Social and Behavioral Sciences Commons^™

#Readyforrio: How A Revised Rule 40 Impacted Sponsorship At The 2016 Summer Olympics, Anthony Carson

Senior Theses

When planning and executing the Olympic Games, a premier event in modern sport, the International Olympic Committee (IOC) relies heavily on sponsorship revenue from their official sponsors. “Worldwide Olympic Partners,” the top 11 sponsors of the 2016 Olympics, had exclusive rights during the Olympic cycle from 2013-2016.

With the purchase of these expensive sponsorship deals, brands are looking to capitalize on the “glow” of the Olympics, and use excusive Olympic intellectual property to make ties from their brand to the Games. In order to make these sponsorship deals more valuable, the IOC has historically provided official partners with added exclusivity …

Analyzing Palm Print Shapes With Pressure And Distortion, Whitney Grannan

Honors Theses

While much research exists on latent fingerprints, there is a lack of research on palm prints. This study aims to discover how the variable of pressure affects the distortion of latent palm prints recovered from a crime scene. This study used various development techniques to extract prints from aluminum Coca-Cola cans, white copy paper, and household steak knives. The collected prints were scanned into the AFIX Tracker system and an auto-extract number, based on the number of minutiae points, was generated automatically from the system. These auto-extract numbers were then compared to a baseline, which consisted of an average of …

A Validation Study Of Blueview™ Gunpowder Particle Testing Kit, Hanna Lester

Honors Theses

The examination of gunshot residue is often an integral part of evidence processing. The aim of this preliminary study is to validate the use of the BlueView Gunshot Particle Test Kit in the field. This was done by comparing the results of the presumptive tests using the BlueView Gunshot Particle Test Kit to confirmatory test results using a scanning electron microscope. This study used both collection techniques to collect samples for presumptive tests and confirmatory tests. Gunshot residue samples were collected from the hands after a series of guns were fired, and positive results were obtained from the presumptive and …

Exploring Various Techniques To Process And Identify Latent Friction Ridge Details From Fingers On Semi-Porous Surfaces, Emily Campo

Honors Theses

Numerous terrorist groups in the Middle East have been recently making detonators for IEDs (Improvised Explosive Devices) using items as basic as flip flops. Because of the semi-porous nature of flip flops, military forensic response teams have been unable to find an effective method through which they can identify, process, and lift latent fingerprints from the surface of a flip flop. The present study aims to use three fingerprint principles to formulate a reliable method that can be used for such purposes. This study specifically investigated the potential use of powders and cyanoacrylate fuming as processing techniques. The case study …

Using Pattern Area Ridge Flow In The Three Areas Of The Palm To Determine Classification Trends, Ashton Horton

Honors Theses

Friction ridge skin is only located on the fingers, palms, and soles of feet. These ridges have been used to make identifications since before the twentieth century. These methods may be the basis of scientific testimony in court because of the amount of research that has been conducted in fingerprint identification. Courts uphold these techniques because of three principles behind fingerprint identification: fingerprints are unique because no two are the same, they will not change from the time they are formed in the womb until post-mortem decomposition, and they can be objectively classified using a general classification system. Little research …

Exploring The Experiences And Mental Health Concerns Of 9-1-1 Public Safety Telecommunicators, Ariel Patience Elliot

Honors Theses

9-1-1 public safety telecommunicators are the first line of emergency services; however, minimal research currently exists on their mental health. A lack of understanding exists as to how the continuous flow of traumatic calls are influencing these people. The purpose of this project is to help fill the existing gap in literature and contribute to the existing minimal foundation for future research on this topic. Participants for this study were obtained with agency consent from the Harrison County Sheriff’s Office in Gulfport, MS; Gulfport Police Department in Gulfport, MS; Hattiesburg Police Department in Hattiesburg, MS; and Cobb County 911 in …

Exploring The Relationship Between Personality Characteristics And Eyewitness Memory: A Test Of The Weapons-Focused Effect, Emily Jean Stahly

Honors Theses

Eyewitness accuracy is of vital importance in crime scene investigations; however, accumulating evidence suggests that eyewitnesses often show memory inaccuracies. One type of eyewitness inaccuracy is the weapons-focused effect which occurs when the presence of a weapon as part of a crime scene compromises an individual’s ability to recall other details about the event or scene (Erickson, Lampinen & Leding, 2014). Given the weapons-focused effect negatively affects eyewitness accuracy, the purpose of my thesis is to examine the extent to which the weapons-focused effect is moderated by certain personality traits. Of particular interest were the neuroticism and conscientiousness factors in …

Is Corporal Punishment The Best Punishment? A Millennial Perspective, Zachary Rush

Honors Theses

Corporal punishment, defined as “physical force resulting in pain or discomfort, but not significant injury…meant to alter a child’s unfavorable behavioral patterns,” remains a much debated topic of conversation in the United States (Straus & Donnelly, 2001, p. 4). Straus and Stewart (1999) reported that 94% of parents have spanked their children by the time of their fifth birthday. Moreover, the same study identified that 52% of parents continued to employ corporal punishment when their children were teenagers (twelve to thirteen years old) and 20% up until their children were seventeen years of age. However, spanking and similar forms of …

Police Perceptions On False Accusations Of Sexual Assault, Danielle Ostrander

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

The purpose of this study was to expand current literature regarding police officers’ perceptions on false accusations of sexual assault; specifically, focusing on perceptions of the frequency of false accusations, rape myths and behavior displayed by women reporting sexual assault. Police officers’ perceptions on false accusations of sexual assault were examined by administering a 21-question survey consisting of close-ended and open-ended questions. The survey included questions about police perceptions, false accusations, rape myths, training, and behaviors of women reporting sexual assault. The sample consisted of 40 sworn law enforcement officers from different municipal police departments in Tennessee. The results showed …

How To Think Constitutionally About Prerogative: A Study Of Early American Usage, Matthew J. Steilen

Journal Articles

This Article challenges the view of “prerogative” as a discretionary authority to act outside the law. For seventy years, political scientists, lawyers and judges have drawn on John Locke’s account of prerogative in the Second Treatise, using it to read foundational texts in American constitutional law. American writings on prerogative produced between 1760 and 1788 are rarely discussed (excepting The Federalist), though these materials exist in abundance. Based on a study of over 700 of these texts, including pamphlets, broadsides, letters, essays, newspaper items, state papers, and legislative debates, this Article argues that early Americans almost never used “prerogative” as …

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 …

Evaluation Of Illumina’S Forenseqtm Signature Prep Kit For Eye And Hair Color As Well As Biogeographical Ancestry Predictions, Krupa Vijaykumar Jani

Student Theses

This study examined and analyzed 266 samples using ForenSeq^TM Signature Prep Kit B. Samples from various populations such as African American, East Asian, South Asian, European, and Mixed population were included in the study. Primer Mix B targets 27 autosomal STRs (aSTRs), 24 Y-STRs, 7 X-STRs, and 94 identity Single Nucleotide Polymorphisms (iSNPs), 24 phenotypic SNPs (pSNPs), and 56 ancestry SNPs (aSNPs), coming to a total of 231 targets. The study mainly focused on the quality of data generated by the instrument as well as for the accuracy of eye and hair color as well as biogeographical ancestry predictions …

Ant Predation Of Blow Flies During Decomposition And Its Potential Impact On Pmi Estimations, Vincent J. Nappi

Student Theses

When an organism dies, the process of decomposition begins and many insects are attracted to the decomposing remains, or carrion, as a prospective food source for themselves, or their offspring. Blow flies (Family: Calliphoridae), in particular, are one of the first insects to discover and colonize a dead body due to the ability to detect a decomposing resource from large distances. As a result, forensic entomologists take advantage of the behavior and developmental cycles of early colonizers to calculate the post-mortem interval (PMI) in order to determine the time since death. However, along with the insects that are attracted to …

The American And Swedish Criminal Justice System: A Comparative Study, Josefin Hedstrom

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Hosting 22 percent of the world’s prison population, the United States is the number one country in the world regarding incarceration rates where 1 in 109 adults are locked up behinds bars and about two-thirds of offenders will recidivate within three years of their release (Durose, Coope, & Snyder, 2014; Kaeble, Glaze, Tsoutis, & Minton, 2016; U.S. Census Bureau, 2015; Walmsley, 2013). Sweden has one of the lowest recidivism and incarceration rates in the world where only 29 percent reoffend and 1 in 2,278 of their total population is behind bars (Kriminalvården, 2017; The World Bank, 2016). The purpose of …

Factors Affecting The Longevity Of Individual Terrorists, Madeline Brice

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

The purpose of this study is to examine factors that affect the longevity of individual terrorists. Previous studies on terrorist group longevity have focused on the decisions terrorist groups have made rather than focusing on factors that help individuals evade capture. Literature also suggests that terrorists that manage to stay active may be able to use this as a valuable recruiting tool. This project examines six different relationships with longevity, including Attorney General (AG) Guidelines, demographics, ideology, level of participation, number of activities, and sophistication of attack. To examine these relationships, data will be used from the American Terrorism Study …

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 …

Three Strikes Law: Penal Extremism And Draconian Rhetoric, Marcelo Swofford

Creative Activity and Research Day - CARD

In our modern political history, there has been a separation between the two main political parties, the Democrats and Republicans, on virtually every major issue that has surfaced in our society aside from incarceration, which was emphasized by Democrat Bill Clinton’s introduction of the Three Strikes Law at the beginning of his term in 1994. The logistics of the Three Strikes Law are that once a criminal has been convicted of two violent/serious crimes, once they are convicted of a third felony then they will be sentenced to anything between a 25 year sentence and life sentence; the Three Strikes …

Committed Women: Explaining Rising U.S. Female Imprisonment 1990-2010, Ellen L. Tyler

Economics Honors Projects

Female prison admissions grew 62% between 1990 and 2010, while arrests for females over the same period only increased by 14%. As a larger portion of arrested women have been sent to prison over time, it seems that increased prison admissions over time are not due only to more women committing crimes, but also to more severe punishment for arrested females. Using data on arrests, prison admissions, and county characteristics, I examine factors in the increased arrest rate and imprisonment rate for females and males according to offense type over 1990 to 2010 using panel regressions with county and state-time …

Victimization: Its Impact On Masculinity And Criminal Offending, Shon M. Reed, Alexis Kennedy

Graduate Research Symposium (2018 - present)

Male victims are an underrepresented group within society. Prior research has indicated that male vic,ms may feel a diminished sense of their own masculinity. Criminology has iden,fied that masculinity does play a role in some men’s decisions to engage in criminal behavior (Messerschmidt, 1993, 2016). It seems logical that these two concepts would be related. Utlizing self­‐reported data from 135 college males, the current study analyzes the rela,onship between childhood vic,miza,on, masculinity beliefs, and the decision to engage in criminal/delinquent behavior.

Assessing Bias In Regression Estimates Using Monte Carlo Simulations: Examples In Criminal Justice Research, Matthew P. West, Melissa Rorie, Mark A. Cohen

Graduate Research Symposium (2018 - present)

Can we trust published results? Problems with bias in reported results: “Do social scientists even know anything?” Failed replications (“repligate”). Inaccurate inferences about important relationships (Type I and Type II errors). Inaccurate power analyses for future studies. To avoid these problems, researchers need tools to rigorously evaluate statistical models. The Monte Carlo method is one tool that can be used to evaluate bias in model estimates

The 1492 Jewish Expulsion From Spain: How Identity Politics And Economics Converged, Michelina Restaino

Honors College Theses

In 1492, after Queen Isabella and King Ferdinand defeated the last Muslim stronghold on the Iberian Peninsula, they presented the Jewish community throughout their kingdoms with a choice: leaving or converting to Catholicism. The Spanish kingdoms had been anti-Jewish for centuries, forcing the creation of ghettos, the use of identifying clothing, etc. in an effort to isolate and “other” the Jews, who unsuccessfully sought peaceful co-existence. Those who did not accept expulsion, but converted, were the subject of further prejudice stemming from a belief that Jewish blood was tainted and that conversions were undertaken for financial gain. The government’s dramatic …

Acknowledgments, Howard S. Carrier

International Journal on Responsibility

Serious work to bring the International Journal on Responsibility to life commenced during the summer of 2015. In the intervening period between conceptualization and publication, many organizations and individuals within James Madison University and the wider community have contributed enormously to bringing the journal to fruition.

Who Is Responsible For Ethical Legal Education, For What And To Whom? Case Of Kosovo, Sabiha Shala, Gjylbehare Muharti

International Journal on Responsibility

Legal education continues to be one of the most demanded areas of study from the younger generation in Kosovo. As result, the number of law graduates is quite high. On the other hand, the rule of law sector is quite fragile, judges and lawyers are perceived by parts of the society to be ethically dysfunctional. The trust in judicial institutions is quite low. The debate which is going on now is whose main responsibility for such a situation that is. Is the duty of the higher education institutions providing legal education, or is it a responsibility of educational institutions at …

Resolving The Paradox Of Holding People Responsible, Hal Pepinsky

International Journal on Responsibility

Regardless of justification, it is commonplace throughout the U.S. criminal justice system as in everyday life to teach our offenders and children alike that wrong actions “have consequences,” namely, those authority figures promise to impose upon them. We do so in the name of holding people responsible for their actions, or in legal parlance in civil law, holding them accountable or liable. I noticed that in Norwegian, responsibility, accountability and liability translate into one word, ansvar, which I have translated from Germanic to Latin roots as “responsiveness.” In practice, the state of being responsive to others with whom one conflicts …

Political Flip-Flopping, Political Responsibility, Current Governance, And The Disenfranchised, T.Y. Okosun

International Journal on Responsibility

No abstract provided.

What Does Responsibility Mean To Me?, Arun Gandhi

International Journal on Responsibility

No abstract provided.

Who Is Responsible To Do What For Whom? A Letter From The Editor-In-Chief, Terry Beitzel

International Journal on Responsibility

No abstract provided.

You Have Seventy-Two Hours: How The City Complaint System Enables Criminalization Of The Unsheltered Population, Lindsey Grace Earl

Theses and Dissertations

The unsheltered population has been denigrated since the formation of the United States. This is true in a city I call Marinville, Illinois where the privatization paradigm, social stratification, and anti-homeless ordinances have contributed to the shutdown of at least five homeless encampments. Multiple times per week, law enforcement officials interact with the chronically unsheltered population and incarcerate individuals for petty ordinance violations. In our current regulatory system, city officials, police officers, and homeless service organizations (HSOs) all influence the unsheltered population’s lives, including options for social and spatial mobility. This thesis is based on multi-method research from 2016-2017: engaging …

The Impact Of A Religious/Spiritual Turning Point On Desistance: A Lifecourse Assessment Of Racial/Ethnic Differences, Rhissa Briones Robinson

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Criminology’s most recent theoretical tradition involves examination of the developmental onset, continuity, and desistance from offending behavior across the life course. A prominent life course perspective organized around social bonding was proffered by Robert J. Sampson and John H. Laub in dual volumes that include Crime in the Making: Pathways and Turning Points Through Life (1993), and Shared Beginnings, Divergent Lives (2003). Because Sampson and Laub’s age-graded theory is based on a sample of White males born in the 1920s and 1930s, and matured during a historical period of vast economic growth, the universal theoretical processes emphasized in their theory …

Understanding The Experiences And Perceptions Of Specialty Mental Health Probation Officers, Brice Terpstra

Theses and Dissertations

Over the last two decades, specialty mental health probation caseloads have become increasingly common – focusing on offenders with serious mental illness (SMI). Scholars have examined overall effectiveness, the organization and design of these programs, and the differences between standard probation and specialty probation. Less attention, however, has been placed on examining how the officers supervising these SMI caseloads perceive their roles as specialty mental health probation officers and how discretion impacts their caseload management. In the current study semi-structured interviews were conducted with a complete census of 24 SMI caseload probation officers and supervisors in Maricopa County, Arizona over …