Digital Commons Network^™

Staying Connected: Keeping Justice-Involved Youth “Close To Home” In New York City, Jeffrey A. Butts, Laura Negredo, Evan Elkin

Publications and Research

When justice-involved youth are supervised by local agencies and placed with locally operated programs rather than being sent away to state facilities, they are better able to maintain community ties. They stay connected with their families, and they are more likely to remain in local schools. Policy reforms that localize the justice system are often called “realignment.” New York’s “Close to Home” (or C2H) initiative is a prominent example of youth justice realignment. Launched in 2012, it is the latest chapter in a decade-long commitment by New York State and New York City to improve the justice system for young …

“Entrenched Practices And Other Biases”: Unpacking The Historical, Economic, Professional, And Social Resistance To De-Implementation, Theresa Montini, Ian D. Graham

Publications and Research

Background In their article on “Evidence-based de-implementation for contradicted, unproven, and aspiring healthcare practices,” Prasad and Ioannidis (IS 9:1, 2014) referred to extra-scientific “entrenched practices and other biases” that hinder evidence-based de-implementation. Discussion Using the case example of the de-implementation of radical mastectomy, we disaggregated “entrenched practices and other biases” and analyzed the historical, economic, professional, and social forces that presented resistance to de-implementation. We found that these extra-scientific factors operated to sustain a commitment to radical mastectomy, even after the evidence slated the procedure for de-implementation, because the factors holding radical mastectomy in place were beyond the control of …

Effectiveness Of The Cure Violence Model In New York City, Jeffrey A. Butts, Kevin T. Wolff, Evan Misshula, Sheyla A. Delgado

Publications and Research

New research from the John Jay College Research & Evaluation Center (JohnJayREC) suggests that the Cure Violence strategy may effectively reduce the incidence of homicide. Researchers at John Jay worked with analysts at the New York Police Department (NYPD) to assemble information about violence in New York City neighborhoods and compared areas with and without Cure Violence programs. The analysis focused on programs in three areas: two in Brooklyn and one in Manhattan. All three areas were operating Cure Violence programs as of 2010, and homicides were tracked through 2013. When the study compared homicide rates in those areas with …

A Replication Of Failure, Not A Failure To Replicate, Gary Holden, Kathleen Barker, Sofie Kuppens, Gary Rosenberg, Jonathan`

Publications and Research

Purpose: The increasing role of systematic reviews in knowledge production demands greater rigor in the literature search process. The performance of the Social Work Abstracts (SWA) database has been examined multiple times over the past three decades. The current study is a replication within this line of research.

Method: Issue level coverage was examined for the same 33 SWA core journals and the same time period as our 2009 study.

Results: The mean percentage of issues missing in the current study was 20%. The mean percentage of issues missing in the current study was significantly greater than …

Challenging Race-Based Stereotypes About Gay And Bisexual Men’S Sexual Behavior And Perceived Penis Size And Size Satisfaction, Christian Grov, Lena D. Saleh, Jonathan M. Lassiter, Jeffrey T. Parsons

Publications and Research

Racial prejudice and stereotyping in gay and bisexual communities may be important contextual factors that contribute to racial disparities in HIV. In an effort to challenge race-based stereotypes regarding gay and bisexual men’s sexuality, we sought to determine the extent to which race and ethnicity were associated with (1) racial homophily (i.e., same-race partnerships), (2) sexual behavior (e.g., number of partners, condomless anal sex (CAS), sexual position (top/versatile/bottom)), and (3) perceived penis size and size satisfaction. Data were taken from a survey of 1,009 gay and bisexual men recruited using a street-intercept method at gay, lesbian, and bisexual community events …

Fat Rights And Fat Discrimination: An Annotated Bibliography, Yasmin Sokkar Harker

Publications and Research

No abstract provided.

Communications Now A Culture War In Academia, Aldemaro Romero Jr.

Publications and Research

No abstract provided.

Old Places, New Places: Geographic Mobility Of Dominicans In The U.S., Ramona Hernández, Sarah Marrara

Publications and Research

The aim of the study is to document internal migration patterns of Dominicans in the U.S., comparing international migrants and domestic migrants.

Dominican Blue Book, Cuny Dominican Studies Institute, The City College Of New York

Publications and Research

The Dominican Blue Book features twenty-two outstanding and accomplished professionals with degrees from CUNY, the largest public urban institution of higher education in the United States, from which over forty-thousand people of Dominican descent have graduated at the time of the writing (2015). The present rendition of the Dominican Blue Book is an expression both of pride in the accomplishments of the Dominican people and of gratitude to the CUNY system, with hope and confidence that this mutually fulfilling relationship will continue.

“To See How Far I Can Go”: Benefits Of “Fun” In Encouraging Civic Engagement And Building Self-Efficacy Among New York Community College Students, Paul Naish

Publications and Research

Community Days, an innovative initiative to foster community service and civic engagement at the City University of New York’s new Guttman Community College, encourages students to perform volunteer work around the city. What makes the program unique are opportunities for students to take self-directed excursions and enjoy free resources in the city—activities not usually associated with service-learning. Including a component that the students identify as “Fun Day” in a program dedicated to volunteer service strengthens the program and increases the enthusiasm of the participants. This essay examines reflections completed by the students after participating in Community Days, considering their initial …

Connecting Science Education To A World In Crisis, Kenneth Tobin

Publications and Research

Even though humanity faces grand challenges, including climate change, sustainability of the planet and its resources, and well-being of humans and other species, for the past 60 years science educators have been preoccupied with much the same priorities. Adherence to the tenets of crypto-positivism creates problems for research in the social sciences (e.g., over reliance on statistical analyses leads to oversimplified models that strip away context and are reductive). Hypotheses and associated statistical tests support causal models that rarely predict social conduct or blaze pathways for meaningful transformation. In contrast to the mainstream of research in science education, I advocate …

More Than Just Cat Pictures: Reddit As A Curated News Source, Steven Ovadia

Publications and Research

This article examines the use of the online Reddit community as a mediated news source. Reddit allows users to post links and to comment upon them, sometimes resulting in serious discussions and sometimes resulting in abhorrent behavior.

Patterns Of Client Behavior With Their Most Recent Male Escort: An Application Of Latent Class Analysis, Christian Grov, Tyrel J. Starks, Margaret Wolff, Michael D. Smith, Juline Koken, Jeffrey T. Parsons

Publications and Research

Research examining interactions between male escorts and clients has relied heavily on data from escorts, men working on the street, and behavioral data aggregated over time. In the current study, 495 clients of male escorts answered questions about sexual behavior with their last hire. Latent class analysis identified four client sets based on these variables. The largest (n = 200, 40.4 %, labeled Typical Escort Encounter) included men endorsing behavior prior research found typical of paid encounters (e.g., oral sex and kissing). The second largest class (n = 157, 31.7 %, Typical Escort Encounter + Erotic Touching) included men reporting …

Situating Information Literacy In The Disciplines: A Practical And Systematic Approach For Academic Librarians, Robert Farrell, William Badke

Publications and Research

Purpose – The purpose of this article is to consider the current barriers to situating in the disciplines and to offer a possible strategy for so doing.

Design/methodology/approach – The paper reviews current challenges facing librarians who seek to situate information literacy in the disciplines and offers and practical model for those wishing to do so. Phenomenographic evidence from disciplinary faculty focus groups is presented in the context of the model put forward.

Findings – Disciplinary faculty do not have generic conceptions of information literacy but rather understand information-related behaviors as part of embodied disciplinary practice.

Practical implications – Librarians …

Resources For College Libraries (Rcl), Christina Miller

Publications and Research

Resources for College Libraries (RCL) is a subscription bibliographic database produced by Bowker (a ProQuest affiliate), Choice, and the Association of College and Research Libraries (ACRL). Primarily a collection development tool, the database provides titles of print and electronic books, Web sites, and databases deemed essential by subject specialists for four- and two-year college and vocational and technical school library collections. This resource is a seminal tool for library collection development, maintenance, and assessment.

Numeracy Infusion Course For Higher Education (Niche), 1: Teaching Faculty How To Improve Students' Quantitative Reasoning Skills Through Cognitive Illusions, Frank Wang, Esther I. Wilder

Publications and Research

We describe one of the eight units of a professional development program, the Numeracy Infusion Course for Higher Education (NICHE), which introduces research on cognition, including dual-processing theories, to university faculty. Under the dual-processing framework, System 1 (intuition) quickly proposes intuitive answers to judgment problems as they arise, while System 2 (deliberation) monitors the quality of these proposals, which it may endorse, correct, or override. We present several classic questions that demonstrate the pitfalls of overreliance on intuition without analytical thinking, then describe faculty participants’ responses to these questions and their ideas on how to apply cognitive illusion research to …

Low Income Lgbtgnc (Gender Nonconforming) Struggles Over Shelters As Public Space, Michelle Billies

Publications and Research

As a focal point of neoliberalism in the US, New York City has been made the advance guard of both welfare reform and order maintenance policing, making the 2008 recession all the more destabilizing among low-income LGBTGNC (gender nonconforming) residents. At the same time, expanding gay rights have accompanied this neoliberal turn, defining while masking new intersectionalities of oppression, policing some raced and classed sexualities and genders while protecting others, producing an urban landscape conducive to neoliberal aims (Ferguson, 2004; Puar, 2007). In the process of attracting capital, homonormative discourses and practices have increasingly bolstered white and multicultural classprivileged gay …

A Game Changer: Frederick Wiseman’S The Titicut Follies, William Blick

Publications and Research

It has become evident that film has the ability to invoke changes in a society. The social issue of the treatment of the mentally ill has always been the subject of films, although many films of past appear exploitative, sensationalist, crude, and ignorant of the realities of the issues being represented. In 1967, Frederick Wiseman’s film, The Titicut Follies, despite winning numerous awards, created such controversy that it became the only film to be banned in the United States for reasons other than obscenity and national security until 1991. The film revealed gross mistreatment of the mentally ill …

Youth As Cosmopolitan Intellectuals, Tiffany A. Dejaynes, Christopher Curmi

Publications and Research

Two high school teachers examine classroom moments that position youth as cosmopolitan intellectuals and invested community members as opposed to disengaged and disaffected adolescents.

Academia Needs To Be More Of A Leader, Aldemaro Romero Jr.

Publications and Research

No abstract provided.

Post Secondary Education Needs Common Sense, Aldemaro Romero Jr.

Publications and Research

No abstract provided.

In Pursuit Of Peace: A Qualitative Study On Subjectification And Peaceful Co-Existence In Four Elementary School Classrooms, Debbie Sonu

Publications and Research

This paper presents qualitative data gleaned from four New York City elementary classrooms and focuses on how teachers attempt, each in their own distinct way, to create educational cultures of peace. Here, classroom vignettes are reconstructed from two months of observational and interview data with attention to how teacher beliefs on peaceful co-existence manifest in the playing field of a child's subject formation. Drawing from Judith Butler's concept of subjectification, this study asks: what conditions of possibility do teachers conceive of when thinking about peace in their classrooms? Findings show that teachers create conditions that emerge from their particular theories …

Investigating The Applicability Of Macro-Level Criminology Theory To Terrorism: A County-Level Analysis, Joshua D. Freilich, Amy Adamczyk, Steven M. Chernak, Katherine A. Boyd, William S. Parkin

Publications and Research

This exploratory study examines if causal mechanisms highlighted by criminology theories work in the same way to explain both ideologically motivated violence (i.e., terrorism) and regular (non-political) homicides. We study if macro-level hypotheses drawn from deprivation, backlash, and social disorganization frameworks are associated with the likelihood that a far-right extremist who committed an ideologically motivated homicide inside the contiguous US resides in a particular county. To aid in the assessment of whether criminology theories speak to both terrorism and regular violence we also apply these hypotheses to far-right homicide and regular homicide incident location and compare the results.

Specters Of Kurdish Nationalism: Governmentality And Counterinsurgent Translation In Turkey, Nicholas S. Glastonbury

Publications and Research

This essay examines translations of the Kurdish epic poem Mem û Zîn into Turkish, tracing the logics behind these state-sponsored translations and examining how acts of translation are also efforts to regulate, translate, and erase Kurdish subjectivities. I argue that the state instrumentalizes Mem û Zîn’s potent nationalist currency in order to disarm present and future claims of Kurdish national autonomy. Using translation as a counterinsurgent governmental tool, the state attempts to domesticate Kurdish nationalist discourses even as it reproduces them, thereby transforming Kurdish nationalism into a specter of itself. Attending to this specter, however, allows us to see how …

The Effects Of Merging Proactive Cctv Monitoring With Directed Police Patrol: A Randomized Controlled Trial., Eric L. Piza, Joel M. Caplan, Leslie W. Kennedy, Andrew M. Gilchrist

Publications and Research

Objectives: This study was designed to test the effect of increased certainty of punishment on reported crime levels in CCTV target areas of Newark, NJ. The experimental strategy was designed for the purpose of overcoming specific surveillance barriers that minimize the effectiveness of CCTV, namely high camera-to-operator ratios and the differential response policy of police dispatch. An additional camera operator was deployed to monitor specific CCTV cameras, with two patrol cars dedicated to exclusively responding to incidents of concern detected on the experimental cameras.

Methods: A randomized controlled trial was implemented in the analysis. A randomized block design was used …

Risk Terrain Modeling For Spatial Risk Assessment., Joel M. Caplan, Leslie W. Kennedy, Jeremy D. Barnum, Eric L. Piza

Publications and Research

Spatial factors can influence the seriousness and longevity of crime problems. Risk terrain modeling (RTM) identifies the spatial risks that come from features of a landscape and models how they colocate to create unique behavior settings for crime. The RTM process begins by testing a variety of factors thought to be geographically related to crime incidents. Valid factors are selected and then weighted to produce a final model that basically paints a picture of places where crime is statistically most likely to occur. This article addresses crime as the outcome event, but RTM can be applied to a variety of …

Feminist Erasures: The Development Of A Black Feminist Methodological Theory, Alex J. Moffett-Bateau

Publications and Research

Within the social sciences, and particularly in political science, feminist methods and theory are seen as valuable only within its own disciplinary boundaries, and limited to its own departments or program, often named women’s studies, gender studies, and/or feminist studies. While the move within the academy to formalize the study of women, gender, and feminism is an important one, these disciplinary boundaries unfortunately have the result of rendering the study and practice of feminist intellectual work invisible to the rest of the academy. Too often, feminist theory and methodological practice is only carried out by one or two female academics …

Investigating Differences In How The News Media Views Homosexuality Across Nations: An Analysis Of The United States, South Africa, And Uganda, Amy Adamczyk, Chunyre Kim, Lauren Paradis

Publications and Research

While there is a wealth of information about the extent to which people across the world disapprove of homosexuality, we know a lot less about the lenses through which they view same-sex relations. The aim of this study is to understand better how homosexuality is framed in the public press, and how religion and economic development may combine to shape this discourse. Through an analysis of almost 400 newspaper articles, this study compares how homosexuality is framed in Uganda, South Africa, and the United States. Because these nations have high levels of religious belief, but differ in their level of …

Religiosity And Reactions To Terrorism, Amy Adamczyk, Gary Lafree

Publications and Research

Although many of the world’s most serious outbreaks of conflict and violence center on religion, social science research has had relatively little to say about religion’s unique role in shaping individuals’ attitudes about these events. In this paper we investigate whether Americans’ religious beliefs play a central role in shaping attitudes toward the continuing threat of terrorism and their willingness to assist officials in countering these perceived threats. Our analysis of an original data collection of almost 1600 Americans shows that more religious respondents are more likely to express concerns about terrorism. However, this relationship is mediated by their level …

Toward A Political Sociology Of Conjugal-Recognition Regimes: Gendered Multiculturalism In South African Marriage Law, Michael W. Yarbrough

Publications and Research

While conjugal-recognition policies are often a subject of political debate, scholarly attempts to explain such policies are relatively rare and typically focused on discrete policies—same-sex marriage, no-fault divorce, etc.—with comparatively little investigation of potential connections among policies. This article begins to develop a more holistic approach focused on explaining and understanding what I call conjugal-recognition regimes. Adapting the concept from the existing literature on welfare regimes, I argue that conjugal-recognition regimes exist when an identifiable pattern or principle organizes an institution’s conjugal-recognition policy and thereby shapes social relations at multiple levels, from the individuals in conjugal relationships to the multiple …