Digital Commons Network^™

Court Intervention And Recurrence Of Child Maltreatment, Steven Wayne Luke

Walden Dissertations and Doctoral Studies

The problem of child maltreatment recurrence is both complex and pervasive, affecting nearly every nationality and culture worldwide. The current body of research consistently contains reports of a gap due to the lack of input from the families served that may be resolved through the application of intergroup contact theory. The purpose of this study was to determine if the presence of an attorney representing parents in child maltreatment intervention predicted lower recurrence in child maltreatment as opposed to when those attorneys are absent from the process. While much of the practice of social work is based on ecological systems …

Evaluation Of The Impact Of Virginia’S Senate Bill 1294 On Crisis Intervention Team Cooperation, Dennis Ray Martin

Walden Dissertations and Doctoral Studies

In 2009, the Commonwealth of Virginia passed Senate Bill (SB) 1294 that directly involved the Department of Criminal Justice Services and the Department of Behavioral Health and Developmental Services in the spread of the Crisis Intervention Team (CIT) program statewide. The purpose of this mixed-method study was to explore how the passage of SB 1294 affected the level of stakeholder cooperation within Virginia’s statewide CIT program, through 11 interviews with Virginian CIT leaders and by the completion of 115 questionnaires by CIT members in a region of central Virginia. Findings indicated the most common way that SB 1294 affected CIT …

Use Of Force Citizen Complaints, Use Of Force Violations, And Early Intervention, Drema Ann Hymon

Walden Dissertations and Doctoral Studies

Abstract

Mounting public protests, increasing expensive payouts, and shootings of unarmed victims by police is a call to reexamine options to problem solving, service recovery, and preventing police misconduct as it pertains to the use of force. The purpose of this quantitative study was to examine the correlation between early intervention system data

(a) use of force, citizens' complaints (race and gender), and use of force violations (race, gender, and years of service for officers). The disruptive theoretical framework provided an innovative lens to examine police misconduct of a large midwestern large law enforcement agency. This secondary data study did …

Social Support And Hiv Among Young Transwomen Of Color, Cynthia Joycelle Tucker

Walden Dissertations and Doctoral Studies

HIV is an emerging epidemic among young transgender women of color (YTWC). Researchers have documented the challenges and issues that YTWC encounter, including discrimination, isolation, and violence. However, little is known about whether social support can impact these challenges as an avenue to improve HIV preventive behaviors and HIV status. Using secondary data from the Life Skills HIV study, this research assessed how social support affects HIV preventive behaviors among 298 YTWC residing in Chicago. The study was grounded in the modified social-ecological model and Spearman’s rank correlation and logistic regression analyses was used to determine whether there was an …

Public Perceptions Of Delays In The Release Of Police Body-Worn Camera Footage, Christopher Lee Bush

Walden Dissertations and Doctoral Studies

Delays in the release of police body-worn camera (BWC) video footage have amplified public concerns about police misconduct. Law enforcement transparency is questioned when video from BWCs is not shared in a timely manner with the community. The purpose of this qualitative case study was to explore community and victims’ family’s beliefs related to delays in the release of police BWC footage. Rogers’s diffusion innovation theory and Mettler and Sorelle’s policy feedback theory were used for the study’s conceptual framework. The research questions focused on understanding the perceptions of community relationships with law enforcement around transparency, communication, and information sharing. …

Teachers' Experiences Implementing Evidence-Based Interventions With Fidelity For Preschool-Students With Disabilities, Catherine Patricia Gabbin

Walden Dissertations and Doctoral Studies

Challenging behaviors are common among preschool students with disabilities in educational settings. Evidence-based interventions (EBIs) when implemented with fidelity can be used to support these students. However, many teachers report having limited knowledge of EBIs and are unprepared to use them. The purpose of this exploratory qualitative case study was to observe and interview preschool teachers regarding the methods, procedures, and activities they use to implement EBIs with fidelity for preschool aged students with disabilities in inclusion settings. The conceptual framework was the implementation science framework, which is focused on implementation of EBIs to achieve their intended purpose. A purposeful …

The Impact Of Sex Offender Registration Laws On Offenders’ Reintegration Into Society, Stephanie Rose

Walden Dissertations and Doctoral Studies

Information related to the experiences of sex offenders required to register under the Sex Offender Registration and Notification Act of 2006 is predominantly based on quantitative data, and the majority of information relates to the factors that contribute to sexual offenses, recidivism rates, and public opinion of the sex offender registry. There is a lack of research on the lived experience of sex offenders who are required to register, specifically those in rural Pennsylvania. Research is also lacking on how sex offenders and the professionals with whom they interact perceive the registry. Therefore, the purpose of this phenomenological study was …

Loneliness, Prosocial Relationships, And Recidivism In Long-Term Incarcerated Juveniles, Amy Rhoads Jozan

Walden Dissertations and Doctoral Studies

Prosocial bonds have been key in juvenile criminal desistance. Juvenile facility placement has resulted in deterioration of important prosocial supports and social isolation, increasing risk for recidivism. Loneliness has been increasingly prevalent in a facility setting, often leading to ongoing behavioral and health problems. Youth incarcerated longer than 1 year have experienced higher rates of physical and mental health challenges, lasting into adulthood. Lengthy juvenile incarceration impacts loneliness, postrelease prosocial relationships, and desistance implications have been underexplored. The purpose of this phenomenological study was to explore themes associated with reaffiliation motive, or lifelong problems resulting from loneliness, after experiencing youth …

Expressions Of Sexual Deviance In Black Serial Killers, Lucia J. Weatherall

Walden Dissertations and Doctoral Studies

The number of Black serial killers (BSKs) has increased, but empirical studies have not focused on this unique population, including their expressions of sexual deviance. The purpose of this case study was to understand the common socialization experiences and the expressions of sexual deviance in BSKs. Two conceptual frameworks were used to identify the concepts to explore: Bandura’s social learning theory of aggression and Agnew’s general strain theory. Data collected came from archival court and police records in Texas. A content-analysis approach was used to analyze the archival data, organized by criminal background, sexual deviance, familial data, and social development. …

Racial Profiling In Northern Virginia Against Hispanic Males, Abe Vasquez

Walden Dissertations and Doctoral Studies

Racial profiling is a trending topic today against the Black community. In contrast, there is little to no literature referencing racial profiling against Hispanic males. This paper discusses racial profiling against Hispanic males in Northern Virginia. The purpose of this study was to understand the relationship between local law enforcement in Northern Virginia and the Hispanic community. I implemented a conceptual framework with a focus on the critical race theory using a qualitative approach. This study identified the relationship make up between the police and the Hispanic community, how they interacted, and if the Critical Race Theory was present. The …

Exploring Predictive Variables Of Burnout In Students Attending Eastern Caribbean Medical Schools, Denise Deloris Lewis

Walden Dissertations and Doctoral Studies

The medical students of the Eastern Caribbean medical schools form a cohort of international students completing their clinical years of training on the Islands. They experience a degree of burnout though to a lesser extent than indicted in the literature. The Maslach Burnout Inventory General Survey Student (MBI-GS(S) and a structured questionnaire of sociodemographic qualities and the medical education process items, were used to assess the relationship between the predictive variables and burnout. An N=96 was obtained from the student population. The data collected was analyzed using a series of multiple linear regression. The findings of the linear regression were …

Police Perception And Decision Making Related To Cult Activities In Rivers State,Nigeria, Stephen Tete

Walden Dissertations and Doctoral Studies

AbstractCult groups are criminal youth gangs in Rivers State and Nigeria that are proscribed by law and engaged in criminal activities. The activities of cult groups are a severe problem confronting the police and communities across Rivers State, Nigeria. This qualitative phenomenological study’s objective was to fill a gap in knowledge by exploring how the police perceived cult groups and the threats they posed to public safety and their decision-making processes to combat cult criminal activities. This study used Lipsky’s street-level bureaucracy theory to explore how police exercise discretion to discharge their duties, considering some organizational constraints. The first research …

Exploring The Challenges Of Reentry Among Female Former Offenders, Crystal B. Mciver

Walden Dissertations and Doctoral Studies

AbstractThe incarceration rate of female in the United States is growing faster than the rate of male ex-offenders. This purpose of this generic qualitative study was to understand female ex-offenders’ perceptions of reentry programs. The ecological system theory was used to explore how family support, federal and state financial support, and the economic conditions of the neighborhood ex-offenders were returning to influenced their return to society. Data were collected via semistructured interviews with female ex-offenders who had completed a reentry program and had not recidivated for 1 year. The use of Yin’s 5-step process for data analysis provided the following …

The Effectiveness Of African American Male Faith-Based Juvenile Delinquency, Dewaun C. Martin

Walden Dissertations and Doctoral Studies

The Southeast region of the United States is experiencing an increase in the amount of crime in the African American community particularly among juveniles. Furthermore, the rate of African American juveniles being arrested is higher than arrest rates among other races. This problem reveals the need for reformation and rehabilitation programs to reduce recidivism in the juvenile justice system. Research indicates that juveniles who have attachments to a conventional institution commit fewer delinquent acts. Although attachments to sports and other programs are positively associated with the social bond theory, it was unclear what aspects of the church program might influence …

Individual Experiences Of Criminogenic Youth Participating In Outpatient Treatment, Seth Allen Garcia

Walden Dissertations and Doctoral Studies

Outpatient treatment programs for low-level criminogenic youth have been shown to positively impact behavioral trends and recidivism rates. By providing juvenile offenders the opportunity to remain in the community while receiving clinical interventions to address their maladaptive behaviors, outpatient therapy enables participating youth to identify their negative decision patterns. The purpose of this phenomenological study was to examine the individual experience of low-level criminogenic youth who successfully completed outpatient treatment. Bandura’s self-efficacy theory was used to frame the study, and audio recordings were collected during semistructured interviews with 8 participants. Subsequently, the recordings were transcribed and the data were coded …

Examining The Criminogenic Effect Of Imprisonment On Drug Offender Recidivism, Tiffany Jean Vedder

Walden Dissertations and Doctoral Studies

Studies have found criminogenic consequences of imprisonment when testing the deterrence hypothesis, yet few studies were found that examined the magnitude of post release criminal offenses among the drug offender population. The specific deterrence and criminogenic effects of imprisonment were the theoretical frameworks that guided this study of Harris County, Texas, to determine if incarceration predicted serious reoffending among low-level drug offenders. A Journal of Science and Law (Scilaw) archival dataset based on Harris County court records was used to build the sample. Chi-squared test of association and logistic regression statistics were used to analyze a sample of first-time drug …

Strengthening Mental Health Awareness Of University Students Using An Online Training Module, Lavern Rosemarie Bourne

Walden Dissertations and Doctoral Studies

Canadian youth pursuing postsecondary education are facing a major mental health crisis. There are substantial gaps between the diagnosis and treatment of mental illnesses. The purpose of this study was to evaluate whether a web-based mental health educational intervention was an effective tool with which to increase mental health awareness and help-seeking behaviors of university students. The theory of planned behavior, the help-seeking model, and the technology acceptance model were the theories that guided this study. Using a quantitative quasi-experimental research design, data were collected from 329 undergraduate students in the Faculty of Health Sciences at a university in Eastern …

Battered Women's Help-Seeking In The Rural Southwestern United States, Celina Gerese Bryant

Walden Dissertations and Doctoral Studies

Many victims of domestic violence who seek help are never able to break the cycle of abuse. Many studies address the stages and types of domestic violence, but few focus on successful recovery from abuse. The purpose of this study was to fill the gap in the literature concerning battered women's help-seeking processes in rural southwestern United States. The specific focus was on how victims and survivors of intimate partner violence seek help for domestic violence issues and whether their help-seeking processes determine successful recovery from domestic violence situations. This study was a qualitative case study based on symbolic interactionism …

Child Welfare Workers' Perceptions Of The Effective Black Parenting Program, Kharmynn M. Bullock

Walden Dissertations and Doctoral Studies

The child welfare system (CWS) serves around half a million families each year in America. Of those, in Texas, hundreds of thousands of African American families represent the greatest percentages of families in the CWS when compared with their respective numbers in the general population. In 2013, African American children made up about 13.9% of the overall population of children in the United States; however, these children represented close to 26% (or 101,938) African American children in the system with CWS. Child Protective Services (CPS) has various programs and services, including parent education referrals to social services agencies that carry …

Impacting Nonprofit Financial Sustainability And Mission, Jarhal Duncan

Walden Dissertations and Doctoral Studies

Nonprofits in the United States have been struggling to maintain financial sustainability and create new pathways to accomplish its mission. The research problem was that there was limited research on leadership strategies for nonprofits to facilitate the balance of achieving the organizational mission and financial sustainability. The purpose of this study was to increase the understanding of how current leaders of niche-based nonprofit organizations use strategies to impact financial sustainability and maintain the mission of the nonprofit organization. Building on this understanding can help address this issue. Theoretical frameworks such as Resource Dependence Theory and General Systems Theory help develop …

Social Workers’ Perceptions Of The Impact Of Trauma On Police Officers, Amber Leigh Copeland

Walden Dissertations and Doctoral Studies

AbstractPolice officers experience trauma in their roles as first responders. Although there are resources to address the psychological and physical impact on police officers, these resources are underutilized. Police officers in active duty endure traumatic events regularly but fail to seek assistance for their physical and mental health symptoms. Officers interact with individuals from multiple disciplines throughout their daily encounters, including social workers. Despite the professional relationship between officers and social workers, some officers remain guarded and minimize their mental health needs. For this project, a focus group was conducted with 9 social workers who have worked with police officers …

Undercover Law Enforcement Operatives’ Perceptions Of Post Critical Incident Mental Health Services, David B. Spinella

Walden Dissertations and Doctoral Studies

Undercover officers experience unique job-related stressors due to the covert nature and sometimes long duration of their tasks. Undercover officers adopt false identities that involve taking on a personality and lifestyle that the officer might find personally objectionable. If this identity is ever compromised, they and family members are in great danger. Officers are faced with the daily possibility of encountering abrupt and unforeseen traumatic events, such as gang retaliation, terrorism, and other events rarely experienced by civilians. Such events that exceed the range of normal experience are critical incidents, and they may be so overwhelming that they are beyond …

Quantitative Analysis Of Public Perceptions Of Female Sex Offenders, Michael Buckley

Walden Dissertations and Doctoral Studies

Public perception may have formed a consensus belief regarding sex offending. Males have considerably outweighed females with offenses, which may have created a bias against males. This study was a quantitative examination and review of the public's perceptions of female sex offenders (FSOs) as it related to their crimes and differences in sentencing when compared to male sex offenders (MSOs). There may be many reasons why females sexually offend, but there is a lack of understanding of these reasons and how FSOs are viewed by the public and the sentencing by the judicial system. The theoretical framework for the study …

Resources Needed By Transitional Participants For Independent Living, Odell Jonathan Cole

Walden Dissertations and Doctoral Studies

A lack of resources for youth making the transition from foster care into independent living is a significant issue in the United States. However, this lack of resources may be overcome through successful career pathway programs. The purpose of this case study was to explore which career pathway strategies are useful for an organization attempting to help young people make a transition into independence. During the developmental planning stage of the program, plans were put in place for a program to help young people find guidance in a career field as they learn to live on their own and become …

Preschool Educators’ Perspectives On The Racial Disproportionality In Exclusionary School Discipline, Delesline Miller

Walden Dissertations and Doctoral Studies

Black preschool students are disproportionately suspended and expelled from school compared to their same age White peers. The purpose of this study was to explore the perspectives of preschool educators in a single county located in a southeastern state to gain insight about the racial disproportionality in school discipline. Critical race theory was used as a framework to further understand educators’ perspectives concerning the influence of race and culture on student discipline and examine educators’ perspectives concerning the contextual factors that contribute to exclusionary school discipline. This was a basic qualitative study with semistructured interviews of 11 preschool educators. Participants …

Community-Based Counselors’ Experiences Counseling Female Adjudicated Youth: A Basic Qualitative Study, Ericka Pinckney

Walden Dissertations and Doctoral Studies

Licensed professional counselors (LPCs) have encountered difficulties engaging at-risk youth in meaningful treatment. Youth who faced great stress such as abuse, neglect, truancy, family problems, homelessness, and traumatic events have presented with challenging behaviors. Literature suggested adjudicated youth engaged in relational and physical aggression; these behaviors increased the risk for out-of-home placement. Research on community based LPCs’ professional experiences in working with adjudicated female youth is scarce. The purpose of this basic qualitative study was to explore community-based counselors' experiences treating female adjudicated youth. Professional counselors' techniques and strategies were explored. The relational-cultural theory provided the conceptual lens through which …

Healing Centered Engagement Of Black Survivors Of Sexual Trauma In Marion County, Indiana, Jillian Jay Watts

Selected Social Change Portfolios in Prevention, Intervention, and Consultation

Trauma is a manifestation of the pain and experiences that holistically impact an individual physically, mentally, emotionally, intellectually, and interpersonally. One element of trauma that is in need of exploring is its impact collectively. That is, the shared hurt by a community that transcends a personal silo. In particularly in the Black community, an ethnically marginalized community, this injury has a history of being “politically instigated…with aims at inflicting collective injury against certain groups thus undermines a collective wellbeing of a people” (as cited in Annie, 2020). This social phenomena, combined with personal experiences sexual violence that disproportionately impact …

Young Adult Addition To Opioids And Synthetic Opioids In Atlanta, Georgia, Jennifer Gaul

Selected Social Change Portfolios in Prevention, Intervention, and Consultation

The drug epidemic in the United States has grown significantly with increased drug overdose deaths quadrupling from 1999 to 2018 (Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (C.D.C.), 2019). Of those deaths by overdose in 2018, 70% were from an opioid. The trend in opioid misuse has shown the use of non-medical prescription opioids (P.O.s) is increasing with adolescence (mean age 16.8), in which 83% will transition to use heroin within four years (Guarino, Mateu-Gelabert, Teubl, & Goodbody, 2018). The rate of using heroin has doubled over the last decade for young adults, age 18-25-years-old. The county in Atlanta I live …

How To Reduce Mental Health Crises By Improving Training And Education For Law Enforcement First Responders, Ashley Shulski

Selected Social Change Portfolios in Prevention, Intervention, and Consultation

This writer chose to focus her social issue on creating an improved 911 system staffed with trained mental health emergency workers who respond to mental health emergencies, and crisis calls concurrently with law enforcement officers. This method will help law enforcement officers ascertain the correct level of care for a person experiencing a mental health crisis. The same would be considered a prevention effort to reduce persons being revictimized by being arrested by uniformed police officers or providing appropriate mental health services at the time of crisis. There are advanced trained law enforcement officers competent to deal with behavioral health …

Societal Impacts Of Sports Betting In Colorado, Lawerence Wall Jr.

Selected Social Change Portfolios in Prevention, Intervention, and Consultation

Sports betting has become legal in many states across the Unites States after the Murphy v. National Collegiate Athletic Association United States Supreme Court case was ruled in favor of the former New Jersey Governor Chris Christie on May 14, 2018. This case overturned the Professional and Amateur Sports Protection Act (PASPA), allowing state-sponsored sports betting. PASPA was passed by Congress in 1992 to prohibit state-sanctioned sports gambling, except in four states: Delaware, Montana, Nevada, and Oregon, which already established legal sports betting regulations. New Jersey failed to apply in 1991 to be added to the list of exempt states …