Digital Commons Network^™

Informal Rulemaking And Democratic Participation Fda – Food Labeling, Fcc – Net Neutrality, A Text Mining Study, Casey Shannon

Public Administration Master’s Projects

The Administrative Procedure Act (APA) is supposed to make the rulemaking process at the administrative level democratic. This study will look at two examples of federal regulatory agencies – Food and Drug Administration (FDA) and the Federal Communications Commission (FCC). The topics are food labeling, and net neutrality respectively. The APA highlights the process of notice and comment rulemaking. The APA is evaluated in the literature review for effectiveness and shortcomings. Interest groups play a key role in the policy making process; interest groups inform and mobilize citizens, and then coordinate commenting on agency rule propositions. This can sometimes lead …

Political Beliefs, Region Of Residence, And Openness To Firearm Means Safety Measures To Prevent Suicide, Sarah E. Butterworth

Master's Theses

Firearms account for approximately half of all suicides in the US and are highly lethal, widely available, and popular; thus, firearms are an ideal candidate for targeted means safety interventions. However, despite their value as a suicide prevention tool, firearm means safety strategies are not widely utilized, possibly due to factors which impede openness to their use. This study examined the relationship between region, political beliefs, and openness to firearm means safety in a sample of 300 American firearm owners. Overall, firearm owners were more willing to engage in means safety for others than for themselves and to store firearms …

Rhetoric, Legislation, And The Felony Offender, Cyrus Taylor

Master's Theses

Rhetoric is arguably of more importance than the message that is being overtly conveyed. Therefore, it is of great importance to understand how rhetoric can be utilized to convey one message while simultaneously transmitting another distinct message (Walter 2017). In this study, discourse analysis was conducted by examining the rhetoric associated with the Violent Crime Control and Law Enforcement Act (VCCLE), through the use of legislative speeches and newspaper articles, to determine how language has effectively resulted in the relegation of felony offenders within a class-based society. Utilizing two theories, class structure theory and distributive justice theory, an understanding was …

The Eric Garner Incident: Sentinel Calls For Greater Scholarly Support In Policymaking, Joe D. Mazza

Journal of Criminal Justice and Law

The Eric Garner incident serves as a sentinel event exposing weakness in our system of policing low-level offenses. The New York Police Department policy at the center of this encounter lacked a foundation of sound evidence. Administrative mandates forced officers to make a custodial arrest instead of releasing a low-level offender in the field. Combined, they created a condition ripe for tragic results. Custodial arrests should serve important public interests, but none are apparent here. This incident presents a call for greater scholarly partnerships with police and other stakeholders to provide studies with evidence on which better public policy can …

Measuring Disproportionate Treatment In Policing: One Department’S Experience, Heidi S. Bonner, Michele Stacey

Journal of Criminal Justice and Law

Detecting disparate impact in policing practice is essential, but those tasked with developing such inquiry face significant challenges in designing analyses. Racial profiling research has also been plagued by an inability to gain consensus regarding valid comparison groups – commonly termed the “denominator problem” in benchmarking analyses. The current inquiry details the process and outcome of using the disproportionality index (Dolan Consulting Group, 2016) to investigate several enforcement actions at a midsize department in the southeastern United States. The findings highlight the importance of combining the appropriate benchmark with the appropriate level of analysis, and the need for more scholarly …

Maine Sexual Assault Kit Study, Alison Grey, Erika Arthur, Viacheslav Tomenko, George Shaler Mph, Elisabeth Snell

Justice Policy

The Cutler Institute recently released the Maine Sexual Assault Kit (SAK) Study Report. This report was produced for the Maine Coalition Against Sexual Assault (MECASA). In 2018 MECASA contracted with researchers at the Cutler Institute, with funding in part from a grant from the Office on Violence Against Women STOP Violence Against Women Formula Grant Program, through the Maine Department of Public Safety.

Researchers employed a mixed-methods approach to gather comprehensive data about the current status of sexual assault kits in Maine; the challenges and successes of processing and storing kits in Maine; and nationally recognized best practices.

Findings from …

Raps Sheet, December 2018, Retirement Association Of Portland State

RAPS Sheet: Monthly Newsletter

No abstract provided.

Habitat Suitability Analysis For Mountain Lions (Puma Concolor) Recolonization/ Reintroduction In Minnesota, Mbongowo J. Mbuh, Neil Vruno

Geography & Geographic Information Science Faculty Publications

The mountain lion range once extended throughout the state of Minnesota. The breeding population has been greatly reduced with time, new roads, and timber harvesting, which have broken large tracts of contiguous forest into isolated patches that are too small and no longer suitable for the breeding mountain lion population. The objective of this study is to use suitability analysis to determine the most suitable habitat to conserve mountain lion populations threatened by habitat fragmentation. To attain our objective, we created three sub models that contribute to the overarching goal of the suitability model. A habitat sub model was developed …

Standardization Roadmap For Unmanned Aircraft Systems, Version 1.0, Kristine Kiernan, Christian Janke, Kenneth Witcher

Publications

This Standardization Roadmap for Unmanned Aircraft Systems, Version 1.0 (“roadmap”) represents the culmination of the UASSC’s work to identify existing standards and standards in development, assess gaps, and make recommendations for priority areas where there is a perceived need for additional standardization and/or pre-standardization R&D.

The roadmap has examined 64 issue areas, identified a total of 60 gaps and corresponding recommendations across the topical areas of airworthiness; flight operations (both general concerns and application-specific ones including critical infrastructure inspections, commercial services, and public safety operations); and personnel training, qualifications, and certification. Of that total, 40 gaps/recommendations have been identified as …

Conspiracy: Contemporary Gang Policing And Prosecutions, Keegan Stephan

Cardozo Law Review

Part I of this Note reviews gang policing before Morales, explains the vagueness, equal protection, and policy and custom doctrines that helped shape gang policing, and details the practices of contemporary gang policing. Part II argues that contemporary gang policing violates equal protection under the innovative showing of discriminatory intent found in Floyd v. City of New York, and that contemporary gang policing violates both prongs of the vagueness doctrine when viewed in its totality-at least where it is proscribed by statute. Part III notes that the vagueness doctrine has historically been applied only to statutory law and …

Law Enforcement Employees’ Perceptions Of Performance Appraisals In A Medium-Size, Suburban Police Department, Christopher C. Zimmerman

Seton Hall University Dissertations and Theses (ETDs)

The purpose of this qualitative case study was to investigate how police officers in a medium-size, suburban police department perceived performance appraisals and the effects of performance appraisals on job satisfaction and job performance. This study also examined the impacts of job satisfaction and job performance on organizations. One-on-one participant interviews were conducted, and thematic coding was utilized to capture the dominant themes associated with the police officers’ perceptions of performance appraisals. Twelve police officers from a medium-size, suburban police department in New Jersey participated in the study, and their anonymity was maintained to elicit transparent responses. This dissertation was …

Root And Branch: The Thirteenth Amendment And Environmental Justice, Mehmet K. Konar-Steenberg

Nevada Law Journal

‘[The Thirteenth Amendment] abolishes slavery . . . root and branch. It abolishes it in the general and the particular. . . . Any other interpretation belittles the great amendment and allows slavery still to linger among us in some of its insufferable pretensions.’

Banishment Of Non-Natives By Alaska Native Tribes: A Response To Alcoholism And Drug Addiction Halley Petersen, Halley Petersen

Alaska Law Review

Since 2015, at least a dozen tribal court banishments have been reported in Alaska, mainly involving alleged bootleggers and drug dealers in rural communities. Rural Alaska communities, which are predominantly Alaska Native, face high rates of alcoholism, drug abuse, and related crime. Faced with these drug and alcohol issues and insufficient access to law enforcement, it is not surprising that some communities have decided to banish offenders. However, banishment is not currently legal, at least when imposed upon non-Native citizens. Tribal courts lack sufficient jurisdiction over non-Natives to banish them for bootlegging or dealing drugs. Tribal governments are sovereigns with …

Alaska’S Merit Selection Of Judges: The Council’S Role, Past And Present, Teri White Carns, Susie Mason Dosik

Alaska Law Review

Delegates to Alaska's Constitutional Convention adopted a Judiciary Article that called for the state's judges to be selected and retained in a merit selection system. Modeled after the "Missouri Plan," attorneys applying for judgeships are reviewed by the Judicial Council; two or more candidates are nominated to the governor; the governor appoints from the Council's list; and all judges periodically stand for retention in the general elections. Alaska's Judicial Council is composed of three non-attorneys appointed by the governor and confirmed by the legislature, three attorneys appointed by the Alaska Bar Board of Governors, and the Chief Justice who serves …

"I Just Got Out; I Need A Place To Live": A Business Plan For Transitional Housing, Walker Beverly V

Electronic Theses, Projects, and Dissertations

The United States has a serious epidemic of mass incarceration and high recidivism rates. The U. S. must act on these high recidivism rates by implementing social services programs that help the formerly incarcerated stop committing crimes. The formerly incarcerated are being oppressed by a historic process that has continued to incarcerate and control them, even after they had served their time for their crimes. This project attempts to assist in reducing the high recidivism rates by creating an education-based transitional housing facility with a plethora of supportive services that will be open to formerly incarcerated individuals. This project sheds …

The Right To Be Human: Universal Design For Learning And Literacy Sponsorship As Liberatory Pedagogy, Jeremy Lunasco

Electronic Theses, Projects, and Dissertations

This project explores the possibilities of implementing a critical and liberatory pedagogy within the confines of the prison. Building upon the fields of critical prison theory, literacy studies, and (dis)ability studies, I assert that implementing small, organic, and tactical changes though the principles of Universal Design for Learning allows the prison educator to make impactful moves with liberatory goals. I conclude by reimagining what a prison education mission statement that takes this perspective looks like then imagine the liberatory applications of the principles of universal design for learning within the prison.

College Students' Perceptions Of Policing Careers, Patrick Robert Sullivan

Master's Theses and Capstones

Police departments across the United States have had tremendous difficulties in recruiting new officers over recent years. Past research has examined factors that motivate people to become police officers but has not examined reasons why people choose not to become police officers. This study aims to identify the college students’ opinions of policing careers. This study evaluates the relationship of views, past interactions, thoughts of prestige, and the role of the media in students’ desire to enter a policing career through a survey and follow-up interviews. Survey results show no statistically significant relationship between views of police and past interactions …

Public Support For Democracy And The Rule Of Law In The Southern Cone, Patrick James Baga

Master's Theses and Capstones

This is an analysis of the countries of Argentina, Chile, and Uruguay which argues that public support for democracy and the rule of law in these countries is impacted by the institutional reform processes which are mediated by the social cleavages within these states. The paper begins with a qualitative overview of each country’s experiences before, during, and after military dictatorship. The overview assesses the degree to which each country underwent successful institutional reform at the time of transition to democracy, and how institutional reform impacts public perceptions. Also built within the qualitative overview are the historical experiences which ultimately …

Relationship Between Road Network Characteristics And Traffic Safety, Hatim Sharif, Samer Dessouky

Publications

The Transportation and Capital Improvement of the City of San Antonio, Texas Department of Transportation (TxDOT) and other related agencies often make several efforts based on traffic data to improve safety at intersections, but the number of intersection crashes is still on the high side. There is no one size fits all solution for intersections and the City is often usually confronted with doing best value option analysis on different solutions to choose the least expensive yet more advancements. The goal of this project was to obtain the relationship between road network characteristics and public safety with a focus on …

Interdependent Infrastructure As Linked Social, Ecological, And Technological Systems (Setss) To Address Lock-In And Enhance Resilience, Samuel A. Markolf, Mikhail Chester, Daniel A. Eisenberg, David Iwaniec, Cliff I. Davidson, Rae Zimmerman, Thaddeus R. Miller, Benjamin Ruddell, Heejun Chang

Geography Faculty Publications and Presentations

Traditional infrastructure adaptation to extreme weather events (and now climate change) has typically been techno-centric and heavily grounded in robustness—the capacity to prevent or minimize disruptions via a risk-based approach that emphasizes control, armoring, and strengthening (e.g., raising the height of levees). However, climate and nonclimate challenges facing infrastructure are not purely technological. Ecological and social systems also warrant consideration to manage issues of overconfidence, inflexibility, interdependence, and resource utilization—among others. As a result, techno-centric adaptation strategies can result in unwanted tradeoffs, unintended consequences, and underaddressed vulnerabilities. Techno-centric strategies that lock-in today’s infrastructure systems to vulnerable future design, management, and …

Too-Big-To-Fail Shareholders, Yesha Yadav

Vanderbilt Law School Faculty Publications

To build resilience within the financial system, post-Crisis regulation relies heavily on banks to fund themselves more fully by issuing equity. This reserve of value should buttress failing banks by providing a mechanism to pay off creditors and depositors and preserve the health of financial markets. In the process, shareholders are wiped out. Scholars and policymakers, however, have neglected to examine which equity investors, in fact, are purchasing bank equity and taking on the default risk of U.S. banks. This Article addresses this question. First, it shows that five asset managers - BlackRock, Vanguard, State Street Global Advisors, Fidelity and …

Officer Perceptions On Armed Campuses, Paul Perry

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

This research was intended to investigate the perceptions of firearm policies and the views held by campus security personnel regarding student or teacher carry on campus. The purpose of the interviews was to investigate campus security officer’s perceptions and how they differ based upon individual belief systems. The goal, therefore, was to understand how their perspectives on campus carry could impact interactions with students and faculty. Exploring a representative sample of current firearm policies, both on and off campus, established a framework that exposed the opinions of campus security personnel and gave some insight into the potential impact that might …

The Effects Of Sexual Victimization On College Women, Bailie Light

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

This thesis analyzed the effects of sexual victimization among college women. Previous research has found that victimization has several negative effects. This thesis was designed to add to this literature by addressing how sexual victimization effects both behavior and academic performance. Results indicated that there was a significant relationship between sexual victimization and behavior changes, the type of victimization experienced had a different impact on the victim based on the type of victimization they experienced, and that academic performance was significantly affected by sexual victimization.

Research Incentive Programs For Closures Of Public And Private Grade Crossings, Julius Codjoe

Publications

Vehicle-train crashes that occur at highway-rail crossings result in injuries, fatalities, and damage to equipment. In order to reduce the number of vehicle-train crashes, Federal Railroad Administration requires states which have challenges with crossing safety, including Louisiana, to develop a State Action Plan to improve grade crossing safety. Consequently, identification of specific solutions for improving safety at crossings was included in the 2015 Louisiana Transportation Plan as one of its objectives. This study seeks to identify and evaluate current and new incentive programs that encourage closure of at-grade railroad crossings to reduce the number of potential vehicle-train collision points, and …

Exploratory Analysis Of Accuracy Monitoring Techniques In Vehicle Detection Systems For Intelligent Transportation Systems Applications And Maintenance, Manasi Sanjay Palod

Theses and Dissertations

The goal of transportation management is to ensure the mobility of people and goods, in a reliable and efficient manner. Operation and maintenance of transportation infrastructure is key to accomplish their objectives. Intelligent Transportation Systems (ITS) applications rely on massive detection networks that collectively demand significant maintenance resources. Resource constraints force transportation agencies to look for innovative ways to optimize their operational and maintenance costs while serving their users at intended performance levels. The system inputs come from vehicle detection system (VDS), acting as field data collection devices, enabling traffic monitoring and management through response to specific conditions. This research …

Winter 2018

The Weldon Times

A student-run publication from the Schulich School of Law at Dalhousie University.

Editors in Chief: Emma Chapple, Joel Tichinoff

Editors: Sydeny Hull, Matt Gruchey

Graphic Design & Layout: Max Waterman

Photography: Luke MacGillivray

The Impact Of Crime And Other Economic Forces On Mexico's Foreign Direct Investment Inflows, Rene Cabral, Andre V. Mollick, Eduardo Saucedo

School of Economics and Finance Faculty Publications

This paper examines the effect of different crimes on Foreign Direct Investment (FDI) inflows into the 32 Mexican states. Using a state-quarter panel data for the period 2005 to 2015, we estimate alternative models of FDI, with fixed effects throughout a flexible lag-lengths methodology and System Generalized Method of Moments (SGMM) models in order to identify the determinants of FDI inflows into the country. The dependent variable in our model is the annual inflow of FDI and the independent variables are state level indicators (real wages and electricity consumption), and macroeconomic forces (the real exchange rate and interest rate). We …

For The Game. For The World. But What About For The Workers? Evaluating Fifa’S Human Rights Policy In Relation To International Standards, Haley Christenson

San Diego International Law Journal

This Comment will primarily review the labor trafficking and human rights concerns that arise in host countries of the World Cup, suggest a host for the 2026 World Cup based on candidates’ laws and infrastructure, and suggest changes for FIFA’s current human rights policy to aid in the prevention of labor trafficking in relation to the World Cup.

Forming A New Reality Through Art, Lorena Alvarez

Capstone Projects and Master's Theses

This capstone explores a deeper understanding of what it means to provide an effective outlet for children and adults in low socioeconomic communities. Working closely with Sons of the Sun, a nonprofit organization aimed at providing an arts studio space for the “studio-less,” the realization that it takes more than being provided a space to express yourself and take part in self-growth, flourished. Through self-reflection, observations, and interviews came the understanding that in order to formulate change in underserved communities, exposure to the arts, parent relationships, and community involvement can help make even the slightest difference for some children’s realities. …

Overcoming The Challenges Of Asbestos Containing Materials In Remodels - A Case Study, Noah W. Champlin

Construction Management

This is a study of one project’s experience with delays caused by the need for asbestos abatement. It will also cover the best approaches for limiting both safety and financial risks to the contractor, subcontractors and owner. I wanted to gather information on this type of issue within our industry because there will be an increased need for large scale remodeling within major cities to keep them up to the level of standard people expect. This includes the more modern infrastructure of a building to accommodate for the technological improvements made in recent years and to provide a more comfortable …