Sociology Commons^™

Inextricably Bound: Strip Clubs, Prostitution, And Sex Trafficking, Dan O'Bryant

Dignity: A Journal of Analysis of Exploitation and Violence

No abstract provided.

The Global Supply Chain Of Sexual Exploitation And The Necessity Of Combating The Demand For Commercial Sex, Lisa L. Thompson

Dignity: A Journal of Analysis of Exploitation and Violence

No abstract provided.

Amend The Communications Decency Act To Protect Victims Of Sexual Exploitation, Samantha Vardaman

Dignity: A Journal of Analysis of Exploitation and Violence

No abstract provided.

Today's Porn: Not A Constitutional Right; Not A Human Right, Patrick Trueman

Dignity: A Journal of Analysis of Exploitation and Violence

No abstract provided.

Adverse Childhood Experiences And Their Role As Mitigators For Youthful And Non-Youthful Offenders In Capital Sentencing Cases, Jessica R. Trapassi

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Adverse childhood experiences (ACEs) and their role as mitigators in capital sentencing is an important, yet relatively unexplored, topic in criminological literature. Using data from the North Carolina Capital Sentencing Project, this study explores the role of ACEs as mitigating factors for youthful and non-youthful capital offenders: whether youthful offenders are less likely to be sentenced to death, whether or not ACEs are effective as mitigating factors, and whether ACE mitigators are more effective for youthful or non-youthful offenders. Results show that youthful capital offenders are less likely to be sentenced to death than adult capital offenders, and while ACE …

Prison Programming And Recidivism As A Method Of Social Bond Theory: A Meta-Analysis Of Research From 2000-2015, Madalyn Smith

Mahurin Honors College Capstone Experience/Thesis Projects

Prior research indicates that completion of prison programs significantly decreases recidivism amongst offenders. This research classifies prison programs as an aspect of Social Bond Theory to determine if these types of programs improve the recidivism rate. Social Bond Theory has four elements: commitment (time invested into education or career), attachment (relationships with family and friends), involvement (time spent in activities outside of crime), and belief (agreement with social norms). Research articles were compiled from 2000-2015, published and unpublished, with a three year recidivism rate or less (several exceptions were made), and a sample size of greater than 50. An odds …

An Ethical Evaluation Of The Modern Pharmaceutical Industry, Kaitlyn Drennan

Dialogue & Nexus

Lack of transparency, wrongdoings, and unlawful promotion characterize the healthcare industry; these are especially prevalent within the pharmaceutical industry. Consequently, an investigation into the evidence of the corruption and the ethical infringement is needed. In this paper, I will evaluate the pharmaceutical industry’s adherence to the three major branches of ethics. The ever-increasing prices of pharmaceutical products, especially medications used for the combating of anaphylaxis and cancer, coupled with the compensatory-based medication promotion and research points to a major crisis in the realm of social justice. These examples, among many other current issues, lead to difficulties in individuals receiving the …

“They Teach You How To Weather The Storm, But They Don’T Teach You How To Dance In The Rain:” Veterans’ Perspectives On The Pathways To Criminal Justice Involvement, Kelli E. Canada, Clark Peters

Qualitative Criminology (QC)

"Some veterans face elevated risk of mental illness, alcohol, and drug use, and difficulty adjusting post-deployment, which can increase the risk of homelessness and contact with the criminal justice system (Elbogen et al., 2012). This study adds to the limited and mixed findings regarding factors associated with criminal offending among veterans. It explores, from veterans’ perspectives, what contributes to their criminal justice involvement. In-depth interviews with 28 U.S. Veterans on probation or parole explored their military service, mental health, and the events surrounding arrests. Findings indicate that substance use was a significant contributor to arrests. Alcohol and drugs were used …

Conjectures, Refutations, And (Elusive) Resolution: An Exercise In The Sociology Of Knowledge Within Criminology, Brendan Dooley

Qualitative Criminology (QC)

"An analysis of in-depth discussions (oral histories) with 17 leading criminologists on the seminal debates in which they each participated showcases the benefits of intellectual debate. Over the last half-century, the field’s understanding of crime and its control has experienced genuine gains through a vigorous exchange of conjectures and refutations. It stands to benefit from more of these. However, there is a tension between professional and scientific concerns that limits the expansion of this process. The insistence on open ended inquiry in advancing professional ends dulls the interest and opportunity for debating first principles. As a result, the field is …

Kitty Calavita And Valerie Jenness, Appealing To Justice: Prisoner Grievances, Rights, And Carceral Logic, Talisa J. Carter

Qualitative Criminology (QC)

"In Appealing to Justice, by Kitty Calavita and Valerie Jenness explain the grievance system of the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation (CDCR) in detail. Grievance systems are the formal internal process by which inmates contest prison conditions. Federal law requires that prisoners fully exhaust the grievance system before their claims can be heard in court. Although there may be an assumption that justice exists in systems that are charged with upholding standards of safe and humane conditions within confinement facilities, the authors find the grievance process to be riddled with inefficiencies and inequalities."

Waverly Duck, No Way Out: Precarious Living In The Shadow Of Poverty And Drug Dealing, Jascha Wagner

Qualitative Criminology (QC)

"No Way Out: Precarious Living in the Shadow of Poverty and Drug Dealing examines how the residents of “Lyford Street,” an impoverished Black neighborhood, organize for survival against the backdrop of “increasingly desperate circumstances.” Decades of deindustrialization and misguided social policies have left the neighborhood economically and socially isolated. Unemployment and poverty are rampant for young men of Lyford Street. Stripped of educational or economic opportunities, the drug trade has become their “principal employment.” However, against the “stereotypical image of the drug infested ghetto,” Waverly Duck compels us to see Lyford Street as a place with a unique social …

Aldo Civico, The Para-State: An Ethnography Of Colombia’S Death Squads, Elena Sciandra

Qualitative Criminology (QC)

"On August, 24, 2016, the Colombian conflict returned to the spotlight. On this day the peace agreement between the Colombian government and the last active guerrilla group, the FARC (Fuerzas Armadas Revolucionaria de Colombia), had been signed after decades of discontinuous peace talks. Such discontinuity, along with other peculiarities, have long piqued the interest of scholars in this conflict; not only is it one of the longest civil wars in recent history – its origin dating back to the end of the 1950s – it has also shaped the political, economic, and cultural life of the country. Started as sectarian …

Self-Motivation In Policing, Scott W. Phillips

Qualitative Criminology (QC)

"Research shows that the work shift of a patrol officer includes a large amount of “down time.” Occupational scholarship has validated that workers can reduce boredom by engaging in activities that are ancillary to normal duties. The autonomous work environment of police officers provides them a unique opportunity to minimize boredom by working in a way that makes their expected behavior interesting. To date the police motivation scholarship tends to examine “job satisfaction,” but the notion of boredom is missing from the research. This study used an observational research design to provide a qualitative examination of the techniques used by …

Michel Foucault, Discipline & Punish: The Birth Of The Prison, Trans. Alan Sheridan, Brian Sellers

Qualitative Criminology (QC)

"For hundreds of years, criminologists and penologists alike have investigated the various functions and designs, as well as the policies and practices that regulate the effectiveness of prisons as correctional institutions. The ideological aims underpinning penal practice can be either myopically focused or quite diverse as they reflect the varying goals of retribution, deterrence, incapacitation, and rehabilitation. However, as corrections continue to undergo numerous reforms, scholars and policymakers might do well to revisit, critically reflect upon, and reexamine the socio-historical origins of the prison and its close relationship to power structures operating in the wider society. French philosopher, Michel Foucault’s …

Playing Nice In The Sandbox: An Examination Into The Working Relationships Between Retail Store Detectives And Public Law Enforcement Officers, Ronald Floridia

Qualitative Criminology (QC)

"This study explores the working relationship between store detectives and public law enforcement officers. Thirty semi-structured interviews were conducted with store detectives from two national retail chains. The results of this study indicate that store detectives have a positive working relationship with police and engage in active cooperation with them. In addition, the presence of community development units and organized retail crime task forces enhance active cooperation between the two parties. Findings from this study can be used by both academics and practitioners to promote strong relationships between law enforcement and the retail security industry."

Some Things Are Just Better Left As Secrets: Non-Transparency And Prosecutorial Decision Making In The Era Of Neoliberal Punitivism, Shanda Angioli, Paul Kaplan

Qualitative Criminology (QC)

"This paper focuses on prosecutorial decision-making during the late-20th and early 21st century era of punitive American criminal justice. Qualitative semi-structured in-depth interviews were conducted with 10 former prosecutors who worked in two large and diverse states to determine how they made their decisions regarding charging and plea bargaining. This study investigates how prosecutors consider legal and extra-legal factors when making decisions. The results suggest that prosecutors considered legal factors such as evidence/provability and elements of the crime, the defendant’s criminal history, and witness credibility and/or victim credibility, but also extra-legal factors such as, victim’s request, law enforcement priorities, relations …

Comparative Study Of Uniformed/Undercover Loss Prevention Agents In Reducing Shrinkage In Retail Businesses, Rustam Zakirov

Student Theses

This research examines the effectiveness of loss prevention strategies, specifically, uniformed and undercover Loss Prevention Agents (LPA), to determine the proper implementation of these strategies and provide necessary recommendations for the retail stores to lower the rate of shrinkage. It has been found that to date $13 billion worth of merchandise is stolen per year nationwide. Therefore, in order to reduce shoplifting, retail stores implement various loss prevention strategies among them: LPAs and others. Much research has been conducted in order to find an effective strategy for reducing shoplifting which among others impacts the rate of shrinkage. However, to date, …

Charging A Police Officer In Fatal Shooting Case Is Rare, And A Conviction Is Even Rarer, Philip M. Stinson

Criminal Justice Faculty Publications

No abstract provided.

Downstream Competence Challenges And Legal/Ethical Risks In Digital Forensics, Michael M. Losavio, Antonio Losavio

Annual ADFSL Conference on Digital Forensics, Security and Law

Forensic practice is an inherently human-mediated system, from processing and collection of evidence to presentation and judgment. This requires attention to human factors and risks which can lead to incorrect judgments and unjust punishments.

For digital forensics, such challenges are magnified by the relative newness of the discipline and the use of electronic evidence in forensic proceedings. Traditional legal protections, rules of procedure and ethics rules mitigate these challenges. Application of those traditions better ensures forensic findings are reliable. This has significant consequences where findings may impact a person's liberty or property, a person's life or even the political direction …

Detecting Deception In Asynchronous Text, Fletcher Glancy

Annual ADFSL Conference on Digital Forensics, Security and Law

Glancy and Yadav (2010) developed a computational fraud detection model (CFDM) that successfully detected financial reporting fraud in the text of the management’s discussion and analysis (MDA) portion of annual filings with the United States Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC). This work extends the use of the CFDM to additional genres, demonstrates the generalizability of the CFDM and the use of text mining for quantitatively detecting deception in asynchronous text. It also demonstrates that writers committing fraud use words differently from truth tellers.

Rape Culture, Victim Blaming, And The Role Of Media In The Criminal Justice System, Lily K. Thacker

Kentucky Journal of Undergraduate Scholarship

Rape culture and the practice of victim blaming are inherently linked phenomena, and both are prevalent in American society. The existence of a rape culture which normalizes sexual violence and blames rape victims for the attacks against them strongly affects the American criminal justice system, influencing both the outcomes of rape trials and the treatment of rape victims. In particular, the media’s methods of discussing and portraying rape are examined as primary sources for the perpetuation of rape culture, and the effects of these media representations of rape on the outcomes of real rape trials are also examined. The problematic …

How Japan’S Cultural Norms Affect Policing: A Side-By-Side Comparison With The United States, Katrina Tran

Themis: Research Journal of Justice Studies and Forensic Science

The ways of policing have been critiqued throughout the years—some have advocated for a direct approach while others value diplomatic techniques. Consideration is emphasized by how culture affects policing in the United States and Japan. In the United States, the customs of policing involve violence, individualism, pragmatism, social mobility, and low power distance, whereas Japan encourages non-violence, face-saving, conservatism, and high power distance. The difference in these cultural norms reflects how policing is conducted in these two countries. To understand how policing in these two countries are different, this paper examines the difference of cultural norms and its impact on …

Body-Worn Cameras: Reducing Citizen Complaints And Improving Relationships, Julie Bui

Themis: Research Journal of Justice Studies and Forensic Science

Video recordings of police-citizen interactions, most notably those obtained from the dashboard cameras (dashcams) of police cars, have been successful in objectively capturing police-citizen exchanges. However, since police-civilian interactions do not solely occur in front of police cars, dashcams present significant limitations. Off-camera violent, and sometimes fatal, encounters (such as the notorious Ferguson case) have fueled increased public support for body-worn cameras. This is especially true in cases with conflicting accounts from the officer(s), victim(s), and witness(es). Requiring officers to wear bodycams may reduce incidents of force and citizen complaints, and increase officer accountability. This paper will present peer-reviewed research …

Solitary Confinement: Social Death And Its Afterlives, Jen Rushforth

Themis: Research Journal of Justice Studies and Forensic Science

No abstract provided.

Mass Shootings And The Media: How Race And Ethnicity Influence Media Coverage, Emily Wheeler

Themis: Research Journal of Justice Studies and Forensic Science

Topics related to crime and the criminal justice system comprise a majority of topics discussed in the media. This study explores how media coverage of mass shootings varies based on the racial or ethnic identity of the shooter. Topics examined include popular beliefs and misconceptions about the race of mass murderers, the role mass media plays in influencing public perceptions about race and crime related topics, and the alarming rate at which the public recognizes and accepts the media as a reliable source of information when official data sources provide a much different picture. Further analysis of the Columbine High …

Exploring The Social Trend Of Household Computer Ownership In Affecting The United States 1990'S Crime Drop, Alison Kimberley Bogar

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

During the 1990’s the world witnessed a crime drop throughout all categories of crime. Many researchers have sought to seek an explanation for this drop; however, there has been a lack of concrete findings to fully explain this phenomenon. The purpose of this study is to explore a further reasoning as to why this drop occurred, specifically throughout the United States. An unexplored factor to explain this phenomenon is the increase of household computer ownership during the 1990’s. During this decade, household computers and the internet became prevalent throughout the nation. This study utilized secondary data from the Uniform Crime …

Environmental Factors And School Disorder: The Role Of Urbanicty, Brandon S. Coffey

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

The purpose of this study is to explore the differential impact of various environmental and organizational factors on levels of school misconduct. Although we have a general understanding of this relationship, little effort has been made to determine whether the effects are influenced by urbanicity. The current study utilizes data from the 2007-2008 School Survey on Crime and Safety to address this gap in the literature by utilizing a series of negative binomial regression models that seek to determine differences between predictive factors in urban and rural settings. Results indicate that disorganization has a similar effect within urban and rural …

Examining The Extent And Impact Of Surveillance On Animal Rights Activists, Cassandra Boyer

UNLV Theses, Dissertations, Professional Papers, and Capstones

In the post-9/11 era, the USA PATRIOT Act provided law enforcement agencies broad powers to investigate citizens believed to be potential or perceived domestic terrorist threats. Preceded by the Animal Enterprise Protection Act (AEPA) of 1992, the Animal Enterprise Terrorism Act (AETA) of 2006 delivered to these same agencies laws under which animal rights (AR) activists could be charged as domestic terrorists. Considered to be potential domestic terrorist threats under the Green Scare era, AR activists became prioritized as state-sponsored surveillance subjects.

This thesis seeks to determine the extent of surveillance on AR activists as well as its impact in …

Cooling Down Crime Hot Spots: Impact Of Saturation Patrol On Crime Hot Spots In Las Vegas, Nevada, Rachel Ware Stephensen

UNLV Theses, Dissertations, Professional Papers, and Capstones

As law enforcement agencies embrace technology, hot spots policing has enjoyed popularity. The esteem of the strategy is not without warrant, as many studies show its effectiveness. The policing strategy simply involves focusing police resources on a specific area or areas of concentrated crime. An abundance of policing tactics exists to address problems within these areas. Many studies tout significant crime reductions in hot spot areas, with some police treatments proving more effective than others. Other studies discuss trepidation regarding geographically focused police efforts. Therefore, law enforcement’s strategy in an area must involve careful consideration of the associated benefits and …

International Responses To Human Trafficking: A Comparative Secondary Data Analysis Of National Characteristics, Olivia Germaine Tuttle

UNLV Theses, Dissertations, Professional Papers, and Capstones

Human trafficking is a rising international issue that has become a key concern for human rights organizations and governments throughout the world. As such, new policies are being developed and implemented to combat the problem. A guiding standard for these policies is the United Nations (UN) 2003 Protocol to Prevent, Suppress, and Punish Trafficking in Persons, Especially Women and Children, which established a formal definition of human trafficking. While the UN Protocol was a significant step in the fight against human trafficking, it is limited by its framework, which focuses heavily on criminalization and punishment of traffickers. Recent discourse and …