Digital Commons Network^™

‘Male Victims Of ‘Honour Crimes’: A Critical Examination Of The Concepts Of ‘Honour’ And The Wider Debates Surrounding ‘So-Called Honour-Based Violence’ And ‘Hate Crime’, Narissa Maclennan-Matthews

School of Law, Humanities and Social Sciences Theses

This thesis critically interrogates the experiences of male victims of ‘so-called honour-based violence and abuse’ (SCHBVA) through an intersectional criminological framework. It draws primarily on Barbara Perry’s theories of ‘Doing Difference’ (2001; 2003) and the ‘in terrorem effects’ of hate crime (Perry & Alvi, 2012), alongside insights from Structural Criminology (Hartjen, 1978; Kramer, 1985) and Humanistic Criminology (Hagan, 1986). Drawing on semi-structured interviews with male survivors and criminal justice professionals, and employing thematic and case study analysis, the study examines how violence is produced and legitimised across intersecting axes of gender, sexuality, ethnicity, and religion.Building on Perry’s conceptualisation of ‘Doing …

The Impact Of Criminal Justice System Contact On Adolescents In The U.S.: Prescription Drug Misuse, Marijuana Use, Health Outcomes, And Demographic Characteristics, Fadime Gokce Karaaslan

Graduate Studies Theses and Dissertations 2026

Criminal justice system (CJS) contact remains a pervasive feature of social life in the United States, with both direct and indirect consequences for adolescents and their families. Although previous research has explored the consequences of direct CJS contact, less is known about how indirect or vicarious contact affects adolescents’ well-being and substance use. Drawing on data from the Future of Families and Child Wellbeing Study (FFCWS), this study investigates the association between parental incarceration and vicarious police stops, defined as police stops involving parents, siblings, friends, neighbors, or other social ties, and adolescent well-being. Findings indicate that CJS contact is …

Exploring Barriers And Facilitators Of Mental Health Treatment For Law Enforcement Officers: The Impact Of Police Occupational Culture, April Reed

Graduate Studies Theses and Dissertations 2026

Prior research has explored the impact of police culture on mental health stigma among law enforcement, however, a deeper understanding about how different aspects of police culture may inhibit or facilitate mental health treatment utilization is needed to inform policy and practice. This dissertation explores the relationship between police culture and mental health using a qualitative research design. Twenty-five (n=25) law enforcement officers from a county sheriff’s office in Central Florida were interviewed and participant observations were conducted during a three-month period. The present study sought to address the following research questions: What are the experiences of the job and …

“I Call For The Resurgence And Reclamation Of Our Indigenous Ways”: Institutional Landscapes, Resistance, And The Experiences Of Mmir Advocates, Sara Tehrani

Graduate Studies Theses and Dissertations 2026

Indigenous Peoples across Turtle Island experience disproportionately high rates of violence and homicide compared to other racial groups. Rooted in coloniality and sustained by Western institutions, this epidemic is recognized as the Missing and Murdered Indigenous Relatives (MMIR) crisis. In response, Indigenous women have mobilized the MMIR Movement to raise awareness and advocate for institutional change. Although scholarship on MMIR has expanded, limited research has explored the experiences of MMIR advocates. This study interrogates the institutional landscapes that shape MMIR advocacy and explores the resistance strategies advocates employ to address the crisis. Using reflexive thematic analysis, this study examines semi-structured …

Diasporic Challenges, Domestic Abuse And Patriarchal Norms Experienced By Migrant Pakistani Women In Australia, Safia Iftikhar, Shajimon Peter, Vicki Banham, Elizabeth Reid Boyd

Research outputs 2022 to 2026

This article examines diasporic challenges, domestic abuse and patriarchal ideologies that constitute unique diasporic lives of first-generation migrant married Pakistani women (MPW) in Australia. For this qualitative study, 21 MPW residing in Australia were recruited for semi-structured in-depth interviews. Results from the interpretative phenomenological analysis of data revealed the diasporic encounters MPW face in Australia and the influence of patriarchal ideology on their lives in navigating those encounters. MPW’s responses to patriarchal norms in their married lives fell on a spectrum, which include conformation to the norms of patriarchal familial structures on the one side and resistance and bargaining against …

Exploring A Potential Link Between Personality Traits, Sexual Assault Attitudes And The Propensity To Create Deepfake Pornography, Lorna Marns, Ross Hollett

Research outputs 2022 to 2026

Deepfake pornography represents a rapidly expanding form of image-based sexual abuse (IBSA), yet little is known about the psychological factors that predict individuals’ willingness to create such material. This study examined whether rape myth acceptance (RMA) and Dark Tetrad traits (Machiavellianism, narcissism, psychopathy, and sadism) predicted heterosexual men’s proclivity to create deepfake pornography. Using an online self-report survey of 213 heterosexual men recruited from an Australian university and the surrounding community, participants completed measures of RMA, dark personality traits, and hypothetical scenarios assessing the likelihood of creating deepfake pornography. Hierarchical regression models showed that RMA attitudes that minimise or excuse …

Negligent Hiring: Recidivism And Employment With A Criminal Record, Benjamin David Pyle

Faculty Scholarship

This Article tackles a difficult legal and policy challenge— reducing the impact of criminal records on job applicants’ chances in a manner that does not spur more discrimination—by looking at how another area of law, tort liability, impacts employers’ decision-making. It uses theoretical and empirical methods to study the most common reason employers report being reluctant to hire workers with a criminal record: legal liability generated by the tort of negligent hiring. While the purpose of the tort is ostensibly to protect and make whole those harmed when an employee misbehaves in a foreseeable manner, I show that, in practice, …

Informed Applicants: Anti-Discrimination Enforcement Based On The Use Of Criminal Records, Benjamin David Pyle

Faculty Scholarship

Navigating the labor market with a criminal record is treacherous. Countless job applicants will be turned down immediately after a potential employer learns they have had contact with the criminal legal system. Criminal records reflect and exacerbate long-standing racial and economic inequalities in the United States. Thus, the use of records in employment decisions will often implicate anti-discrimination laws. However, successfully enforcing these protections requires job applicants to, at minimum, understand why they were not hired. Many applicants never learn why they were not hired and thus will never be able to protect their rights. This Article argues that understanding …

Uncorrected, Janet Freilich, W. Nicholson Price Ii

Faculty Scholarship

In addition to making rules and deciding outcomes, the legal system generates, curates and shares information. When the system gets rules and outcomes wrong, it is obviously a problem, and much effort (and scholarly attention) goes into identifying those mistakes and fixing them. But the system also gets information wrong; a problem mostly overlooked by policymakers and scholars. Those information mistakes matter too: they are prevalent and harmful. We show here that even when the mistakes are widely known and the errors broadly acknowledged, the information very often goes uncorrected. As a result, people make decisions based on bad information …

An Insidious Interstice: Understanding Cognition And Language Behaviour Through The Eyes Of Juvenile Justice Professionals, Anne M. Perrotti, Allison T. Chappell, Tancy Vandecar-Burdin

Human Movement Studies & Special Education Faculty Publications

Introduction

Despite evidence suggesting language and cognition deficits are prevalent for justice involved youth, little research explores how juvenile justice personnel experience language and cognition behaviours in the youth they serve.

Aims

This qualitative study explored how juvenile justice personnel understand language and cognition skills and deficits in justice involved youth.

Methods

Twenty-two U.S. juvenile justice professionals participated in individual, semi-structured interviews. Questions focused on individual understanding of receptive language, expressive language, social communication, and cognition (i.e., problem-solving, predicting consequences and impulsiveness) in juveniles served. Using a phenomenological lens, transcripts were coded identifying themes and sub-themes of participant responses.

Results …

When Civilians Involve Themselves In Crime Control: Do Perceived Police Legitimacy And Trust In The Police Predict Support For Vigilantism And Citizen’S Arrests?, Charlotte T. Parque

Electronic Theses & Dissertations (2024 - present)

Recent cases in which civilians involved themselves in the crime control process have garnered divided reactions, with some people supporting and others disapproving the civilians’ actions. Although existing research shows that perceptions of the police predict support of civilians involved in crime control, exact directions of the effects conflict. I address these conflicting findings by examining how people conceptualize police legitimacy and trust in the police, whether those conceptualizations align with scholarly definitions of legitimacy and trust, and explore if the two constructs differentially predict support of vigilantism. Additionally, I explore whether people approve of two types of civilian crime …

From Sparks To Insights: An Aggregate Analysis On Arson And Explosive Data Reporting Published By The Atf (2014-2024), Zahra A. Khan

Electronic Theses & Dissertations (2024 - present)

This thesis provides an aggregate assessment of arson and explosives incidents reported by the Bureau of Alcohol, Firearms, and Tobacco, from 2014 to 2024. This thesis is written to highlight trends, investigative outcomes, and evolving patterns of criminal activity. Analysis of the data reveals notable shifts in incident frequencies, data distributions, and case resolution rates. This suggests both emerging technologies and changing operational dynamics that have affected long-term trends in arson and explosive incidents. Variations in incident types and investigative outcomes underscore the interplay between law enforcement priorities, resource allocation, and reporting practices over the ten-year period. The study also …

Excavating Miranda, Samuel J. Levine

Scholarly Works

Sixty years after it was decided, Miranda v. Arizona remains one of the most significant and renowned cases—as well as, arguably, one of the most controversial cases—in the history of the United States. Chief Justice Earl Warren’s majority opinion, establishing the eponymous Miranda warnings for custodial interrogation of criminal suspects, has prompted voluminous and continuing commentary, among both critics and supporters. This Article is part of an ongoing project exploring a particular aspect of Chief Justice Warren’s majority opinion: a footnote referencing Jewish legal sources, documenting an important passage at the start of a pivotal section of the opinion.

Building …

Postpartum Psychosis On Trial: A Preview Of Commonwealth V. Clancy, Jolie Zangari

Scholarly Works

In the case of Commonwealth v. Clancy, the deaths of three young children are the focus of the upcoming criminal trial.  However, the identity of their killer will not be at issue.  The children, Cora, Dawson, and Callan Clancy, were killed by their mother, Lindsay Clancy, who then attempted suicide, but survived with severe permanent injuries. The critical issue to be litigated is—why?  Why did she kill them?  Most fundamentally at issue is whether Lindsay Clancy was suffering from symptoms of a mental disease so severe that she should be found not guilty by reason of insanity.

The Commonwealth of …

Concentration Or Coincidence? Rethinking Random Effects In Spatial And Spatiotemporal Concentration Of Burglary Through A Target-Based Approach, Yichao Gao

Electronic Theses & Dissertations (2024 - present)

Studies of crime and place have long asked how much random processes contribute to the spatial and spatiotemporal concentration of crime. Traditionally, simulations assume that crime incidents occur randomly across microgeographic units—such as block groups, street segments, and parcels—by selecting geographic units at random with replacement. This dissertation takes a different approach, modeling crime incidents as random selections among potential targets, also with replacement. In this framework focusing primarily on burglary, simulated patterns reflect the spatial distribution of potential targets (i.e., properties). This dissertation relies on burglary data from San Antonio, Texas (2017–2019), and measures available burglary targets as individual …

Victimized And Criminalized: The Intertwined Narratives Of Trauma And Offending, Caitlin Maria Udas

Electronic Theses & Dissertations (2024 - present)

How do pathways between childhood victimization, drug use, and offending behavior vary for recordholders of different races and genders? Prior literature and theory indicates that there are distinct processes that can link childhood victimization to drug use and other offending behavior. These processes are rooted at least partially in experiences of racism/discrimination, placement relative to sociocultural power structures, and norms established over one’s childhood through peer and familial influences. However, less is known about how these differ by race, gender, and the intersection thereof. This dissertation examines the intersectional differences in narrative pathways that link childhood victimization, drug use, and …

Race And Racism In Canada’S Immigration Detention System, Efrat Arbel, Prasanna Balasundaram, Hanna Gros, Nana Yanful

All Faculty Publications

Race and Racism in Canada's Immigration Detention System is the first comprehensive, independent study to examine race and racism in Canada's immigration detention system. Grounded in rigorous legal analysis and qualitative research, the study draws on interviews with 50 participants, including people with lived experience of immigration detention, as well as lawyers, paralegals, and service providers who work in immigration detention. The research was guided by an advisory board of people with lived-experience in immigration detention and co-led by a collaborative research team.

Student Codes Of Conduct, Institutional Isomorphism, And Restorative Justice: Practice And Implementation In The State University Of New York (Suny) System, Alexandra Athens

Electronic Theses & Dissertations (2024 - present)

The student conduct field constantly must balance the legal requirements of the federal and state governments with providing an educational environment for students to learn and develop valuable skills in conflict management, problem solving, and communication. Each higher education institution has a student code of conduct detailing the policies and procedures by which students are expected to abide. These codes of conduct carefully combine the legal requirements and educational goals of each institution’s conduct office. This study analyzed the prevalence of restorative justice practices and other common practices in the codes of conduct at 4-year institutions in the State University …

Punishment, Fast And Slow: Five Experiments On Behavioral Economics In The Mass Incarceration Context, Nathaniel M. Schutten

Electronic Theses & Dissertations (2024 - present)

As many jurisdictions across the United States seek to reduce their prison populations, a pressing question is whether the public will support the reforms necessary to do so. Public openness to reform likely varies across policy areas, with the path of least public resistance occurring where attitudes are the most malleable and loosely held. A major challenge, however, is that traditional methods for measuring public opinion are poorly suited to identifying which policy areas are characterized by such weakly held views.

This dissertation develops a novel behavioral economics framework for identifying these areas. I theorize that when public opinion is …

The Punishment Paradox, Steven Arrigg Koh

Faculty Scholarship

What does criminal punishment do? Across centuries of criminal legal thought, a shared answer persists: punishment incapacitates the wrongdoer. And yet punishment sometimes yields its opposite. Paradoxically, punishment sometimes becomes a rallying point-expanding community identification and solidarity around the defendant. This Article shows this punishment paradox using the 2023-24 prosecutions of President Trump and recent and historical case examples-from Luigi Mangione to Karen Read to Rosa Parks. By arguing that criminal law can generate solidarity rather than stigma, the Article both rethinks foundational theories of punishment and reconsiders the role of criminal law in democratic politics. Such an approach transcends …

Reproductive Wrongful Convictions: The Making Of "Unfit" Mothers, Valena Beety

Articles by Maurer Faculty

This Article draws a straight line from wrongful convictions of women in the past to criminal charges based on pregnancy and parenting behaviors today. Faulty forensic evidence and biased evidence based on sex-stereotypes have, in combination, been used to convict innocent women, particularly in situations where an accident or health event was misconstrued to be a criminal act. Seventy-four percent of known exonerated women were wrongly convicted where no crime occurred. Similarly, in criminalizing pregnancy behaviors, police, medical personnel, or prosecutors erroneously label a non-criminal event, such as a miscarriage or stillbirth, as criminal. Criminal charges are being brought against …

Drag’S Impact On Drag Lives, José L. Oropeza Iii

Anthós

Drag’s Impact On Drag Lives

In light of recent political developments where Drag and Trans identities are being punished, why do people still participate in Drag? If there are repercussion to face for being a Drag Queen, then surely it must affect their lives for the better for them to continue the practice.

Through an autoethnographic approach to researching the Portland, OR Drag community, I collected transcripts of conversations with local Queens, took notes of community interactions, and put myself in Drag for the first time as a Queer man to better understand the Drag community and why they Drag. …

Civil Death By A Thousand Cuts, Eisha Jain

Faculty Publications

Commentators have leveled trenchant critiques of collateral consequences of criminal conviction, analogizing them to a form of “civil death.” This Essay develops the related concept of “civil death by a thousand cuts” in two senses. First, penalties such as voting bans or deportation after a conviction are often just the tip of the iceberg. Second, a system of far-flung, intertwined civil and criminal penalties portends the death of a civil society capable of recognizing and mediating excessive penalties. Recognizing how these penalties operate—and how difficult they can be to address—is a critical step toward creating a more proportionate criminal legal …

Responding To The Needs Of First-Generation Students: An Action Research Study Of Professional Development Opportunities For Faculty And Staff, Kyle G. Phillips

Theses and Dissertations--Educational Leadership Studies

First-generation college students have historically been considered marginalized in institutions of higher education, with diminished success rates and disproportionately higher incidents of imposter syndrome. This Mixed Methods Action Research study assessed the extent to which faculty and staff are able to recognize and implement research-based best practices to improve the support system surrounding this student demographic. In particular, it assessed current levels of preparation to support first-generation students and sought to identify and implement an appropriate professional development program as part of the study's intervention. The efficacy of the intervention was then assessed, with the result delineated in this dissertation. …

The Ideological Work Of Penal Reform: How Reformers Justify Penal-Welfare Hybridization, John Halushka, Brandon Miller

Faculty Research, Scholarly, and Creative Activity

This article uses the Santa Clara County Reentry Resource Center (RRC) as a case study to explore the cultural content of penal reform. Specifically, we explore the discourses that officials use to publicly justify projects of penal-welfare hybridization, or the linking of state systems of punishment and welfare to manage criminalized populations. Our qualitative analysis draws on a dataset consisting of county planning documents, budgets, videos, press releases, and newsletters published online between 2011 and 2023. By examining these materials over time, we are able to chart patterns of consistency and variation in how officials justify hybridization. We find that …

Civil Rights Microviolations, Michael Kagan, Alissa Cooley Yonesawa

Scholarly Works

No abstract provided.

Legal Ethics Of Ai Snake Oil: Navigating The Hype, Harm, And Hope Of Legal Ai, Drew Simshaw

Scholarly Works

This paper argues that the legal ethics of AI extend far beyond competence and hallucinations. It shows how AI often functions as a mirror, exposing deeper ethical questions about institutional incentives, lawyer wellbeing, access to justice, and AI's broader social and environmental impacts.

Prevention Beyond Deterrence, Benjamin A. Barsky

Faculty Scholarship

This Article reconceptualizes preventive justice—the public safety paradigm that seeks to prevent harm before it occurs. Scholars have long documented how cities have advanced this paradigm through largely punitive measures, notably variants of broken windows policing, which posit that aggressive misdemeanor enforcement deters more serious crime. Yet in the aftermath of the 2020 George Floyd protests, and as underscored recently in City of Grants Pass v. Johnson, these measures have faced a legitimacy crisis—prompting calls for nonpunitive responses to nonviolent incidents.

This Article establishes a preventive justice approach that advances health and safety without emphasizing crime deterrence. It draws on …

Retrenchment, Segregation, And Public Education: A Five-Year Analysis Of State Exclusionary School Discipline Legislation, Thalia Gonzalez, Will Martel

Faculty Scholarship

Notwithstanding the decision in Brown v. Board of Education formally ending educational segregation and more than two decades of state reform, the legislative landscape protecting minoritized children from the structural violence of exclusionary school discipline has dramatically shifted in less than five years. From the passage of state “Teacher’s Bills of Rights” to mandatory expulsions, rescissions of prior protections, and new categories of removal, a retrenchment of anti-inclusion legislation—and its corollary, educational carcerality— has occurred. While studies of other forms of legislative retrenchment in K–12 public schools, such as anti-Critical Race Theory and Don’t Say Gay laws, literacy bans, and …

Justifying The Fourth Amendment, Daniel Epps

Vanderbilt Law Review

Why does the Fourth Amendment belong in the Constitution? This question is not whether society should impose some legal restraints on government searches and seizures. Rather, why should such protections reside in our national charter, superior to other forms of law and insulated from change via ordinary majoritarian political processes? Despite major disputes about the Fourth Amendment's content, Fourth Amendment theorists rarely ask this question. Almost all agree that the Fourth Amendment's constitutional protections are critically important-even if no one can agree exactly what those protections are.
This Article seeks a justification for the Fourth Amendment-the reason why search-and-seizure protections …