Other Legal Studies Commons^™

Examining The Decision-Making Processes Of Sex Tourists Using On-Line Data, Thomas J. Holt, April M. Zeoli, Kathleen Bohrer

Qualitative Criminology (QC)

"Criminological research has increasingly focused on the decision- making processes of offenders in order to better understand criminal behavior as a whole. A small body of research has considered how the bounds or limits of offender decision-making are shaped by various factors. In addition, limited research has considered the role of preference and bounded rationality in crimes where long-range planning and careful consideration of options are possible. To that end, this study explores both the factors that influence individual decisions and the way that they interact with preference to shape the decision-making process of sex tourists or individuals who travel …

Van Den Hoonaard, D.K. Qualitative Research In Action: A Canadian Primer, Deborah Landry

Qualitative Criminology (QC)

"Dr. Deborah Van Den Hoonaard has made a distinguished career of applying qualitative methodologies to uncover the rich everyday experiences of marginal populations. Professor Van Den Hoonaard holds a prestigious position as Canada Research Chair in Qualitative Analysis, garnering the respect of her peers for her fieldwork. The savvy experience of a seasoned field researcher unfolds easily in this guidebook, which feels more like a documentary than a methodology textbook. Nodding to the ethnographic traditions of the Chicago School and McGill University (the Canadian version of the Chicago School), her engagement with contemporary approaches is couched in an informed historical …

Louise Westmarland, Gender And Policing: Sex, Power, And Police Culture, Maria D. H. Koeppel

Qualitative Criminology (QC)

"Originally released in 2001, Louise Westmarland’s Gender and Policing has been released with a new publisher. With Routledge’s rerelease of the book, it is necessary to reassess the value of its research in the field of gender and policing to determine if it is still relevant. Throughout the book, Westmarland uses qualitative data to explore gendered themes in United Kingdom police forces. More specifically, her work focuses on whether differential deployment exists in policing based on gender and explores the role of gender within policing culture in several different situations. To analyze possible gendered patterns, Westmarland bases her work on …

“We’Re All Born With Equal Opportunities”: Hegemonic Individualism And Contextual Mitigation Among Delaware Capital Jurors, Ross Kleinstuber

Qualitative Criminology (QC)

"The Supreme Court has ruled that evidence derived from a capital defendant’s life history is crucial for making the reasoned moral judgment that is central to the death penalty’s constitutionality. However, Dunn and Kaplan (2009) suggested that individualism is so embedded in American culture that most people defer to it uncritically, which makes the use of such contextualizing mitigating evidence challenging. Prior studies suggest that capital jurors do not understand mitigation and focus on guilt-related issues when making their sentencing decisions, but they do not examine why this is so. This study extends these prior works by comparing the content …

Geoff K. Ward, The Black Child-Savers: Racial Democracy & Juvenile Justice, Robin D. Jackson

Qualitative Criminology (QC)

"Drawing on biographical details, people’s experiences, and historical documents, Geoff K. Ward examines Black child savers’ efforts and struggles to transform a Jim Crow juvenile justice system into a racially democratic model of juvenile justice. In his first book: The Black Child-Savers: Racial Democracy & Juvenile Justice, Ward describes Black child-savers as concerned Black Americans and their allies who sought racial reform in the juvenile justice system and who intervened on the behalf of Black dependent and delinquent youth. Ward also discusses “the sociocultural origins and organization of Jim Crow juvenile justice as well as the social movement by …

W.E.B. Dubois, The Philadelphia Negro: A Social Study, Howard Henderson

Qualitative Criminology (QC)

"Criminology’s Forgotten Genesis?

Crime is a phenomenon of organized social life, and is the open rebellion of an individual against his social environment. Naturally then, if men are suddenly transported from one environment to another, the result is lack of harmony with the new conditions; lack of harmony with the new physical surroundings leading to disease and death or modification of physique; lack of harmony with social surroundings leading to crime. (DuBois, p. 235) "

Saundra D. Westervelt & Kimberly J. Cook, Life After Death Row: Exonerees’ Search For Community And Identity, Jeanne Subjack

Qualitative Criminology (QC)

"Life After Death Row examines how individuals wrongly sentenced to death adjust to life after their release. The idea for the book arose in 2009, after Westervelt and Cook attended a conference and learned about the different aspects related to wrongful convictions that had yet to be addressed in academia. To gain a more thorough understanding of the events the participants experienced, the authors used life history and feminist methods to conduct their research. Although the current analysis is not necessarily focused on gender, feminist methods are useful here because they can be applied when a researcher “seeks an …

Broken Windows, Police, &Traffic Safety, Carol Servino

Graduate Research Symposium (2010 - 2017)

Abstract This research explores application of the “broken windows” theory of public disorder and urban decline to the pattern and problem of police officer fatalities in motor vehicle crashes. It contextualizes the influential theory into a 45-year timeline of significant events related to legislative efforts and traffic safety behavioral safety programs in the United States. It finds one police agency that reported fewer crimes and fewer crashes after implementing a community-wide Safe Streets program designed around “broken windows” theory in 1997. It pays particular attention to states with the highest percentages of law enforcement officer fatalities in motor vehicle crashes, …

A Content Analysis Of Statutory Grounds For Involuntary Termination Of Parental Rights: The Impacts And Susceptibility Of Incarcerated Mothers And Their Children, Holly Marie Duke

Master's Theses

As the myriad of complex circumstances surrounding incarceration and foster care debilitate the parent-child relationship, the likelihood of legal severance between an incarcerated parent and their child increases. Despite the nation’s mounting prison population over the last three decades, the growing interaction between the prison and foster care populations has received minimal attention in the literature. To date, the influence of the statutory grounds for involuntary termination of parental rights on the legal severance between incarcerated parents and their children has been largely ignored. The purpose of this research is to determine the susceptibility of incarcerated parents to the involuntary …

Assessing The Impact Of Ethical Training On Law Enforcement Personnel, Tina L. Lee

Dissertations

The purpose of this study was to investigate the opinions of police officers in regards to satisfaction with ethics training. The participants in this study were police officers in city/municipal and county law enforcement agencies. Ethics training is very important in the field o f law enforcement because of the many temptations that officers face and the tremendous amount of authority that society gives to the police. In order to investigate officer’s satisfaction with ethics training, the Ethics Training Questionnaire (ETQ) was developed. This questionnaire contained two parts. The first part was completed by police administrators, and the second part …