Digital Commons Network^™

Is It Good To Be Bad? The Potential Buffering Role Of Callous-Unemotional Traits On The Relationship Between Trauma And Juvenile Offending, Kathryn Anne Mcgill

Graduate Theses and Dissertations (2019 - present)

Juvenile offending is prevalent, costly, and often difficult to intervene in. Although there are a multitude of factors previously studied that contribute to offending, researchers are still unable to pinpoint all possible variables contributing to juvenile offending. More so, of explored and accepted factors leading to juvenile offending, predictive ability of any specific factor leading to offending is still weak. Thus, study of specific predisposing factors leading to juvenile offending, as well as mediational or moderational variables, is needed. This study explores two previously studied variables in the pathway to juvenile offending: trauma and callous-unemotional traits. Novel study of the …

County Finance, House Prices, And Financial Decision-Making, Kyle Kopplin

College of Business: Dissertations, Theses, and Student Research

This work is in three chapters. The first chapter investigates the extent to which county-level property tax changes are capitalized into house prices. The literature mainly focuses on specific tax events, but this chapter generalizes the context to large U.S. cities. The main findings suggest that county-level property tax capitalization occurs and varies along the distribution of house prices. The second chapter measures differences in county-aggregated self-assessed valuations of house prices and county- aggregated sale prices to determine whether there are trends in the level of misperceived house value. Factors like age, time of tenure in a house, and house …

Examining Reflexive Communication Following A Break In Alcohol Abstinence, Lynda Kay Maxfield

UNLV Theses, Dissertations, Professional Papers, and Capstones

Over 107 million individuals are thought to have alcohol use disorder (AUD) (Ritchie & Roser, 2018). Discontinuing drinking can be difficult, but social support is thought to promote sobriety efforts. The r/stopdrinking online public community supports such efforts. This study has two broad aims: (1) explore how resilience building might occur on r/stopdrinking among initial users disclosing an abstinence disruption and responses from other users; and, (2) explore possible relationships, within initial posts, between resilience and three other phenomena (i.e., trauma, stated views of Alcoholics Anonymous, statements reflecting the transtheoretical model’s ten processes of change; Prochaska & Prochaska, 2021). To …

Analysis Of Fire Safety Preparedness And Risk In University Housing, Sophia House

Theses/Capstones/Creative Projects

In the growing field of fire safety and preparedness, university dormitories are a prime location to observe unique residential circumstances that contribute to fire risk. This study will utilize survey responses from student housing residents from four universities to analyze if and how certain factors affect fire safety preparedness. Additionally, the results will be compared to existing literature to examine any gaps in research or contributions to current data. This study seeks to confirm that university housing is a higher risk category of residential fires because of student contributions and a lack of direct intervention to improve fire safety preparedness.

Lapd Suffers Hiring Shortage Following A Shift In How Angelinos View Police, Nicole Norman

Honors Thesis

This is a news article written about how the nationwide police shortage following the murder of George Floyd has affected the City of Los Angeles. According to a poll done by Suffolk University and the LA Times, about one third of Angelinos believe that the police are performing poorly. However, those who are younger than 35 are more than twice likely to believe that police are performing poorly. Through this article, I will explore the changes that the LAPD is making in order to keep up with a changing social climate and an upcoming workforce that is not interested in …

Spatialising Degrowth In Southern Cities: Everyday Park-Making For (Un)Commoning, Manisha Anantharaman, Marlyne Sahakian, Czarina Saloma-Akpedonu

Sociology & Anthropology Department Faculty Publications

Answering the call in this special issue to spatialise degrowth studies beyond the Global North, this paper examines practices of ‘park-making’ in Chennai and Metro Manila as a potential degrowth pathway. Parks in the coastal mega cities of Metro Manila and Chennai can be seen as relics of a colonial era, and spaces coherent with capitalist, growth-oriented and consumerist logics. At the same time, however, they become spaces that prefigure alternative ways of organising social life in the city based upon values of conviviality, care and sharing. Using qualitative methods of analysis, this paper examines what practices people engage with …

Victims Of Crime: System Navigation, Ashley R. Chesney

Capstone Projects and Master's Theses

Santa Cruz County’s Shared Safety Workgroup, a collaborative chapter of United Way Santa Cruz, is working to better meet the needs of survivors and victims of crime. Due to the complexity of their trauma and the systems they navigate many survivors of crime are experiencing re-victimization. UWSCC attempted to create a comprehensive system mapping process for Santa Cruz County’s survivor-serving system with the assistance of community agencies. The expected outcome of the system mapping project is to create the first-ever system mapping tech platform that uniquely autogenerates services for survivors of crime while eliminating specific barriers based on their individual …

Human Suspicious Activity Detection, Nilamben Bhuva

Electronic Theses, Projects, and Dissertations

The detection of suspicious human activity is a crucial aspect of ensuring public safety and security. The aim is to identify suspicious behavior. To accomplish this, we employ the LRCN, a long-term recurrent convolutional network, to detect anomalous activity. It is important to consider the temporal data of the video when classifying suspicious behavior, and the framework uses a combination of CNNs and RNNs to analyze video frames and extract relevant features. The key milestones of this project include conducting research, collecting and pre-processing data, designing and training the model, and evaluating its performance. The resulting detection system can accurately …

Voter Id Laws And Gendered Impacts On Voter Turnout, Jacqueline D. Franolich

Boise State University Theses and Dissertations

Since well before the U.S. presidential election of 2020, voter identification laws have been a topic of discussion amongst politicians, voters, the news media, and scholars. Many have questioned the focus and true reason for their creation, their implementation, their effects and potential unintended consequences. Specifically, many have argued that voter identification laws pose too great a barrier to potential voters to be worth the benefits gained in election security. Since the election of 2020, those discussions seemed to magnify. For example, in a May 2021 speech, President Biden repeated similar assertions made in the past by scholars and activists …

Public Perceptions And Punishment Of Sex Offenders, Emily R. Ives

Student Theses

Previous research has examined negative public perceptions and attitudes towards sex offenders and, in turn, how sex offenders are punished. The present study aims to build on previous research by examining whether perceptions of sex offenders are impacted by the offender’s relationship to the victim, and how victim perpetrator relationship may impact sentencing. Survey data from n=119 participants was examined. Participants were randomly assigned to one of three relationship conditions (i.e., stranger, acquaintance, or spouse) which was manipulated within a mock article vignette describing a rape incident. Subsequently, participants completed questionaries regarding sentencing of the described perpetrator, as well …

Remembering The Aids Crisis & Act Up: The Failures Of The American Public, Government, And Cultural Institutions, Céilí Flot

Comm-entary

This paper discusses the history of the AIDS crisis and the activist group ACT UP. During the early stages of the outbreak, there was much confusion and hysteria surrounding the nature of the illness. Many misconceptions about the illness had led to inaction from the public and government. In response, ACT UP had formed to address this inaction. This paper analyzes a set of six photographs taken during ACT UP’s protest efforts and analyzes the arguments within them.

The Mental Health Experiences Of Daca Recipients And Non-Daca Recipients, Lizeth Ariana Guadalupe

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Millions of immigrant children without legal status grow up in the U.S. and aspire to live and thrive in American society. However, without legal status, they face challenges in integrating into society. Implemented in 2012, the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) program was created to help immigrant youth integrate into society by providing them with work permits, facilitating educational opportunities, and protection from deportation. However, not all immigrant children qualify for DACA, and the recent legal challenges to DACA prohibit new applicants and put roughly 600,000 recipients in legal limbo. The research questions this study poses are 1.) How …

Unlawful, Unjust, And Unchanged; A Thesis Of Racial And Socioeconomic Disparities In Criminal Sentencing, Jessica Cochrane

Undergraduate Theses and Capstone Projects

Black people and people of low socioeconomic status are disproportionately incarcerated in the United States of America. For a country that prides itself on being a “melting pot” of people and cultures, this is an extremely impactful issue. One of the byproducts of the disproportionate incarceration that occurs is that Black people and/or people of low socioeconomic status are also given longer sentences than their White and upper-class counterparts. This is a problem because those who have certain traits that they cannot change or would have a hard time changing are being negatively affected by implicit bias held by others …

Toolkit: Healing Our Protectors: Building Resilience Among Tribal Law Enforcement Officers Through Cultural Interventions, Lavonne Fox, Leo Sr. Belgarde, Thomasine Heitkamp, Shawnda Schroeder

Indigenous Health Faculty Publications

Introduction: The U.S. and Native Americans have a government-to-government relationship. The result of 375 treaties, established laws and instituted policies promote Tribal sovereignty and are intended to support the general wellbeing Indigenous persons and protect their lands and resources. The Tribal sovereignty includes law enforcement. This resource is intended to provide a broad understanding of the challenges both Tribal and Bureau of Indian Affairs (BIA) law enforcement officers face; many struggle dealing with the traumatic events they have experienced. We acknowledge that there is a scarcity of current information related to Tribal and BIA police officers’ mental health. This document …

Police And Their Relationship With The Public, Kevin Hebri

Capstone Projects and Master's Theses

This research essay aims to understand some of the social themes relevant to issues present between the public and the police institutions of the United States. Existing literature about this topic has noted the decentralized nature of law enforcement in the United States and the differences in policies and procedures used by different police departments and agencies. The existing literature has also cited the importance of police officer discretion and the situational factors that contribute to their decision-making. Occupational stress, and characteristics of a civilian involved in a police interaction, influence the decision-making process for police officers. This research is …

The In/Visible Stockade: Sex Offender Management, Governmentality, And The Search For Normal Life, Christopher Wakefield

UNLV Theses, Dissertations, Professional Papers, and Capstones

Over the past thirty-five years, the United States has seen a dramatic expansion of regulatory policy around individuals convicted of sexual offenses. Sex offender management policies include national and state registries, notification laws, treatment mandates, residency restrictions, and numerous exclusions from institutions. A growing body of research from sociologists and criminologists has tracked the effects of this sex offender regime by measuring recidivism and collateral consequences among released offenders. Less attention has been paid to how sex offenders adapt to their regulator context—especially the selective public visibility that the registry generates. Furthermore, sociological scholarship has not yet developed strong theoretical …

Stronger Together Newsletter, May 2023, Office For Inclusive Excellence

News, Magazines and Reports

News and Updates: Information Technology majors design interactive accessibility map of campus -- The Multicultural Center hosts the Inaugural End of the Ceremony. Students and graduating seniors who help contribute to our department’s goal for inclusive excellence were honored -- Lavender Graduation Celebration coordinated by the SHU Gender Sexuality Alliance (GSA) in partnership with the Multiculutural Center -- Silent Walk of Reflection and Remembrance of George Floyd -- Ram Devineni, creator of Priya’s Shakti, speaks at SHU -- “The State of Antisemitism Today”-”Heart Challenges Hate” Panel -- Disability Pride Campaign -- Center for Teaching and Learning: 2022-2023 recap -- Rachel …

An Analysis Of The Sophistication–Maturity Of Justice And Non-Justice Involved Youth And Young Adults, Lauren Grove

Theses, Dissertations and Culminating Projects

Juvenile transfer refers to a set of mechanisms whereby a juvenile’s case may be processed in criminal court. Forensic mental health evaluators often assess youths’ risk/dangerousness, sophistication–maturity, and treatment amenability to assist judicial determinations regarding youth disposition. Of these three factors, sophistication–maturity—in which the law is concerned with the extent to which a juvenile defendant’s criminal sophistication and maturity level parallels that of an adult—has traditionally been the most challenging for practitioners to define and apply in practice. The Risk-Sophistication-Treatment Inventory (RSTI) is the only commercially available, specialized forensic assessment instrument for the assessment of youths’ sophistication–maturity. However, this tool …

Dynamic Risk Trajectories, Community Context, And Juvenile Recidivism, Kevin T. Wolff, Michael T. Baglivio, Jonathan Intravia

Publications and Research

Purpose

While the implementation of risk assessment has expanded, the extent to which there are different trajectories of risk/protective factors among adjudicated youth during supervision in the community remains unanswered. The goal of the current study is to identify the distinct trajectories in dynamic risk and protective factors among youth on probation and assess whether different patterns in risk over time are associated with continued offending.

Method

Group-based trajectory modeling is used to identify distinct trajectories across multiple domains of risk/need. The individual- and neighborhood-level factors associated with these trajectories are then explored, prior to examining their relationship to continued …

Generative Stresnet For Crime Prediction, Ba Phong Tran, Hoong Chuin Lau

Research Collection School Of Computing and Information Systems

In this work, we combine STResnet (Zhang et al., 2017) with VAE Kingma & Welling (2013) to generate crime distribution. The outputs can be used for downstream tasks such as patrol deployment planning Chase et al. (2021).

Assessing Corporate Social Responsibility And Sustainability In The Small Businesses Of Bridgewater, Ma, Ryan Mannett

Honors Program Theses and Projects

This thesis examines the extent to which small, local businesses in Bridgewater, MA generate social value for their community by engaging in socially responsible and sustainable corporate practices. After conducting an examination of local businesses to determine those that utilize such strategies, members of the selected organizations were contacted via email and asked to participate in a survey intended to generate qualitative data relating to corporate sustainability. Factors such as community impacts, internal benefits, motivations, and communication strategies pertaining to sustainability were all evaluated. Results indicate that Bridgewater businesses practicing sustainability not only generate internal value for the organization by …

A Phenomenological Study Of Lived Experiences Of Drug Treatment Court Judges, Jennifer Smith Ramey

Doctoral Dissertations and Projects

The purpose of this phenomenological study is to describe current judges’ experiences presiding over drug treatment courts in Virginia. These experiences include the factors that led them to serve as a drug court judge, their training (if any) in behavioral health, and their perspective on how they apply therapeutic jurisprudence and procedural justice. The theory guiding this study is the diversionary justice theory. This theory explains the importance of diverting individuals charged with a crime from entering the punitive criminal justice system. The study was guided by the following research questions: How do judges describe their experiences presiding over drug …

Spartan Daily, April 25, 2023, San Jose State University, School Of Journalism And Mass Communications

Spartan Daily, 2023

Volume 160, Issue 35

Mitigating Peer-To-Peer Housing Impacts: Toward A Rational Nexus P2p Housing Impact Mitigation Strategy, Arthur C. Nelson

Journal of Comparative Urban Law and Policy

Traveler lodging has been around since humans created tribes and certainly since they invented civilization. The internet and the rise of peer-to-peer, short-term housing has accelerated traveler and lodging opportunities. Today, Airbnb alone has nearly three million hosts offering more than seven million listings. This article explores the rise of “peer-to-peer,” or P2P housing, and offers economic, planning, and public policy perspectives.

The Cowl - V. 87 N. 16 - April 20, 2023

The Cowl

The Cowl - student newspaper of Providence College. Vol. 87 No. 16 - April 20, 2023. 24 pages.

Analysis Of Firefighters’ Psychological Trauma And Interrupted Domains, Alyssa Garcia, Pam Kasyan-Howe, Kristin Domville, Kristian Llaca

Student Capstone Papers

Firefighters are at a high risk of experiencing posttraumatic stress, anxiety, depression (Teoh et al., 2019), suicidality, substance abuse (Bing-Canar et al., 2019), and burnout (Teoh et al., 2019). Firefighters are regularly exposed to traumatic events on calls which results in their decreased mental health; and associated decreased participation in meaningful occupations, routines, and roles (Edgelow & Cramm, 2020; Edgelow et al., 2021; Wittwer et al., 2021). This project contains both research and a program. The purpose of this research was to understand how firefighter demographics interact with interrupted occupations, routines, and roles and at what frequency when faced with …

An Experimental Look At Reasonable Suspicion And Police Discretion, Kyle Mclean, Justin Nix, Seth W. Stoughton, Ian T. Adams, Geoffrey P. Alpert

Criminology and Criminal Justice Faculty Publications

Purpose

This study aims to demonstrate the need for further examination of legal judgments and the exercise of discretion in policing.

Design/methodology/approach

A factorial vignette survey with traffic stop scenarios based on US Court of Appeals decisions was administered to 396 police officers across six states. Officers were asked to indicate their assessment of the presence of reasonable suspicion and the likelihood that they would extend the stop for investigatory purposes.

Findings

Officers' reasonable suspicion judgments are significantly influenced by the vignette facts and align with court ruling expectations. However, even in the presence of reasonable suspicion, responses indicate a …

Volume 9 Full Text, Bjur Staff

Butler Journal of Undergraduate Research

No abstract provided.

Identifying Disinformation In Scholarly Publishing, Natalie M. Mclendon

Butler Journal of Undergraduate Research

This paper examines the pro-Confederacy movement’s attempt to distort history through textbook revision to argue in favor of strengthened media literacy as a brace against the effects of disinformation and propaganda. Previous definitions of misinformation and disinformation overlap and are as yet unclear and, therefore, should be further studied. “Lost Cause” mythologists worked diligently to propagate school textbooks which portrayed skewed versions of history that cast Southern Confederates’ cause as noble and honorable while obscuring the real reason for the Civil War. While undergraduate students can rely on the CRAAP and BEAM methods of identifying problematic texts, they should be …

Shoplifting And Other Types Of Petit Larceny In New York City, Jeffrey A. Butts, Richard A. Espinobarros

Publications and Research

This data brief from the Research and Evaluation Center at John Jay College of Criminal Justice highlights recent trends in petit larceny in New York City, based on the latest police crime data. Thefts involving items valued under $1,000 have increased by 50% since 2006 and 29% since 2019. Between 2019 and 2022, incidents at major commercial retailers rose sharply by 53%, with drug stores and chain stores experiencing some of the most dramatic increases. While some types of petit larceny had been in decline prior to 2019, many surged again in the years following. These patterns suggest shifting dynamics …