Digital Commons Network^™

Public Education, The State, And The Crisis, Hakan Yilmaz

Publications and Research

This paper aims to construct a framework for understanding the causes and dynamics of the wave of teacher strikes that took place in 2018-19. To do this, the paper first analyzes the constraints under which the state managers function and describes the relationship between the state and public education. Second, it summarizes a theoretical framework for understanding the Great Recession and describes the influence of neoliberal policy orthodoxy on the reaction to the Great Recession. Third, it provides empirical evidence that displays how following the Great Recession, the constraints of the state actors and implementation of certain policies reduced spending …

Book Review: The Making Of Black Lives Matter: A Brief History Of An Idea, Joni Schwartz

Publications and Research

Review of the book The Making of Black Lives Matter: A Brief History of an Idea (2017) by Christopher J. Lebron.

Anti-Lgbtq Hate: An Analysis Of Situational Variables, Jill Kehoe

Publications and Research

The current study aimed to augment the scant body of literature on anti-LGBTQ hate by providing an in-depth examination of anti-LGBTQ hate incident situational characteristics including offender substance use, number of offenders, crime location, and victim-offender relationship. Analysis of situational dynamic variables provided support for the notion that anti-LGBTQ hate is a distinct type of criminal incident. Significantly increased levels of offender substance use, crimes perpetrated by multiple offenders, crimes perpetrated by acquaintances, and crimes taking place in open spaces substantiates the theory that anti-LGBTQ hate is qualitatively unique, typified by different characteristics than other forms of crime. The data …

Setting The Terms Of Our Own Visibility A Conversation Between Sam Feder And Alexandra Juhasz On Trans Activist Media In The United States, Alexandra Juhasz

Publications and Research

In the summer of 2016, I sat down at my computer and Skyped with my friend and fellow queer media activist Sam Feder about their film, Disclosure: Trans Lives on Screen. What follows is a highly edited transcript of our conversation, paying particular attention to Sam’s core research findings about trans representational history and how their findings might align with their processes and goals as a trans activist media maker committed to telling this complex story.

Profile Evidence, Fairness, And The Risks Of Mistaken Convictions, Collin O'Neil, Marcello Di Bello

Publications and Research

Many oppose the use of profile evidence against defendants at trial, even when the statistical correlations are reliable and the jury is free from prejudice. The literature has struggled to justify this opposition. We argue that admitting profile evidence is objectionable because it violates what we call “equal protection”—that is, a right of innocent defendants not to be exposed to higher ex ante risks of mistaken conviction compared to other innocent defendants facing similar charges. We also show why admitting other forms of evidence, such as eyewitness, trace, and motive evidence, does not violate equal protection.

Participatory Action Research In Schools: Unpacking The Lived Inequities Of High Stakes Testing, Tiffany A. Dejaynes, Tabatha Cortes, Israt Hoque

Publications and Research

Purpose – This paper aims to examine a school-based Youth Participatory Action Research (YPAR) project on educational inequity and high stakes testing.

Design/methodology/approach – A former high school teacher (currently a university professor) and two former students (currently research assistants and university students) take up a youth studies framework to collaboratively resee multimodal artifacts from a tenth-grade course in qualitative research.

Findings – Findings illustrate the power of finding allies in peers and educators; the transformative power of deep participation; and the longitudinal nature of social change and action. Thus, this research demonstrates that when students are positioned as researchers, …

Easily Overstated: Estimating The Relationship Between State Justice Policy Environments And Falling Rates Of Youth Confinement, Douglas N. Evans, Gina Moreno, Kevin T. Wolff, Jeffrey A. Butts

Publications and Research

Researchers used state-level data on youth justice policies and practices to explore the association between state policy environments and recent changes in the use of residential placements for adjudicated youth (i.e., confinement). The study assigned a score to each of the 50 states based on the extent to which their youth justice policy environments could be considered "progressive" as opposed to punitive or regressive. Using data from the National Center for Juvenile Justice's compendium of justice system characteristics, "Juvenile Justice, Geography, Policy, Practice & Statistics" (JJGPS), the research team created an index that accounts for 16 policies that are more …

Viewpoint Symposium Introduction: #Metoo In Academia: Understanding And Addressing Pervasive Challanges, Maria J. D’Agostino, Nicole Elias

Publications and Research

No abstract provided.

Care In Crisis: Covid-19 As A Catalyst For Universal Child Care In The United States, Nicole Elias, Maria J. D’Agostino

Publications and Research

School closings during COVID-19 exposed an under-addressed gender equity issue in the United States: child care in crisis. To better understand the child care crisis in the current U.S. context, we detail how New York City is addressing child care during COVID-19. We then connect the current approaches to the Lanham Act that was instituted during WWII as a historical parallel. Ultimately, we argue for the adoption of a universal system that is affordable, high-quality, federally-funded with local involvement and discretion, and flexible for primary caregivers seeking care support. This potential system builds on current congressional proposals and should take …

Characterization Of Women And Leadership In Public Administration And Beyond, Maria J. D'Agostino, Meghna Sabharwal, Helisse Levine

Publications and Research

Women were 30% of the labor force in 1950 and 48.6% of the workforce today. Women are also currently outpacing men in the attainment of college degrees – 36% of women aged between 25- 29 years have a bachelor’s degree compared to 28% of males in the same age group and have surpassed men in college graduation rates. Despite these growing numbers, women have yet to reach a critical mass in leadership positions. Women represent less than 5% of CEOs in Fortune 500 companies. Out of 195 state heads around the world, only 15 are currently women. Less than 20% …

Student Success In Psychology-English Learning Communities., Jillian Grose-Fifer, Kimberly A. Helmer

Publications and Research

Participation in a learning community has been widely recognized as a high impact educational practice. Here, we focus on a highly successful partnership between a psychology professor (JGF) and an English professor (KAH), who codesigned and cotaught a first-year cocurricular (Psychology/English Composition) learning community (LC) course for multiple semesters at a large public Minority/Hispanic Serving Institution in the Northeast. We describe how we created co-curricular links between our courses, which hinged in part on a collaborative podcast assignment based on psychology-themed books. We detail how we built a strong sense of community, designed scaffolded assignments targeting skills, such as information …

Teaching In A Flipped Classroom., Jillian Grose-Fifer

Publications and Research

In this chapter, I describe how I switched to using a flipped class model in an upper-level Sensation and Perception course, by reversing where different types of learning take place. In the flipped model, instead of introducing students to basic concepts in class, they answered guiding questions after watching videos or reading the textbook before attending class. They then spent class time working collaboratively in small groups on more challenging assignments, many of which had been homework assignments in prior (non-flipped) courses. In-class activities consisted of mini-experiments, and other student-centered hands-on learning experiences designed to foster higher-order critical thinking and …

Did Juvenile Domestic Violence Offending Change During Covid-19?, Michael T. Baglivio, Kevin T. Wolff, Joan A. Reid, Sherry L. Jackson, Alex R. Piquero

Publications and Research

The current study adds some of the first light into the initial impacts of the largest global health crisis in a generation on family and domestic violence, the long-term repercussions of which may take decades to unpack. Statewide trends in juvenile arrests for domestic violence (DV)-related offending are examined, taking into account school closures for in-person learning in March 2020 and the subsequent mandate for an in-person learning option in Florida in August 2020. Additionally, trends by sex, race/ethnicity, and severity of the offense are examined. Contrasting with growing studies demonstrating an increase in DV-related arrests among adults, we find …

Lgbtq+ Civil Rights: Local Government Efforts In A Volatile Era, Nicole M. Elias

Publications and Research

LGBTQ+ issues at the local level pose some of the most pressing civil rights challenges in the current U.S.context. This analysis provides insight into what is taking place in major municipalities and how these efforts can be improved to bolster equity and civil rights for LGBTQ+ populations. At a time when identity, language, and public sector values are inherently intertwined and constantly changing, the following question is ripe for analysis: how are major U.S. municipalities addressing the civil rights needs of the LGBTQ+ population? To answer this question, an analysis of government websites from the top 10 U.S. cities by …

A Third Option: Understanding And Assessing Non-Binary Gender Policies In The United States, Nicole M. Elias, Roddrick Colvin

Publications and Research

Our fundamental understandings and treatments of gender and gender identity within the United States are evolving. Recently, a few countries and several U.S. states have moved away from the binary categories of male and female to include a non-binary gender option for official state documents. This third, gender-neutral option, is usually represented as "X" where "M" for male and "F" for female traditionally appeared. The purpose of this study is twofold; first, to utilize Iris Marion Young's theory of oppression to help contextualize the historical oppression of non-binary gender identity recognition by the State, and second, to analyze recent efforts …

Popular Culture Informing Public Administration: Messages And Prospects For Social Equity, Sean Mccandless, Nicole M. Elias

Publications and Research

In the discipline of public administration, popular culture remains under-examined in scholarship and under-utilized in pedagogy. However, the field would benefit from greater integration of popular culture to expand understandings of governance, especially in that it provides important representations of and messaging about some of today's most pressing social equity issues. To contextualize popular culture in public administration, we use critical discourse analysis as a frame to demonstrate how popular culture can inform public administration, especially regarding social equity. We argue that popular culture should be more extensively covered in public administration, because it offers a lens for better understanding …

Examining Public Opinion About Abortion: A Mixed-Methods Systematic Review Of Research Over The Last 15 Years, Amy Adamczyk, Chunrye Kim, Leevia Dillon

Publications and Research

Although abortion became legal four decades ago, Americans remain staunchly divided over its acceptability. While researchers have been interested in the factors shaping abortion attitudes, there are almost no reviews of this work. We examine the factors shaping Americans’ abortion attitudes and assess the state of published peer-reviewed articles in this area over the last 15 years. Using a mixed-methods systematic review, we analyze and critique the findings from 116 journal articles that have examined attitudes about abortion between 2001 and 2016. Amongst the many predictors and outcomes examined, we show that religion is by far the most utilized statistically …

Policy And Procedure Recommendations For The Collection And Preservation Of Eyewitness Identification Evidence, Gary L. Wells, Margaret Bull Kovera, Amy Bradfield Douglass, Neil Brewer, Christian A. Meissner, John T. Wixted

Publications and Research

Objective: The Executive Committee of the American Psychology-Law Society (Division 41 of the American Psychological Association) appointed a subcommittee to update the influential 1998 scientific review paper on guidelines for eyewitness identification procedures. Method: This was a collaborative effort by six senior eyewitness researchers, who all participated in the writing process. Feedback from members of AP-LS and the legal communities was solicited over an 18-month period. Results: The results yielded nine recommendations for planning, designing, and conducting eyewitness identification procedures. Four of the recommendations were from the 1998 article and concerned the selection of lineup fillers, prelineup …

Neoliberalism And Financialization In Turkey, Hakan Yilmaz

Publications and Research

This paper summarizes the process of financialization under the neoliberal restructuring of the Turkish economy. First, it discusses the political and economic context that led to the restructuring. Then, it elaborates the first stage of Turkish neoliberalism and financialization under the ANAP government, and the various coalition governments throughout 1990s. Then, it describes the second stage of this process under the Neoliberal Populist regime of the AKP government. Finally, it tries to locate neoliberalism and financialization in the country’s long-term capitalist development. In this context, the paper aims to display the connection between Marx’s tendency of the rate of profit …

And Still They Rise: Lessons From Students In New York City's Alternative Transfer High Schools, Mica Baum-Tuccillo, Varnica Arora, Alison Holstein, Michelle Fine

Publications and Research

And Still They Rise is the first systematic analysis of alternative transfer schools in New York City – alternative educational spaces that keep their doors open to a range of students who seek an education despite past academic struggles. The report blends a qualitative and quantitative review of 842 students’ responses to a participatory survey that asked about goals, desires, obstacles, and what they found at transfer schools. In this report we present the stories and the statistics across schools, elevating silenced stories that lay behind the misnomer “at risk." We review data that shows how deeply students appreciate their …

High Tech, High Risk: Tech Ethics Lessons For The Covid-19 Pandemic Response, Emanuel Moss, Jacob Metcalf

Publications and Research

The COVID-19 pandemic has, in a matter of a few short months, drastically reshaped society around the world. Because of the growing perception of machine learning as a technology capable of addressing large problems at scale, machine learning applications have been seen as desirable interventions in mitigating the risks of the pandemic disease. However, machine learning, like many tools of technocratic governance, is deeply implicated in the social production and distribution of risk and the role of machine learning in the production of risk must be considered as engineers and other technologists develop tools for the current crisis. This paper …

Improving Law Enforcement’S Victim-Centric Responses To Sexual Assault: Global Best Practice Catalog, Ayesha Ashraf, Sebastián Galleguillos Agurto, Frederick Geyer, Kamela Gjoka, Jasmine Hwang, Stanley Montinat, Jessica Moor, Pierre Reyes, Tara Ventimiglia, Hongda Xu

Publications and Research

This catalog was compiled as part of a U.S. State Department Diplomacy Lab Project entitled “Improving Law Enforcement’s Victim-Centric Responses to Sexual Assault,” in fall semester of 2019, for American Citizens Services, US Embassy Bangkok. It is intended to cover best practices in law enforcement response to sexual assault across the globe, including laws, policies and programs.Ten multilingual graduate students in the capstone seminar of the Master of Arts Degree Program in International Crime and Justice at John Jay College of Criminal Justice (CUNY) established criteria for inclusion and standardized elements for each entry in this catalog. The ultimate aim …

Community-Based Responses To Negative Health Impacts Of Sexual Humanitarian Anti-Trafficking Policies And The Criminalization Of Sex Work And Migration In The Us, Heidi Hoefinger, Jennifer Musto, P.G. Macioti, Anne E. Fehrenbacher, Nicola Mai, Calum Bennachie, Calogero Giametta

Publications and Research

System-involvement resulting from anti-trafficking interventions and the criminalization of sex work and migration results in negative health impacts on sex workers, migrants, and people with trafficking experiences. Due to their stigmatized status, sex workers and people with trafficking experiences often struggle to access affordable, unbiased, and supportive health care. This paper will use thematic analysis of qualitative data from in-depth interviews and ethnographic fieldwork with 50 migrant sex workers and trafficked persons, as well as 20 key informants from legal and social services, in New York and Los Angeles. It will highlight the work of trans-specific and sex worker-led initiatives …

Opinions And Perceptions Of Residents In New York City Public Housing. Map Evaluation Update Number 4., Sheyla A. Delgado, Jeffrey A. Butts, Gina Moreno

Publications and Research

This is the fourth of six updates presenting interim findings from the evaluation of the NYC Mayor’s Action Plan for Neighborhood Safety (MAP). As part of an evaluation of the New York City Mayor’s Action Plan for Neighborhood Safety (MAP), researchers from John Jay College of Criminal Justice collaborated with survey specialists from NORC at the University of Chicago to collect data from two probability samples of residents in public housing developments in New York City. This first iteration of collecting survey responses will be compared to the next wave of response to get an understanding of the effectiveness of …

The Criminogenic Effect Of Marijuana Dispensaries In Denver, Colorado: A Microsynthetic Control Quasi-Experiment And Cost-Benefit Analysis, Nathan Connealy, Eric L. Piza, Dave Hatten

Publications and Research

The study analyzed the criminogenic effect of legalizing recreational marijuana dispensaries in Denver. Street segments with recreational dispensaries experienced no changes in violent, disorder and drug crime but did experience an 18% increase in property crime, and street segments adjacent to recreational dispensaries experienced some notable (but non-significant) drug and disorder crime increases. Medical dispensaries demonstrated no significant crime changes. A cost-benefit analysis found the associated crime costs were largely offset by sales revenue. Monetary benefits were much less pronounced, and barely cost effective, when only considering tax revenue.

Please Tweet Responsibly: The Social And Professional Ethics Of Public Defenders Using Client Information In Social Media Advocacy, Nicole Smith Futrell

Publications and Research

Every day the criminal legal system hauls poor and marginalized individuals through a process wrought with trauma, indignity, and abuse. Public defenders representing the criminally accused view their clients and the system from a unique vantage point: they bear witness to the human costs of a system that falls far short of its purported norms and ideals. For the public defender who works within this reality day in and day out, fighting for each individual client might feel limited in its wider impact. Some public defenders have found that using online and social media platforms, such as Twitter, to provide …

Private Security And Cctv Surveillance: A Systematic Review Of Function And Performance, Brandon C. Welsh, Eric L. Piza, Amanda L. Thomas, David P. Farrington

Publications and Research

Private security personnel play an important but largely overlooked role in the operation of CCTV surveillance to prevent crime in public and private areas. This role can take a number of forms, including active monitoring of cameras. Drawing upon a global database of CCTV evaluations (N=165), this article examines the function and performance of private security personnel as related to the effectiveness of CCTV. Findings indicate that CCTV schemes operated by private security personnel generated larger crime prevention effects than those operated by police or those using a mix of police and security personnel. Policy and research implications are discussed.

Hiv Prevention Via Mobile Messaging For Men Who Have Sex With Men (M-Cubed): Protocol For A Randomized Controlled Trial, Patrick Sean Sullivan, Ryan J. Zahn, Sarah Wiatrek, Cristian J. Chandler, Sabina Hirshfield, Rob Stephenson, Jose A. Bauermeister, Mary Ann Chiasson, Martin J. Downing, Deborah J. Gelaude, Aaron J. Siegler, Keith Horvath, Erin Rogers, Ana Alas, Evelyn J. Olansky, Heather Saul, Eli S. Rosenberg, Gordon Mansergh

Publications and Research

Background:

Men who have sex with men (MSM) continue to be the predominately impacted risk group in the United States HIV epidemic and are a priority group for risk reduction in national strategic goals for HIV prevention. Modeling studies have demonstrated that a comprehensive package of status-tailored HIV prevention and care interventions have the potential to substantially reduce new infections among MSM. However, uptake of basic prevention services, including HIV testing, sexually transmitted infection (STI) testing, condom distribution, condom-compatible lubricant distribution, and preexposure prophylaxis (PrEP), is suboptimal. Further, stronger public health strategies are needed to promote engagement in HIV care …

Older Adults Responsible For Total Growth In Drug Arrests, Jeffrey A. Butts

Publications and Research

After years of decline, adults 25 and older were responsible for increasing drug crime arrests after 2015. In contrast, young adults, teenagers, and children experienced drug arrest drops. This databit looks at the drug violation arrest rates from 2000 to 2018 and trends between various age groups.

Youth Still Leading Violent Crime Drop: 1988-2018, Jeffrey A. Butts

Publications and Research

Violent crime arrest rates fell among all age groups but especially for youth under age 18. This databit looks at violent crime arrests and weapon offense arrests from 1988 to 2018 for various age groups.