Criminology and Criminal Justice Commons^™

Police Flight Oversight: Lapd Drone As First Responder Implementation, Nathaniel Worley

CMC Senior Theses

This thesis explores the feasibility of implementing a Drone as First Responder (DFR) program within the Los Angeles Police Department (LAPD), analyzing the operational, social, and financial implications compared to traditional police helicopter usage. The thesis investigates helicopter flight patterns, demographic correlations, and the potential for drones to provide a less invasive and more cost-effective aerial support system. Key findings include the use of incorrect identifying hex codes by LAPD helicopters, suggesting potential transparency issues in aerial operations. The thesis recommends DFR due to substantial cost savings and enhanced surveillance transparency and asserts that a DFR program can mitigate negative …

Exploring The Factors That Influence Female Offending In The U.S. And Mexico, Dana Villasenor

CMC Senior Theses

Hollywood has painted a picture of the criminal woman as a sexy, sneaky, and often psychotic female fatale. This is because men run Hollywood. Much like movies, research on why women offend had historically focused on men as their stellar. However, towards the turn of the century and with the disproportionate rise in female incarceration, literature caught up to the fact that women and men do not experience the same socialization, standards, or reality and, therefore, have different reasons for and ways of offending. This research explores those reasons for women in the U.S. and Mexico and paints the picture …

Identifying The Main Causes For Support Of Crime Control Theater Forms, And Understanding How To Correct The Public’S Perception, Erisjames M. Elliott

CMC Senior Theses

Much research has been completed on the forms of crime control theater (CCT), and the impact that the existence of CCT laws have on society. Research on CCT laws has shown that they are definitively unsuccessful in providing the safety they were created to provide. This thesis will utilize completed research to explain the main psychological phenomena holding people back from decreasing their support for CCT laws. It will also describe proven methods of correcting misinformation in order to change the perceptions of people who support crime control theater laws, and provide suggestions for how research should be continued.

Exploring Change And Stability In Counterterrorism Policy, Prosecution, And Sentencing Of Terrorists In America Over The Last Three Decades In The United States, Georgianna Grace Bettis

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

The purpose of the current study is to investigate the effects of legislation changes on how terrorists are adjudicated in American federal courts. The overarching question is: how have prosecutorial and sentencing outcomes changed in response to homeland security policy shifts over the last few decades? The project examines the impact of policy on changes to terrorists’ sentencing in three time periods, marked by three major events: The 1993 World Trade Center Attack, the 1995 Oklahoma City Bombing, and the attack on the Twin Towers (9/11/2001). In addition to terrorists’ demographic and background attributes (i.e., gender, age, terrorism category), the …

Anger In The Overlooked: A Gendered Analysis Of The January 6, 2021 Capitol Hill Breach, Elizabeth Bender

Theses/Capstones/Creative Projects

The violence seen at the U.S. Capitol Building on January 6, 2021 has sparked concern at the threat of domestic violent extremism (DVE) within the United States. Over 700 individuals have been federally charged in connection with the events of January 6 including almost 100 women. Women’s involvement in DVE is underestimated and understudied. This project utilized a corpus of over 1,000 court documents to content code variables relating to violence and DVE affiliation for the individuals who have been federally charged in relation to January 6th. The results of the coding process were then used to compare the rates …

Bio-Spatial Policing In Theory And Practice: Examining Impacts And Resistance Through Mobilities And Children's Everyday Life, Emily Kaufman

Theses and Dissertations--Geography

Despite decades of reforms and technological innovations, increasing evidence shows that state securitization disproportionately harms already racially, spatially, and socio-economically marginalized communities. My research investigates uneven impacts of state securitization, from punitive welfare programs to school surveillance to policing. Across sites, I focus on scales, voices and the everyday lived experiences often left out of scholarly discourse and sensational media. In the current climate of growing awareness and scholarship on police violence, my dissertation addresses three less-studied areas: 1) the interplay between racial, gendered, spatial, and technified police practices; 2) how these practices impact the everyday lives of those racially …

Agony Of Delayed Justice, Ahmed Saeed

MSJ Capstone Projects

Martin Luther King Jr in his famous letter from a Birmingham jail wrote that justice too long delayed is justice denied. King said so to highlight that justice for African-Americans had been delayed for far too long. (King, 1963) According to ancient Latin maxim, ‘to delay justice is injustice’ but in the land of pure, delayed justice is a new normal. Courts in Pakistan have a backlog of 1.9 million pending cases to be adjudicated. Some of these cases have been pending for three or four decades.

Terrorism In The 2020s: Examining The Global Threat Landscape, Landon W. Swearngin

MSU Graduate Theses

This thesis uses quantitative and qualitative research methods to (1) explore the global trends and trajectories of terrorism, (2) identify emerging strategic challenges, and (3) outline an opportunity analysis for U.S. counterterrorism strategy. Collectively, this project provides a strategic forecast for terrorism in the 2020s, demonstrating that terrorism is becoming increasingly dangerous, dynamic, and difficult to defeat.

The New American Slavery: Capitalism And The Ghettoization Of American Prisons As A Profitable Corporate Business, David A. Liburd

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

The labor of enslaved Africans and Black Americans played a large part in the history of colonial America, with the American plantation being the epicenter for all that was to be produced. While the two have never been completely tied together, capitalism and modern day slavery have been linked with one another. Some analysis sees slavery as a remote form of capitalism, a substitute, to an antiquated form of labor in the modern world.

Slave plantations adopted a new concentration in size and management, referred to by W.E. DuBois as a change "from a family institution to an industrial system."1 …

Selling National Security: Journalism, Political Actors, And The Marketing Of Counterterrorism Policy, Nicole M. Napolitano

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

The social construction of terrorism in the public sphere naturally limits and directs logical policy options. In the United States, media are a primary vehicle for the construction of social problems and accompanying policy solutions, as much of public discourse takes place in media narratives. News media play a major part in political communication, both between government and governed as well as among different segments of government.

Social construction in media is shaped by journalistic values and preferences, occurs within an active and influential policy process, and is shaped by powerful policy actors. Government-based policy actors, or governmental policy entrepreneurs, …

Racism Vs. Social Capital: A Case Study Of Two Majority Black Communities, Bruce W. Strouble

Walden Dissertations and Doctoral Studies

Several researchers have identified social capital as a means to improve the social sustainability of communities. While there have been many studies investigating the benefits of social capital in homogeneous White communities, few have examined it in Black homogeneous communities. Also, there has been limited research on the influence of racism on social capital in African American communities. In this dissertation a comparative case study was used within a critical race theory framework. The purpose was to explore the role of racial oppression in shaping social capital in majority African American communities. Data were collected from 2 majority Black communities …

Who We Are: Incarcerated Students And The New Prison Literature, 1995-2010, Reilly Hannah N. Lorastein

Honors Projects

This project focuses on American prison writings from the late 1990s to the 2000s. Much has been written about American prison intellectuals such as Malcolm X, George Jackson, Eldridge Cleaver, and Angela Davis, who wrote as active participants in black and brown freedom movements in the United States. However the new prison literature that has emerged over the past two decades through higher education programs within prisons has received little to no attention. This study provides a more nuanced view of the steadily growing silent population in the United States through close readings of Openline, an inter-disciplinary journal featuring …

Measuring Intervention Success In Countering Terrorism, Summer Marie Jackson

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

This study examines the shift of Attorney General Guidelines in the wake of September 11th, 2001, and the consequences for both federal law enforcement and federal prosecutors. Previous research has found that prosecutors are more apt to use an exceptional vagueness approach and try terrorists like traditional offenders. Likewise, terrorist are more likely to act like traditional offenders and plead guilty in the post-9/11 era. This study further supports the existing knowledge by providing evidence of increased plea bargain rates post-9/11 of terrorists. In addition, this study is important because it examines the consequences of the early intervention approach and …