Opening The Juvenile Recidivism Umbrella Sold By Residential Treatment, Jack Lutz

Master of Arts in Criminal Justice Leadership

Juveniles, especially in a residential treatment facility fall into the classification of vulnerable population. Researchers, review boards, and the facility administrator carry the burden of ensuring ethics are to the highest standard when this population is involved, so stakeholders can make accurate decisions. Cognitive-based models, which is an evidence-based practice, have been around since the 1990’s. This form of practice has gone through a process of implementation into juvenile residential facilities and has helped reduce the recidivism rate for this population. Budget proposals follow a series of steps, checks, and revisions before taking effect. Probation and Parole is an agency …

Juvenile Hate Crimes And Identity-Based Bullying: A Comprehensive Analysis, Peter Efon Elad

Master of Arts in Criminal Justice Leadership

Abstract

This paper examines juvenile hate crimes and identity-based bullying within the criminal justice system (CJS), proposing leadership strategies and an administrative action plan to address these issues. The analysis includes the impact on peers, community, and justice entities, focusing on accountability, diversity, and inclusivity to foster a positive organizational culture and ensure effective implementation. This paper examines the ethical considerations necessary to address juvenile hate crimes and identity-based bullying within the juvenile justice system and related workplaces. It explores the impact of these crimes on victims and communities, the balance between accountability and rehabilitation for offenders, and the role …

Considerations For The Implementation Of A Specialized Mental Health Probation Caseload, Ross Becker

Master of Arts in Criminal Justice Leadership

The field of community corrections has undergone a transformation. While holding probationers accountable is still the expectation, agencies have begun to embrace evidence-based interventions to guide client change instead of a more punitive approach. The creation of specialized mental health probation caseloads is a natural evolution of supervision. The purpose of a specialized mental health caseload is to create a pathway for the ethical supervision of clients experiencing serious and persistent mental illness. Administrators who are committed to compassionate service will be most impactful when they consider the many potential ethical implications for both the client and the probation practitioner …

Implementing Body Worn Cameras, Eric Fairchild

Master of Arts in Criminal Justice Leadership

Body worn cameras are small video and audio recording devices that document interactions between law enforcement officers and the community. These devices are used to help with documenting evidence, transparency, and training for law enforcement. Prior to implementing body worn cameras, law enforcement agency need to research body worn cameras, protocols, integration, and challenges that could be faced for the organization and their staff. Protocols need to set in place by administration like retrieval process, storage of data, reviewing of videos, and policy development to assist with the seamless integration of body worn cameras. Ethical considerations must be reviewed to …

Reimagining The Criminal Justice Response To Sexual Assault, Jacob Swanson

Master of Arts in Criminal Justice Leadership

After a crime is reported, several different stakeholders work to take the case from a police report to a conviction. In sexual assault cases, these stakeholders may consist of police officers, medical professionals, advocates, forensic scientists, prosecutors, and others. Yet, this process cannot begin until a victim reports their crime to law enforcement. Sexual assault cases are widely underreported and for a variety of reasons. Data from the 2015-2019 National Crime Victimization Survey suggests that only about one-third of sexual assaults are reported to police, while only about 3% lead to a felony conviction (RAINN, n.d.).

The criminal justice community …

Crisis Intervention Policing: Navigating The Past And Adapting To The Future, Tou Vang

Master of Arts in Criminal Justice Leadership

Law enforcement personnel often find themselves responding to crisis calls involving mental health disorders or behaviors; however, standard police training sometimes lacks proper protocol or resources to manage such scenarios without resorting to the use of force. The Crisis Intervention Team (CIT) program is one potential resource that offers law enforcement personnel the tools to handle mental health crises effectively, but implementing it requires a diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) strategy to build community trust and improve responses. This paper emphasizes law enforcement's need to adopt creative, compassionate, and ethical approaches in mental health crises due to past tensions and …

Bars Are Not Fluid: Gender Identity And Women's Rights In Correctional Facilities, Camilla Juliana Gonzalez

Master of Arts in Criminal Justice Leadership

The evolving demographic landscape of the American criminal justice system, with increasing numbers of transgender individuals incarcerated, challenges traditional binary classifications and necessitates revisions in correctional evaluation methods. Balancing the specific needs of transgender inmates with the protection of women's rights and their safety is critical. This research evaluates ethical frameworks within correctional institutions, proposing a compassionate approach to prevent policy manipulation.

Addressing these challenges requires a multifaceted action plan, including establishing a task force, gender assessment protocols, comprehensive policies, and educational initiatives, all supported by ethical accountability. Three key policies—gender affirmation, zero-tolerance, and religious rights—are examined for their potential …

Making Sense Of Making Parole In New York, Alexandra Mcglinchy

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

For many individuals incarcerated in New York, the initial step toward freedom begins with an interview with the Board of Parole. This process, however, is frequently a complex and challenging one, characterized by repeated denials and extended incarcerations. The disparity in outcomes – where one individual may receive over 20 denials and another is granted parole on their first attempt – highlights the ambiguity and inconsistency in the parole decision-making process. This project aims to clarify the factors that influence parole decisions by concentrating on measurable variables. These include age, race, duration of sentence served, proportion of sentence served, type …

Transforming Law Enforcement To Attract Candidates From The Millennial Generation, Jason Muelken

Master of Arts in Criminal Justice Leadership

There is a widespread shortage of law enforcement candidates throughout the nation, resulting in agencies needing to increase their efforts to maintain staffing. The largest group in the workforce, the millennial generation, holds unique set of traits that make recruiting, retention, and leadership challenging for law enforcement administration. With the decrease in law enforcement applicant pools, recruitment and retention success is paramount to maintaining a successful organization in the future. An action plan is needed to practically, and ethically apply the change of approach to a workplace. This paper discusses how these changes may impact peers, the community, and additional …

Improving Police Officer Recruiting, Retention, And Job Satisfaction, Mitch Christensen

Master of Arts in Criminal Justice Leadership

This Capstone paper covered the topics of police officer recruiting, retention, and job satisfaction. It detailed current issues surrounding these topics, and promoted actionable and evidence-based changes to improve those issues. Topics were analyzed through administrative, ethical, and legal and legislative lens views. These proposed measures served as confirmation that current concerning trends can be mitigated, if not reversed, with thoughtful and thorough actions by police administrators and frontline employees alike.

How Human Performance Factors Can Be Better Understood And Influenced To Affect Use Of Force Encounters, Jared Kaspar

Master of Arts in Criminal Justice Leadership

Police officers in the United States of America are afforded a tremendous amount of power over its citizens. With this power comes great responsibility and over the last several years, police use of force in the course of their duties has come under increased scrutiny. Police officers are humans who are bound by the same performance factors of the average citizen: fear, fatigue, anger, physical and mental fitness are among a whole list of influences that affect use of force encounters. Since officers are human, they are not perfect and mistakes can, and do, occur. Tragically, when police officers make …

Containerization Of Seafarers In The International Shipping Industry: Contemporary Seamanship, Maritime Social Infrastructures, And Mobility Politics Of Global Logistics, Liang Wu

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This dissertation discusses the mobility politics of container shipping and argues that technological development, political-economic order, and social infrastructure co-produce one another. Containerization, the use of standardized containers to carry cargo across modes of transportation that is said to have revolutionized and globalized international trade since the late 1950s, has served to expand and extend the power of international coalitions of states and corporations to control the movements of commodities (shipments) and labor (seafarers). The advent and development of containerization was driven by a sociotechnical imaginary and international social contract of seamless shipping and cargo flows. In practice, this liberal, …

Mainstream Media Portrayal Of Banishment And Nation-Imposed Punishment, Keely Ormond

Theses and Dissertations (Comprehensive)

“In a traditional village, we wouldn’t have a teepee with no door on it and throw somebody in there. We wouldn’t cast them out, because banishment meant death. What we had to do was restore relationships” – Ryan Beardy (Thorpe, 2022).

The following project examines the representation of Indigenous traditions, customs, and issues in Canadian mainstream media. Specifically, this project is interested in the portrayal of banishment as an Indigenous practice in Canadian mainstream news outlets. This project is based on an interpretive paradigm informed by grounded theory and concepts of media framing, postcolonialism, settler colonialism and restorative justice. Nineteen …

Applying Social Bond Theory To Foster Care Instability And Justice System Contact, Therin P. Foley

Honors College Theses

While placing a child in foster care is often in an effort to protect them and their future, it does not always fully succeed. Placement in foster care has been found to be highly unstable. Additionally, it has been linked to an increase in individuals’ likelihood to engage in delinquent and criminal behavior. This thesis looks at the possibility that these two aspects may be related through Hirschi’s (1969) Social Bond theory. It examines available data from ten different states in order to explore this idea. The results of this investigation show that the instability of the foster care system …

An Analysis Of The Impact And Effectiveness Of Human Trafficking State Laws And Policies In Missouri And Nebraska, Madeleine Mather

Theses/Capstones/Creative Projects

Human trafficking is the use of force, fraud, or coercion to use another person for sex or labor. Human trafficking is a prevalent issue within the United States that is not talked about enough. This leads to a misrepresentation of facts about human trafficking that can lead to common myths related to human trafficking. It is each state’s responsibility to develop laws and policies that protect victims and prosecute offenders justly according to the crime. This research delves into an analysis of Missouri and Nebraska state statutes to determine their effectiveness and assess the level of awareness among residents of …

The Legislative Impacts Of The Trafficking Victims Protection Act And The Trafficking Victims Protection Reauthorization Act Of 2017, Kathryn Thompson

ALL - Honors Theses

In the past two decades, the issue of human trafficking has grown more prominent around the world (Mollema, 2015). According to the Polaris Project, a nonprofit organization dedicated to fighting human trafficking as well as educating the world on the dangers of human trafficking analyzed data from the Human Trafficking Hotline found that in the year 2021, there were roughly 10,359 cases of human trafficking in the United States with about 16,554 victims (Polaris Project,2022). Out of these cases, approximately 72% (7,498) of them were related to sex trafficking, with the top type of trafficking out of all cases being …

Crossover Youth: The Relationship Between Juvenile Dependency And Delinquency, Victoria Davenport

University Honors Theses

This literature review looks at the relationship between juvenile delinquency and juvenile dependency. Specifically, it evaluates the existence of "crossover youth", minors who have been involved with both systems in their lifetime. The review considers thirteen different studies, literature reviews, and databases to determine risk factors in maltreated youth that cause them to offend. The review also looks at the impact that second-generation parents have on likelihood of offending as juveniles, as well as the importance of welfare worker perception on parental involvement with dependency agencies. Finally, the review considers potential interventions to crossover youth, determining how to assist maltreated …

Human Trafficking In The Americas: Comparison Of Original Source Compilation Versus Unodc Data, Ivette Avila Jimenez

Electronic Theses, Projects, and Dissertations

International human trafficking (IHT) is a type of criminal activity that involves groups and individuals who facilitate the global movement and exploitation of people, often by illegal means. Estimates show that, worldwide, there are over 25 million victims of human trafficking at any given time; however, estimates are prone to under and overcounting. Focusing on the Americas, this study compared the quality of two data sources that could be used to observe IHT. Country-to-country IHT networks generated from 9 years of researcher compiled governmental and non-governmental data (2008-2017) was compared with networks generated from data downloaded from the United Nations …

The Contributions Of Mental Health Issues, Traumatic Brain Injury, And Adverse Childhood Experiences To Recidivism Among Rural Jail Incarcerees, Lauren N. Miley

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Recidivism should be a major concern, particularly for American jails. The Unites States incarcerates 2.3 million people, a number exceeding rates in any other country. Approximately 90% of those individuals will reenter society at some point, and roughly half of those people will ultimately return to jail. This revolving door costs U.S. taxpayers upwards of $39 billion per year, and undermines public safety. Therefore, breaking this cycle of incarceration and recidivism is of utmost concern, and the focus of this dissertation. Mental health problems, traumatic brain injury (TBI), and adverse childhood experiences (ACEs) are three potential risk factors for recidivism …

Assessing The Relationship Between True Crime Documentary And Podcast Consumption, Fear Of Crime, And Protective Behaviors, Lauren A. Tremblay

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

This study examines how the consumption of true crime documentaries and podcasts is linked to the fear of crime and the adoption of protective behaviors. Building upon prior research that explores these relationships, this study aims to evaluate the impact of true crime content consumption and fear of crime on individuals’ engagement in protective behaviors. Using a cultivation theory framework with an analytic sample of 665 American adults, three Ordinary Least Squares (OLS) regressions and one structural equation model are used to evaluate the relationship between true crime documentary and podcast consumption, fear of crime, and protective behaviors. Results suggest …

A Comparison Of Defensiveness In Mmpi-2-Rf Profiles Of Male Sex Offenders And Child Custody Litigants, Kyla M. Jones

Theses and Dissertations

Clinical evaluations have had a long-standing role in criminal and civil legal proceedings due to the intersection between various legal criteria and aspects of psychological functioning. The Minnesota Multiphasic Personality Inventory (MMPI; Hathaway & McKinley, 1943) and its subsequent versions have been among the most commonly utilized and empirically supported measures of personality and psychopathology in assessing forensic populations. One application for which MMPI instruments have been particularly useful is in the evaluation of sex offenders. This is in part due to the tests’ built-in validity scales, as MMPI underreporting scales are found to be effective in assessing sex offenders’ …

Lighting The Way Of The Learner: Towards A Social Virtue Epistemology In Aḥmad Al-Ṣaghīr’S The Faqīh’S Lantern, Amani Khelifa

Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Repository

This thesis offers an original translation and analysis of a West African didactic poem in Islamic ethics and law, by the Mālikī-Ashʿarī Mauritanian scholar Aḥmad al-Ṣaghīr (d. 1272 AH/1856 CE) called The Faqīh’s Lantern (Miṣbāḥ al-Faqīh). In addition to the critical translation, I examine the poem thematically through the lens of social virtue epistemology. Chapter 1 sketches the background of the text and author, positioning the author historically as a product of a rich scholarly and pedagogical tradition while noting Mauritania’s contemporary place in the North American Muslim imagination. Chapter 2 is the translation of the text, making …

Recruitment And Retention Of Millennials And Generation Z In The Criminal Justice Field: How Do We Replenish The Ranks?, Chris Vierling

Master of Arts in Criminal Justice Leadership

The Criminal Justice field is, and has been, experiencing a drastic decrease in the number of individuals willing to take on this unique calling. This decline can be attributed to several factors, primarily concerns about safety, the current political and social environment, work schedules, and personal life influences. The purpose of this paper and research is to examine the causes of the ongoing hiring crisis in the field of Criminal Justice and propose potential solutions. Through research, several contributing factors have been identified that can help agencies at various levels recruit and retain Criminal Justice candidates. This is an ongoing …

Gender-Responsive Supervision Six Guiding Principles, Barriers, And Benefits Of Implementation, Tessa Matousek

Master of Arts in Criminal Justice Leadership

Over the years, the goals of probation have remained the same: to increase community safety and reduce recidivism; however, as the world changes, the needs of offenders have changed. Evidence-based practices are used in probation to determine risk levels and create targeted case plans. The criminal justice system has seen an increase in female offenders, which has brought up valid questions of evaluation tools and supervision practices. The quest to provide the most effective services to all offenders brings innovation, research, and change. Gender-responsive supervision is the answer to how to best serve female offenders. Change is a natural evolution, …

Damned & Damned: Examining Vexatious Litigation And The Vexatious Litigant Statute In Florida Courts, Sarah L. Harper

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

This dissertation examines self-represented litigants subjected to limitations under the Vexatious Litigant statute (F.S. 68.093) and related case law. It draws data from official records, surveys, interviews with judges, and a thematic analysis of court orders. The present research consists of two studies: Study I focuses on the application of Florida's Vexatious Litigant statute and similar sanctions, and Study II explores judges' decision-making in cases involving challenging self-represented litigants. Restrictions on litigants' court access raise concerns about due process rights, and an assessment of the use of these sanctions and litigants' practices is vital for understanding their application. The findings …

Understanding And Minimizing School Shootings, Taylor Hammond

Master of Arts in Criminal Justice Leadership

The unfortunate trend of school shootings is on the rise within the United States. The purpose of this paper is to describe a leadership communication plan for a school shooting situation, along with identifying the three phases of a crisis: pre-crisis, crisis response, and post-crisis. It also describes the role a probation officer plays within this topic and the importance of this person in a juvenile’s life. An unforeseen issue with school shootings is how it relates to social media. Social media can be used to bully, harass, and contact others unsolicited. It can also be used for a student …

Dna Analysis: The Answer For Unsolved Cases?, Sarah Hetchler

Master of Arts in Criminal Justice Leadership

DNA analysis has become a crucial part of solving cases. It has developed significantly since its creation in the mid-1980s. The longing for answers within unsolved cases is historically lengthy, leaving traces of distrust and injustice. Criminologists offer a potential solution to the mess created by connecting DNA analysis to protect victims and communities. DNA evidence and analysis can assist in solving cases and provide answers for exonerees. Like public genealogy websites, law enforcement agencies must acknowledge new methods to solve issues. Not only could law enforcement agencies solve and arrest suspects through DNA analysis, but DNA could also provide …

Restrictive Pursuit Policies And Rising Violent Crime, Ryan Kelly

Master of Arts in Criminal Justice Leadership

Consequences can be a driving factor for why citizens follow laws in the United States. Financial and physical freedom is valued. Citizen’s behavior may change if police officers threaten to take these things away for breaking laws. Policymakers today are working to restrict when law enforcement officers can chase criminals for breaking the law. Suppose the ability of law enforcement to hold criminals accountable is restricted. Would this not lead a reasonable person to believe that criminals may think they are free to commit crimes? This paper will cover current trends in violent crime in both the United States and …

Incorporating A Peer Support Program In A Criminal Justice Department, Joshua Gerving, Joshua J. Gerving

Master of Arts in Criminal Justice Leadership

This research aims to provide police agencies with a step-by-step guide for developing a Peer Support Program. It will address how to design the program, overcome complex changes in an agency, create a crisis communication strategy, and budget for the new specialty department. This research will address ethical and moral dilemmas a peer support member may face as they perform their duties. Furthermore, the author will present a code of conduct that will serve as the foundation of the program. The researcher will also explain how training, ethical accountability, and stewardship are crucial in making an ethical program for first …

Where Do We Go From Here? Reconsidering Crowd Management And Control In The Wake Of The George Floyd Era Of Protests., Nicholas Steiger

Master of Arts in Criminal Justice Leadership

This research evaluated police response to protests and considered crowd management and control in the wake of the George Floyd era of protests. The research reviewed the history of crowd management and control and evaluated new methods to increase police legitimacy. It proposed the adoption of the Elaborated Social Identity Model of crowd control and provided agencies with additional recommendations that may increase ethical decision-making. It proposed that forming multi-jurisdictional mobile field force teams for crowd management and control will increase the professionalism of the police and help ensure the rights and safety of those participating in First Amendment activities. …