Digital Commons Network^™

Illinois State University, One Hundred And Sixty-First Annual Commencement, May 2020, Illinois State University

Commencement Programs

Illinois State University
One Hundred and Sixty-First Annual Commencement
May 2020

Access To Justice And Dispute Resolution Across Cultures, Sukhsimranjit Singh

Fordham Law Review

There is a saying in the United States: the justice one receives is the justice one can afford. All too often, this saying proves true for both lower- and middle-class individuals. For the greatly impoverished, the access to justice crisis is twofold: part of the problem is knowing when to seek legal help and another is ensuring adequate delivery of legal assistance on request. Middle- class individuals face a different challenge, as they surpass the income threshold for free civil public legal aid but cannot afford the rising costs of conventional litigation. The problem persists across different cultures. This Article …

Convictions As Guilt, Anna Roberts

Fordham Law Review

A curious tension exists in scholarly discourse about the criminal legal system. On the one hand, a copious body of work exposes a variety of facets of the system that jeopardize the reliability of convictions. These include factors whose influence is pervasive: the predominance of plea bargaining, for example, and the subordination of the defense. On the other hand, scholars often discuss people who have criminal convictions in a way that appears to assume crime commission. This apparent assumption obscures crucial failings of the system, muddies the role of academia, and, given the unequal distribution of criminal convictions, risks compounding …

Students' Perceptions Of School Resource Officer Quality And School Safety, William Cooper

Theses and Dissertations

In recent years, school resource officers (SROs) and their role in the context of school safety have become a popular topic of research. In this study, I analyze data from 31,156 students from over 100 schools in Kentucky to better understand how students perceive SROs and the impact of SROs on their perceptions of school safety. The findings reveal that males, students who liked having an SRO at their school, students who saw their SRO at several locations on campus during the typical school day, and students who viewed their SRO as more than a law enforcer felt safer at …

“No One Ever Forced Them To”: Law Enforcement Perceptions Of And Experiences With Human Sex Trafficking, Chloe Parker

Theses and Dissertations

In this thesis, I explore how law enforcement officials in Mississippi and Alabama make sense of and respond to human sex trafficking cases. The central questions guiding this research project are: How do law enforcement officials perceive sex trafficking and what does this mean for victim identification and treatment? By conducting 20 interviews with law enforcement officials, I offer insight into how the training, or lack of training, officers receive impacts victim identification, labeling, and treatment. Further, I examine how perceptions, experiences, and training work to influence officer responses to those that do not fit a typical victim narrative, such …

Relationships Between Parental Involvement, Socioeconomic Status And Literacy Skills, On Graduation Rates, Juvenile Incarceration Rates, And Psychiatric Hospitalization Rates, For Mississippi Youth, Karla Weir

Theses and Dissertations

The purpose of this study was to examine the relationship between two sets of variables with the first including parental involvement, literacy skills, and socio-economic status and the second including graduation rates, incarceration rates and psychiatric hospitalization rates. The study methodology included three separate multiple regression analyses. Data were collected from archival sources through the Mississippi Department of Education (MDE), Mississippi Department of Mental Health, and the Mississippi Department of Human Services Youth Divisions. The results of this study indicated that socio-economic status has a statistically significant relationship with high school graduation rates and youth psychiatric hospitalization rates in the …

One Skill At A Time- Friends Outside, Jocelyn Lopez Sanchez

Capstone Projects and Master's Theses

Friends Outside is a non-profit organization that provides services to in and out of custody clients with their re-entry into the community. Clients who are in-custody are not learning the adequate skills to integrate back into the community and are not engaged in the classes offered by Friends Outside, which could build these skills. This is due to either seeing the material repeatedly or believing the material does not pertain to them or is uninteresting. When clients don’t engage in the classes it leads to higher rates of recidivism, job insecurity and mental health concerns. The project focused on providing …

Mental Health Awareness In Arroyo Seco Academy, Elia Pizano

Capstone Projects and Master's Theses

Arroyo Seco Academy is an elementary school located in Greenfield (CA) serving students from k through 6th grade. The capstone project and its implementation took place at Arroyo Seco’s counseling department. The community that is served by the counseling department is children who experience social and behavioral issues. There School has seen an increase of mental health illness in Monterey County that affects children directly and indirectly. The project; named Mental Health Awareness in Arroyo Seco Academy, consisted of an educational intervention that focused on 6 th grade students. The intervention focused on the importance of mental health and touched …

Rancho Cielo Value Added Program Evaluation, Yacin Cardenas Alfaro

Capstone Projects and Master's Theses

Rancho Cielo Youth Campus is a 501 (c) (3) non-profit organization located in Salinas CA. The agency serves underserved and disconnected youth that have dropped out of school, are on probation, or under truancy regulations in Monterey County. The problem this capstone addressed is that the recidivism rate for at-risk youth is too high. Rancho Cielo’s Value-added program seeks to alleviate this problem by training youth in agriculture technology as a way to connect them with careers in the sector. The capstone project consisted of a program evaluation that documented the program implementation and the creation of a program logic …

Restorative Justice Practices: Addressing The Eleven Percent, Marshal Galvan Jr.

Capstone Projects and Master's Theses

This paper analyzes, assesses, and introduces the importance of a “Needs Assessment” that can potentially record the effectiveness of the Victim Offender Reconciliation Program (VORP) practices with its youth offenders. VORP is a program within the purview of the Restorative Justice Partners, INC. organization. The functions of this program works closely with the probation department of Monterey County, along with various community partners; its practices are funneled through a restorative justice lens. Current data will show that 89% of youth offenders who have successfully completed the VORP program and are closed compliant do not reoffend, meanwhile the other 11% recidivates …

An Investigation Of White-Collar Criminal Sentencing Disparities In Six Federal District Courts, Lauren Frances Elizabeth Galloway

UNLV Theses, Dissertations, Professional Papers, and Capstones

Since the turn of the century, sentencing research has consistently shown that certain aspects of the social context generally condition individual-level sentencing variations. I further explore this postulation in assessing how legal changes affect courtroom decisions; and in analyzing how extra-legal offender characteristics and judicial attributes influence the likelihood and length of white-collar incarceration sentences. The study hypothesized an emergent sociotemporal trend, largely driven by implementation of white-collar sentencing legislation and a return to judicial discretion, whereby white-collar offenders sentenced in the years post-Booker would receive more lenient punishments (i.e., less likely to be incarcerated and shorter incarceration sentences) than …

Analysis Of Cannabinoids In Serum By Gc-Ms/Ms, Christie Cannarozzi

Student Theses

Due to recent changes in federal and state legislations, the availability and consumption of cannabis products have increased in the United States. The expanded use of recreational and medicinal cannabis products increases the importance of implementing sensitive and selective instrumental methods in toxicological laboratories, as legal implications may arise in forensic cases, such as driving under the influence of drugs (DUID). The purpose of this study was to perform a cross-validation for the quantitative analysis of cannabinoids (Δ9-tetrahydrocannabinol, cannabidiol, cannabinol, 11-hydroxy-Δ9-tetrahydrocannabinol, and 11-nor-9-carboxy-Δ9-tetrahydrocannabinol) in serum by gas chromatography coupled to triple quadrupole tandem mass spectrometry (GCTQ). This method was fully …

Dna Methylation Analysis For Tissue And Age Determination For Forensic Human Identification, Lauren Satcher

Master's Theses

Forensic Science is a vital aspect of criminal investigations and new techniques that could be used to advance this field are constantly being investigated. There are current forensic techniques to identify relevant tissues, but tissue specific methylation markers are being examined as a new way for identifying tissue type. In addition, methylation markers are being investigated as a method to determine other relevant information about donors, such as the age of the individual.

In this study, methylation markers were investigated to determine tissue specific markers to differentiate sperm from blood, saliva, and vaginal epithelial cells, and age specific markers to …

Identification Of Saliva Using Dna Methylation Analysis For Forensic Use, Elizabeth Staples

Master's Theses

The identification of biological fluids is a precursor to determine if further human identification is required in a forensic setting. There are four forensically-relevant biological fluids: blood, semen, vaginal epithelial tissue, and saliva. While serological testing can identify these tissue types to some degree of accuracy, there has recently been momentum in research to use DNA methylation for tissue identification.

In the current study, five potential tissue-specific methylation markers were studied in order to identify locations in the genome that would differentiate saliva from other tissue types. Genomic DNA was extracted from each sample, followed by bisulfite modification, polymerase chain …

Toward The Development Of A Practitioner-Friendly Delay Tolerance Assessment And Treatment For Typically-Developing Children, Kaitlynn Mary Gokey

Theses and Dissertations

Delay discounting is the decrease in the value of a reinforcer as a function of the delay to the delivery of the reinforcer. Individuals who exhibit steep delay discounting are commonly referred to as ‘impulsive’ and are at a greater risk of behavior problems such as poor academic performance, addiction, and excessive risk-taking. One effective intervention is a concurrent activity, in which the individual must complete a task demand during the waiting period. Rules and rulegoverned behavior also play a critical role in improving delay discounting rates across populations, and may be used as an intervention to promote self-controlled responses. …

Examining Corporate Blameworthiness In Relation To Federal Organizational Sentencing For Probation And Corporate Monitors., Emily M. Homer

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Organizations that have benefitted from the commission of federal crimes committed by their employees may be sentenced to federal criminal penalties. Two of these potential penalties include probation and the requirement to implement a corporate monitor. The federal guidelines provide suggestions for sentencing probation that echo the theoretical focal concern of blameworthiness. This research used eight years of United States Sentencing Commission data covering 2011 to 2018 (n= 1,224) to examine if organizations were being sentenced to probation and monitoring consistent with the federal guidelines and focal concern of blameworthiness. The study examined nine potential measures of blameworthiness …

Predictors Of Binge Drinking Among Military Veterans: A General Strain Theory Approach., Emily Ann Hayden

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

This dissertation is theoretically informed by General Strain Theory (GST) (Agnew 1992, 2002), and examines binge drinking within a military veteran population. It begins with an assessment on reform and focuses on shaping knowledge around the issue of binge drinking by military veterans. The current study uses Agnew’s GST to argue for an understanding of how strain and stress can affect individuals who have served in the military and acknowledges how this strain can lead to negative coping mechanisms such as binge drinking. The latter part of the dissertation argues that understanding Agnew’s GST (1992, 2002) with a military population …

The Moral Agency Of The State: What Does A Virtuous State Look Like And Is Allowing Capitalism Virtuous?, Austin Cable

Undergraduate Honors Theses

It has become quite noticeable that modern world politics across the globe has lacked a guiding morality in which we can hold states morally accountable in both the international and domestic spheres. This can be seen in the never-ending wars and occupations across the Middle East, South-East Asia, and many other places around the world. Now, attempting to implement such guiding moral principles seems to be an impossible task mainly because of the massive difficulties that one would face in trying to get the 195 countries around the world to agree on such principles. Because of this, most will probably …

The Development Of Singapore Law: A Bicentennial Retrospective, Andrew Phang, Yihan Goh, Jerrold Soh

Research Collection Yong Pung How School Of Law

The present article reviews (in broad brushstrokes) the status of Singapore law during its bicentennial year. It is not only about origins but also about growth – in particular, the autochthonous or indigenous growth of the Singapore legal system (particularly since the independence of Singapore as a nation state on 9 August 1965). The analysis of this growth is divided into quantitative as well as qualitative parts. In particular, the former constitutes an empirical analysis which attempts – for the very first time − to tell the development of Singapore law through numbers, building on emerging techniques in data visualisation …

The Impact Of Hurricane Katrina On Crime In Louisiana, Eleanor A. Casey

Honors Theses

The literature surrounding variables affecting crime is infinite; however, little of that research, especially in economics, focuses on how hurricanes affect crime. In addition, much of the research that has been conducted on this is conflicting. Thus, this paper seeks to shed light on this topic using Hurricane Katrina’s impact on Louisiana as a case study. Using crime data from the FBI UCR and ICPSR from 1995-2014, I employ a differences-in-differences (DD) strategy to estimate the hurricane’s effect on burglary, larceny, motor vehicle theft, robbery, aggravated assault, and murder. My findings suggest burglary, larceny, and robbery increase following the hurricane, …

California’S Proposition 47: The Safe Neighborhoods And Schools Act, Edith Garcia Fong

Master's Projects

Proposition 47 made drastic changes to California’s criminal justice system. Critics and proponents of the measure have made sweeping claims about its impact on crime trends and the criminal justice system, in general. However, many of these claims are based on assumptions and are not based on actual data and research. Given the fact that California’s prison population is still subject to court oversight, it is essential that the effectiveness of Proposition 47 as a solution to this issue be evaluated. If the state hopes to maintain compliance with the court-mandated prison population caps, it must ensure to exhaust all …

How Can Embedded Criminologists, Police Pracademics, And Crime Analysts Help Increase Police-Led Program Evaluations? A Survey Of Authors Cited In The Evidence-Based Policing Matrix, Eric L. Piza, Json Szkola, Kwan-Lamra Blount-Hill

Publications and Research

Evidence-based policing emphasizes the evaluation of interventions to create a catalog of effective programs and practices. Program evaluation has primarily been considered the purview of academic researchers, with police agencies typically uninvolved in the evaluation of their own interventions. Scholars have recently advocated for police to take more ownership over program evaluation, often arguing for an increased role of three primary entities: embedded criminologists, police pracademics, and crime analysts. While an emerging body of literature has explored these entities individually, research has yet to explore the unique contributions each can make to police-led science. The current study is a survey …

Dfl-Opt : A Daily Fantasy Lineup Optimizer, Francis Aurori

Theses, Dissertations and Culminating Projects

[Background] Daily fantasy sports (DFS) are a variety of fantasy sports where contests take place in a matter of days or hours rather than over a whole season. A disparity exists between skilled professionals and casual participants in the creation of line-ups (i.e. teams) w.r.t their chances of winning in these contests. The purpose of the current project was to create a user-friendly, open source platform (named DFL-Opt) for participants of all skill levels to utilize in the creation of DFS line-ups. In addition, efficacy of the DFL-Opt platform was determined by playing the lineups generated by the DFL-Opt tool …

Clinical Supervisor Self-Perceived Addiction Competencies In Response To The Opioid Epidemic, Elizabeth A. Conte

Theses, Dissertations and Culminating Projects

As the United States is facing an unprecedented national opioid epidemic it is essential that clinical supervisors who oversee the practice of Licensed Professional Counselors demonstrate understanding, knowledge, and application of addiction competencies. The purpose of this study was twofold: to identify the self-perceived addiction competencies of Approved Clinical Supervisors (ACS), and to examine the predictive value of addiction education (graduate and training courses), direct substance use counseling, and generalist counseling experience in relation to supervisors' self-perceived addiction competency. The results of multiple linear regression analyses indicated that substance use counseling experience had a significant relationship with self-perceived addiction competency. …

How Do Student And Secondary School Characteristics Explain College English I Completion In A Rural Arkansas Community College?, Jessica Rohlman

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Community colleges serve diverse populations that may not be as academically prepared as at four-year institutions. Accountability of higher education institutions is ever-increasing in importance, so understanding the contributing factors to student success is critical. Students bring a unique set of characteristics to the community college, including individual traits and secondary school experiences. Many studies have examined these characteristics at large urban or mid-western institutions, but few in rural settings. Rural areas of the United States have lower rates of educational attainment than other areas, which often translates to lower incomes. It is the mission of community colleges to train …

Show Me St. Louis: Risk Assessment Through An 80-20 Framework, Hannah K. Steinman

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Researchers of crime and place have long explored the uneven distribution of crime within the built environment and repeatedly identified where crime is concentrated. The longstanding question pertaining to crime at the micro-level, is why crime concentrates. This study operates within environmental criminology, through an 80-20 framework, to explore the spatial distribution of crime across streets with crime generators and attractors in St. Louis, Missouri to fill this gap in the literature. A conjunctive analysis of case configurations is used to identify unique high and low-crime street profiles. Crime data from 2018 – 2019 are used from the St. Louis …

Journalism Vs. Activism: How The Social Impact Of Journalism Has Evolved, Kathryn Serrano

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

The aim of this study was to question the objectivity norm that arose in journalism in the 20th century, and analyze what objectivity means today in the context of investigative journalism. This study examined the mission statements and objectives of the investigative nonprofits The Marshall Project and Injustice Watch, which are two publications with specific mission statements that cover the United States criminal justice system. The examination of these nonprofits helps explore a question of where the line is drawn between journalism and activism. The researcher interviewed 25 journalists from mainstream media outlets, the nonprofits discussed above, and other investigative …

The Impact Of Body-Worn Cameras On Use Of Force And Citizen Complaints: A Quasi-Experimental Study At The Newport News Police Department, Michael Jon Kyle

Dissertations

Several questionable officer involved shootings and perceived abuses of authority disproportionately involving minority citizens have resulted in public outcry, protests, and nationwide scrutiny of police in recent years. The resulting police legitimacy crisis has prompted agencies to rapidly equip officers with body-worn video cameras (BWCs). BWC advocates lauded the findings of an early study that attributed significant reductions in use of force incidents and citizen complaints to the devices and it is this and a handful of other short-term studies upon which the claims of these benefits are predicated. However, subsequent research has produced mixed findings and the sustainability of …

Awakening From Androcentrism: Calls For Measurement Of Gender And Sexuality In Criminology, Hannah Gateley

Masters Theses and Doctoral Dissertations

In recent years, calls have been made to progress the inclusivity of criminology, a field historically dominated by males. While specialty journals, such as Feminist Criminology, permit and encourage inclusive and progressive conceptualizations of social constructs such as gender and sexuality, these recent calls have noted mainstream criminology’s historical reluctance to such progress. The current study examined articles published in the past five years in a mainstream criminological journal and a well-respected victimization journal to examine inclusion and conceptualization of gender and sexuality. Gender and sexuality were included more in the diversity-focused victimization journal that was analyzed, compared to the …

Those Who Spectate Are Bound To Murder, Kaitlyn Michelle Samons

All Theses

This thesis is a criticism of chroniclers. As is said at the end of the introduction, this research not only criticizes poor investigative work (whether it be intentionally malicious, or simply lazy) from the past, but also reinforces a standard of expectation for those who wish to go into any field of research and/or writing. As writers are the last defense against the erasure of history, it stands to measure that there should be a higher expectation of those of them granted the authority to chronicle history. However, it is obvious based on the case studies of Native American lynchings …