Digital Commons Network^™

Border Crisis Impacts On United States National Security, Victoria Halyne Smith

Masters Theses

This thesis addresses how the United States (U.S.) currently faces various homeland and national security threats. A specific and substantial threat to the U.S. is the border crisis that began to escalate in later 2020 but has been an ongoing issue for decades. Several elements encompass the border crisis such as the political circumstances, policy passed by Congress and endorsed or drafted by the President, resources at borders, and law enforcement or security implementation. However, two vital elements to analyze within the current border crisis are the border security and immigration policies of the Trump and Biden administrations as well …

Police Officer Recruitment And Retention: How Can The Problem Be Solved, Paul R. Eagleston

Doctoral Dissertations and Projects

This grounded theory study aimed to understand the issues with police officer recruitment and retention for police administrators nationwide. The theory guiding this study was the grounded theory approach by Glaser and Strauss (1967) as it relates to the reasons for the loss of interest in law enforcement, including an increase in officers resigning before retiring. Data collection will explore if the police administrator being interviewed has experienced increased difficulties in recruiting potential candidates to fill vacancies and an increase in police officers in their department resigning before retirement. Data was collected through semi-structured interviews with law enforcement administrators. Recruitment …

The Use Of Geographical Information Systems In The Eastern United States Emergency Management Organizations, From A Public Administration Perspective, Daron Jay Keesee

Doctoral Dissertations and Projects

This phenomenological study explored the use of Geographical Information System (GIS) technology in federal, state, and local government emergency management organizations. Using the Technology Acceptance Model (TAM), the research focused on understanding local governments' perceptions of GIS access. The study theorizes that GIS is underutilized by local government emergency management due to cost, perceived limited benefits, data security concerns, and lack of experience. The central question is: How do public administration professionals perceive the value and benefits of GIS in emergency management? The study involved interviews, focus groups, and writing prompts with emergency management officials from the eastern U.S. The …

“They Don’T Want Us Anywhere”: The Impact Of Anti-Homelessness Laws On Unsheltered Residents Of Fort Worth, Texas, Brie Diamond

Qualitative Criminology (QC)

"Access to public space is not afforded equally amongst the population. Often, the people who must spend most of their time in these spaces, people experiencing homelessness, are barred by local or state law from being there. Fort Worth, Texas, implemented a camping ban in 2019 that prohibits camping on public or private property. This article explores the impact of this ban on unsheltered people experiencing homelessness using semi-structured interviews with 18 people residing in encampments across the city. The findings document the tangible and existential losses endured by this group and the impact on the perception of their place …

Campaigning For Change: How State-Level Groups Advocate For Legislative Sexual Offense Reform, Jennifer L. Wooldridge, Danielle J. S. Bailey, Stephanie Taulli

Qualitative Criminology (QC)

"In the criminal justice field, advocacy groups work to better the circumstances for specific groups of people facing perceived injustice. While some advocacy groups have been studied extensively, one type of group – sexual offense reform advocates – has been understudied. This is particularly problematic due to stigmatization and legislative differences in how individuals convicted of sex crimes are supervised compared those convicted of non-sexual offenses. These post-conviction differences make it necessary to better understand these advocacy groups and their processes when fighting for public policy change. The current study examines qualitative interviews conducted with affiliates of a national organization …

October 7 And International Police Cooperation:The Silence Of Interpol, Mathieu Deflem

Faculty Publications

Aim: The aim of this study is to explore the background and interpretation of Interpol’s silence following the terrorist attacks committed by Hamas against Israel on October 7, 2023. The author examines the international policing implications of the events, with special attention to why the world’s largest police organization failed to issue any substantive response.

Methodology: The research is based on a sociological analysis combining a historical and institutional overview of Interpol’s counterterrorism activities with the examination of the organization’s communications and institutional decisions. It relies on qualitative sources and an interpretive, case study-based approach using public documents, records, and …

Game, Set, Empower: A Comparative Instagram Analysis Of Branding And Engagement In The Confederation Of African Football (Caf) Women’S And Men’S Champions League, Nour Abdelkader Ms

Theses and Dissertations

The rise of women’s football has placed new emphasis on digital branding, with social media becoming a vital space for visibility, engagement, and representation. This thesis investigates how Instagram content strategies influence fan engagement during the CAF Women’s and Men’s Champions League tournaments. Specifically, it examines the role of content type (match, behind-the-scenes, off-the-pitch, promotional), marketing orientation (organic, sponsored, collaborative), and post format (reel, carousel, photo, graphic) in shaping audience interaction.

Using an explanatory sequential mixed methods approach, the study analyzed 674 Instagram posts (276 CAFWCL, 398 CAFCL) and conducted semi-structured interviews with five digital sports professionals, including CAF digital …

Sex Offender Prison Treatment Programs: Outdated Science Masquerading As A Legitimate Penological Objective, Shelby Jones

Penn State Journal of Law & International Affairs (2012 - Present)

No abstract provided.

Arson Event Detection Using Yolov9, Ali Abbas Abbod, Matheel E. Abdulmunimb, Ismail A. Mageed

Journal of Soft Computing and Computer Applications

Detecting event anomalies is crucial for surveillance systems, as it enables the identification of occurrences in videos, both temporally and spatially. It can identify deviations from patterns without requiring human oversight by learning from past information to distinguish normal behavior and pinpoint irregularities. Early detection of arson fires is critical to mitigating damage, public safety, property, and the environment, as well as saving lives and aiding in law enforcement investigations. The objective of this study is to evaluate a system for detecting events using the You Only Look Once version 9 (YOLOv9) model in surveillance videos with a focus on …

Elemental Analysis Of Sediments In Johnson County, Kansas: Applications In Fluvial Suspended Sediment Tracing, Kiena Campbell

Undergraduate Theses, Capstones, and Recitals

This exploratory study investigates whether bulk elemental analysis of sediment samples using inductively coupled mass spectrometry (ICP-MS) can reveal chemical signatures that identify anthropogenic contributions to sedimentation and increased fluvial suspended sediment loads, and whether these contribution sources can be identified. Human activity, urbanization, and changes in land use increase erosion, resulting in higher-than-natural suspended sediments (SS) in waterways and increasing sedimentation in reservoirs across the state of Kansas. These threats to freshwater storage capacity are especially urgent given the projected rise in freshwater demand in the Great Plains region driven by climate change. Understanding the origin of anthropogenic SS …

Sex And Control In Redeemer Georgia, Anthony Michael Kreis

Georgia State University Law Review

This Essay explores the interplay of history, law, and morality behind the first abortion law in Georgia. Examining the philosophical underpinnings of liberty and equality as articulated in Georgia’s constitutional history through time, this Essay highlights the moral contradictions inherent in the legal frameworks of Reconstruction Georgia. The origin of Georgia’s 1876 abortion law contains multitudes—rooted in race-based contestations for political power, the sociological evolution of medical practice, and evolving attitudes on individual rights. At times, White elites used abortion to attack Yankee culture and stir up racist fears about moral contagion associated with Radical Republicans. To this end, when …

Medication Abortion And The Mails: The Ghost Of Anthony Comstock Rides Again?, Lars Noah

Georgia State University Law Review

Mail-order dispensing of the prescription drug mifepristone has become the latest flashpoint in this country’s long-running debate over abortion access. It also has brought back from the dead one of the oldest federal statutes to address that contentious subject. In their fight to limit access to a drug approved by the FDA one quarter of a century ago, abortion opponents have rediscovered the Comstock Act. Although amended on several occasions since 1873, Congress never managed to repeal or clarify its ambiguous language relating to abortion. On its narrowest reading, this provision would have no impact whatsoever on access to mifepristone; …

Taxing Morality: How Tax Law Defines Wealth, Justice, And Fairness, Doron Narotzki, Tamir Shanan

Georgia State University Law Review

Tax law is more than a fiscal framework; it is a moral compass that shapes society's values, governing who bears the burden and who reaps the benefits. Hidden within the tax code are moral judgments on wealth, privilege, responsibility, and fairness, making taxation one of the most profound expressions of social ethics. This Article argues that the tax system is not just a mechanism for raising revenue but is, and should continue to be, a legal tool for enforcing collective moral decisions about justice and equity. As the wealth gap widens and public discourse intensifies around tax fairness, the question …

What's Freedom Got To Do With It? Occupational Freedom And The Illusion Of Choice, Bojan Perovic

Georgia State University Law Review

This Article critically examines the concept of occupational freedom, arguing that the legal right to choose and pursue a profession, as enshrined in many constitutional systems, remains largely theoretical for vast segments of the population. While legal frameworks recognize occupational freedom, socioeconomic barriers, systemic discrimination, and cultural norms continue to impede genuine access to professions. Using historical examples like the exclusion of women from the legal profession or racial segregation under apartheid, this Article illustrates how law can act as both an instrument of oppression and a tool for progress.

Through a comparative analysis of case law from Germany, South …

Aspects-Based Sentiment Analysis Of Extreme Weather On Twitter Using Long Short-Term Memory, Tursun Abdurahmonov, Muhammad Nabil Toby Abiyyu, Dzikru Nur Khayat, M. Ary Heryanto

Journal of Informatics and Web Engineering

This study presents an aspect-based sentiment analysis of tweets related to extreme weather events in Indonesia, utilizing the Long Short-Term Memory (LSTM) model. The dataset was obtained through a Twitter crawling process, followed by a series of preprocessing steps including data cleaning, stop word removal, normalization, tokenization, and stemming. The three primary areas of emphasis in the study were kinds of bad weather forecasts, and the government or society reactions. Using a lexicon-based technique, sentiment labelling generated three groups: positive, neutral, and negative. A random oversampling method was employed to address the data imbalance. The model using the LSTM algorithm …

Criminalization Of Homelessness: The Impact Of A Market-Oriented Approach, Gabriella M. Chioffi

Duke Journal of Comparative & International Law

Since the fourteenth century, countries have sought to criminalize unhoused individuals by labeling them as "vagrants." Currently, the United States and other countries continue to criminalize acts of sleeping rough, begging, loitering and other vagrancy-type activities that disproportionately target unhoused persons. Despite going through a period of decriminalization in the 1960s and 1970s, these punitive measures were largely reinstated by the 1990s. In the most extreme case, vagrancy criminalization was entrenched in a state's constitution. This Note contends that the reversion to punitive measures is triggered by a country's transition to a market-oriented approach that privatizes housing development and de-emphasizes …

Burned In Berlin – Banned In Boston: Censorship Of Booksellers During The Interwar Period In The U. S. As Compared To Germany, 1919-1939, Aleksandra Jimerson-Mckinnies

Lawrence University Honors Projects

During the twenty-year interwar period from 1919-1939, two vastly different nations faced their own personal wars with the censorship of booksellers. Germany—at first the Weimar Republic, then later the Nazi Regime—underwent such a transformation that Berlin went from one of the literary capitals of the world to the site of the most infamous of censorship crimes: the book burnings. Meanwhile, the United States was a long-standing democratic nation in which freedom of speech was one of its cornerstone tenants. Despite the differences of governments and the scope and scale of the censorship, there were major similarities between the tactics and …

Benefits Of Extended Unemployment Insurance On Post-Unemployment Outcomes, Alyssa Roche

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

This thesis investigates how unemployment insurance (UI) affects individuals during and after unemployment. Drawing on historical evidence from recent recessions in the United States, publicly available data, behavioral insights, and mathematical modeling, it argues that the benefits of extending UI outweigh the potential costs. The analysis incorporates a wide range of sources, including empirical economic studies using regression models and psychology and business research that highlight behavioral responses to financial stress and job insecurity. By combining quantitative data with behavioral context, the thesis offers a more comprehensive understanding of how extended UI influences job search decisions, wage outcomes, and overall …

Predictive Analysis Of Crash Severity And Modeling Of 85th Percentile Speed For Rural Highways Of Arkansas Using Artificial Intelligence (Ai), Sagun Basel

Student Theses and Dissertations

Crash severity is a significant aspect of transport safety as its contributing factors assist engineers and designers in designing safer roads. The focus of this project is to predict crash severity, analyze crash parameters, and modeling of the 85th percentile speed (V85) selected rural roads (i.e., Interstate-555, East Johnson Avenue Highway, and Red Wolf Blvd) in Arkansas, using Artificial Neural Network (ANN) models. MATLAB® was used to predict the V85 and compare it with the actual V85 collected from field instrumentation. Besides the speed data, weather (e.g., rainfall), road geometry, light conditions, and traffic volume were used as input in …

“Do No Harm,” Unless God Says So? The Unholy Conflict Of Religious Objections In Health Care, Brandon Hernandez

Journal of Health Care Law and Policy

No abstract provided.

Walking The Line On Safety And Free Speech: Sidestepping First Amendment Challenges To Median Bans, Taylor J. Black

New Mexico Law Review

In 2021, the Tenth Circuit held a ban targeting pedestrians on street medians in Albuquerque, New Mexico unconstitutional under the First Amendment. Citing a crisis of pedestrian fatalities, Albuquerque has since promulgated a new pedestrian-safety ordinance with an adjusted median ban that prohibits pedestrians from sitting or standing on certain street medians. This ban not only fails to increase pedestrian safety but also arbitrarily blames the city’s poorest residents and poses a threat to First Amendment freedoms. Because the city cannot produce case-specific evidence to show that the ban is narrowly tailored to ameliorate a nonspeculative harm, the current ban …

Beyond Criminalization: A Call For Educational Restorative Justice In Response To Maryland’S 2024 Juvenile Crime Bill, Melissa B. Spirn

Maryland Law Review Online

No abstract provided.

Letter From Eartha White To N. B. Young, Rough Draft

Eartha M. M. White Textual Material

Correspondence: Rough draft of letter from Eartha White to N. B. Young requesting that he speak at the Lincoln - Douglass Memorial Observance. Undated.

Exploring Novel Methods For Real-Time Multi-Camera People Tracking In Machine Learning, Johan Kou, Connor Vallero

Computer Science and Engineering Senior Theses

Multi-camera people tracking is the process of tracking persons and their paths, continuously across different camera fields of view. It can help track suspects across large areas, and assist individuals in emergency situations. The current state-of-the-art (SOTA) method involves using geometric-consistent constraints, information on the appearance of subjects, and pose estimation for dealing with occlusion issues. This current SOTA works well, but is still lacking in its ability to handle occlusion and perform well in real-time applications on a network. With occlusion, the IDs assigned to persons can be accidentally swapped in high density areas, or places where there are …

The Impact Of Hazard Naming In Wireless Emergency Alerts: Enhancing Protective Action Decision Making And Organizational Attitudes, Micki Olson, Hugh Walpole, Jeannette Sutton, Lauren B. Cain, Nicholas Waugh

Emergency Preparedness, Homeland Security, and Cybersecurity Faculty Scholarship

Wireless Emergency Alerts are an important way people learn about impending threats. Yet, these messages typically lack information about the hazard that will endanger people. In this study, we examine how naming the hazard and its associated cues in a Wireless Emergency Alert influences people’s perceptions that help them make protective action decisions, including understanding, belief, personalization, deciding, response efficacy, and self-efficacy. We also measure the extent to which naming the hazard and its cues affects an organization’s reputation and perceived transparency. To do so, we conduct a 2 (message type: named hazard vs. unnamed hazard) × 3 (hazard type: …

Leveraging An Arts-Based Approach To Foster Engagement, Nurture Kindness, And Prevent Violence, Yok-Fong Paat, Diego Garcia Tovar, Nathan W. Myers, Max C. E. Orezzoli, Anne M. Giangiulio, Sarah L. Ruiz, Angela V. Dorado, Luis R. Torres-Hostos

School of Social Work Faculty Publications

Drawing from the insights of community partners, this study explored the roles and benefits of arts-based approaches to foster civic learning, critical media literacy, and community engagement. It also uncovered approaches to promote kindness, prevent violence, and combat online extremism, offering insights into strategies that may enhance community engagement and create a positive impact. We presented our model framework, a detailed case study of our project, and qualitative methods incorporating 15 interviews with our community partners to capture a broad range of perspectives and experiences. Interviewees were community partners who collaborated with our project in organizing events and activities using …

Plan Mano Dura: A Punctuated Political Act? Addressing Gang Violence In El Salvador, Carlos A. Arias

Hatfield Graduate Journal of Public Affairs

On July 23, 2003, Salvadoran President Francisco Flores introduced a punitive and militaristic gang-prevention measure, Plan Mano Dura (Plan Iron Fist), in an attempt to solve the gang phenomenon plaguing El Salvador. Although it turned out to be an abject policy failure, its future effects and significance would far outweigh its intended impact, essentially dictating how El Salvador would combat gang violence for the next 20 years and beyond. As such, it is essential to better understand how such an ineffective policy could arise as a policy approach. This paper examines whether Punctuated Equilibrium Theory (PET) can account for the …

Week Of June 9, 2025, Student Life

College, School and Department Newsletters, Magazines, and Journals

Your summer hub for events, resources and updates.

International Abolitionist Advocacy: The Rise Of Global Networks To Advance Human Rights And The Promise Of The Worldwise Campaign To Abolish Capital Punishment, John D. Bessler

Minnesota Journal of International Law, Vols. 28:2 onward (2019-present)

The modern international human rights movement began with the U.N. Charter and the U.N. General Assembly’s adoption of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. Although the movement to abolish the death penalty is rooted in the Enlightenment, global advocacy to halt executions and to abolish capital punishment has accelerated exponentially in recent decades. This Article discusses the origins of global networks to advance human rights and highlights the growing international advocacy, including by nation-states and nongovernmental organizations (“NGOs”), for a worldwide moratorium on executions and to abolish capital punishment altogether. The total number of countries conducting executions in the past …

The Adoption And Implementation Of Lean And Six Sigma In State Governments And Its Impact On Efficiency, Effectiveness, And Equity, Jin Hong Kim

All Faculty Scholarship

This research explores the contextualized use of Lean and Six Sigma (LSS) practices in the state governments in the United States. It analyzes LSS’s capacity to innovate public service administration to improve efficiency, effectiveness, and equity in government.
This study employed the Grounded Theory Method to analyze 2,048 LSS project reports from 32 state governments between 2003 and 2024, aiming to identify systematic patterns in the adjustment and application of LSS within state service administration and its outcomes.
Thirty-two states applied LSS across 24 service areas, adapting it in five ways: strategic programming, production efficiency, customer focus, internal accountability, and …