Digital Commons Network^™

Restorative Justice: Psychological Needs Of Offenders And Implications For Safety & Security, Festus C. Obi, Ifeoma E. Okoye, Andrew I. E. Ewoh, Ihekwoaba D. Onwudiwe

African Social Science Review

Crime creates psychosocial needs for victims, offenders, and communities where they occur—whether it is homogeneous or heterogeneous. Unfortunately, the criminal justice system does not recognize and take steps to meet these needs. This failure stems from a mischaracterization of the state or government as the crime victim. Our contention is that this problem also emerges from the theoretical groundswell that posits that offender must pay for his or her crime through incarceration. The result of this skewed perception of crime and victimhood has not deterred crime as evidenced by the high rate of recidivism. Certainly, crime-created psychological and social needs, …

Qualitative Approach To Understanding Guardian Models Of Policing, Jacqueline B. Helfgott, Beck M. Strah, Joycelyn Pollock, Loren T. Atherley, John Vinson

Qualitative Criminology (QC)

Since 2015, there has been a growing interest and controversy regarding the “warrior” versus “guardian” models of policing. This article discusses the concept of guardian policing and uses qualitative data from an evaluation of guardian-based training in a police academy to highlight guardian concepts as understood by the trainers. Results suggest that trainers generally exhibit a widespread level of support and commitment towards the guardian model and the priorities of guardian training, view the model as consistent with what has traditionally been considered “good policing,” and believe that critics do not understand the basic elements of the model itself, …

Graffiti With A Purpose: Sexual Violence & Social Justice Conversations In University Bathroom Stalls, Rachel E. Green, Miriam Northcutt Bohmert, Amanda N. Gesselman, Rasul Mowatt, Jennifer Maher, Justin R. Garcia

Qualitative Criminology (QC)

In 2014, our university began posting educational fliers in bathroom stalls across campus in order to share resources and policies on sexual violence, which spurred numerous forms of graffiti commentary about sexual violence prevention and response. Since some scholars have argued that bathroom graffiti can be a unique form of social commentary and even resistance facilitated by the tension of doing semi-private things in semi-public spaces, we examined 429 bathroom stall fliers across 11 heavily trafficked campus buildings, and a total of 177 graffiti comments/images. We then analyzed the relationships between comments in order to answer research questions about the …

Routledge Handbook Of Graffiti And Street Art, Jeffrey Ian Ross (Editor), Andrew C. Gray

Qualitative Criminology (QC)

Expressing oneself by depicting images on public surfaces for others to view is a system of communication that has been around since the earliest societies formed and developed their own languages. This tradition of public communication has continued into the present in the form of graffiti and street art. The development of contemporary graffiti and street art is often attributed to the scenes in Philadelphia and New York City, which arose during the 1970s. In fact, it has been contended that these art forms spread to and mixed with graffiti/street art scenes across the globe due to NYC’s status as …

Criminal Genius: A Portrait Of High-Iq Offenders, James C. Oleson, Allen Copenhaver

Qualitative Criminology (QC)

Criminology has a long history of attempting to discover and explain what some researchers claim are links between biological characteristics and criminal behavior. More specifically, some criminologists have explored the potential linkages between IQ and criminal behavior (i.e. see the work of Lombroso, Beaver, and Hirschi, among others). James C. Oleson continues this line of research with his 2016 book Criminal Genius: A Portrait of High-IQ Offenders. Oleson’s work is unique in that it is the first attempt to systematically examine the potential links between individuals with high IQs and criminal behavior. To accomplish this, Oleson uses a mixture …

Susan F. Sharp, Susan Marcus-Mendoza, Kathleen A. Cameron, Elycia S. Daniel-Roberson, Across The Spectrum Of Women And Crime: Theories, Offending, And The Criminal Justice System, Aneesa A. Baboolal

Qualitative Criminology (QC)

In Across the Spectrum of Women and Crime: Theories, Offending, and the Criminal Justice System, edited by Susan F. Sharp (The University of Oklahoma), Susan Marcus-Mendoza (The University of Oklahoma), Kathleen A. Cameron (Pittsburg State University), and Elycia S. Daniel-Roberson (Texas Southern University), interdisciplinary perspectives that examine multiple dimensions of women’s offending grounded in feminist theory are presented across three sections of the book. This edited volume first focuses on theoretical perspectives of women and crime including addressing intersectional social locations related to gender, race, class, and sexual orientation. The second section examines a variety of female offenders including …

Proxy Punishment: Consequences Of Informal Sanctions Among Families Of Offenders In Japan, Mari Kita

Qualitative Criminology (QC)

This study demystifies the nature of societal reactions to crime in Japan and their consequences on the family members of those who have trouble with the law. Over a 20-month period in metropolitan areas in Japan, participant observation and in-depth interviews were conducted with 50 mothers, fathers, wives, and sisters of those who had broken the law. Major findings include the role that the media and criminal justice authorities play in triggering the informal labeling of offenders’ kin. Families’ strong ties to communities also rendered them particularly vulnerable to the effects of informal sanctions, even more so than offenders themselves. …

A Diversity Course For Criminal Justice Undergraduate Students: A Preliminary Evaluation, Nancy Hirschinger-Blank, Lori Simons, David Fernandez

Qualitative Criminology (QC)

Racially-involved police community incidents demonstrate the urgent need for educating future criminal professionals to work in a multicultural environment. We present a qualitative evaluation of a criminal justice diversity course designed to broaden university students' multicultural attitudes, knowledge, and skills. Results indicated that most students reportedly experienced a decrease in biases, described the importance of learning about cultural differences, acknowledged minorities’ negative attitudes toward the criminal justice system, and reported intentions to serve as fair and open-minded criminal justice professionals. Students also showed a significant increase in empathy across the semester.

The Deweyan Approach To Learning Victim Advocacy: Seeing Beyond Stigmas And Facilitating Second Chances, Ashley Peake Wellman, Sherri Dioguardi

Qualitative Criminology (QC)

Fundamentally, criminal justice practitioners are public safety promoters, yet safety can be compromised if a divide exists between them and the communities they serve. The best way to train future criminal justice practitioners may be found in the progressive education proposed by John Dewey in the early 20th-century. Dewey’s experiential approach, specifically service-learning, has gained traction as an effective teaching tool for broadening perspectives, deepening understanding of diverse populations, and fostering higher order reasoning, all of which are critical characteristics for criminal justice professionals as well as for all American citizens. Undergraduate students participated in service-learning during a semester-long honors …

Uncompromising Hunger For Justice: Resistance, Sacrifice, And Latcrit Theory, Edwin G. Lindo, Brenda Williams, Marc-Tizoc Gonzalez

Seattle Journal for Social Justice

No abstract provided.

California Debates Parole For A Member Of The Manson Family, Rachel Robinson-Greene

Languages, Philosophy, and Communication Studies Faculty Publications

On the night of August 9, 1969, several young people crept into the Los Angeles home of Leno and Rosemary LaBianca. At the behest of cult leader Charles Manson, they stabbed the couple to death. Cult member Leslie Van Houten stabbed Rosemary LaBianca fourteen times. The group wrote messages on the wall in the victims’ blood. After she played her part in the murder, Van Houten took a shower, put on one of Rosemary LaBianca’s dresses, and ate some food from the refrigerator.

The Persistence Of Fatal Police Taserings In 2017, Donald E. Wilkes Jr.

Popular Media

Fatal police taserings are a persistent phenomenon in the United States. Every year dozens of Americans are fatally tasered by our police.This article looks at the number of deaths cause by police tasering during 2017.

Innovating Criminal Justice, Natalie Ram

Northwestern University Law Review

From secret stingray devices that can pinpoint a suspect’s location, to advanced forensic DNA-analysis tools, to recidivism risk statistic software—the use of privately developed criminal justice technologies is growing. So too is a concomitant pattern of trade secret assertion surrounding these technologies. This Article charts the role of private law secrecy in shielding criminal justice activities, demonstrating that such secrecy is pervasive, problematic, and ultimately unnecessary for the production of well-designed criminal justice tools.

This Article makes three contributions to the existing literature. First, the Article establishes that trade secrecy now permeates American criminal justice, shielding privately developed criminal justice …

The Accuracy, Fairness, And Limits Of Predicting Recidivism, Julie Dressel, Hany Farid

Dartmouth Scholarship

Algorithms for predicting recidivism are commonly used to assess a criminal defendant’s likelihood of committing a crime. These predictions are used in pretrial, parole, and sentencing decisions. Proponents of these systems argue that big data and advanced machine learning make these analyses more accurate and less biased than humans. We show, however, that the widely used commercial risk assessment software COMPAS is no more accurate or fair than predictions made by people with little or no criminal justice expertise. We further show that a simple linear predictor provided with only two features is nearly equivalent to COMPAS with its 137 …

Re-Assessing Mass Incarceration In Light Of The Decriminalization Of Marijuana In Maryland, Matthew R. Braun

University of Baltimore Law Forum

No abstract provided.

Jury Decision Making: Is The Devil In The Details? Observations Of A Criminal Justice Professor From Inside The Jury Room, Julie Kiernan Coon

Justice Studies Faculty Publications

In this invited essay, author Julie Kiernan Coon, a professor of criminal justice, summarizes and analyzes her experience serving as a juror in a criminal case.

Rethinking The Boundaries Of "Criminal Justice", Benjamin Levin

Publications

This review of The New Criminal Justice Thinking (Sharon Dolovich & Alexandra Natapoff, eds.) tracks the shifting and uncertain contours of “criminal justice” as an object of study and critique.

Specifically, I trace two themes in the book:

(1) the uncertain boundaries of the “criminal justice system” as a web of laws, actors, and institutions; and

(2) the uncertain boundaries of “criminal justice thinking” as a universe of interdisciplinary scholarship, policy discourse, and public engagement.

I argue that these two themes speak to critically important questions about the nature of criminal justice scholarship and reform efforts. Without a firm understanding …

Brother’S Keeper: Self-Discovery, Social Support, And Rehabilitation Through In-Prison Peer Mentorship, Rebekah Zwick

School of Criminal Justice Theses and Dissertations

Correctional practices in New York State largely support a punishment paradigm, a framework in which men and women are incarcerated to suffer punition, with little consideration given to understanding the causes of criminality or means to rehabilitate the offender. The growing awareness of correctional failures have necessitated efforts to re-evaluate the justice system, with no consensus regarding which rehabilitative methods work. Correctional philosophy and practice provides few substantive opportunities for transformative rehabilitation; therapeutic peer programming to address deficiencies in pro-normative socialization and provide peer support are virtually nonexistent.

For many formerly incarcerated men who build successful lives for themselves within …

Martin Luther King Jr. And Pretext Stops (And Arrests): Reflections On How Far We Have Not Come Fifty Years Later, Tracey Maclin, Maria Savarese

UF Law Faculty Publications

By January, 1956, the Montgomery Bus boycott was in full-swing. Black citizens in Montgomery, Alabama were refusing to ride the city’s private buses to protest racially segregated seating. On the afternoon of January 26, 1956, twenty-seven-year-old Martin Luther King, Jr. had finished his day of work at the Dexter Avenue Baptist Church in Montgomery. On his drive home, King stopped his vehicle to offer a ride to a group of bus boycotters standing at a downtown car-pool location. After the boycotters entered King’s car, two motorcycle policemen pulled-in behind King’s vehicle. While everyone in King’s car tried to remain calm, …

Perceptions Of Justice : Views Of Jailed Defendants On Procedural And Distributive Justice, Kirstin Anne Morgan

Legacy Theses & Dissertations (2009 - 2024)

The current study examines defendant perceptions of their recent experiences in one of two criminal courts in an urban-suburban county. Forty-three interviews were conducted with jail sentenced participants, during which they were asked about the perceived fairness of the case process and outcomes, as well as their relationship with their defense attorney for the case. This study was undertaken to answer four research questions: 1) Are the concepts of procedural and distributive justice related from the defendant perspective? 2) Are perceptions of procedural justice related to satisfaction with case outcomes? 3) Are perceptions of procedural justice related to satisfaction with …

The Criminological Implications Of Moral Foundations, Jasmine Renee Silver

Legacy Theses & Dissertations (2009 - 2024)

Judgments about morality play an important role in several areas of crime and justice. This dissertation applies Haidt’s Moral Foundations Theory (MFT)—which posits that judgments about morality are intuitive and pluralistic—to develop a theoretical framework for understanding the role of moral cognition in shaping attitudes and behaviors related to crime and justice. I also draw on research suggesting that people make moral judgments separately about moral agents (e.g., offenders) and moral patients (e.g., victims). Specifically, via an offender-centered theoretical framework, I argue that endorsement of moral foundations that promote moral concerns that are specific to one’s ingroup (a binding motive) …

Prosecutorial Discretion And Decision Making : Processing Sexual Assault Cases, Megan Kennedy

Legacy Theses & Dissertations (2009 - 2024)

This dissertation examines prosecutorial discretion and decision making in the processing of sexual assault cases. The literature has long focused on the idea that prosecutors make decisions with the goal of avoiding uncertainty, the uncertainty being a potential acquittal. Researchers suggest this goal is the result of prosecutors’ beliefs that professional advancement is dependent upon one’s conviction record. Much of the research in this area has relied upon quantitative methods and analyses. The results of the analyses lead researchers to infer that prosecutors do indeed make charging decisions with an eye toward avoiding uncertainty. Specifically related to sexual assault cases, …

The Consensus Myth In Criminal Justice Reform, Benjamin Levin

Michigan Law Review

It has become popular to identify a “consensus” on criminal justice reform, but how deep is that consensus, actually? This Article argues that the purported consensus is much more limited than it initially appears. Despite shared reformist vocabulary, the consensus rests on distinct critiques that identify different flaws and justify distinct policy solutions. The underlying disagreements transcend traditional left/right political divides and speak to deeper disputes about the state and the role of criminal law in society.

The Article maps two prevailing, but fundamentally distinct, critiques of criminal law: (1) the quantitative approach (what I call the “over” frame); and …

Aggressive Policing And The Educational Performance Of Minority Youth, Joscha Legewie, Jeffrey A. Fagan

Faculty Scholarship

An increasing number of minority youth are confronted with the criminal justice system. But how does the expansion of police presence in poor urban communities affect educational outcomes? Previous research points at multiple mechanisms with opposing effects. This article presents the first causal evidence of the impact of aggressive policing on the educational performance of minority youth. Under Operation Impact, the New York Police Department (NYPD) saturated high crime areas with additional police officers with the mission to engage in aggressive, order maintenance policing. To estimate the effect, we use administrative data from about 250,000 adolescents aged 9 to 15 …

The Intersection Between Young Adult Sentencing And Mass Incarceration, Joshua Gupta-Kagan

Faculty Scholarship

This Article connects two growing categories of academic literature and policy reform: arguments for treating young adults in the criminal justice system less severely than older adults because of evidence showing brain development and maturation continue until the mid-twenties; and arguments calling for reducing mass incarceration and identifying various mechanisms to do so. These categories overlap, but research has not previously built in-depth connections between the two.

Connecting the two bodies of literature helps identify and strengthen arguments for reform. First, changing charging, detention, and sentencing practices for young adults is one important tool to reduce mass incarceration. Young adults …

Shooting Down Oliphant: Self-Defense As An Answer To Crime In Indian Country, Adam Crepelle

Lewis & Clark Law Review

Crime is a dire public safety problem in Indian country as Indians suffer violent crime at twice the rate of any other racial group. Indian country’s unique and confusing jurisdictional scheme combined with a shortage of police leave Indians easy targets for those looking to commit crimes. A largely unexplored answer to crime in Indian country is self-defense. This Article posits that the United States self-defense jurisprudence may make self-defense the most practical solution to crime in some parts of Indian country.

The Article discusses the history of self-defense laws and the relationship between self-defense laws and firearms. The Article …

Nsu M.S. In Criminal Justice Overview 2018, Nova Southeastern University

Abraham S. Fischler College of Education and School of Criminal Justice College Archive

No abstract provided.

Nsu M.S. In Criminal Justice Core Curriculum (15 Credits) Specialty Concentrations (12 Credits) [No Date], Nova Southeastern University

Abraham S. Fischler College of Education and School of Criminal Justice College Archive

No abstract provided.

Nsu Ph.D. In Criminal Justice 2018, Nova Southeastern University

Abraham S. Fischler College of Education and School of Criminal Justice College Archive

No abstract provided.

Punishing Risk, Erin Collins

Law Faculty Publications

Actuarial recidivism risk assessments-statistical predictions of the likelihood of future criminal behavior-drive a number of core criminal justice decisions, including where to police, whom to release on bail, and how to manage correctional institutions. Recently, this predictive approach to criminal justice entered a new arena: sentencing. Actuarial sentencing has quickly gained a number of prominent supporters and is being implemented across the country. This enthusiasm is understandable. Its proponents promise that actuarial data will refine sentencing decisions, increase rehabilitation, and reduce reliance on incarceration.

Yet, in the rush to embrace actuarial sentencing, scholars and policy makers have overlooked a crucial …