Digital Commons Network^™

Person-Environment Fit And Retention Of Racially Minoritized College Students: Recommendations For Faculty, Support Staff, And Administrators, Alex A. Ajayi, Lauren L. Mitchell, Sarah C. Nelson, Jillian Fish, Lovey H.M. Peissig, José M. Causadias, Moin Syed

Faculty Authored Articles

Although colleges in the United States have become increasingly racially and ethnically diverse, degree attainment remains disproportionately low among students from underrepresented and minoritized racial backgrounds. In this paper, we discuss the interactive influence of both person and environment factors in shaping academic persistence and argue that college administrators, faculty, and student support staff can intervene and take specific steps to improve the academic experience of racially minoritized college students. To this end, we offer specific evidence-based recommendations for campus leaders and stakeholders on how to adapt their campus community to facilitate the requisite person-environment fit to maximize academic persistence.

Criminal Justice Update - June 2021, Patrick Mahoney

Criminal Justice Updates

The Criminal Justice Update is a monthly newsletter created by the Adams County Bar Foundation Fellow providing updates in criminal justice policy coming from Pennsylvania's courts and legislature as well as the US Supreme Court.

Contents:

• Updates from PA Governor's Office (no updates this month)
• Updates from the PA Legislature
• Updates from the Courts
• U.S. Supreme Court: Criminal Law & Procedure
• PA Supreme Court: Criminal Law & Procedure
• PA Superior Court: Criminal Law & Procedure

Dean's Report To Library Advisory Council June 2021, Central Washington University

Library Advisory Council for CWU Libraries

Report from the Dean of Libraries to the Library Advisory Council.

Graduate Catalogue 2019 - 2021, Tennessee State University

Tennessee State University Graduate Catalogues

No abstract provided.

2021 Summer - Schedule Of Classes, Office Of The Registrar, East Tennessee State University

Registration Resources

No abstract provided.

Plea Bargaining For The People, Daniel S. Mcconkie Jr.

College of Law Faculty Publications

Our criminal justice system must be democratic enough to allow for significant citizen participation. Unfortunately, our current system cuts the people out. Instead of juries, plea bargaining professionals like prosecutors, defense attorneys, and judges decide most cases. Plea bargaining does efficiently process cases but, in addition to its well-known coercive aspects that warp case outcomes, ignores what I call “criminal justice citizenship.” This refers to the people’s privilege to participate on an equal basis in the criminal justice system. That participation strengthens our democracy, shores up the legitimacy of the system, and helps to ensure that the system, within constitutional …

How Can Child Welfare Agencies Leverage Data To Address Important Workforce Questions?, Quality Improvement Center For Workforce Development

QIC-Tips

Child welfare agencies experience workforce turnover (14-20% annually) that can be costly and result in poorer outcomes for children and families. Although turnover is often acknowledged as a significant problem, it is not one that is easily understood or addressed. The following tips and strategies being implemented by jurisdictions working with the QIC-WD may be helpful for child welfare administrators, legislators, and other policymakers seeking to utilize agency data to answer pertinent child welfare workforce questions.

• Understand what data is collected and stored, and where. Oftentimes, there are multiple systems used by agencies during the employee lifecycle that may contain …

Researching Marijuana Law, Seth Quidachay-Swan

Law Librarian Scholarship

This article provides a brief overview of the current legal framework governing the regulation of marijuana at the federal and state levels in the United States. It also provides an overview of the state of Michigan’s current regulatory framework and resources for attorneys interested in learning more about marijuana regulation.

Developing A Diagnostic Tool Of A Community’S Health, Ruth Kurtycz

Dissertations

Where we live can affect nearly every aspect of our lives, including how long those lives will be. Previous studies have demonstrated large health disparities between communities in the United States; since the health of a community can significantly impact its residents, evaluating and predicting community health is of interest to many people. Currently the Federal government collects and publishes data on community-level demographics, housing, crime rates, and disease. State-level and non-governmental agencies track and share community housing prices, school performance, neighborhood safety, and other characteristics. In short, there is a wealth of information but the work being done around …

Comparative International Law And The Social Science Approach, Emilia Justyna Powell

Chicago Journal of International Law

The social science approach has already contributed and continues to contribute to the study of international law. In particular, research that incorporates the social science approach has provided much insight into reality and day-to-day functioning of international law by going beyond historical and normative description and providing generalizable theories. If based on a sound theoretical framework that is subsequently tested in a rigorous scientific manner, the social science approach allows us to uncover a multiplicity of factors that commingle to shape states’ preferences and actions toward international law. Combining insights provided by analysis of large-N data with qualitative methodology allows …

Talking Back In Court, M. Eve Hanan

Washington Law Review

People charged with crimes often speak directly to the judge presiding over their case. Yet, what can be seen in courtrooms across the U.S. is that defendants rarely “talk back” in court, meaning that they rarely challenge authority’s view of the law, the crime, the defendant, the court’s procedure, or the fairness of the proposed sentence.

With few exceptions, legal scholars have treated the occasions when defendants speak directly to the court as a problem to be solved by appointing more lawyers and better lawyers. While effective representation is crucial, this Article starts from the premise that defendants have important …

The Problem With Assumptions: Revisiting The Dark Figure Of Sexual Recidivism, Tamara Rice Lave, Jj Prescott, Grady Bridges

Law & Economics Working Papers

What is the actual rate of sexual recidivism given the well-known fact that many crimes go unreported? This is a difficult and important problem, and in The Dark Figure of Sexual Recidivism, Nicholas Scurich and Richard S. John (2019) attempt to make progress on it by “estimate[ing] actual recidivism rates given observed rates of reoffending” (p.172). In this article, we show that the math in their probabilistic model is flawed, but more important, we demonstrate that their conclusions follow ineluctably from their empirical assumptions and the unrepresentative empirical research they cite to benchmark their calculations. Scurich and John contend that …

Propaganda Warfare On The International Criminal Court, Sara L. Ochs

Michigan Journal of International Law

Propaganda warfare, while novel in nomenclature, is far from new in practice. In an era dominated by constant news, battles for public opinion complement physical attacks. In fact, “winning modern wars is as much dependent on carrying domestic and international public opinion as it is on defeating the enemy on the battlefield.” The fight for public opinion has become so valuable to military initiatives that the U.S. Department of Defense Law of War Manual specifically recognizes propaganda directed towards “civilian or neutral audiences” as a “permissible means of war.”

Stay Put; Remain Local; Go Elsewhere: Three Strategies Of Women’S Domestic Violence Help Seeking, Janet C. Bowstead

Dignity: A Journal of Analysis of Exploitation and Violence

In published domestic violence strategies, there is a tendency to focus on service provision and service responses in each administrative location; rather than recognising the extent to which women and children move through places due to domestic abuse. Whilst a woman’s help-seeking may be local—if she has the information and resources, and judges it possible to do so—such help-seeking whilst staying put is only one of many strategies tried by women experiencing domestic violence. Women’s strategies are often under-recognised and under-respected by the very service providers which should be expected to be supporting women’s recovery from abuse. This article uses …

To “Defund” The Police, Jessica M. Eaglin

Articles by Maurer Faculty

Much public debate circles around grassroots activists’ demand to “defund the police,” raised in public consciousness in the summer of 2020. Yet confusion about the demand is pervasive. This Essay adopts a literal interpretation of “defund” to clarify and distinguish four alternative, substantive policy positions that legal reforms related to police funding can validate. It argues that the policy debates between these positions exist on top of the ideological critique launched by grassroots activists, who use the term “defund the police” as a discursive tactic to make visible deeper transformations in government practices that normalize the structural marginalization of black …

Correlates Of Exam Performance In An Introductory Statistics Course: Basic Math Skills Along With Self- Reported Psychological/Behavioral And Demographic Variables, Laura A. Rabin, Anjali Krishnan, Rose Bergdoll, Joshua Fogel

Publications and Research

This study investigated whether basic mathematics skills are associated with undergraduate psychology statistics course performance while simultaneously considering self-reported psychological/behavioral and demographic variables. Participants (n = 460) completed a Math Assessment for College Students (MACS), which included questions ranging from calculating percentages to graphical interpretation. The researchers used a discriminant correspondence analysis to reveal differences in course performance evaluated as the average of three exam grades. For the variation in the average exam scores accounted for by our model, the MACS scores provided the largest contribution. Other variables associated with better exam grades included white ethnicity, non-transfer status, lower year …

Further Evaluation Of The Associations Between Psychopathic Traits And Symptoms Of Ptsd And Depression In A Nonclinical Sample, Nicholas Kavish, Danielle Boisvert, Eric M. Cooke, Richard H. Lewis, Matthias Woeckener, Jessica Wells, Todd A. Armstrong

Criminal Justice Faculty Publications and Presentations

Examining psychopathic traits at the factor or facet level has revealed that various aspects of psychopathy may be differentially related, even in opposing directions, to important outcomes (e.g., intelligence, emotion regulation). Empirical work on relations between psychopathy and internalizing disorders, such as posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) and depression, has provided evidence for a positive association with antisocial traits. However, findings for the affective domain have been more equivocal. The current study (N = 732) sought to replicate past findings of the positive association of antisocial psychopathic traits with higher levels of PTSD and depressive symptoms, and to further explore …

Fair Lending For Cannabis Banking Justice, Benjamin T. Seymour

University of Michigan Journal of Law Reform Caveat

This Comment offers a fair lending solution to promote racial equity in cannabis banking reform: amend the Equal Credit Opportunity Act to ensure individuals previously arrested, charged, or convicted for selling, cultivating, or possessing marijuana will not therefore be precluded from loans to start legal cannabis businesses. Given disparities in the criminal enforcement of marijuana laws, this amendment would provide racial justice benefits, while also encouraging entrepreneurship. As a market-based social justice effort, this amendment offers a bipartisan approach to one of the most vexing and contentious issues in marijuana banking reform.

Part II of this Comment briefly surveys the …

Remarks, Lisa Foster

University of Michigan Journal of Law Reform

In both Greek and Roman mythology, a Hydra guards the entrance to the underworld. For those who don’t remember their mythology, a Hydra is a multi-headed serpent who exhales poisonous fumes. If you get close enough to the Hydra and are able to cut off one of its heads, two grow back in its place. Slaying the Hydra was number two on Hercules’ famous list of Labors. He was successful, but not without a fierce struggle.

As you’ve heard over the last four days, fines and fees are Hydralike. Fines are imposed for almost every minor offense — misdemeanors, infractions, …

What The Great Recession Revealed About Taxation By Citation And What Can Be Done About It, Dick M. Carpenter Ii, Chelsea Lawson, Courtney Deuser

University of Michigan Journal of Law Reform

In recent years, the issue of “taxation by citation” has grown in national prominence. It is generally defined as municipal revenue generation through fines and fees that transcends a clear relationship to public health and safety and serves more as a revenue generating device. According to critics, taxation by citation creates conflicts of interest, violates the rights of those with low income, and distorts law enforcement priorities. Municipal leaders reject such criticisms by denying taxation by citation even exists. To date, research findings have been mixed on whether cities practice taxation by citation. This Article examines whether there is a …

Transparency's Ai Problem, Hannah Bloch-Wehba

Faculty Scholarship

A consensus seems to be emerging that algorithmic governance is too opaque and ought to be made more accountable and transparent. But algorithmic governance underscores the limited capacity of transparency law—the Freedom of Information Act and its state equivalents—to promote accountability. Drawing on the critical literature on “open government,” this Essay shows that algorithmic governance reflects and amplifies systemic weaknesses in the transparency regime, including privatization, secrecy, private sector cooptation, and reactive disclosure. These deficiencies highlight the urgent need to reorient transparency and accountability law toward meaningful public engagement in ongoing oversight. This shift requires rethinking FOIA’s core commitment to …

Visible Policing: Technology, Transparency, And Democratic Control, Hannah Bloch-Wehba

Faculty Scholarship

Law enforcement has an opacity problem. Police use sophisticated technologies to monitor individuals, surveil communities, and predict behaviors in increasingly intrusive ways. But legal institutions have struggled to understand—let alone set limits on—new investigative methods and techniques for two major reasons. First, new surveillance technology tends to operate in opaque and unaccountable ways, augmenting police power while remaining free of meaningful oversight. Second, shifts in Fourth Amendment doctrine have expanded law enforcement’s ability to engage in surveillance relatively free of scrutiny by courts or by the public. The result is that modern policing is not highly visible to oversight institutions …

Use Of The Prescription Drug Monitoring Program For Substance Abuse Monitoring And Pain Management, Crystal P. Beddard

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Abstract

The United States is in an opioid epidemic. The comitant use of opiates and benzodiazepines can ultimately result in death. This project consisted of a quality improvement approach addressing the continued need to educate prescribers on coprescribing benzodiazepines and opioids to the adult population. A qualitative and quantitative descriptive analysis was utilized for data collection. The results will assist in determining if accessing the Prescription Drug Monitoring Program (PDMP) and utilizing evidence-based guidelines before prescribing treatment compared to the nonutilization of the PDMP and evidence-based guidelines aid in the reduction of mortality and overdose rates within a three-month period. …

Critical Thinking In Law Enforcement Training Academies: A Phenomenological Study Of Officer Experiences, Billy J. Spruill

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Recently, law enforcement officer use of force incidents resulting in death has seemingly become more prevalent. Generally, the educational requirement for a law enforcement officer is a high school diploma or general education development degree. One must question if this requirement is sufficient for a law enforcement officer to be successful in a modern world as the law enforcement training academy may be the law enforcement officer’s only postsecondary education. Critical thinking is a needed skill identified by high-stress professions such as the military, nursing, and disaster management, yet there is limited study regarding critical thinking in law enforcement. The …

Los Zetas, Neoliberalism, And Popular Opposition: A Study In Linkages, Gina R. Lyle

Master's Theses

Los Zetas are considered by security analysts to be a transformative force within transnational criminal organizations (TCO), exporting their unique model throughout Mexico. Los Zetas’ idiosyncratic interventions include their diversification of criminal operations, professionalization of TCO security, sophisticated use of media and technology, extreme forms of violent coercion, and decentralized command structure. This project aims to complicate the narrative that Los Zetas emerged because of top leaders’ sadistic tendencies or due to an inherently violent culture in Mexico by reframing the group’s evolution within historical processes. Moving beyond Los Zetas, this project examines how persons affected by Los Zetas’ indiscriminate …

Handling Aggravating Facts After Blakely: Findings From Five Presumptive-Guidelines States, Nancy J. King

North Carolina Law Review

No abstract provided.

The Federal Sentencing Guidelines: Some Valedictory Reflections Twenty Years After Apprendi, Frank O. Bowman Iii

Faculty Publications

This Article reflects on the author's professional experience and intellectual evolution in relation to federal sentencing policy and the Federal Sentencing Guidelines before and after the Supreme Court's decision in Apprendi v. New Jersey.

The account begins with the author's first encounters with the Guidelines when he was a zealous Assistant U.S. Attorney, continues through his transition to teacher, scholar, policy advocate, and occasional sentencing consultant, and concludes with the author pessimistic about the prospects of meaningful federal sentencing reform.

The utility, if any, of these musings will lie partly in the fact that the author has been deeply involved …

How Did You Become A Police Officer? Entry-Related Motives And Concerns Of Women And Men In Policing, Samantha S. Clinkinbeard, Starr J. Solomon, Rachael M. Rief

Criminology and Criminal Justice Faculty Publications

As police agencies in the United States suffer declining applications and struggle to recruit women, the National Institute of Justice has identified workforce development as a priority research area. To recruit more effectively, we must understand what attracts people to policing and what deters them. We surveyed officers in two Midwestern police departments (n = 832) about entry motivations and concerns and examined gender differences. Serve/protect motivations were most important for men and women, though women rated the category significantly higher. Women and non-White officers rated legacy motives higher than did males and White officers. Women reported more concerns overall …

Expanding The Extraordinary: Expungements In Minnesota, Alena Simon

Minnesota Journal of Law & Inequality

No abstract provided.

The Unheard Voices And Privilege Of A Killer: An Analysis Of Conversations With A Killer: The Ted Bundy Tapes, Allison G. Jones, Emma L. Mabe

Communication Studies

This analysis of Conversations with a Killer explores representations of Bundy’s victims and the depiction of Bundy himself. This paper will focus on how the documentary is an example of white male privilege and gender inequality through its erasure of the victims’ identities and perpetuation of a celebrity-like narrative of Bundy.