Social and Behavioral Sciences Commons^™

Higher Education And Police Officers: The Effects On Citizen Complaints, Evan D. Brown

All Graduate Theses, Dissertations, and Other Capstone Projects

This study was conducted to examine the effects that different levels of education may have on the number of citizen complaints filed against police officers. There are many literature articles pertaining to the education of police officers but few studies have been conducted to measure the specific effects of higher education in law enforcement. The analysis in this paper will show relationships between higher education of police officers and if it has a relationship with the number of officer complaints.

A Legal Analysis: The Transgender Bathroom Debate, Josselyn Sheer

The Journal of Sociology & Social Welfare

This article examines the current legal battles over transgender bathroom, locker room, and employment rights. In the recent years, there has been a major uproar surrounding the rights of transgender individuals; concurrently, our country is witnessing a shift in the ways in which individuals understand their gender outside of the binary male and female classification. While the word transgender can serve as an “umbrella term encompassing a wide array of identifies,” transgender rights have steadily grown across numerous areas (Buck, 2016, p. 465). However, there have been contentious legal issues that have put transgender individuals rights in the spotlight.

The …

Probate Attorneys’ Understanding Of The Inclusion Of The Lucid Interval In Testamentary Capacity Proceedings, Jeremy Cassius

Walden Dissertations and Doctoral Studies

This study focused on the experience of probate attorneys with the lucid interval in contested will cases. There is a gap in the research for understanding the lucid interval for people who live with dementia. Dementia can affect the testamentary capacity (TC) of a testator who is signing a will because the testator may not understand all the property that is in their possession. This causes difficulties and conflict for families when a loved one dies. It can also cause the testator to be susceptible to undue influence. The present study analyzed data from interviews with 6 probate attorneys about …

Dispositional Self-Control And Motherhood: An Investigation Into Recidivism, Corliss Crawford-Bayles

Walden Dissertations and Doctoral Studies

The goal of many female offenders when released from prison is reunification with their children. However, resumption of motherhood is a gendered challenge that may increase the risk of recidivism. The purpose of this research was to investigate whether resuming custody of minor children would increase the risk of recidivism or support and maintain desistence. This research is grounded in feminist theory, identity theory, and self-control theory with a quasi-experimental design. The key research question, whether motherhood increased the risk of recidivism, was investigated using a researcher-generated, 18-question research questionnaire. Additionally, the Dispositional Self-Control (DSC) scale consisted of 17 questions …

Low-Income Household Adults Sustaining Affordable Housing In Affluent Neighborhoods, Edward Brian Flournoy

Walden Dissertations and Doctoral Studies

Public housing policy continues to exacerbate the concentration of poverty for low

income household adults (LIHA), preventing their mobility to achieve or sustain

affordable housing in low-poverty affluent neighborhoods. Successful design and

implementation of public housing policy for LIHA has been elusive for policymakers

seeking to address socioeconomic self-sufficiency problems in the United States.

Wilson’s spatial mismatch theory on social transformation of the inner city was the

theoretical framework for this study. This qualitative study utilized policy analysis and

key interviews to explore the importance of public policy design and implementation in

how the Moving to Opportunity (MTO) program influenced …

The Impact Of Executive Hiring Decisions Within Homeless Services Providers, Thela Rachelle Thatch

Walden Dissertations and Doctoral Studies

Inequities in staffing may affect the ability of organizations to deliver social services to the homeless. As homeless services are challenged with roadblocks exacerbated by systemic racism, a focus on hiring diverse employees may impact the delivery of services to minority clients. Little is known about the effects of diverse hiring in social service programs that serve the homeless. The purpose of this study is to bridge the gap in knowledge by examining the diverse hiring practices of senior employees that hold decision-making roles that affect the delivery of homeless services. Research questions were focused on discovering participants lived experience …

Wrongful Conviction: Using Lived Experience To Explore Errors In Juror Cognition, Danielle Nicole Schulte Lewis

Walden Dissertations and Doctoral Studies

AbstractWrongful conviction is a pressing legal and social justice issue that requires scholarly attention in the United States. The role of jurors in the criminal justice system has been empirically investigated and debated for many decades as researchers attempt to understand the juror decision-making process and how jurors contribute to wrongful conviction. The purpose of this study was to qualitatively explore how errors in juror cognition during decision-making led to juror reliance on narrative construction and commonsense reasoning rather than legal and judicial instruction in wrongful conviction cases. In-depth interviews were conducted with 12 jurors who served on a criminal …

Police Procedural Justice, Lawyer Procedural Justice, Judge Procedural Justice, And Satisfaction With The Criminal Justice System: Findings From A Neglected Region Of The World, Daniel K. Pryce, George Wilson

Sociology & Criminal Justice Faculty Publications

Although the impact of procedural justice on citizens’ satisfaction with the police and other branches of the criminal justice system has been tested in several geopolitical contexts, this is the first study to examine the relative impacts of police procedural justice, lawyer procedural justice, and judge procedural justice on satisfaction with a country’s criminal justice system. To assess the universal applicability of procedural justice, scholars must carry out research in all geopolitical regions. However, subSaharan Africa appears to be a region that scholars have neglected for far too long. As a result, the current study assesses the relative impacts of …

Hernández V. Mesa And Police Liability For Youth Homicides Before And After The Death Of Michael Brown, Delores Jones-Brown, Joshua Ruffin, Kwan-Lamar Blount-Hill, Akiv Dawson, Cicely J. Cottrell

Sociology & Criminal Justice Faculty Publications

In a five-to-four decision announced in February of 2020, the United States Supreme Court ruled that the parents of an unarmed fifteen-year-old Mexican national killed by a U.S. Border Patrol agent in a cross-border shooting, cannot sue for damages in U.S. civil court. Here, we critique the majority and dissenting opinions and attempt to reconcile the strikingly different approach each used to resolve the case. Using a publicly available data set, we examine the homicide in Hernández v. Mesa, against the circumstances and context in which underage youth were killed by police within the United States over a five year …

Texas Landfills: The Need For Administrative Reform Of The Texas Commission On Environmental Quality’S Permitting Process, William Todd Keller Jr.

St. Mary's Law Journal

Abstract forthcoming

The Program, Aaron Douglas Estrada

Theses and Dissertations

In my work, I explore the engineering of identity and socioeconomics that are programed into Black and Brown communities. I refer to this as “The Program”. The Program validates, breaks, codes, and critiques the system that divided us. The Program is identifying with the struggle of growing up in a system that is programmed to see you fail. So if you get caught up in that system it’s a natural death within the program. But you can break and make your own program. If you stick to the program.

The paper's use of language is coded. Text has been written …

Collective Healing Within Queer Paradoxes: Deconstructing Emotional Abuse In Lgbtq2sia* Communities To Cultivate More Accountable And Compassionate Worlds, Alexia Siebuhr

Cal Poly Humboldt theses and projects

Emotional abuses within LGBTQ2SIA* communities are rarely acknowledged as existing or often normalized. Through care and anti-oppression works, transformative justice models such as community and self-accountability have helped carve out ways of addressing harm directly and breaking cycles of violence. The research in this thesis has been through mixed qualitative methodologies including semi-structured interviews and surveys. The participants' along with other authors, artists, activists and scholars’ narratives draws upon the experiences of emotional abuse lived within structural and social surveillance. The settler colonial state sanctioned projects have responded to harm by perpetuating violence upon those most marginalized. Deconstructing emotional abuse …

Taking Stock Of The Religion Clauses, John D. Inazu

Scholarship@WashULaw

After a few decades of relative quiet, the Supreme Court has in recent years focused once again on the religion clauses and related statutes.

Beyond Unreasonable, John D. Inazu

Scholarship@WashULaw

The concept of “reasonableness” permeates the law: the “reasonable person” determines the outcome of torts and contracts disputes, the criminal burden of proof requires factfinders to reach conclusions “beyond a reasonable doubt,” and claims of self-defense succeed or fail on reasonableness determinations. But as any first-year law student can attest, the line between reasonable and unreasonable is not always clear. Nor is that the only ambiguity. In the realm of the unreasonable, many of us intuit that some actions are not only unreasonable but beyond the pale—we might say they are beyond unreasonable. Playing football, summiting Nanga Parbat, and attempting …

Virtual Access: A New Framework For Disability And Human Flourishing In An Online World, John D. Inazu, Johanna Smith

Scholarship@WashULaw

While many commentators have noted the wealth and class disparities that emerge from the digital divide, disability adds another important lens through which to consider questions of access and equity. Online accessibility for disabled people has fallen prey to the same assumptions and impediments that led to the Americans with Disabilities Act (“ADA”) addressing disability access in the offline world. Addressing these shortcomings requires a significant conceptual shift in our understanding of “access,” even among disabled people. Offline, the sidewalk or doorway hindered access to those who needed assistance walking or moving. Today’s virtual sidewalks and doorways complicate access in …

What’S Wrong With Police Unions?, Benjamin Levin

Scholarship@WashULaw

In an era of declining labor power, police unions stand as a rare success story for worker organizing—they exert political clout and negotiate favorable terms for their members. Yet, despite broad support for unionization on the political left, police unions have become public enemy number one for academics and activists concerned about race and police violence. Much criticism of police unions focuses on their obstructionist nature and how they prioritize the interests of their members over the interests of the communities they police. These critiques are compelling—police unions shield officers and block oversight. But, taken seriously, they often sound like …

The Wandering Officer, Ben Grunwald, John Rappaport

Faculty Scholarship

“Wandering officers” are law-enforcement officers fired by one department, sometimes for serious misconduct, who then find work at another agency. Policing experts hold disparate views about the extent and character of the wandering-officer phenomenon. Some insist that wandering officers are everywhere—possibly increasingly so—and that they’re dangerous. Others, however, maintain that critics cherry-pick rare and egregious anecdotes that distort broader realities. In the absence of systematic data, we simply do not know how common wandering officers are or how much of a threat they pose, nor can we know whether and how to address the issue through policy reform.

In this …

Undeliverable: Suspended Driver's Licenses And The Problem Of Notice, Brandon L. Garrett, Karima Modjadidi, William Crozier

Faculty Scholarship

In North Carolina, one in seven adult drivers currently has a suspended license for nondriving related reasons. As in many other states, in North Carolina, driver’s licenses are commonly suspended, for reasons unrelated to safety, when a person fails to appear in court in response to notice of a traffic court date or fails to pay traffic fines. Notices of traffic court dates are sent by mail, typically to the address on record at the Department of Motor Vehicles, as are subsequent notices that the consequence for nonappearance will be a driver’s license suspension. To better understand the effects of …

The Prevalence Of Secondary School Sport Safety Policies Within State Athletic Associations And Legislation, Samantha E. Scarneo, William M. Adams, Susan W. Yeargin, Madeline A. Konz, James E. Potter, Douglas J. Casa

Internet Journal of Allied Health Sciences and Practice

Purpose: The location of secondary school health and safety policies impacts how they are implemented by the sports medicine team and stakeholders. Yet, a comprehensive list of each state’s policy locations has not been established. The purpose of this study was to describe where secondary school health and safety policies were located at the state level within the United States. Method: Emergency related health and safety policies were designated as either being located in the state high school athletics association (SHSAA), state legislation (LEGIS), or in both SHSAA and LEGIS (BOTH). Designation was determined by two researchers who independently …

Access Law Schools & Diversifying The Profession, Deseriee A. Kennedy

Scholarly Works

Lawyers do not reflect the racial diversity in the United States. The legal profession continues to struggle with ways to achieve and maintain racial diversity. Law schools play a critical role in the path to practice, and therefore an examination of the barriers to the profession they created is warranted. This essay critiques the over-reliance on standardized testing in law school admissions and advocates for an open admissions process that prioritizes racial and academic diversity. It suggests that the benefits of minimizing the role of standardized tests far outweigh any perceived costs in legal education. This essay concludes that the …

Socialists And Housing, Michael Lewyn

Scholarly Works

My review of Capital City by Samuel Stein

Subways And Covid-19: A Literature Review, Michael Lewyn

Scholarly Works

Discusses a variety of articles and blog posts which address the impact (or lack thereof) of the New York subway system upon the COVID-19 pandemic.

An Essential Service: Public Libraries And Their Role In Law And Society, Graham Reynolds

All Faculty Publications

On March 16, 2020, in order to help slow the spread of COVID-19, the City of Vancouver closed all of its public library branches. I experienced these closures on a number of different levels: as a Vancouver resident who loves to read and to visit libraries, as the partner of an avid reader, as the father of a four and a half year old who is as excited about the prospect of trips to the library to pick up “fresh books” as he is with the chance to practice riding his pedal bike through the neighborhood, and, among other identities, …

The Shifting Scheme Of Athletic Fundraising: Investigating Private Giving Under The Tax Cuts And Jobs Act, Kirsten Nicole Brown

Graduate Theses, Dissertations, and Problem Reports (ETD)

With a consistent decline in state funding to public higher education, institutions have become more reliant on private funding to institutional support. The shift in government policy through the introduction of the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act (TCJA) (2017) created financial uncertainty within athletic departments and university foundations. The TCJA eliminated the 80 percent tax deduction on season ticket donations and increased the standard deduction. With these policy changes, athletic development officers speculated a decline in donations in 2018 and beyond. Using quantitative methodology and a longitudinal approach, this study examined athletic donations from January 1, 2013 to July 31, …

Structural Discrimination In Covid-19 Workplace Protections, Ruqaiijah Yearby, Seema Mohapatra

All Faculty Scholarship

Workers, who are being asked to risk their health by working outside their homes during the COVID-19 pandemic, need adequate hazard compensation, safe workplace conditions, and personal protective equipment (PPE). Sadly, this is not happening for many essential workers, such as those working in home health care and in the meat processing industry. These workers are not only being unnecessarily exposed to the virus, but they are also not receiving paid sick leave, unemployment benefits, and affordable health care and childcare. The lack of these protections is due to structural discrimination and has disproportionately disadvantaged women of color and low-wage …

Mapping Misinformation In The Coronavirus Outbreak, Ana Santos Rutschman

All Faculty Scholarship

The coronavirus outbreak has sent ripples of fear and confusion across the world. These sentiments—and our collective responses to the outbreak—are made worse by rampant misinformation surrounding the new strain of the virus, COVID-2019. In this post, I survey some of the most pervasive areas of tentacular coronavirus-related misinformation that has proliferated online -- as well as the responses of social media companies like YouTube, Facebook, Pinterest and TikTok that may ultimately prove inadequate given the magnitude of the problem.

The Village Of Billionaires: Fair Taxation And Redistribution Amid Relative And Absolute Poverty, Alexis Brassey, Henry Ordower

All Faculty Scholarship

Tax justice and principles underpinning the international tax regime are in vogue. The idea that companies and individuals need to pay their "fair share", not just in the domestic sense but also the international sense, is now a mainstream position. This paper explores the problems relating to what might constitute a "fair share" by setting out what is meant when this expression is used. A reasonable assumption is to consider taxation as the means by which the state funds public services and in some jurisdictions, contributes to greater equality within society. Those goals, however, give rise to competing claims. This …

Comments On The Preliminary Framework For Equitable Allocation Of Covid-19 Vaccine, Ana Santos Rutschman, Julia Barnes-Weise, Robert Gatter, Timothy L. Wiemken

All Faculty Scholarship

On September 1, 2020 the National Academies released a draft framework for Equitable Allocation of a COVID-19 Vaccine. In this response, we analyze the proposed framework and highlight several areas.

Among the proposed changes, we highlight the need for the following interventions. The final framework for distribution of COVID-19 vaccines should give a higher priority to populations made most vulnerable by the social determinants of health. It should incorporate more geography-based approaches in at least some of the four proposed phases of vaccine distribution. It should address the possibility of a vaccine being made available through an emergency use authorization …

The Undeserving Rich: Can They Be Redeemed? Policy Options For Curbing Illegal Wealth, James F. Gilsinan, James E. Fisher, Muhammad Islam, Henry Ordower, Wassim Shahin

All Faculty Scholarship

Purpose – The purpose of this study is to examine the efficacy of various policy options for curbing the accumulation of illegal wealth and suggest ways to close the increasing wealth inequality gap.

Design/methodology/approach – The paper begins with a historical/literary analysis of the place of wealth in American Society and the ambivalent cultural attitudes toward wealth. Different policy approaches that seek to limit wealth inequality and the illegal accumulation of wealth are then examined. Finally, the current policy climate in the USA is reviewed to determine the likelihood of meaningful reform.

Findings – In Europe, the BASEL accords show …

Feminist Action Against Pornography In Japan: Unexpected Success In An Unlikely Place, Caroline Norma, Seiya Morita

Dignity: A Journal of Analysis of Exploitation and Violence

In late 2016 a feminist movement against problems of commercial sexual exploitation, and especially issues of coerced pornography filming, arose in Japan. This article describes the history of this movement as it mobilized to combat human rights violations perpetrated by the country’s pornographers. The movement’s success came not spontaneously or haphazardly; in fact, it was orchestrated earlier over a full decade-and-a-half by activists who persevered in researching and highlighting pornography’s harms in a civil environment of hostility, isolation and social derision, even among progressive groups and individuals. The Anti-Pornography and Prostitution Research Group (APP) was particularly prominent in this history. …