Digital Commons Network^™

The Interaction Effects Of Subjective And Structural Factors On Crime Among Formerly Incarcerated Males, Christopher Alvin Veeh

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

The high rate of recidivism in the over 600,000 individuals who return from incarceration each year is an important social problem facing U.S. society and the criminal justice system. Efforts undertaken so far early in the 21st century to address the problem of recidivism in the formerly incarcerated, particularly prison reentry programs, have produced disappointing results at reducing the rate of recidivism. Therefore, there is a need to identify new ways for prison reentry programs to reduce recidivism among individuals recently returned from prison, and social work with its person-in-environment perspective can make an important contribution through conducting research to …

From American Service To Disservice: An Exploration Of The Impact Of Military Experience Among An Incarcerated Population, Erika Brooke

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

This dissertation research examines the impact of military service among an incarcerated population. It addresses the gaps identified within the prior literature by taking a closer look at the association between service experience and criminal justice outcomes. Specifically, the present study explores whether branch type, combat exposure, age of entrance, service length, and discharge status impact the number of lifetime arrests, current offense type, and institutional misconduct. This research uses data from the U.S. Bureau of Justice Statistics* 2004 Survey of Inmates in State and Federal Correctional Facilities. Multivariate analyses indicate that different elements of military participation influence criminal and …

What We Hide, Ashley Bowcott

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

What We Hide is a collection of memoir essays that explores the themes of mystery and deception in personal relationships, specifically within familial and romantic ones. Though the essays in the collection explore the decades from early in the narrator's childhood through her move to Florida for graduate school, the narrator's keen discernment of the world around her and her curiosity for what experiences shape a person's character remain constant. Many essays explore the extent of her father's alcoholism and the consequences of it, as well as the narrator's obsession over the possible sources of his addictions. Other essays examine …

Stand-Alone Personalized Normative Feedback For College Student Drinkers: A Meta-Analytic Review, 2004 To 2014, Keri Dotson

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Personalized normative feedback (PNF) has shown promise as a stand-alone intervention for reducing alcohol use among college students. PNF uses norms clarification to correct drinking norms misperceptions by highlighting discrepancies between personal alcohol use, perceived peer alcohol use, and actual peer alcohol use. Previous reviews of personalized feedback interventions have identified norms clarification as key a component, prompting researchers to study PNF as a single-component intervention for college drinking. As the number of publications focused on PNF effectiveness has increased in recent years, an empirical review of these studies is warranted to assess the potential impact of PNF as a …

Implicit Bias And The American Juror, Jennifer K. Elek, Paula Hannaford-Agor

Faculty Publications

On March 4, 2015, the United States Department of Justice (DOJ) released a report of findings in its investigation of the Ferguson, Missouri, criminal-justice system. The report con­tributed to the still-growing body of literature acknowledging contemporary racial inequality and recognizing that these dis­parities may not be explained on the basis of people's explicit, intentional biases alone. Although the possible effects of implicit bias on justice-sys­tem outcomes should be considered at each decision point in case processing, we focus in this article on the potential effects of implicit bias in the decision making of everyday American citizens who are randomly selected …

O'Connor V. Uber Technologies, United States District Court For The Northern District Of Californa

Historical and Topical Legal Documents

No abstract provided.

Revising By Numbers: Promoting Student Revision Through Accumulated Points, Mark Mcbeth

Journal of Response to Writing

In an effort to rethink the evaluation of student writing with the ultimate goal of convincing novice writers that rewriting predicates as well as presupposes the act of writing, I describe a point-accrual grading system where students accumulate points with redrafted submissions during a semester. This approach to evaluation offers students more autonomy in controlling their “earned” grade as well as incentivizes their investments in the revision process. In contrast to the normative percentages approach to grading, this point-accrual system not only gives students a less ambivalent form of grading but also moves them past surface-level revision and into rhetorical …

The Association Between School Climate And School Discipline Policies And Practices In Rhode Island Public Schools, Anna G. Lubiner

Open Access Dissertations

Exclusionary discipline practices have been associated with a range of negative student outcomes, both academic and behavioral, as well as a higher likelihood of later school drop-out and involvement in the juvenile justice system. Alternatively, more positive school climate has been associated with a variety of favorable student outcomes including higher levels of academic achievement and fewer behavioral infractions. The purpose of this study was to explore the relationship between school climate and exclusionary discipline practices and policies in the Rhode Island public elementary and secondary schools. More specifically the study sought to investigate the association between teacher and student …

Impact Of Citizens’ Economic Status On Policy Formulation And Implementation, Joash Ntenga Moitui

Khazar Journal of Humanities and Social Sciences

There are many factors that are considered in public policy implementation. This paper seeks to explore the economic abilities of citizens influence on the formulation and implementation of public policy. Behavioural economics has been used to explore individuals behavioural antecedents especially in decision making. The paper explores this concept coupled with how economic ability and behavior of citizens, particularly the middle class can play in enlightening policymakers. The general purpose of the paper will be to find out how these factors influence the making and execution of policy. It uses Thomas Humphrey Marshall social concept to argument, critique and analyze …

A Provocative Defense, Aya Gruber

Publications

It is common wisdom that the provocation defense is, quite simply, sexist. For decades, there has been a trenchant feminist critique that the doctrine reflects and reinforces masculine norms of violence and shelters brutal domestic killers. The critique is so prominent that it appears alongside the doctrine itself in leading criminal law casebooks. The feminist critique of provocation embodies several claims about provocation's problematically gendered nature, including that the defense is steeped in chauvinist history, treats culpable sexist killers too leniently, discriminates against women, and expresses bad messages. This Article offers a (likely provocative) defense of the provocation doctrine. While …

When Theory Met Practice: Distributional Analysis In Critical Criminal Law Theorizing, Aya Gruber

Publications

Progressive (critical race and feminist) theorizing on criminal law exists within an overarching American criminal law culture in which the U.S penal system has become a "peculiar institution" and a defining governance structure. Much of criminal law discourse is subject to a type of ideological capture in which it is natural to assume that criminalization is a valid, if not preferred, solution to social dysfunction. Accordingly, progressives’ primary concerns about harms to minority victims takes place in a political-legal context in which criminalization is the technique of addressing harm. In turn, progressive criminal law theorizing manifests some deep internal tensions. …

Toward A Structural Theory Of Implicit Racial And Ethnic Bias In Health Care, Dayna Bowen Matthew

Publications

No abstract provided.

Increasing Police Accountability: Restoring Trust And Legitimacy Through The Appointment Of Independent Prosecutors, Kami Chavis Simmons

Faculty Publications

Criminal prosecution of police officers raises a myriad of issues that this Article will begin to explore. First, while there has been a paradigmatic shift in police accountability in recent decades from remedies focusing on individual officers to those focusing on broad organizational reform, this Article will explore the important role that the deterrence rationale of criminal prosecution might play as one tool to address police misconduct. Second, other than deterrence, criminal prosecutions serve numerous goals, including retribution for the harms imposed upon the victims and society for the crimes. Historically, many racial minorities, when compared with their white counterparts, …

From Prosecutorial To Reparatory: A Valuable Post-Conflict Change Of Focus, Nancy Amoury Combs

Faculty Publications

No abstract provided.

Let The Good Time Roll: Early Release For Good Behavior In Prison, Michael M. O'Hear

Faculty Publications

No abstract provided.

Has The “Machinery Of Death” Become A Clunker?, Stephen F. Smith

Journal Articles

From the Essay

This symposium essay sounds a cautionary note while ultimately remaining agnostic about what the future holds for the death penalty. There are a variety of reasons to be skeptical about the abolitionists' newfound optimism. The usual reasons for optimism about ending the death penalty-sharp declines in public support for the death penalty and of the ultimate sanction-do not necessarily portend the demise of the death penalty. This essay argues that other factors can account for recent declines in capital punishment and that there are countervailing factors suggesting that the American death penalty is alive and well, despite …

Adjunct Faculty Evaluation At Public Community Colleges : A Precursor Of Organizational Learning, Muhammad Muddassir Siddiqi

Graduate Research Theses & Dissertations

This study explored the current status of adjunct faculty teaching-performance evaluation at public community colleges across the United States and how the results of evaluations were used to make decisions pertaining to professional development, employment and recognizing excellence in teaching performance. This study also investigated whether the evaluations were used to review institutional policies pertaining to adjunct faculty members.;The research questions of this study were: (1) How do public community colleges evaluate adjunct faculty teaching performance?, and (2) How do public community colleges use adjunct faculty evaluation data?;Organizational learning theory guided this research. This study utilized cross-sectional, correlational, descriptive survey …

Applying Frances Fowler's Model To Analyze The History Of Compulsory Attendance Laws In The United States, Deborah Dyer Osborne

Graduate Research Theses & Dissertations

The notion of compelling formal education has been in existence since the 1600's. Subtle differences can be extrapolated from the compulsory school attendance statutes enacted during the past four centuries; however, the core requirements have remained the same. Despite the fact the United States Supreme Court has ruled education is not a fundamental right. Every state has laws mandating school attendance for minor children. For centuries, judicial efforts have wrestled with crafting effective interventions and punishments for students and parents failing to follow these laws. Sadly, truancy continues to be a plague in 21st century education. There continues to be …

Judicial Decision-Making And Criminal Sentencing : Partisanship And Sentencing Severity By State Trial Judges, Sean Daly

Graduate Research Theses & Dissertations

American trial judges exercise an enormous power when they sentence criminal offenders to a specific length of incarceration. Does the partisan affiliation of the trial judge affect the final determination in an offender's length of incarceration? Using a psychological framework, I examine the effects that partisanship, and ideology have on a judge's perception of the root causes of crime and the primary purpose that sentencing should serve in our criminal justice system. Using a unique proxy measure for judicial partisanship I analyze violent felony cases in Washington State from 2000 to 2006. I find that a Republican judge hands down …

Student Cyberspeech Targeting Faculty : What Can School Administrators Legally Do About It?, Bradley L. Shortridge

Graduate Research Theses & Dissertations

This paper investigates how school officials can make sound decisions based on appropriate legal precedent when faced with incidents of student cyberspeech targeting staff members. In particular, this study examined court decisions, law review articles, state and federal legislation, online sources, and newspaper articles relating to student speech issues. Analyzing these decisions offers some insight for school administrators faced with these instances. Trends from various cases at different court levels are discussed, and some recommendations and tips for school administrators are provided.

I'M Ready Warden : An Examination Of The Rhetoric Of Death, Zac Wendler

Graduate Research Theses & Dissertations

This dissertation examines the rhetorical context, preservation, and dissemination of the final statements of American felons executed between 1985 and Spring 2012, as well as the history of these items in the West generally and America specifically. This examination found little variance in final statement genre incidence rates with respect to ethnicity, gender, date of utterance, or any other temporal or demographic factor. As a result, it examines in detail the cultural context which stabilizes and centers this type of utterance, and explores how such statements move through American society and are transformed in the process. It argues that such …

Male Health Promotion Professionals In Higher Education : Why They Enter And Remain, Alicia Katherine Czachowski

Graduate Research Theses & Dissertations

This dissertation examines men in the career of health promotion in higher education. This study was designed to gain insight from men currently working in health promotion in higher education about why and how they entered their career as well as what is keeping them working in this field. The purpose of this qualitative study was to explore the perceptions and experiences of men working as health promotion professionals in the higher education setting regarding their entry into and persistence in their chosen profession.;Using a basic interpretive qualitative study approach, five participants took part in three semi-structured interviews, in which …

The Relationship Between Interrogative Suggestibility And Decision-Making, Darci Van Dyke

Theses and Dissertations

Interrogative suggestibility is the individual's tendency to yield to misleading questions and negative feedback. Individuals who exhibit this tendency have been found to be more likely to falsely confess to a crime, a decision with often severe negative consequences. Many individual differences in cognition, emotion, and personality have been linked with interrogative suggestibility. These individual differences have also been found to be related to an individual's decision-making ability. However, the relationship between interrogative suggestibility and decision-making has not been investigated. The current project sought to determine how decision-making abilities, cognitive ability, memory, and anxiety predict variability in interrogative suggestibility. Results …

Resisting Nsa Surveillance: Glenn Greenwald And The Public Sphere Debate About Privacy, Rebecca Rice

Graduate Student Theses, Dissertations, & Professional Papers

In May of 2013, National Security Agency contractor Edward Snowden flew to Hong Kong with thousands of classified NSA documents. He contacted Glenn Greenwald, blogger, activist, and journalist for The Guardian. Greenwald and several other reporters flew to Hong Kong, where they spent a week interviewing Snowden. Greenwald began reporting on the documents in The Guardian, publishing many articles that demonstrated that the US government was spying on US citizens without court warrants. The leak was considered the biggest in NSA history. One year later, Greenwald published No Place to Hide: Edward Snowden, The NSA, and The U.S. Surveillance State. …

Racism Vs. Social Capital: A Case Study Of Two Majority Black Communities, Bruce W. Strouble

Walden Dissertations and Doctoral Studies

Several researchers have identified social capital as a means to improve the social sustainability of communities. While there have been many studies investigating the benefits of social capital in homogeneous White communities, few have examined it in Black homogeneous communities. Also, there has been limited research on the influence of racism on social capital in African American communities. In this dissertation a comparative case study was used within a critical race theory framework. The purpose was to explore the role of racial oppression in shaping social capital in majority African American communities. Data were collected from 2 majority Black communities …

An Analysis Of The Economic Costs Of Seeking The Death Penalty In Washington (Report), Peter A. Collins, Robert C. Boruchowitz, Matthew J. Hickman, Mark A. Larranaga

Faculty Articles

Professor Boruchowitz and colleagues published the results of a seven-month study into the costs of the death penalty in Washington state and has found a more than $1 million price break in cases where capital punishment is not sought.

Mitigating Foul Blows, Mary Bowman

Faculty Articles

For nearly eighty years, courts have offered stirring rhetoric about how prosecutors must not strike foul blows in pursuit of convictions. Yet while appellate courts are often quick to condemn prosecutorial trial misconduct, they rarely provide any meaningful remedy. Instead, courts routinely affirm convictions, relying on defense counsel's failure to object or concluding that the misconduct was merely harmless error. Jerome Frank summed up the consequences of this dichotomy best when he noted that the courts' attitude of helpless piety in prosecutorial misconduct cases breeds a deplorably cynical attitude toward the judiciary. Cognitive bias research illuminates the reasons for, and …

A Homeless Bill Of Rights (Revolution), Sara Rankin

Faculty Articles

This article examines an emerging movement so far unexplored by legal scholarship: the proposal and, in some states, the enactment of a Homeless Bill of Rights. This article presents these new laws as a lens to re-examine storied debates over positive and social welfare rights. Homeless bills of rights also present a compelling opportunity to re-examine rights-based theories in the context of social movement scholarship. Specifically, could these laws be understood as part of a new “rights revolution”? What conditions might influence the impact of these new laws on the individual rights of the homeless or the housed? On American …

Relieving Human Suffering: Compassion In Social Policy, Mary E. Collins, Sarah Garlington, Kate Cooney

The Journal of Sociology & Social Welfare

Human suffering is always present in society. There is general consensus that action should be taken to address suffering, but there are differing views as to the appropriate means of doing so. In this paper we utilize a classical understanding of the virtue of compassion to answer the research question: How does contemporary U.S. policy address human suffering through compassionate response? To answer this question, we conduct a critical analysis of three policy domains (hospice care, domestic violence, and disaster relief) to determine variation in response to human suffering. Comparisons among the domains suggest the various ways in which compassion …

Reframing New Frontiers For Indigenous Peoples, Hilary N. Weaver

The Journal of Sociology & Social Welfare

This paper examines colonial and Indigenous perspectives on frontiers. The United States context is used to further focus on the historic impact of the frontier on Native Americans. This is followed by a discussion of how boundaries and frontiers might be reframed in more balanced ways that respect the sovereignty of Indigenous nations. Examples are presented from child welfare and casino gaming to illustrate contemporary interactions across boundaries.