Digital Commons Network^™

How And Why Hundreds Of Preventable Deaths Continue To Occur Behind America's Prison Walls And Jail Cells, Melody Monssen

William & Mary Journal of Race, Gender, and Social Justice

This Note examines how the Prison Litigation Reform Act (PLRA) came to be and the consequences of its passage. The PLRA was largely a response to the growing movement of prisoners’ rights that began in the 1960s and continued until the 1990s. As the Court grew more conservative, the legal system became less receptive to prisoners’ plights. Consequently, PLRA was enacted in an effort to curtail prison litigation. Consequently, conditions in correctional institutions have continued to worsen, leaving prisoners with little recourse. Although the passage of PLRA was justified by claiming that prisoners were bringing frivolous lawsuits, the continued upward …

Federal Extreme Risk Protection Orders: A Potential Pathway To Preventing Mass Shootings, Lilly H. Donahue

William & Mary Journal of Race, Gender, and Social Justice

This Note examines how the creation and implementation of a federal extreme risk protection order (ERPO) statute would impact federal investigations, mass shooting prevention, and the reduction of firearm deaths at large. While ERPOs exist in several states, there is currently no federal statutory scheme to allow federal law enforcement agencies to pursue ERPOs against citizens at risk of harming themselves or others with firearms. By examining the current legal landscape of state-level ERPOs, federal agencies’ investigatory procedures and failures, constitutional and racial equity concerns, and industry best practices, this Note aims to explore what a federal ERPO statute could …

Confessions In Cases Of Child Physical Abuse-A Capnet Study., Margaret R. Russell, Antoinette L. Laskey, Henry T. Puls, Suzanne P. Starling, Joanne N. Wood, Daniel M. Lindberg, Nancy S. Harper, Caitlin R. Mcnamara, Angela W. Bachim, Farah W. Brink, Lori D. Frasier, James Anderst, Porcia Vaughn, Kristine A. Campbell

Manuscripts, Articles, Book Chapters and Other Papers

OBJECTIVE: Prior research on confessions of physical abuse (PA) has explored mechanisms of injury. Little is known about conditions supporting a confession of abuse or how confessions may influence case outcomes.

METHODS: This cross-sectional study of suspected PA in children aged < 10 years at 10 centers participating in CAPNET, a multicenter child PA research network, included children with in-person Child Abuse Pediatrics (CAP) consultations between February 2021 and December 2022 and excluded children without injury. Our focus was a confession of inflicted injury known to the CAP during clinical involvement. We compared child and clinical characteristics, out-of-home (OOH) placements, and arrests between cases with and without confessions. Multivariable models using generalized estimating equations (GEE) produced adjusted predicted probabilities (APP) clustering by CAPNET site.

RESULTS: Confessions were known to CAPs in 115/4297 (2.7%) cases, with significant site variability. In a multivariable GEE model, confessions were more likely in cases with injuries with high specificity for abuse (APP 6.0% vs 1.6%, P < .001), near-fatality (APP 5.6% vs 2.3%, P < .001), and older children (APP 4.8% vs 2.5%, P = .025). OOH placements and arrests were more common in cases with confessions. CAP awareness of confessions, OOH placements, and arrests did not follow racial or ethnic patterns seen in the US child welfare system. Lower socioeconomic status was associated with OOH placements and arrests but not with CAP awareness of confessions.

CONCLUSIONS: Our findings highlight differences in case characteristics and outcomes where a confession is known to the CAP and raise questions about …

The Epidemic Of Unsheltered Men In The United States And Its Public Health Consequences: A National Public Health Priority, James E. Leone, Awo-Yusra H. Musa

Bridgewater Review

People experiencing homelessness refers to an individual or family lacking a fixed, regular, and adequate nighttime residence and affects a diverse group of people in the United States (National Alliance to End Homelessness, 2025). This may include living on the streets, in cars, parks, or abandoned buildings as well as shelters, transitional housing, or people facing an imminent loss of housing without another identified residence (CDC, 2024). Homelessness affects all demographics ranging from age (youth and elderly) and ethnicity to gender and even class. Secondary to experiencing a lack of stable housing, individuals also face food scarcity, employment instability, and …

April 2026 Library & Learning Newsletter, Minnesota State University, Mankato. Library & Learning Dean's Office Communication Team

Library & Learning Newsletters

PDF version of the April 2026 (Volume 4, Issue 9) Library & Learning Newsletter.

Cyclones Of Crime: How Environmental Degradation In Haiti Strengthens Gangs In Governmental Power Vacuums And How The International Community Can Respond Beyond Military Intervention, Stephanie Minor

William & Mary Environmental Law and Policy Review

In Haiti, the ground beneath people’s feet, both politically and literally, has never stopped shifting, as cycles of gang violence and environmental disasters feed each other in a relentless spiral of instability. This Note intends to be an analysis of the cycle of gang violence and environmental disasters, along with possible legal and organizational solutions. It begins with a very brief historical analysis of how the situation has progressed from state creation to present day and how Haiti’s colonial past shaped its current governance problems. At its creation in 1804, Haiti became the first state founded by enslaved persons through …

Drug War Repair Guarantees, Amber Baylor

Washington and Lee Law Review

Drug legalization, especially cannabis legalization, is a critical step forward in states’ willingness to address systemic disparities, privacy intrusions, violence, and other harms of the drug war. Yet, reforms center on legalization and repair through a narrow lens, focused on changes to the penal code. The public has found that narrow forms of legalization cannot serve their purported reparative purpose. Narrowly drawn legalization is illusory. Drug war harms and punishment for legalized substance use continue. Legalization reforms are vulnerable to political trends, resulting in rollback and retrenchment of drug war operations.

Legalization cannot deliver on its reparative terms without guarantees. …

Comment On “Voices From Beyond The Grave: Protecting The Audio Of Murder Victims Through (Intellectual) Property Law” By Alexandra M. Hudson, Christopher B. Seaman

Washington and Lee Law Review

Alex’s Note correctly identifies the tension between two important, competing values when it comes to how the law should deal with the sound recordings of murder victims captured in a public record, such as a 911 call or body camera footage. The first value is government transparency, including disclosure of public records through federal and state Freedom of Information Acts (FOIAs). As the Supreme Court has explained, “[t]he basic purpose of FOIA is to ensure an informed citizenry, vital to the functioning of a democratic society, needed to check against corruption, and to hold the governors accountable to the governed.” …

Education As A Right, Homelessness As A Crisis: The Displaced Futures Of American Homeless Youth, Tina Pham

Washington and Lee Law Review

Homelessness in the United States has been a humanitarian crisis affecting youth as one of its most vulnerable populations. Education is one of the few opportunities to break through this cycle of poverty. Recognizing the gap in education for homeless students and other students, Congress enacted the McKinney-Vento Act, which guarantees homeless youth educational rights to access public education. Following the Supreme Court’s decision in Grants Pass v. Johnson, however, the rise of criminalizing policies, such as encampment sweeps and anticamping ordinances, threatens the success of the Act. These policies not only destabilize families, but they also leave homeless youth …

Mapping Disabled Justice: Empirical Research Towards A People-Centered Approach, Qudsiya Naqui

Book Chapters

This paper reviews access to justice for people with disabilities, focusing on what we know—and still need to know—about how justice systems can better serve and include disabled populations. Based on existing research, we know that disabled people, constituting roughly 16% of the global population, face significant legal, informational, communication, physical, and economic barriers at all stages of the justice process, and are disproportionately represented in both civil and criminal legal systems. We also know that these barriers impede disabled people’s access to the law, access to legal processes, and access to just outcomes, undermining their ability to engage in …

Beyond The Individual: Exploring Structural Explanations Of Homelessness Through Thematic Analysis Of Extant Research, Madison R. Mcclain

Senior Theses

This thesis examines how homelessness is defined, explained, and addressed within contemporary U.S. research using Critical Race Theory (CRT) and Intersectionality as guiding frameworks. Through a qualitative, deductive thematic analysis of 16 peer-reviewed articles, this study identifies six key themes related to structural causation, policy governance, measurement practices, racial inequality, dominant narratives, and intersecting systems of disadvantage. Findings reveal that while structural explanations of homelessness are widely acknowledged, they are inconsistently defined and often insufficiently theorized. Institutional systems primarily function to manage rather than resolve homelessness, while measurement practices and definitions actively shape who is recognized and prioritized. Additionally, structural …

Csbs Kudos, Spring 2026, University Of Northern Iowa. College Of Social And Behavioral Sciences.

CSBS Kudos

Contents:

--- Faculty Accolades
--- Retirements - Ken Atkinson, Gregory Bruess, Todd Evans, Mark Grey, James Hall, Wallace Hettle, Mary Losch
--- Promotions - Disa Cornish, Tyler O'Brien, Jayme Renfro, Eran Hanke, Kyle Endres
--- In Memoriam - Mary Louise Franken, John Johnson, Susan Welch, Charlotte C. Wells
--- $1.22 million grant to UNI’s Center for Civic Education
--- University of Northern Iowa receives $2.4 million grant to launch Humanities Hub
--- UNI announces restructuring to strengthen humanities and public service education
--- UNI launches online non-thesis Master of Arts in Geography
--- UNI teacher education program continues to boast …

Virtual Reality Training Assists With Police De-Escalation, Brad Kneller

Center for Cybersecurity

Title: Virtual Reality Training Assists with Police De-escalationAuthor: Brad Kneller, Department of Criminal Justice, Kean UniversityAbstract:Objective/Overview: Everyday police officers encounter high-stakes situations that require split-second decisions, where outcomes can be life or death. In many cases, de-escalation techniques could replace or reduce the need for force, potentially leading to safer resolutions for both officers and civilians. To support officers in developing these skills, universities, police departments, and community agencies are exploring innovative training methods, such as the use of virtual reality (VR). VR enables officers and trainees to engage in realistic, immersive scenarios that traditional classroom or role-play settings cannot …

Bridging Theory And Practice: A Criminal Justice Course Collection, Penny Geyer

Open Educational Resources

Dr. Penny Geyer compiled a full reading list, course calendar, set of weekly discussion questions, in-class experiential exercises, a death penalty case-study module, and a final paper assignment into a single, organized course packet that can be easily accessed, revised and remixed by other instructors teaching theory-to-practice criminal justice courses.

Reimagining Incarceration: Scandinavian-Inspired Policy Innovation In Pennsylvania And California, Isabel M. Mallory

College Honors Program

The United States’ decentralized system of incarceration leaves individual states largely responsible for criminal justice policy, yet the country continues to maintain the highest incarceration rate in the world, prompting growing interest in reforms that both reduce incarceration and improve outcomes. One such approach emphasizes rehabilitation over traditional goals such as deterrence and incapacitation, drawing on the example of Scandinavian prison systems as an evidence-based practice. This thesis examines how states, as laboratories of democracy, are experimenting with rehabilitation-centered models of incarceration through different mechanisms of policy change. Focusing on two case studies – Pennsylvania’s Scandinavian Prison Project as a …

Commencement Program: 2026, Governors State University

Commencement Documents and Videos

Lincoln Laureate: Jonathan Cooper

May 17, 2025
10 a.m.

Student Speaker: Journey Mae Manuel

College of Education and Human Development
College of Health and Human Services

May 17, 2025
4 p.m.

Student Speaker: Victoria Gómez

College of Business
College of Arts and Sciences

Constructive Falsity, Legal Truth, And The Public Interest In Not Reporting On Expunged Records, Itay Ravid

Villanova Law Review (1956 - )

No abstract provided.

Silent Cries: Analyzing The Psychological Profiles Of High School Shooters, Kayla Martinez

Posters - 2026

• School shootings have become a recurring event for the past couple of decades in the United States
  • high school has the most exposure to these shootings
• Shootings can cause serious trauma and various mental health issues in the students and staff who survived (as well as communities)
• Protocols put in place seem to only be reactive rather than proactively identifying and preventing the occurrence
• Most people overlook the previous behaviors of the shooters

Against A Medical Exception To Equal Protection, Govind Persad

Washington and Lee Law Review

Government regulations of medicine sometimes treat patients differently based on their race or sex. Does heightened scrutiny apply to such regulations—as is usual when law treats someone differently based on a protected characteristic? Or is there a medical exception to equal protection?

Recently, in United States v. Skrmetti, the Supreme Court upheld a law that restricted access to medical treatments for transgender minors. Though its holding did not rely on medical exceptionalism, its discussion reinvigorated interest in a “medical exception” to equal protection: that medical decisions are exempt from the searching review applied when governmental decisions consider protected characteristics.

For …

Program: Virginia Academy Of Science 104th Annual Meeting, 2026, Virginia Academy Of Science

Virginia Journal of Science

Full program of the 104th Annual Meeting of the Virginia Academy of Science. Held at  Christopher Newport University, Newport News, Virginia on May 28, 2026.

Adapting The Alternative Program At Panther Community High School To Meet The Needs Of Its Students, Citlali J. Flores Hernandez

Dissertations

This study presents a comprehensive program evaluation of the PAGD alternative education program (a pseudonym) at Panther Community High School, a program that had not undergone formal revision since approximately 2015. The purpose of the study was to examine the effectiveness of the PAGD program in addressing students’ academic, behavioral, and social-emotional needs, and to identify areas in need of improvement to support both student success and long-term program sustainability. The evaluation was guided by four primary research questions: To what extent is the PAGD program meeting students’ needs? To what extent are PAGD program teachers receiving the necessary support? …

“I Should’Ve Listened!”: Lived Experiences Of Postsecondary Transitions Among Students With Emotional And Behavioral Disorders From Non-Traditional High Schools, Kristen De Rose

Dissertations

This phenomenological study explored the lived experiences of former students with EBD who attended a non-traditional high school. Eight semi-structured individual interviews were conducted to understand how students experienced emotional and academic supports during high school and throughout the transition into adulthood. Results revealed that participants appreciated attending a non-traditional school for its school connectedness, emotional and instructional supports, and school-based counseling. Additionally, findings suggest the school did not prepare them for the transition to post-secondary life. These findings suggest that emotional and academic support for students with EBD in non-traditional high school settings positively affected students’ sense of success …

Tetrahydrocannabinol: The Extraction And Analysis Of Thc Metabolites From Urine Via Sle And Lc-Ms/Ms, Kaycee A. Smith

Senior Honors Theses

Over the past few decades, widespread cannabis legalization has substantially increased forensic toxicology casework throughout the United States (National Institute of Justice, 2019). Washington state, an early adopter of recreational cannabis legalization, reflects this trend with toxicology laboratories reporting a 59% increase in annual case submissions since 2014 (Goldstein-Street, 2026). Current cannabinoid analysis methods involving liquid – liquid extraction (LLE) coupled with gas chromatography – mass spectrometry (GC-MS) are time consuming, labor-intensive, and require chemical derivatization and pH modification prior to analysis. To manage growing caseloads, an efficient method capable of consistently and reliably detecting THC is critical. The goal …

1st Place Contest Entry: "Gaps In The Academy: Evaluating Pre-Service Criminal Justice Training For Interactions With Vulnerable Populations", Rowan Eiselman

Kevin and Tam Ross Undergraduate Research Prize

This is Rowan Eiselman's submission for the 2026 Kevin and Tam Ross Undergraduate Research Prize, which won first place. It contains their essay on using library resources, a summary of their research project on the effectiveness of pre-service law enforcement training, and their bibliography.

Rowan is a fourth-year student at Chapman University, majoring in Community Educational Studies. Their faculty mentor is Dr. Quaylan Allen.

1st Place Research Paper: "Gaps In The Academy: Evaluating Pre-Service Criminal Justice Training For Interactions With Vulnerable Populations", Rowan Eiselman

Kevin and Tam Ross Undergraduate Research Prize

This research investigates pre-service training for law enforcement officers (LEOs), specifically examining how current educational practices prepare them to interact with vulnerable populations, including victims, suspects, and individuals in crisis. The quality of this training is critical, as it directly shapes officer behavior, decision-making, and ethical conduct in the field (Mier, 2018). Amid heightened public scrutiny of police practices and calls for reform, the effectiveness of law enforcement education has become a central concern.

The significance of this topic is underscored by extensive research on training methodologies such as procedural justice and de-escalation, which aim to improve police-community relations and …

Black Men's Perception Of Mentorship In A Black Male Initiative Program, Caprice Butts

Dissertations

Black men in higher education often navigate systemic barriers, including underrepresentation, limited access to resources, and challenges related to belonging and identity within predominantly white institutions (PWIs). Mentorship programs, such as Black Male Initiative (BMI), have emerged as a key support mechanism; however, limited research explores how Black men experience these programs and how mentorship influences their personal and professional development. This study examined how Black men perceive the influence of a BMI mentorship program on their personal and professional development during and after their postsecondary journeys.

This qualitative phenomenological study explored the lived experiences of Black men who participated …

Socio-Informed Policing: Applying Bourdieu To Mandatory Police Reform Training, Neil T. Shelton El

Theses and Dissertations from DePaul University

Contemporary U.S. police reform policies rely on officer training as a primary mechanism to address issues of law enforcement legitimacy and accountability. Yet, despite legitimacy-based curricula such as procedural justice, research indicates that this training struggles to produce durable changes in police practice. This qualitative study used a phenomenological approach to examine officers’ perceptions of mandated reform-oriented training. Drawing on Bourdieu’s theory of practice, the study conceptualized police training as a sociological process shaped by habitus, forms of capital, and the policing field. Data were collected from six officers in a large urban police department to examine how they internalize, …

Decarceration & Voting Rights Advocacy, Sophie E. Trudgeon

Graduate Student Portfolios, Professional Papers, and Capstone Projects

Portfolio detailing my MSW practicum placement at Catalyst MT under the Justice Initiative and the growth that accompanied it.

Augmented Advocacy: Ethical Constraints And Regulatory Gaps In Ai-Driven Legal Practice, Molly M. Rowlands

West Virginia Law Review

The rapid advancement of artificial intelligence (“AI”) and particularly generative AI (“Gen AI”) is reshaping the legal profession in unprecedented ways. AI-powered tools enhance efficiency, improve accuracy in legal analysis, and expand access to justice by automating research, contract review, litigation support, and predictive analytics. However, these benefits come with significant ethical, regulatory, and procedural challenges, including competency concerns and AI “hallucinations,” data confidentiality risks, algorithmic bias, and the environmental impact of AI-driven computing. This Note critically examines the evolving role of AI in legal practice and evaluates the inadequacies of existing regulatory frameworks—such as Rule 11 of the Federal …

Individualized Cannabis Reparations, Scott Bloomberg

Faculty Publications

This Article makes an argument that should be obvious. The best way for governments to right the wrongs of cannabis prohibition is to give money to people with cannabis offenses. Nonetheless, this straightforward reform has been consistently overlooked, dismissed, or minimized by policymakers and scholars alike, eschewed in favor of other social equity programs that do not right those wrongs nearly as effectively. Governments have indeed invested hundreds of millions of cannabis tax dollars in social equity licensing programs and community reinvestment initiatives. These programs-while often worthwhile-do not benefit the vast majority of people with past cannabis offenses. Governments should …