Digital Commons Network^™

Thinking And Acting Both Globally And Locally : The Field School In Intercultural Education As A Model For Action-Research Training And Civic Learning., Douglas D. Perkins, Benjamin W. Fisher, Holly L. Karakos, Sharon L. Shields, Elizabeth D. Gilbert, Meaghan M. Patterson

Faculty and Staff Scholarship

We present the Field School model of intercultural civic education, service-learning, action research training, and collaboration (with local academic and community partners) based on field work in applied anthropology. Theoretical and methodological foundations of the Field School also include experiential learning and immersive pedagogy, multiculturalism and cross-cultural communication, international education and study abroad programs, collaborative international development, participatory research, and in-depth knowledge in one’s own specific discipline. The primary goals of these intensive, short-term action research projects in other, less-developed countries or regions are benefits for community partners that are as sustainable as possible and to foster and assess learning …

Efficacy Of Collaborative Consulting Training Module, Brenda Stone

Theses and Dissertations

Code for America Fellowships pair technologists with local city governments to develop digital tools that support how governments provide service to their communities. The lack of project sustainability following these Fellowships has been a source of dissatisfaction for both Fellows and clients. Code for America supports each Fellow with technical training, but provides no training on consulting techniques that help clients sustain the changes or new technology being introduced. The purpose of this action research study was to determine the efficacy of a collaborative consultation module for the Fellows at Code for America. To gather data, surveys, interviews and analysis …

Steven Avery, A Case Study: Making A Murderer Or Making An Identity, Allison Grussing

Masters Theses

Steven Avery, a Wisconsin native, has spent the majority of his adult life in prison, once for a crime he was later exonerated from, and then again for murder. The Netflix series Making a Murderer documents Avery's murder trial, and uses only first hand accounts. Ultimately, this research had two goals: one was to better understand how the series utilized framing to engage in advocacy for Avery and the second was to uncover what identity was constructed by the producers and series for Avery. With a thematic analysis approach and open and axial coding this research revealed three themes that …

Intrinsic Factors Affecting Decomposition Changes In Archaeological Head Hair From Kellis 2 Cemetery, Dakhleh Oasis, Egypt, Kathleen Cole

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Post-mortem hair root degradation, and associated characteristics such as post-mortem root banding, brush-like ends, and hard keratin points, has remained a little understood phenomenon in the forensics discipline since its discovery in the 1800's. At present, the underlying causes of these characteristics are still unknown. In addition, there is no standardization for preparing samples for forensic or archaeological analysis. In this study, 1200 hairs from a total of 51 individuals (males, n = 22; females, n = 29) ranging in age from 16 to 60+ and interred at the Kellis 2 cemetery in the Dakhleh Oasis, Egypt are examined microscopically …

Impacts Of Workplace Violence: The Role Of Inequality, Lindsey Singer

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

In 2011 the National Crime Victimization Survey (NCVS) reported that of people who are employed and aged 16 and older, 24% of nonfatal violent incidents happened at work. To understand the magnitude of the problem, from 2005 to 2009, 572,000 nonfatal workplace crimes occurred against people aged 16 or older. Annually, the rate of workplace violence was about 5 victimizations per 1,000 employed persons aged 16 and older (Harrell 2011). The impact of crime on victims is a topic that deserves attention because it extends our understanding beyond descriptive rates of violence. Workplace victimization, like most other types of victimizations …

Black, White, And Read All Over: Exploring Racial Bias In Print Media Coverage Of Serial Rape Cases, Lauren Wright

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

The discussion of race and crime has been a long-standing interest of researchers, with statistics consistently showing an overrepresentation of non-white offenders compared to their white counterparts – specifically in relation to violent crimes such as murder and rape. Prior research has found that about 46 percent of serial rapists are black, a fact that correlates with other sensationalized violent crimes such as mass murder and serial murder. The news media are the primary sources of this kind of information for the general public, with previous studies acknowledging that the media primarily focus on discussing non-white offenders in their crime-based …

Determinants Of Terrorist Target Selection: A Quantitative Analysis, Taylor Haywood

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Existing research on the subject of terrorism is vast, spanning causes of terrorism, the membership of terrorist groups, types of terrorist attacks, and more. One area of terrorism research, though, has received only limited consideration: terrorist target selection. What research does exist explains target selection almost exclusively as a function of ideology (Asal et al. 2009, 270 and 274; Drake 1998b, 54-56 and 58). However, such a limited causal focus obscures other possible, and probable, explanations of terrorist target selection. This paper proposes an alternative explanation of terrorist target selection that includes ideological and terrorist group capability variables, as well …

Racial And Gender Justice In The Child Welfare And Child Support Systems, Margaret F. Brinig

Journal Articles

While divorcing couples in the United States have been studied for many years, separating unmarried couples and their children have proven more difficult to analyze. Recently there have been successful longitudinal ethnographic and survey-based studies. This piece uses documents from a single Indiana county’s unified family court (called the Probate Court) to trace the effects of race and gender on unmarried families, beginning with a sample of 386 children for whom paternity petitions were brought in four months of 2008. It confirms prior theoretical work on racial differences in noncustodial parenting and poses new questions about how incarceration and gender …

Stop Asking Which Came First, The Jail Or The Criminal - Start Reinvesting In Justice In Maryland, Bridget Lowrie

University of Baltimore Law Forum

The numerous cries for reform of the United States criminal justice system in recent time are not without merit based on an examination of the prison population. Despite violent crime being at record low rates in the United States, the prison population has expanded tremendously. On the global stage, the United States is the leader in incarceration rates. The United States has more people incarcerated than any other country, including China, Russia, and India. Looking at a local level, Maryland is not immune to this trend. In Maryland, while violent crime is on the decline, the amount of time an …

The Impact Of Mass Incarceration And Social Issues Of Institutionalization On School Violence In Youths, Stephen C. Stanko, Gordon A. Crews

Criminal Justice Faculty Publications

In this chapter the authors examine the impact that mass incarceration has had upon children in the United States over the last several decades. Inherent in this examination is to discuss the impact of institutionalization on the propensity of committing violent acts by children. The authors also discuss the impact of these American phenomena on many aspects of juvenile delinquency and violence.

School Killers Speak: A Comprehensive Examination Of Gang-Related School Violence Perpetrators In K-12 American Schools, Gordon A. Crews

Criminal Justice Faculty Publications

The purpose of this work is to examine the perpetrators of acts of school violence in K–12 schools in the United States. It is hoped that this examination will offer new and unique insight into the extremely complex issues surrounding juvenile violence in general and school violence in particular. There have been myriad works categorizing, theorizing, and profiling the causes of these types of events and the offenders who commit them. The problem is that very few have actually sought answers where they lie, from those who actually know why an event happened—the individuals who committed the act. …

School Killers Speak: A Comprehensive Examination Of Associated And/Or Mentally Ill And Non-Associated And/Or Mentally Ill School Violence Perpetrators In K-12 American Schools, Gordon A. Crews

Criminal Justice Faculty Publications

No abstract provided.

The American Gun Culture: Potential Impact On K-12 School Violence, Gordon A. Crews, Garrison A. Crews

Criminal Justice Faculty Publications

Most researchers insist on combining all school shootings/violence incidents into one type of act and therefore one type of actor and one type of event. However, public mass shootings, university environments, international incidents, and K-12 school shootings and violence are not the same. They have different catalysts, motivations, types of occurrence, and offenders. The research for this work is part of a comprehensive examination of 78 currently incarcerated U.S. K-12 school violence offenders and their acts between 1979 and 2011 in 33 states. Topics examined include: weapons used and injuries incurred, availability of guns, where the gun or weapon …

Stimulating Critical Literacy Consciousness, Kathryn S. Hastings

International Christian Community of Teacher Educators Journal

This story from the field recounts how, after being an educator for over ten years, I became aware that I had been responsible for misrepresenting information to my first-grade students. This difficult realization shook me to the core, but it also became the impetus for me to learn about critical pedagogy and critical literacy. Both of these educational practices align with my faith and have been transformational to my teaching. As a result, I am able to teach my pre-service and graduate students how to instruct in more socially-just ways.

Black Male Genocide: Sanctioned Segregation In American Policy, Alton Maxel James

Wayne State University Dissertations

College degree attainment for Black Americans has significantly fallen their majority counterparts. While educational attainment for this minority demographic has been less than average, a secondary trend emerges. Despite the rises in graduation rates, Black males consistently earn a smaller percentage of the degrees garnered by Black students. Furthermore, policies throughout sectors of American society produce segregation that manifests as genocidal realities in the lives of Black men—including college graduation. Thus, the purpose of this research was to determine the effect of neighborhood segregation on Black men and women’s 4 and 6-year graduation probability and determine if Black men reduce …

Civilizing Criminal Settlements, Russell M. Gold, Carissa Byrne Hessick, F. Andrew Hessick

Articles

No abstract provided.

The Cost Of Inexperience, Mirit Eyal-Cohen

Articles

Free market entry is vital in preventing concentration of market power and eliminating large deadweight losses Yet in recent years studies show that newcomers are less successful than existing firms that have diversifies their products in the market What might explain this phenomenonThis Article unveils a regulatory catch 22 It reveals that although a regulation may be efficient in correcting a certain market failure its distributional effects may create another It exposes the degree to which "economies of experience" in regulation create significant disadvantages to newcomers and provide substantial advantages to oldtimers Being wellversed in their marketplace oldtimers possess knowledge …

2017 Georgia Southern University Men's Soccer Media Guide, Georgia Southern University

Men's Soccer Records

• Georgia Southern 2017 Men's Soccer Media Guide & Record Book

Structure And Service Delivery Approach Of The Children’S Bureau’S Resource Centers And Implementation Centers, Tammy Richards, Michelle Graef, Kathy Deserly, Peter Watson, Mark Ells

Center on Children, Families, and the Law: Faculty Publications

The Children’s Bureau (CB) provides a system of training and technical assistance (T/TA) to build the capacity of state and tribal child welfare systems, with the goal of improving outcomes for children and families. During the time period of 2008-2014, this infrastructure included ten National Child Welfare Resource Centers (NRCs), five Child Welfare Implementation Centers (ICs), and a Training and Technical Assistance Coordination Center (TTACC). Individual ICs and NRCs differed in structure and content expertise, yet they served the same jurisdictions and at times provided services concurrently. To increase cohesion and consistency, the NRCs, ICs, TTACC, and CB worked together …

Consumer Credit In America: Past, Present, And Future, Pamela Foohey, Jim Hawkins, Creola Johnson, Nathalie Martin

Faculty Scholarship

We began organizing this symposium at the start of 2016 with the recognition that consumer credit and financial services were in a state of flux prompted in significant part by the Great Recession. The Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act brought with it the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau. The CFPB’s creation marked the most significant moment in modern American consumer law. Consumers gained an advocate charged with protecting them through researching, monitoring, and regulating the providers of consumer financial products and services, enforcing federal consumer financial protection laws, and, as importantly, empowering consumers.

The Prisonization Of America's Public Schools, Maryam Ahranjani

Faculty Scholarship

Over the past generation, episodes of mass school violence in American public schools have led to the “prisonization” of schools. The problems associated with prisonization practices have been identified and well-documented in the legal literature over the past few years, and they include the school-to-prison pipeline, as well as the over-policing of vulnerable populations like students with disabilities and African-American and Latino children. This piece seeks to contribute to existing literature in two ways. While national attention has turned to the lack of rigorous research on the effectiveness of prisonization practices, and studies are underway to identify whether prisonization practices …

Curbing Excessive Force: A Primer On Barriers To Police Accountability, Kami N. Chavis, Conor Degnan

Faculty Publications

This Issue Brief summarizes some of the traditional mechanisms for holding police accountable for misconduct, offers a critique of each, and ends with suggestions for the future of police accountability. Part I focuses on some of the legal and structural impediments to police accountability including the inherent conflicts of interest that frequently prevent local prosecutors from prosecuting police officers accused of using excessive force. Part I also discusses how the doctrine of qualified immunity shields officers from civil liability when a suspect is harmed or dies in police custody. Part II explores how the Department of Justice (DOJ) has failed …

"Make Him An Offer He Can't Refuse"-- Mezzanatto Waivers As Lynchpin Of Prosecutorial Overreach, Christopher B. Mueller

Publications

Plea bargaining is the dominant means of disposing of criminal charges in the United States, in both state and federal courts. This administrative mechanism has become a system that is grossly abusive of individual rights, leading to many well-known maladies of the criminal justice system, which include overcharging, overincarceration, convictions on charges that would likely fail at trial, and even conviction of “factually innocent” persons. Instrumental in the abuses of plea bargaining is the so-called Mezzanatto waiver, which takes its name from a 1995 Supreme Court decision that approved the practice of getting defendants to agree that anything they say …

Firearms In The Family, Carolyn B. Ramsey

Publications

This Article considers firearms prohibitions for domestic violence offenders, in light of recent Supreme Court decisions and the larger, national debate about gun control. Unlike other scholarship in the area, it confronts the costs of ratcheting up the scope and enforcement of such firearms bans and argues that the politicization of safety has come at the expense of a sound approach to gun control in the context of intimate-partner abuse. In doing so, it expands scholarly arguments against mandatory, one-size-fits-all criminal justice responses to domestic violence in a direction that other critics have been reluctant to go, perhaps because of …

Spectrum, 2017, Northwestern College

Spectrum literary magazine

Literary journal

Gender's Role In Abolitionist Pedagogy: A Fictionalized Autoethnography, Shelby A. Shaw

Open Access Dissertations

The purpose of this dissertation research was to explore the role of gender in prison-based abolitionist pedagogy. In order to achieve this objective, the following research questions framed this study:

(1) How did institutional gatekeepers influence my experience with gender’s role in prison-based abolitionist pedagogy?

(2) In my experiences within the cultures of different prison facilities and programs what role did gender play in prison-based abolitionist pedagogy?

(3) What role did gender play in my overall experience with prison-based abolitionist pedagogy?

Using autoethnographic methods, my firsthand experience as a prison educator and researcher comprised the primary data for this study. …

An Empirical Analysis Of The Relationship Among Social Institutions And Juvenile Arrests In Virginia, Linh Thi T. Nguyen

Theses and Dissertations

The United States has unusually high rates of violence among developed nations, including the victimization of and perpetration by youth. Using Institutional Anomie Theory (IAT) as the theoretical framework, this study analyzes the relationships between social institutions and crime and the interactive relationships among the institutions in a sample of Virginia localities. Multivariate analyses are conducted to produce additive and multiplicative models, and simple slope analyses are conducted to clarify interaction/moderation effects. Findings yield mixed support for IAT. Localities with higher levels of monthly welfare per recipient (a measure of polity) have lower juvenile violent crime arrest rates, and welfare …

Recognizing Her Characteristics As A Leader: An Examination Of The Self-Assessment Of Women Leaders As Shaped By Social Identity Theory And The Concept Of Double Consciousness, John C. Gregory

Theses and Dissertations

Women leaders are grossly underrepresented in police and Army organizations and relevant research suggests that women face the most significant challenges in reaching leadership positions in male dominant organizations. Although there have been recent policy changes to increase opportunities for women in police and Army organizations, women are still barely represented in senior command and primary staff positions in police and Army organizations. When women are underrepresented, particularly at the most senior ranks, there are implications regarding cultural, structural, and attitudinal challenges that simply should not still exist in these organizations. Using qualitative methods, this study examined the experiences of …

Assessing The Implementation Of Campus Safety Policies In Virginia Community Colleges: An Analysis Of The Forces At Play In Higher Education Institutional-Level Policymaking, Steven T. Keener

Theses and Dissertations

The purpose of this study was to assess the extent to which community colleges have implemented major post-Virginia Tech campus safety recommendations. In addition to gaining a comprehensive overview of the safety policies and practices in place, this study assessed if campus safety policy implementation levels at the community colleges correlated with institutional characteristics, and the internal and external forces that helped drive the implementation of these policies. Focusing specifically upon the Virginia Community College System, data on the policies and practices in place at each of the 23 Virginia community colleges were collected from institutional websites and through follow-up …

West Africa – The Region’S Pivotal Role In International Drug Trafficking, Richard Rousseau

Khazar Journal of Humanities and Social Sciences

Africa is a pivotal continent for international drug traffickers and criminal organizations. According to the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC) estimates, approximately 40 to 50 tons of cocaine destined for the European market passes through the African continent each year.1 The illicit profits from such activities amount to at least 1.8 billion dollars, but it could be much larger according to some estimates. Such profits provide drug traffickers with the financial means to destabilize already weak governmental structures and law enforcement institutions in various African countries. This massive profits fuel a trade that has far reaching consequences …