Digital Commons Network^™

Prosecuting Families, Anna Arons

Faculty Publications

Hundreds of thousands of parents are prosecuted in the family regulation system each year. Their cases are investigated by family regulation agencies and prosecuted by lawyers employed by the government—family regulation prosecutors. Like police and prosecutors in the criminal legal system, this family regulation prosecutorial team wields immense power, particularly over race–class subjugated communities. Yet even as scholarship on criminal prosecutors and on the family regulation system has proliferated, the role of family regulation prosecutors has gone underexamined and undertheorized.

This Article offers a critical examination of the role of these family regulation prosecutors. Drawing on a variety of primary …

The Criminal System Under Racial Capitalism, Sandeep Singh Dhaliwal

Faculty Publications

In 2021, major segments of the business lobby converged around a consensus for criminal system reform. As the United States experienced historic levels of labor market tightness, business groups argued for removing “barriers” to employment that system-involved people face. Just a few months later, the orientation of business to the criminal system was decidedly more mixed. By March 2022, the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, the country’s most powerful business lobby, had stepped to the forefront of the national moral panic around retail theft, launching a vigorous campaign to defend and even strengthen criminal punishment across the country.

Anchoring its analysis …

What’S Left Of The New Deal State?, Sandeep Singh Dhaliwal

Faculty Publications

(Excerpt)

A vast body of scholarship situates itself in the New Deal era. Another extensive collection explores the history of criminal justice in the United States. To date, however, there has been little effort to bring these conversations together. New Deal Law and Order, written by legal historian Anthony Gregory, fills this conspicuous gap. Gregory remarkably narrates the New Deal era through the lens of President Franklin Roosevelt’s “war on crime” (p. 1), challenging how we think about both the New Deal’s legacy and the foundations of the modern security state.

In recent years, scholars have called on their …

Evaluating The Acceptability Of Ptsd Treatment Among Justice-Involved Women In Kentucky With Histories Of Opioid Use, Jesse P. Mccann

Theses and Dissertations--Psychology

Rates of trauma and PTSD as well as histories of opioid use are high among justice-involved women, particularly in Kentucky. However, there are many barriers to receiving treatment. There is a pressing need for brief, trauma-focused interventions that can be more feasibly delivered in jail or prison settings as well as by community clinicians serving women on probation or parole. This study explores the acceptability of treatment for PTSD, particularly Written Exposure Therapy (WET), among justice-involved women on probation or parole with a history of illicit or nonmedical prescription opioid use. The research aims to deepen our understanding of factors …

Unveiling Secrecy: A Qualitative Analysis Of The Breonna Taylor Grand Jury Proceedings, Taylor Bettis

Theses and Dissertations--Psychology

Grand juries have faced heightened scrutiny in recent decades following high-profile cases involving police use of lethal force against Black civilians. In 2020, Police officers killed Breonna Taylor while executing a search warrant at her home. Despite widespread public outcry, it remains unclear how prosecutors failed to indict the officers involved on charges directly related to her death. Guided by critical race theory, procedural justice, and theories of authority, the current project used reflexive thematic analysis to examine the Breonna Taylor grand jury proceedings. We identified two main themes: structural influences and narrative influences. Structural influences examine how prosecutorial authority, …

Standardizing Exoneration Compensation Statutes, Farina Barth

Journal Articles

Wrongful convictions plague the American criminal justice system and leave lasting, unimaginable harm on the innocent. Since 1989 through February 2025, the National Registry of Exonerations reported 3,658 exonerations: a total of 32,750 years behind bars that were lost. An exoneree, once labeled a defendant, becomes a victim. To right this wrong, some states aim to make a wrongfully convicted citizen whole through compensation. However, in examining the evidence of wrongful conviction compensation, a pervasive issue is uncovered in the American compensation system: victims of wrongful incarceration are deeply undercompensated due to statutory drafting. For those states with compensation statutes, …

Prosecutorial Reform And The Myth Of Individualized Enforcement, Justin Murray

Articles & Chapters

The American prosecutor’s legitimacy faces unprecedented challenges. A new wave of reformist prosecutors has risen to power promising to transform the criminal justice system from within, sparking fierce backlash from defenders of the prosecutorial status quo. Central to this conflict is a debate over the nature of prosecutorial discretion, influenced by a set of claims and assumptions that this Article terms the myth of individualized enforcement. This myth posits that prosecutors base discretionary decisions on case-specific facts and equitable circumstances rather than generalizable criteria or categorical nonenforcement practices, such as the policies some reformist prosecutors have adopted that disfavor prosecuting …

Like Holding Up A Mirror: How I Learned To Teach Restorative Justice, Susan Abraham

Articles & Chapters

No abstract provided.

Establishing Metric Method’S To Identify Variation In Human Biological Sex Using The Upper And Lower Limb Bones Of Non-Population Specific Samples., Roland P. Sanchez

Graduate Student Theses, Dissertations, & Professional Papers

Sex estimation of human skeletal remains is a facet of the biological profile. The pelvis has been suggested as the best source to accurately predicting the biological sex, but not always available after the recovery of human remains. At times, only long bones of human skeletal remains are recovered for identification. It has been shown that metric measurements using long can accurately predict biological sex. The most common methods use discriminant functions to predict the likelihood an individual falls within a certain population. These studies rely on population specific collections of skeletal remains for increased accuracy. It’s advised to avoid …

Cultural Coordinates Of Credibility And Sticky Scripts: Womaning Versus Lawyering In The Indian Legal System, Bhumika Billa

Socio-Legal Review

Based on a multimodal and empirical analysis, the article presents Indian women (identifying) lawyers’ lived experiences of epistemic injustice at the sites of legal work in Delhi. The analysis brings a painting, a short film, and 15 semi-structured interviews in conversation with each other to understand women lawyers’ shared experiences of being perceived as “less credible,” and the strategies they have been adopting to assert credibility. The theoretical contribution can be captured by three key arguments. First, using Arpita Singh’s painting, ‘My Lollipop City: Gemini Rising, 2005,’ I argue that the Indian legal system has a “sense of” Delhi. …

Under Political Pressure: How Courts And Congress Can Help Prosecutors Do Justice, Bruce A. Green, Rebecca Roiphe

Faculty Scholarship

Some subordinate federal prosecutors faced a challenging professional dilemma in the early days of the second Trump Administration. It arose from the tension between their role as public officials and lawyers who owe fiduciary duties to the public and their role as Department of Justice (DOJ) employees who take direction from higher-ups. The DOJ leadership directed these subordinate prosecutors to use their considerable power in ways evidently designed to advance partisan political objectives. This was contrary to the clear understanding previously expressed by courts, the legal profession, and the DOJ itself that prosecutors have a duty to seek justice, which …

Breaking A Criminal Mind: Leveraging Habit Breaking/Building For Crime Reduction, Dru Gerace

Williams Honors College, Honors Research Projects

Criminal behavior is often shaped by a complex interaction between psychological processes, habitual actions, and neurobiological mechanisms. This research explores how habitual decision-making and reinforcement patterns contribute to criminal tendencies, integrating insights from neuroscience and psychology. The study examines how early-life experiences, cognitive biases, and environmental factors shape habitual behaviors that may predispose individuals to criminal activity. It also discusses the role of executive functioning, impulse control, and neuroplasticity in breaking maladaptive patterns. By analyzing contemporary theories of habit formation and their neurological underpinnings, this paper offers a multidimensional perspective on the development of criminal behavior. Furthermore, implications for rehabilitation …

Studying Repeat Victimization: A Consideration Of Measurement Issues, Christi Metcalfe, Robert Brame, Tara E. Martin, Angela R. Gover

Faculty Publications

Decades of research have recognized the phenomenon of repeat victimization and its policy relevance. Although there are continuing efforts to explain the theoretical underpinnings of repeat victimization, there are still measurement-related issues that limit our understanding of the topic and ability to inform interventions, including varying operational definitions, data constraints, and sampling and nonsampling error. In this article, we review theoretical advances in the literature over the past decade, propose operationalizations that can foster greater consistency across studies, comprehensively assess the data constraints around commonly used public data sources to study repeat victimization, and empirically demonstrate how one of these …

An Introductory Guide To Trauma Informed Care, Isabella Fallon

Williams Honors College, Honors Research Projects

This project will consist of researching and analyzing at least 30 scholarly and government publications about trauma-informed care (TIC), resulting in a literature review at between 20-25 pages in length. TIC encompasses direct practice with clients, assessment tools, organizational structure and policy, as well as governing documents that impact service delivery. This literature review will build on the work of the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration's Concept of Trauma and Guidance for a Trauma-Informed Approach, focusing on providing practical examples of the physical and mental impacts of trauma, trauma-informed frameworks, trauma-informed tools/assessments, and trauma-informed policy, while analyzing and …

Booked Up Behind Bars: The Impact Of Fiction On Incarcerated Individuals, Sydney N. Peters

Williams Honors College, Honors Research Projects

While prison education programs primarily emphasize vocational skills and functional literacy, the role of fiction in fostering personal growth remains very under-researched. This research paper explores the impact of reading fiction on incarcerated individuals, focusing on its potential to impact emotional intelligence, empathy, and behavior. Research in psychology and correctional education suggests that fiction improves cognitive empathy, emotional regulation, and social skills (Mar & Oatley, 2008; Green & Brock, 2000). I argue that it would be useful to utilize these findings for rehabilitative programming in corrections.

This study critically evaluates findings from psychological and correctional literacy research. Evidence from studies …

Internal Or External: An Exploration Of The United States Police Chief Hiring Process, Kayleigh Walker

Williams Honors College, Honors Research Projects

This paper explores the hiring processes of police chiefs across the United States, focusing on internal versus external hiring practices. The goal of this research was to identify common trends, legislative barriers, and the impact of leadership on the hiring process through historical context, legal analysis, and case studies. The findings suggest that internal hires dominate chief appointments, though external hires are often sought during crises. The paper concludes with recommendations for future research and highlights the need to more fully understand this phenomenon. Understanding the processes and limitations surrounding the appointment of new leadership is critical to reform and …

Analyzing Car Theft Trends In Central Texas: A Comparative Study Of Waco, College Station, And Killeen, Daniel Njogu

Williams Honors College, Honors Research Projects

This study examines motor vehicle theft (MVT) trends from 2019 to 2023 in three Central Texas cities—Waco, College Station, and Killeen—using temporal analysis, geospatial hotspot mapping, and make/model data. In Killeen, thefts generally rose over the period, with notable peaks in October and on Mondays. College Station saw an overall decline in thefts but experienced a seasonal spike each March, and Waco’s thefts increased until around 2021 before beginning to fall. Local festivals—such as the Spirit of Texas in College Station and the Heart O’ Texas Fair in Waco—appear to coincide with these seasonal upticks. Hyundais and Kias were most …

Best Practices Of Vietnamese Catholic Priests Leading Vietnamese Community Parishes In Orange Diocese, Phuc Viet Nguyen

Theses and Dissertations

The Catholic Church is the largest church all over the world and is also the largest one in the United States (Pew Research Center, 2013). Over the past decades, great crises inside the Catholic Church have raised significant concerns for its leadership practices, especially for its governance and administration on the diocese and parish level. Moreover, the issue of immigrants also compounds the problem when there are different ethnic communities inside one single parish. In some dioceses like Orange County, which is one of the most culturally diverse dioceses in the United States (Diocese of Orange, 2018), the urgency of …

Teacher Perceptions And Student Self-Reports: Examining Aggression, Delinquency, And Contextual Correlates In Education And Non-Educational Settings, Abigail Claire Boozer

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

This study investigates the relationship between teacher-perceived delinquency and student self-reported delinquency, utilizing data from the LONGSCAN data set. The research also examines whether the correlates of these behaviors differ across classroom and non-classroom settings, offering insights into the contextual dynamics of delinquency. Grounded in labeling theory, this study explores the influence of teacher perceptions on student behavior, highlighting how labeling may reinforce or mitigate patterns of aggression and delinquency. By leveraging the rich longitudinal data from LONGSCAN, the research identifies key demographic, familial, and environmental factors that contribute to these behaviors. The findings aim to inform educational interventions and …

"Keep Coming Back!": How Recovering Addicts Use Narcotics Anonymous For Social Rehabilitation., Taylor Leigh Ransom

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

This study examines the role of Narcotics Anonymous (NA) in shaping identity transformation and social reintegration among individuals in recovery. Using an ethnographic approach, including participant observation at NA meetings and semi-structured interviews with members, along with textual analysis of Narcotics Anonymous literature, this research explores how NA fosters social recovery by providing a structured yet flexible space for identity reconstruction. Through shared narratives, rituals, and peer support, members navigate the transition from an “addict” identity to one centered on personal accountability, community, and long-term abstinence from drugs.

By situating NA within broader sociological discussions of addiction recovery, social capital, …

Table Of Contents - Cardozo Journal Of Conflict Resolution, Vol. 27, Iss. 2

Cardozo Journal of Conflict Resolution

No abstract provided.

Breaking The Chain: How An Alternate Dispute Resolution Process Can Be Used In The Criminal Justice System For First-Time Non-Violent Criminal Offenders, Leora Perlstein

Cardozo Journal of Conflict Resolution

The criminal justice system is deeply rooted in our history. There are traditional views on how it should be run and conducted. “Founded on the concept that crimes against an individual are crimes against the state, our justice system prosecutes individuals as though they victimized all of society.” Traditionally, when individuals commit a crime, they go through the process of receiving a ticket—or if they commit a particular violent crime they will be immediately arrested—and then they go through the process of appearing in court for an arraignment in which they are “read the charges against [them]” and are either …

Navigating The Neighborhood: Community, Identity, And Gentrification In Crown Heights, Brooklyn, Kayla Karyl Thomas

Yale Graduate School of Arts and Sciences Dissertations

Crown Heights, Brooklyn, New York. This dissertation is a multi-method community study focusing on 21st century gentrification, concurrent socio-political changes, and their relationship to the ways residents understand and negotiate routine interpersonal relationships. The empirical core of the dissertation consists of three distinct yet interrelated papers on the social landscape of the contemporary Crown Heights neighborhood. These papers detail a range of approaches that residents adopt to better understand their own experiences of discrimination, gentrification, and efforts at reconstructing community and responding to change. Complemented by a chapter on the history of a single ‘representative’ Crown Heights apartment building, its …

Faith Amid Chaos: Does Religiosity Buffer Youth Delinquency In Disordered Neighborhoods?, Mason T. High

Honors Undergraduate Theses

This study examines whether religiosity moderates the relationship between neighborhood disorder and delinquent behavior among juvenile offenders. Drawing on Social Disorganization Theory and Neighborhood Disorder, the study hypothesizes that religiosity, both as an attitude and as a behavior, serves as a protective factor against delinquency in disordered neighborhoods. Using data from the Pathways to Desistance study, this research employs Ordinary Least Squares (OLS) regression with and without interaction terms to assess how individual perceptions of disorder interact with religiosity in influencing minor and major delinquency. Results indicate a significant positive association between perceived neighborhood disorder and delinquency, reinforcing the notion …

Sports And Rhetorical Marginalization: A Case Study Of Angel Reese & Caitlin Clark, Diamond R. Williams

Honors Undergraduate Theses

This thesis explores the manifestation of racism, sexism, and capitalism in the language and rhetoric of sports media through a case study of WNBA players Angel Reese and Caitlin Clark. This study theorizes that sports media has referred to Reese and Clark with damaging language tied to the intersections of their respective identities. This thesis also identifies and analyzes the presence of repeated themes throughout select sports media that mirror relevant theories surrounding stereotypes, biases, and marginalization in sports. Examining and analyzing the subtle nuances at play allows one to understand how language implicitly reinforces harmful narratives and, thus, how …

Analyzing The Rate Of Femicide Of Indigenous Women In Rural Australia, Eliza C. Finnigan

Honors Undergraduate Theses

Femicide is an increasingly prevalent issue in Australia, with rates continuing to rise, especially among Indigenous women in rural Australia, who face compounded vulnerabilities. Within literature focusing on femicide, there is a noticeable lack of direct intersection between data on rural area and Indigenous Australians. This study investigates the relationship between rurality, Indigenous status, and femicide rates from 2018 to 2023. Data was compiled from the RED HEART Campaign, focusing on different demographic factors, including Indigenous status, location, victim-offender relationship, and cause of death. Frequencies and rates were calculated using descriptive statistics and data from the Australian Bureau of Statistics …

The Reality Of The Good Faith Exception, Michael Gentithes, Matthew Tokson

Akron Law Faculty Publications

This Article has reexamined the law and theory of the good faith exception. It fnds that the exception, originally confned to narrow circumstances, is turning into a protection for nearly any investigatory activity with an arguable connection to an existing precedent or statute. Our study is the frst to empirically demonstrate the exception’s substantial infuence on modern Fourth Amendment law. Courts rely on the exception with remarkable frequency, and a large proportion of courts invoking the exception avoid any substantive constitutional ruling, stunting the development of Fourth Amendment doctrine. Further, our close theoretical examination of the good faith exception reveals …

Subordinate Prosecutors’ Independence, Bruce A. Green, Jessica A. Roth

Articles

This essay is about subordinate prosecutors’ independence to do what they think constitutes “seeking justice” when they perceive that their boss, or their boss’s boss, wants them to do something that is unjust—not illegal, but unjust. Of course, if subordinate prosecutors want to do either what they are told to do or what they infer that a higher-up wants them to do, they can do so, as long as the conduct is legal. Subordinate prosecutors might choose to disregard their own professional judgment of what justice requires because they share their boss’s objectives, because they see conforming as a route …

Harvesting The Grand Jury’S “Lay Expertise” In Officer-Involved Shootings, Michael Gentithes

Akron Law Faculty Publications

Officer-involved shootings put prosecutors in a bind. While prosecutors normally dominate the pretrial investigation and charging process, these tragedies force prosecutors to change their approach. The incident often pits the victim’s family and community, who feel the case symbolizes a biased and unjust system, against officers and departments, who feel attacked for following their training in a high-stress situation. Prosecutors seek a result that preserves their support from both groups. To resolve this quagmire, prosecutors pass the buck, asking grand jurors to make charging determinations despite their tenuous understanding of the system, their powers, or their role. Many scholars have …

Racializing Three Strikes, G. Ben Cohen, Justin D. Levinson, Koichi Hioki

Akron Law Faculty Publications

"Three Strikes” laws sit at the fulcrum of racial disparities and mass incarceration. Despite clarity across decades that such laws have served to disproportionately punish Black Americans, legislatures have blessed them, courts permit them, prosecutors charge them, and juries convict based on them. Although it has long been clear that these laws have played a key role in the racialization of America's criminal justice system, less clear are the mechanisms that drive and permit the embrace of this racialization. In this Article, we test empirically in a national study the hypothesis that Three Strikes laws exist because of race, are …