Social and Behavioral Sciences Commons^™

Optimizing A Method For Dna Recovery While Preserving Latent Prints On Paper, Niti Dalal

Student Theses

Paper evidence is commonly encountered in cases of kidnapping, threatening letters, extortion, and bank robbery, and the optimal workflow between latent print processing and DNA collection is of interest to the forensic community. The overall aim of this project was to achieve optimal amounts of DNA for typing without destroying the fingerprint. The first study compared two collection techniques—tape-lifting by Scotch Removable Poster Tape and dry swabbing with FLOQSwabs— using prints deposited in defined locations. Samples were processed for DNA and developed with 1,2-indanedione. The second aim was to determine if visualizing print locations with fingerprint powder prior to DNA …

The Curious Case Of Will Brooke, Adam Muro

Capstones

William Wade Brooke, an Alabama businessman with ties to state and national Republican Party politics and scandal, was for over one year a registered foreign agent working for the office of Saad Hariri, Prime Minister of Lebanon. He was the only registered lobbyist for Hariri while he was active, and stranger yet he stated on his Foreign Agent Registration Act forms that he was working for free. An investigation into his background and ties to Lebanon revealed that he lobbied for free in recognition of favors that Hariri did, and continues to do, for a christian missionary group Brooke is …

Revolution In Crime: How Cryptocurrencies Have Changed The Criminal Landscape, Igor Groysman

Student Theses

This thesis will examine the ways in which various cryptocurrencies have impacted certain traditional crimes. While crime is always evolving with technology, cryptocurrencies are a game changer in that they provide anonymous and decentralized payment systems which, while they can be tracked in a reactive sense via the blockchain, are seen by criminals as having better uses for them than traditional fiat currencies, such as the ability to send money relatively fast to another party without going through an intermediary, or the ability to obscure the origin of the money for money laundering purposes. Every week there are new cryptocurrencies …

Differences In Psychopathy And Associated Traits By Police Officer Rank, Rosanne Libretti

Student Theses

Most psychopathy research focuses on its manifestation in forensic populations, however these results may not generalize onto noncriminal, or “successful,” psychopaths. Lykken (1995) conjectured that socialization may enable “heroes,” like law enforcement, to utilize the interpersonal and affective aspects of psychopathy in a manner that benefits society. Previous research (Falkenbach et al., 2018a) suggests that psychopathy and its correlates differ between police recruits and individuals in the community. It is necessary to continue this work with other groups in the police force to see if the patterns found in these studies generalize to veteran officers who have worked in law …

‘Affluent’ Justice: The Role Of Ses In Sentencing Severity, Sonia Pappachan

Student Theses

Imprisonment is the harshest punishment the law can give a defendant; it has considerable consequences on the incarcerated, during and after. Therefore, the sentencing phase of the criminal proceedings should be fair and balanced. However, the literature and researches that have explored the biases in sentencing found that there is a disparity in sentencing due to the characteristics of both the victim and the defendant. The current study used a sample of 209 online survey participants to explore the effect of the socioeconomic status of the victim and defendant on sentencing length. Participants reviewed a vignette of a criminal offense …

Something Old, Something New: Historicizing Same-Sex Marriage Within Ongoing Struggles Over African Marriage In South Africa, Michael W. Yarbrough

Publications and Research

This article examines contemporary struggles over same-sex marriage in the daily lives of black lesbian- and gay-identified South Africans. Based primarily on 21 in-depth interviews with such South Africans drawn from a larger project on post-apartheid South African marriage, the author argues that their current struggles for relationship recognition share much in common with contemporaneous struggles of their heterosexual counterparts, and that these commonalities reflect ongoing tensions between more extended-family and more dyadic understandings of African marriage. The increasing influence of dyadic understandings of marriage, and of associated ideals of romantic love, has helped inspire same-sex marriage claims and, in …

The Impact Of Defendant Gender And Attractiveness On Juror Decision-Making In A Sexual Offense Case, Georgia M. Winters

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

In recent years, instances of educator sexual assault against students have flooded the media. In particular, female teachers who abused students have seized the public’s attention as they are often portrayed as attractive and a sexual fantasy. This portrayal can then impact the way society perceives these sexual assaults. Importantly, however, it is not known whether this perception influences the prosecution and sentencing of these cases. The current study examined the impact of gender and attractiveness of a teacher, as well as gender of the student victim, on juror decision-making in a teacher/student sexual assault case. Using a 2 (Teacher …

Stereotype Threat And Racial Disparities At The Front End Of The Criminal Justice System, Megan J. O'Toole

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

To avoid initial contact with a racially disparate criminal justice system, Black men in the US must be hyperaware of how others perceive them in public. These efforts may be futile, though, as decades of stereotype threat research suggests that the targets of well-known stereotypes often become so overwhelmed with trying to deflect them that they underperform in relevant situations. Through a series of three online experiments, this research examines whether stereotype threat applies to Black men’s experiences at the front end of the criminal justice system. Results reveal that references to the criminal justice system lead Blacks but not …

Bias-Motivated Homicides: Toward A New Typology, Lindsey Sank Davis

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Despite significant progress towards equal protection under the law for women, LGBT individuals, and people of color in the United States, hate crime remains a pervasive problem, and rates appear to have increased in recent years. Bias-motivated homicide – arguably the most serious form of hate crime – is statistically rare but may have far-reaching consequences for marginalized communities. Data from the Uniform Crime Reports and the National Crime Victimization Survey have suggested that, on average, fewer than 10 bias-motivated homicides occur in the United States per year; however, data from open sources indicate that the rate of bias-motivated homicide …

Highly Skilled Immigration In The United States In An Age Of Globalization: An Institutional And Agency Approach, Marcela F. González

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

My dissertation proposes an institutional and agency approach in order to answer a new question to a new set of conditions, processes, and architecture of the new immigration trend for highly skilled immigration in the United States that emerged in the 1990s. The complexification of visa policies for highly skilled immigrants since the 1990s forces many immigrants to follow a multi-step legal pathway to acquire legal permanent residency: first, immigrants have a variety of temporary legal statuses or no legal status, and in a subsequent stage they achieve legal permanent residency. The central question that organizes the dissertation has two …

Gender And Terrorism: A Homeland Security Perspective, Diana Rosa Rodriguez-Spahia

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

While scholars have been studying the growing trend of female terrorists for several years, their research has not permeated politics or the media to help inform our Homeland Security policies. The findings from this body of research indicate that there is hesitance on behalf of the public (especially politicians and law enforcement) to acknowledge that women can be terrorists due to deeply engrained gender norms and expectations about gender roles. Terrorist groups are exploiting this unwillingness by recruiting more women to perpetrate terrorist acts (Lele, 2014; Bloom, 2011). Against the backdrop of the changes in gender norms and expectations that …

Feeling As Knowing: Trans Phenomenology And Epistemic Justice, B. Lee Aultman

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This dissertation is a critical intervention into the literatures on epistemic and phenomenological claims about trans experiences, and embodied knowledge more generally. It also addresses the conception of ordinary affects, or feelings of self-adjustment in everyday life, and their political implications for trans people. Traditional literatures on the political tend to avoid questions of embodiment and the experiences of everyday life in favor of institutional interpretations of courts, elections, and protest movements. This has become particularly true of scholarship on trans politics and theories of ordinary life. These literatures often reduce political movements to their presumed universal intentions for constitutional …

Transformed, I'M Sure: A (Polite) Introduction To Fair Use In Dh, Jill Cirasella

Publications and Research

This presentation looks at how the words "including" and "such as" in the fair use section of United States copyright law (i.e., Section 107 of Title 17 of the United States Code) allow for unforeseen fair uses, including transformative works made by digital humanists.

Islamic Terrorism In The United States – The Association Of Religious Fundamentalism With Social Isolation & Paths Leading To Extreme Violence Through Processes Of Radicalization., Shay Shiran

Student Theses

This exploratory study focuses on identifying motivations for religious terrorism and Islamic terrorism in the United States in particular. Terrorism is a crime of extreme violence with the end purpose of political influence. This crime is challenging to encounter for its multi-faced characteristics, the unusual motivations of its actors, and their semi-militant conduct. The hypothesis of this study asserts that religious terrorists are radicalized by passing from fundamental to extreme devout agendas, caused by isolation from the dominant society, and resulted in high potential to impose those agendas by extreme violence. Under the theoretical framework of subculture in criminology, this …

Bait Questions As Source Of Misinformation In Police Interviews: Does Race Or Age Of The Suspect Increase Jurors' Memory Errors?, Matilde Ascheri

Student Theses

Bait questions—hypothetical questions about evidence, often used by detectives during interrogations—can activate the misinformation effect and alter jurors’ perceptions of the evidence of a case. Here, we were interested in investigating whether mock jurors’ implicit biases could amplify the magnitude of the misinformation effect. We accomplished this by manipulating the age and race of the suspect being interrogated. As an extension of Luke et al. (2017), we had participants read a police report describing evidence found at a crime scene, then read a transcript of a police interrogation where the detective used bait questions to introduce new evidence not presented …

Proposition 47 And Crime: A Difference In Differences Analysis Of Incarceration Rates And Crime Using Border Counties, Brian J. Fischer

Theses and Dissertations

California passed Proposition 47 by vote and changed the way the state punishes drug and theft. I find an increase in crime using a difference in differences model by computing the change in thefts with the change in inmates. This effect sides with anecdotal claims and disagrees with empirical studies.

Media Framing Of Wrongful Convictions, Eza B. Zakirova

Student Theses

Wrongful convictions are a major issue hindering the effectiveness and legitimacy of the criminal justice system. The topic has become a focus of media attention. Among the issues raised are the contributing factors to wrongful convictions, such as false confessions, false or misleading forensic evidence, official misconduct, mistaken witness identification, and perjury or false accusations. The following study examines how media frames these contributing factors of wrongful convictions using Loseke's social constructionist framework, which is useful for deconstructing the issue’s diagnostic, motivational and prognostic frames -- that is, how media consumers assess the causes, solutions, and the reasons to act …

Due Process And The Right To Legal Counsel For Unaccompanied Minors, Marielos G. Ramos

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Unaccompanied minors arriving to the United States fleeing violence and seeking protection are apprehended, detained in facilities, and placed in removal proceedings in accordance with U.S. immigration laws. Like adults, these children have to appear in immigration court to fight deportation and must apply for any form of legal relief for which they may be eligible. However, removal proceedings work as a civil and not a criminal process, and immigration laws have established that while noncitizens have the right to an attorney, they are not entitled to legal counsel at the government’s expense. This thesis examines how the denial of …

The State And Future Of Autonomous Vehicle Regulation In The United States, Nikolay Nyashin

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Autonomous vehicle technology is poised to revolutionize transit around the world. There are currently tens of private companies either testing or building autonomous vehicles, including industry juggernauts like Ford and Google. This new mode of transportation falls into a regulatory grey area. Once cars reach full autonomy, governments will have to decide what entities will regulate them, where they will be allowed to drive, who will be responsible for them and a host of other issues. In some municipalities like San Francisco and Phoenix, autonomous vehicles (AVs) are being tested on public streets in real life conditions. Meanwhile, in 2017, …

Oops!... I Infringed Again: An Analysis Of U.S. Copyright And Its Intended Beneficiaries, Gabriele A. Forbes-Bennett

Student Theses and Dissertations

This paper seeks to establish the reasons why federal copyright protection was created, discuss the shifts in reasoning behind major amendments, and explore its effects on copyright holders and the public, with a slight focus on the music industry. Federal copyright has existed in the United States since the late 1700s, with the creation of the Copyright Act in 1790. Adopted from the first copyright law ever created, the English Statute of Anne (1710), the Copyright Act was meant to protect citizens from piracy in a world where the risk of such a thing was rapidly increasing. The stated objective …

Moral Mode Switching: From Punishment To Public Health, Stephen Koppel

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

A public health response to drug offenses has potential to improve both public safety and public health. However, the public’s desire for retribution represents a possible hindrance to reform. Relying on dual-process theory of moral decision-making, this dissertation examines agreement among laypeople about the relative blame deserved for various crime types, and probes several possible predictors of support—the need for cognition (“NFC”), intergroup bias, and free-will doubt—for retributive as well as consequentialist responses to crime. Findings from several web-based experiments show: (a) in comparison to core crimes (eg., murder) substantially less agreement about the relative blame deserved for noncore crimes …

Conditions Of Personhood And Property, Zachary James Acree

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This paper seeks to demonstrate that a more robust understanding of personhood both reveals flaws in the underlying assumptions of modern property law, and orients that law to a more just application. To do this, the law needs not only a better definition of what persons are, but also a better understanding of how persons function in their society. First, in order to provide some context to the issues at stake, there is a brief historical introduction to some of the problems that personhood inquiries have faced. After the introduction, this paper is divided into four sections. Part I summarizes …

Emancipatory Learning, Open Educational Resources, Open Education, And Digital Critical Participatory Action Research, Jason Leggett, Jay Wen, Anthony Chatman

Publications and Research

Given that we must prepare students for the future workforce today how can we use the power of Open Educational Resources (OERs) and Digital Social Science research to improve student learning and help students develop technical skills needed for the high-tech workforce? In this article, we use transformative learning theory (Mezirow, 1978) and Digital + Critical Participatory Action Research (D+CPAR) to analyze the effectiveness of integrating OERs into a course and reflect on how we used OERs to support student learning and make civic engagement more equitable at an urban community college. In a criminal justice course analyzing the legal …

Guyana-Venezuela Border Dispute: Seeking A Peaceful Solution, Aaron Marcus Homer

Dissertations and Theses

The purpose of this thesis is to examine and evaluate the effectiveness of those dispute settlement mechanisms that are capable of resolving the Guyana-Venezuela border dispute. This thesis will analyze those legal principles and/or techniques of the International Court of Justice, mediation and the Permanent Court of Arbitration, which are indispensable for dispute resolution. I argue that a resolution is significant for the stability of the international community.

Guyana and Venezuela possess economic and political interests in the disputed Essequibo region. Venezuela’s predilection for bilateral negotiations contradicts Guyana’s request for a judicial solution. These extreme positions are not novel but …

Very Long Engagements: The Persistent Authority Of Bridewealth In A Post-Apartheid South African Community, Michael W. Yarbrough

Publications and Research

This article examines the persistent authority of the customary practice for forming recognized marriages in many South African communities, centered on bridewealth and called “lobola.” Marriage rates have sharply fallen in South Africa, and many South Africans blame this on the difficulty of completing lobola amid intense economic strife. Using in-depth qualitative research from a village in KwaZulu-Natal, where lobola demands are the country’s highest and marriage rates its lowest, I argue that lobola’s authority survives because lay actors, and especially women, have innovated new repertoires of lobola behavior that allow them to pursue emerging needs and desires for marriage …

Introduction: For Better Or For Worse? Relational Landscapes In The Time Of Same-Sex Marriage, Michael W. Yarbrough

Publications and Research

As same-sex marriage has become a legal reality in a rapidly growing list of countries, the time has come to assess what this means for families and relationships on the ground. Many scholars have already begun to examine how marriage is helping some same-sex couples, but in this introduction I call for a broader and more critical research agenda. In particular, I argue that same-sex marriage crystallizes a key tension surrounding families and relationships in many contemporary societies. On the one hand, strict family norms are relaxing in many places, allowing more people to form more diverse types of caring …