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Understanding Juror Decisions: The Influence Of Other Jurors' Votes, Unanimous Versus Majority Decision Rule, And Juror Gender, La Donna Flanagan James

Sociology & Criminal Justice Theses & Dissertations

Jury deliberations are secret and there is great curiosity, both among academics and the lay population, about what goes on inside the jury room. Prior research suggests that individuals are very susceptible to the social pressures of others and that this has important implications for decision-making among jury members. Research on jury decision-making also suggests the importance of the assigned decision rule and gender in jury deliberations and trial outcomes. This study used a fictional vignette clearly constructed to elicit a not guilty reaction. The impact of other jurors' votes, assigned decision rule (unanimous versus two-thirds majority), and juror gender …

Racial Differences In Rape Myth Acceptance Among College Women, Lekeshia M. Washington

Sociology & Criminal Justice Theses & Dissertations

This study investigates the racial differences in rape myth acceptance among college women. There has been little research on the topic of rape which examines solely the opinions of women. Black and white college women {N=623) completed a survey which measured the degree of acceptance or rejection of false beliefs about rape, rape victims, or rapists. These false beliefs were termed rape myths. The myths demean the victim and support stereotypes about rape. Past research suggests that blacks accept rape myths more than whites, and that victims accept rape myths more than nonvictims. This study's analyses suggest that women as …

Providence Place: The Development Of A Downtown Mall, Center For Economic Development

Center for Economic Development Technical Reports

This study examines the history of urban mall development in the United States and the role of such sites in widespread revitalization efforts that are intended to protect the city from further decline and bring it back to its once thriving existence, before the mass relocations to the suburbs.

Providence Place in downtown Providence, Rhode Island is the primary focus of the study which has three objectives. The first objective is to analyze the development patterns of suburban malls in the Providence region. The second is to identify the economic factors that prompted the development of a large scale downtown …

Prevalent Low Income Status In Canadian And United States Metropolitan Areas, 1980 And 1990, Kevin M. Gorey

Social Work Publications

As compared to Toronto’s poor people, three to four-fold as many of upstate New York’s poor live in severely impoverished neighborhoods, areas where 40% or more of the residents have annual incomes below the federally established low income or poverty criterion. However, the prevalence of such extremely degraded living conditions increased similarly (two-fold) on both sides of the Canadian-US border during the 1980s. This urban problem, of the concentration of poor people, seems to predominantly be an inner-city problem in the US, whereas it was found to be nearly equivalently extant in the inner-city, mid-suburban and outlying suburban areas of …

A Historical Perspective On The Development Of An Ethnic Minority Consciousness In The Spanish-Language Press Of The Southwest, Nicolás Kanellos

Ethnic Studies Review

Various scholars have treated ethnic newspapers in the United States as if they all have evolved from an immigrant press.(i) While one may accept their analysis of the functions of the ethnic press, there is a substantial and qualitative difference between newspapers that were built on an immigration base and those that developed from the experience of colonialism and racial oppression. Hispanics were subjected to "racialization"(ii) for more than a century through such doctrines as the Spanish Black Legend and Manifest Destiny during the nineteenth and early twentieth century. They were conquered and incorporated into the United States and then …