with evangelical Christians as leading actors in the movement away from vaccines in the United States. The present study investigated factors related to vaccine hesitancy and sources of health-related information among members of evangelical Christian churches in and around Hattiesburg, …

Ticket Punch: The Consequences Of Fare Evasion Enforcement In New York City Subways, Sheyla A. Delgado, Gina Moreno, Fidel L. Osorio, Jeffrey A. Butts

Publications and Research

Researchers at the John Jay College Research and Evaluation Center studied transit fare evasion in New York City subway stations from 2018 to 2023 as part of the NYPD's Police Reform and Reinvention Collaborative. Analyzing fare evasion alongside arrest data and neighborhood characteristics, the study found no significant link between fare enforcement and overall arrest rates. However, fare evasion enforcement was concentrated in socioeconomically disadvantaged areas, highlighting the influence of social factors on public safety practices.

Climate And Extreme Weather Event Impacts On Administrators, Direct Care Staff, And Residents In Oregon Assisted Living, Residential Care, And Memory Care Communities, 2024, Dani Himes, Jacklyn Kohon, Madeline Fox, Laura Rodriguez, Sarah Dys, Diana Jacoby, Paula Carder

Institute on Aging Publications

This brief report on AL/RC staff and resident experiences with climate events highlights the voices of AL/RC direct care staff, former direct care staff, residents, administrators, and management representatives to promote well-being in these care settings. This study can inform Oregon’s efforts to support long-term care workforce readiness for future climate emergencies and inform future quantitative data collection on AL/RC and other long-term care workers, including those employed in home health agencies, nursing facilities, and adult foster homes.

Unequal Neighbors In Diverse Neighborhoods: Accounting For Variation In The Impact Of Relative Inequality On Neighborhood Crime, Samuel A. Torres

Sociology ETDs

Research demonstrates that crime rate differences across racially segregated urban communities are primarily attributable to uneven distributions of resources between neighborhoods. Less is known about the role economic inequality within neighborhoods, what I call relative inequality, plays in maintaining ethno-racial criminal disparities. In this dissertation I explore sources of variation in the impact of relative inequality on neighborhood crime by drawing on data from the 2010-2013 National Neighborhood Crime Study Panel (NNCS2-P). I find that relative inequality effects are attenuated in higher disadvantage neighborhoods and this interaction accounts for differences in effect size by neighborhood ethno-racial composition. Results also show …

From Steps To Strides: My Evolving Journey Into Social Work, Lacresha N. Ffrench

Graduate Student Portfolios, Professional Papers, and Capstone Projects

This paper reflects on my journey, shaped by my heritage as a first-generation Jamaican-American and my experiences in education. The narrative begins with the story of my parents, Desmond and Pauline Ffrench, who immigrated from Jamaica with the hope of providing me with greater opportunities. Their sacrifices and unwavering support have been instrumental in my success. My career in education began in 2019, where I transitioned through various roles, from an educational assistant to the restorative practices coordinator. These experiences, coupled with my deepening commitment to advocating for students, led me to pursue a master's in social work. Encouraged by …

The Integration Of Social Work Values And Principles In Police Work, Dasha Rhodes, Taylor Geyton, Jam Ost

School of Social Work Faculty Publications and Presentations

Persisting social inequities and injustices were spotlighted in the United States in 2020 after the murders of Breonna Taylor and George Floyd. A particular focus on the interactions of police officers and non-violent community members rallied a call to reallocate funds to social services better equipped to handle such situations, aptly named #defundthepolice. Many called for the need and placement of social workers in police agencies to curtail the negative interactions witnessed between police officers and communities of color, specifically with Black Americans. Across the nation, social workers are not always employed or readily available in police organizations. Therefore, instilling …

The Influence Of Eyewitnesses And Police Tip Line Reports: An Exploratory Case Study Of A 2005 Homicide, Abigail Rose Torres

Dissertations and Theses

Public tip lines provide the public to provide information [sic] to the police when there is an ongoing investigation. These public tip lines could increase investigations where the public is being made aware of the investigation, increasing the amount of information being brought forward. Research focuses on how tips reporting is similar to eyewitnesses in that individuals recall information. The literature illustrates how the media can influence the tips. The study is an exploratory content analysis looking at potential themes or patterns that emerged from analyzing the tips and patterns of the tip line and media files related to an …

Digital Records Management: The History Of Your City, Rachel Rowe

Certified Public Manager® Applied Research

As technology rapidly advances, city governments face the challenge of preserving the past and preparing for the future. This article explores digital records management, outlining the background of historical records and their significance in understanding a city’s history. Crucial digitization steps include gathering the right team, following records retention policies, identifying documents, and efficiently managing data. The challenges of preservation efforts, technical and training concerns, workflow management, and compliance with open records laws are addressed. The City of Kilgore’s digitization process reveals how managing records is key to forming a city’s identity and linking the community to its history. This …

Push And Pull Factors That Influence Law Enforcement Officer Turnover: A Qualitative Case Study, Andrew Hunter Kim

Doctoral Dissertations and Projects

A high frequency of voluntary turnover within a law enforcement organization is problematic due to the potential for an increase in expenditures, a reduction in public safety levels, and an increase in liability. However, research has indicated explicitly that criminal justice professions have a high turnover rate, with many organizations having an annual turnover rate of 10 percent or higher. Investigating employee turnover rates and potential solutions to increase employee retention are significant areas of focus that can reduce expenditures, maintain or improve public safety levels by keeping experienced employees, and create a better working environment. A high employee turnover …

Criminal Justice Practitioners Perceptions On Collateral Consequence Policies Affecting Formerly Incarcerated African American Males, Ronnie Devon Williams

Walden Dissertations and Doctoral Studies

Formerly incarcerated African American males have a challenging time transitioning back into the community due to invisible barriers that impede their opportunities for successful reintegration. This generic qualitative study aimed to explore criminal justice practitioners' perceptions regarding collateral consequence policies for formerly incarcerated African American males. The theoretical framework for the study was labeling theory, which explained how others stigmatize individuals due to their social and environmental characteristics. The research question guiding this study was how criminal justice practitioners perceived the impact of collateral consequence policies on the successful reintegration of African American males. Ten criminal justice practitioners including probation …

‘A Storm Is Coming:' The New York Times Coverage Of The Covid-19 Pandemic In American Prisons, Katarzyna Celinska, Amina Cheboubi

Publications and Research

In this research, we analyzed the content of 171 articles published between March and August 2020 in the New York Times (NYT) on COVID-19 in American correctional institutions. We observed that the NYT coverage decreased significantly over 6 months. Our analysis uncovered 8 themes within two broader frames: institutional and systemic inequity. Although the themes are not mutually exclusive, we argue that ‘Responding to COVID-19,’ ‘A storm is Coming,’ ‘Collective Experience,’ and ‘Critiquing Prison Conditions’ are within the institutional framing. ‘Redefining Public Safety,’ ‘Categorizing Prisoners,’ ‘Doing Injustice,’ and ‘Making it as a Celebrity’ are the themes that highlight systemic inequity, …

Spatiotemporal Analysis Of Nighttime Crimes In Vienna, Austria, Jiyoung Lee, Michael Leitner, Gernot Paulus

Faculty Publications

Studying the spatiotemporal dynamics of crime is crucial for accurate crime geography research. While studies have examined crime patterns related to weekdays, seasons, and specific events, there is a noticeable gap in research on nighttime crimes. This study focuses on crimes occurring during the nighttime, investigating the temporal definition of nighttime crime and the correlation between nighttime lights and criminal activities. The study concentrates on four types of nighttime crimes, assault, theft, burglary, and robbery, conducting univariate and multivariate analyses. In the univariate analysis, correlations between nighttime crimes and nighttime light (NTL) values detected in satellite images and between streetlight …

Essays On The Societal Impacts Of Housing Programs And Substance Use Disorder Treatment, Rex W. Sitti

Economics ETDs

I present three essays that contribute to understanding the secondary costs and benefits associated with programs that address homelessness and substance use disorder (SUD) treatment. The first essay investigates whether homeless shelters impact property values. Despite anecdotal claims of property devaluation, endogeneity challenges limit empirical research on homelessness programs. Using data from the Department of Housing (HUD) and Seattle’s King County Department of Assessment, I address these challenges using spatial difference-in-differences methodology, revealing nuanced effects favoring permanent supportive housing. The second essay leverages the Built for Zero program to examine the link between homelessness and crime. Analyzing HUD and crime …

Impact Of Organized Activity Participation On Emotional Distress For Adolescents With Disabilities, Adam Langenfeld, Rebekah Hudock, Rebecca J. Dosch Brown, Marla Eisenberg

Journal of Youth Development

Adolescents who have been diagnosed with disabilities constitute a significant portion of the school population in the United States. For example, the National Survey of Children’s Health identified one in four children ages 12 to 17 as having special healthcare needs in 2019 (Data Resource Center for Child and Adolescent Health, n.d.). These adolescents are often diagnosed with a wide range of conditions, ranging from specific learning difficulties to more global delays across developmental domains. In the school setting, adolescents with disabilities often have an individualized educational program (IEP). Mandated by the Individuals with Disabilities Educational Act (IDEA) of 2004, …