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The Lived Experiences Of Clinicians Who Treat Black Males Who Have Experienced Intimate Partner Violence, Gifty A. Acheampong

Walden Dissertations and Doctoral Studies

Intimate partner violence (IPV) is a global issue that negatively affects humanity. The harmful effects of IPV often result in lifelong consequences for victims. Researchers have consistently identified women and children as the primary victims of IPV, although men can also be affected. The social stigma around men seeking formal help as victims is that they must endure physical, emotional, financial, sexual, and psychological abuse in intimate relationships. Because psychological abuse is the most common form experienced by male IPV victims, there is a higher prevalence of IPV within the Black community. However, research on help-seeking behaviors among Black men …

No Exceptions: The New Movement To Abolish Slavery And Involuntary Servitude, Adam A. Davidson

University of Chicago Law Review

In the twenty-first century, slavery is still alive in the United States, but thankfully, it is increasingly unwell. States across the country, in places both expected and unexpected, have begun to pass amendments to their state constitutions that seek to finish the job started over 150 years ago by the Thirteenth Amendment. Whereas that amendment included an exception, providing for slavery and involuntary servitude as punishment for a crime, these new state amendments contain total prohibitions. But these prohibitions have thus far proven unable to end the blight of prison slavery merely through their text. This Article asks why and …

The Blackstone Ratio, Modified, Murat C. Mungan

Faculty Scholarship

In his discussion of evidentiary policies, Blackstone famously noted that ‘it is better that ten guilty persons escape than that one innocent suffer’ (Blackstone 1769). The conventional wisdom among lawyers, judges as well as academics holds that accepting this statement as a maxim necessitates the adoption of pro-defendant evidentiary rules. It is also commonly believed that costs associated with false convictions being greater than those associated with failures to punish offenders due to the presence of punishment costs provides a utilitarian rationale for Blackstonian principles. After formalizing Blackstone ratios (either as marginal rates of substitution or, alternatively, as the ratio …

The Loss Of The Moral Principal: How The Attitude Of School Discipline Changed From The 1950s Through The 1980s, Brendan Webster

Honors Projects

This comparative historical analysis examines the profound ideological transformation of student discipline in American secondary schools between 1950 and 1989. Utilizing a comparative textual analysis of primary source documents published in The High School Journal. This study investigates how administrative philosophy, professional concern, and disciplinary practice responded to the sociological and geopolitical views in the respective decades.

The research identifies a core continuity in the school's role as an agent of social control, but documents a fundamental divergence in the mechanisms used to achieve it. The 1950s view, shaped by mental hygiene and democratic idealism, framed discipline as a developmental …

Table Of Contents - Vol. 50, Fall 2025

Southern Illinois University Law Journal

No abstract provided.

Ending The Cycle: A New Approach To Decriminalize Mental Illness, Paige E. Kohn

Southern Illinois University Law Journal

Today, America faces a health paradox: the nation’s largest jails are the nation’s largest psychiatric institutions. In a criminal justice system designed for punishment, solutions like mental health units or mental health courts try to address this contradiction. Yet, if mental illness is a health issue, and not a criminal issue, then increased investments in the criminal justice system seem misplaced. Instead, a more promising approach is to stop the mentally ill from entering the criminal justice system at all.

This article presents just that: a new approach to decriminalize mental illness. Viewed under an overarching “health justice” lens, the …

Advocacy At The Front Door, Tenisha S. Hill

Capstone Projects and Master's Theses

This capstone project examines how integrating social work practices into the jail intake process can strengthen support for clients represented by the Public Defender’s Office. The project focuses on understanding the challenges clients face at the earliest point of contact often marked by trauma, instability, and limited access to services and how a social-work-informed approach can improve outcomes. Through direct observation, interviews with staff, and review of intake procedures, the project identifies key gaps in assessment, communication, and referrals. Findings highlight the need for more holistic intake practices that address clients’ social, mental health, and resource needs alongside their legal …

Addressing Mental Needs In The Justice System, Danna B. Perez

Capstone Projects and Master's Theses

Clients in the Mental Health Diversion Program often struggle to understand legal requirements due to the impact of mental health symptoms, which can interfere with their ability to complete the program. This capstone project was implemented at the Monterey County Public Defender’s Office within the Mental Health Diversion team, which serves individuals in the legal system with mental health challenges. The project aimed to strengthen staff communication with clients by providing a training presentation on mental-health-informed communication strategies. A post-presentation survey measured staff experience, confidence, awareness, and intention to apply the techniques. Results showed that most staff already had extensive …

June 30, 2023: Resurrections And Bad Omens Of A Nadir Court, Zamir Ben-Dan

UC Law Constitutional Quarterly

June 29, 2023 was monumental for racial justice advocates and scholars; the U.S. Supreme Court issued a major decision that eviscerated affirmative action while declaring itself a vanguard of racial equality. The Court’s race-related juridical activities on the following day, June 30th, received far less attention. On June 30, 2023, the Court denied certiorari in five cases directly implicating race. Those denials of certiorari generated five opinions, two concurring in the denial and three dissenting from denial. These five opinions should have created as much buzz as the Court’s affirmative action decision the day prior; examined together, they tell a …

Reading Teacher Perceptions: The Impact Of Educator Preparation Program Literacy Coursework And Clinical Experiences On Teacher Efficacy In Historically Underrepresented Populations, Emily Taubken

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Despite research that indicates the critical importance and lifelong impact of early reading proficiency for students, national reading proficiency trends demonstrate most students in the United States are not yet reading at grade level, with disparities existing among historically underrepresented subgroups. Additionally, research shows that preservice and in-service teachers have documented limited feelings of self-efficacy in teaching reading specifically, suggesting limitations in preservice training for educators. To better understand how reading teachers perceive the efficacy of their preservice teacher academic and clinical experiences, especially for those who serve historically underrepresented student populations, this study seeks to document the perspectives of …

Knowledge Acquisition On Mass-Shooting Events Via Llms For Ai-Driven Justice, Benign Ihugba

All Theses

Mass-shooting events pose a significant challenge to public safety because they generate large volumes of unstructured textual data, making it difficult to conduct effective investigations and formulate public policy. The proposed knowledge acquisition system utilized Large Language Models (LLMs) with few-shot prompting to extract vital information from news articles, police reports, and social media content at high speed. The system used entity recognition to detect vital information, which included offenders, victims, locations, and criminal instruments that support legal investigations. An experimental study conducted on actual mass-shooting datasets showed GPT-4o performs best for mass-shooting NER. The o1-mini delivered competitive performance while …

Identifying Common Characteristics Among Female Serial Killers And The Role Of Early Childhood Abuse, Jill Marie Raichel

Walden Dissertations and Doctoral Studies

Approximately 17% of known serial killers in the United States are women, and often their crimes go undetected for years accruing a higher number of victims than their male counterparts. The purpose of this study was to identify common characteristics of female serial killers (FSKs). A multidisciplinary, holistic and developmental approach was used to guide the identification of common characteristics based on theories by Erik Erikson and Carol Gilligan as well as feminist theory. Case studies of 15 FSKs were randomly selected for participation from a list of over 100 known FSKs documented in the Radford Serial Killer database. Common …

University Of Nebraska At Omaha Commencement: December 2025, University Of Nebraska At Omaha

Commencement Programs

No abstract provided.

Representing The Incommunicado Client: Regulating The Attorney-Client Relationship In A Civil Rights Emergency, Michael Kagan

Washington and Lee Law Review Online

When the government obstructs a detainee’s ability to communicate with attorneys, normal rules governing the formation of attorney-client relationships break down. While some work-arounds exist to allow lawyers to bring such cases to court, they have significant limitations and can create problems of their own. The legal profession and the courts should adopt new rules modeled on emergency medicine to facilitate the filing of urgent civil rights claims for clients who are not in a position to consent. In emergency medicine, physicians can presume client consent for certain narrow and urgent purposes. Certain lawyers, in extreme cases, should be able …

When Strength Becomes Stress: The Strong Black Woman Schema And Burnout Among Black Women In Community And Social Services, Portia D. Gordon

LSU New Orleans Theses and Dissertations

This quantitative study explores the relationship between the Strong Black Woman Schema (SBWS) and burnout among Black women in community and social service roles. It uses Black feminist theory (Collins, 1990), intersectionality frameworks (Crenshaw, 1989), and the racial identity development theory (Cross, 1991). Data from 217 women who work or volunteer in community and social services, collected through the Oldenburg Burnout Inventory (OLBI), Social Issues Advocacy Scale-2 (SAIS-2), Activism Orientation Scale (AOS), and Stereotypic Roles for Black Women Scale (SRBWS), along with demographic details, assessed SBWS endorsement, advocacy involvement, and burnout levels. Responses were analyzed across ethnic groups and levels …

Pathways To Aggression: Understanding Peer Victimization In Adolescence, Makenzie H. Clarken

Theses/Capstones/Creative Projects

Insight into aggression among early adolescents is important to understanding its predictors and consequences. In adolescence, aggression is typically related to underlying issues. Addressing this is important, as unmanageable aggression progressing past early adolescence can result in involvement in the criminal justice system. Studies show that peer victimization is associated with increased levels of aggression. Aggressive adolescents may attract victimization from their peers, or those who are victimized may respond with aggression. The current study followed a sample of 182 fifth and sixth graders over the course of the school year. Constructs such as aggression, peer victimization, and social withdrawal …

Empowerment Or Imprisonment? The Line Between Sex Work And Sex Trafficking: A Comparison Of Law Enforcement And Academic Perspectives, Jocelyn Belcastro

Theses/Capstones/Creative Projects

This research explores the line between consensual sex work and sex trafficking to gain a better understanding of the prevalence and pathways through which sex work may transition into sex trafficking. Semi-structured interviews were conducted with law enforcement professionals that work closely with survivors of sex trafficking to examine the pathways from consent to coercion. An interview with a former sex worker, now college professor, was also conducted to examine the lived experience and academic perspective. Both the law enforcement and academic perspectives were analyzed and compared to one another to form a nuanced understanding of the complex issue of …

Alaska Native Disparities In Alaska Jails And Prisons. An Exploratory Study And Descriptive Analysis, Brad A. Myrstol, Cheryl Jones, Rus'sel Sampson, Bri Moffat

AJiC Reports

This report presents an exploratory study of racial disparities in Alaska’s correctional system, combining a review of national research with an analysis of Alaska Department of Corrections (ADOC) booking data.

Institutional Sustainability In Ai Governance: Comparing Paths In The Eu, Japan, And Taiwan, Kuan-Wei Chen

Yearbook of Antitrust and Regulatory Studies

This article explores the concept of institutional sustainability in AI governance by comparing the approaches in the European Union, Japan, and Taiwan. It begins by arguing that the relationship between AI and sustainability extends beyond environmental concerns, encompassing the sustainability of governance institutions themselves. The article posits that institutional sustainability, referring to the capacity of governance frameworks to remain effective over time, is essential in the context of rapidly evolving and future-oriented AI governance. The analysis proceeds by examining the EU’s strategy of normative anchoring through legal codification, Japan’s agile governance model based on collaboration and coordination, and Taiwan’s digital …

The Equity Implications Of Pecuniary Externalities On An Electric Grid, Charles Sims, Gasser G. Ali, J Scott Holladay, Tim Roberson, Chien-Fei Chen, Islam H. El-Haddad

Civil Engineering Faculty Publications

The adoption of rooftop photovoltaic (PV) systems can create upward pressure on retail electricity rates as utilities are forced to spread their fixed costs of generation and transmission across a smaller customer base. Since high-income households are more likely to purchase PV systems, low-income households may be disproportionately impacted by these rate increases. Using a novel combination of agent-based computational economic modeling and a choice experiment of rooftop solar adoption, we show how this pecuniary externality between low- and high-income customers increases low-income electricity bills by 10% in an area with some of the highest poverty rates in the United …

Exploring The Relationship Between Job Satisfaction And Servant Leadership In Community Corrections: A Probation Officer’S Perspective, Shamira B. Gambrell

Education Doctoral

Probation officers work in demanding environments marked by high caseloads, role conflict, and organizational pressures that can negatively affect job satisfaction and workforce stability. Leadership practices at the frontline supervisory level play a critical role in shaping these experiences, yet limited empirical research has examined servant leadership within community corrections. The purpose of this quantitative correlational study was to examine the relationship between probation officers’ perceptions of servant leadership demonstrated by their direct supervisors and their level of job satisfaction.

Data were collected from probation officers affiliated with departments connected to the American Probation and Parole Association using an anonymous …

Enhancing Adherence To Veterans Affairs/Department Of Defense And American Psychiatric Association Clinical Guidelines For Alcohol Use Disorder, Corinna M. Trevino

Doctor of Nursing Practice

Alcohol use disorder continues to be significantly undertreated within outpatient behavioral health settings, particularly concerning pharmacological interventions. Despite the presence of robust national clinical guidelines recommending medications such as naltrexone for individuals with moderate to severe dependence, the rates of prescribing these medications remain modest owing to inconsistent screening procedures, limited referral practices, and provider follow-through barriers. This project was implemented at a substance use treatment center in a large metropolitan area to improve adherence to clinical practice guidelines. The purpose of this project was to increase prescribing of naltrexone and improve referral for patients with moderate to severe alcohol …

Symbolic Justice: The Continued Limits Of International Criminal Justice Without A Permanent Prison System, Meg Penrose

Faculty Scholarship

Many people misremember Nuremberg, Tokyo, and the subsequent World War II tribunals. These seminal international tribunals gave the world convictions but largely failed to fully enforce the sentences imposed. Most people do not recall the mass clemency following the World War II tribunals. This Article seeks to fill a scholarly void by explaining why international criminal justice has never matured beyond Nuremberg and Tokyo. The modern ad hoc tribunals, as well as the permanent International Criminal Court (“ICC”), have failed to deliver lasting justice. Much like Nuremberg and Tokyo, the modern tribunals fixate on arrests and convictions and then seemingly …

The Role Of Law Enforcement In Sexual Assault Kit Submissions: A Statewide Analysis Of Decision-Making Processes & Focal Concerns In Kentucky., Rychelle Elizabeth Wilks

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Sexual assault case attrition persists throughout the criminal justice system, partly due to inconsistent Sexual Assault Kit (SAK) submission decisions. This dissertation examines factors influencing police officers' decisions to submit SAKs for forensic testing, applying the focal concerns perspective to understand how legal and extra-legal characteristics shape these decisions. Using statewide Kentucky data from July 2007 to March 2018, this study analyzed 2,194 adult sexual assault cases from 192 law enforcement agencies. Of these cases, 1,520 (69.3%) resulted in SAK submission. Logistic regression analyses examined the full sample, as well as four subsamples. Results provide mixed support for focal concerns …

A Systems Approach To Shedding Sunlight On A.I. Black Boxes, Ran Xi

Hofstra Law Review

A substantial body of literature has emerged around concerns that machine learning and artificial intelligence systems are opaque, or "black boxes. " The black box nature ofA.I.-powered services and applications has resulted in alarming risks in social life, including insecurity, mistrust, lack of accountability, and exacerbated bias and discrimination. Despite the call to open the black boxes, corresponding legal and regulatory measures tend to run aground due to their infeasibility, inefficacy, and ambiguity. This Article offers a unique perspective on the A.I black box problem. Using systems theory as a heuristic tool, this Article views A.I. as a law-related system …

The Truth Will Set You Free: The Importance Of A Psychologically Rooted Framework That Encourages The Admission Of Expert Testimony On Eyewitness Memory, Emma C. Kiernan

Hofstra Law Review

No abstract provided.

Embodied Overcrowding And Sensory Tensions: A Carceral Autoethnography Of Philippine Jails, Dwayne Antojado

Ateneo School of Government Publications

In this paper, I undertake a sensorially oriented autoethnography of two Philippine jails, illuminating the visceral textures of carceral life that conventional sociological or criminological discourses often overlook. Drawing inspiration from Jewkes and Young's (2021) examination of Kyoto Prison, I foreground the overlapping realms of sight, sound, smell, and touch, arguing that incarceration is inherently a profoundly embodied phenomenon. By weaving personal reflections, field observations, and broader scholarly insights, I reveal how overcrowded dormitories, suffocating heat, and lingering bodily odours converge to redefine detainees' spatial, temporal, and psychosocial realities in ways rarely captured by quantitative metrics. While mindful of Nelken's …

Spaceflight Safety Regulations: The Case For Implementing Safety Management Systems In The Developing U.S. Commercial Human Spaceflight Industry, Carly Davidson

Theses and Dissertations

Accidents have historically accompanied the development of new transportation systems, often due to technical failures; but human factors – such as organizational culture and management decisions – are increasingly recognized as significant contributors. A strong safety culture, prioritizing safety at all organizational levels, effective management procedures, and open reporting of violations, is believed to improve outcomes by proactively reducing risk in highly technical organizations. These elements form the basis of Safety Management Systems (SMS), which include safety policy, risk management, assurance, and promotion. As commercial spaceflight expands public access to space, US regulators must develop flexible safety regulations that protect …

Sharing Hope Series, Sharon A. Smith

Capstone Projects and Master's Theses

Stigma surrounding mental illness in communities of color creates significant barriers to seeking mental healthcare, leaving many individuals and families without the support they need. This capstone project was implemented through the National Alliance on Mental Illness (NAMI) and its Sharing Hope Series, a program designed to provide culturally responsive mental health education and resources. The initiative serves communities of color where stigma, cultural beliefs, myths, and historical mistrust often create barriers for those needing to seek services. The purpose of the project is to reduce stigma and increase awareness through open dialogue, education, and resource sharing. Implemented as a …

Confronting Settler Colonialism Through Indigenous Feminism: The Structural Roots Of Mmiw, Miah Schiavi-Munoz

Capstone Projects and Master's Theses

The crisis of Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women, Girls, and Two-Spirit people (MMIWG2S) across the United States and Canada represents a manifestation of ongoing settler colonial violence. This paper examines the MMIW crisis through the frameworks of settler colonial theory and Indigenous feminist scholarship, arguing that contemporary patterns of disappearance, assault, and murder are structural outcomes of colonial law, governance, and heteropatriarchal control. Drawing on historical analysis, legal critique, and participant observation from the 2025 MMIP Training Conference in Monterey, California, this study traces how the settler colonial logic of elimination operates through jurisdictional fragmentation, bureaucratic neglect, data erasure, resource …