Criminology Commons^™

Teaching Students How To Access The World: Information Fluency Modules In World Criminal Justice Systems Courses, Grace Allbaugh, Chad M. Kahl, Dawn Beichner

Faculty and Staff Publications – Milner Library

This presentation discusses a long-term collaboration between Milner Library and the Department of Criminal Justices Sciences to bring information fluency training to students in CJS 369: World Criminal Justice Systems. Learn how it has changed from pen and paper, responded to COVID, and where it's at now.

“I Have Already Lost My Kids”: Mothering Experiences Of Women In Jail, Bothwell Piason, Dawn Beichner-Thomas

Faculty Publications - Criminal Justice Sciences

Although women represent a small proportion of the incarcerated population globally, their rate of incarceration in the United States has increased dramatically over the past four decades, outpacing that of men. As carceral trends return to pre-COVID-19 pandemic levels, jail populations continue to rise, with most incarcerated women being mothers of young children. Yet, research on motherhood behind bars has largely focused on prisons rather than jails. This study explores the mothering experiences of women incarcerated in two U.S. Midwestern jails, including both pretrial detainees and sentenced individuals. Using qualitative data from in-depth interviews with jailed mothers, the analysis examines …

Innocence Interrupted: A 25-Year Study Of Reported Filicide Incidents In The United States, 1999 To 2023, Jeffrey A. Walsh, Jessie L. Krienert, Ema Voksic

Faculty Publications - Criminal Justice Sciences

This study examines filicide, the killing of a child by a parent or parental figure, using 25 years of data (1999–2023) from the National Incident-Based Reporting System (N = 3,974). Multinomial logistic regression was used to analyze variations in offender, victim, and incident characteristics across four victim age categories: neonaticide (within 24 hr of birth), infanticide (1–364 days), child filicide (1–17 years), and adult filicide (18+ years). Results reveal significant differences in offender age, sex, race, weapon use, and victim demographics. Neonaticide is most often associated with younger female offenders and the use of personal weapons, while adult filicide …

“… It's Google That's Big Brother”: The Symbiosis Between Icac Investigators And The Private Sector Regarding Encryption And Privacy, Christopher G. Brewer, Kevin F. Steinmetz, Don Kurtz, Brian Schaefer

Faculty Publications - Criminal Justice Sciences

Encryption technologies have become ubiquitous for both individual and commercial sectors. Perhaps no realm of law enforcement is so acutely affected by encryption than cybercrime, including internet crimes against children (ICAC) personnel. There exist a variety of encryption-based tools and authentication measures available to help online child sexual abusers and consumers of child sexual abuse material (CSAM) hide their activities and obstruct law enforcement efforts to gather evidence of criminal activity. Established here is the idea that ICAC investigative practice is ultimately shaped by these technologies as well as the relationship between the distributors of these technologies and private platforms …

“If You Think This Vilifies The Police, Then You Think The Police Are Villains”: Teaching Reparations Won As An Antidote To Copaganda, Kaitlyn Selman, Hannah Carson Baggett, Justin Turner

Faculty Publications - Criminal Justice Sciences

Building on prior research about copaganda and pro-police socialization, we argue that the Reparations Won curriculum in Chicago Public Schools is an antidote to police legitimization efforts in K-12 schools. Specifically, the curriculum affirms student experiences that are not accounted for nor deemed possible in a world built by and for policing; it emphasizes relationship-building and centers definitions of community that resist the alienation required for such a world; and it facilitates an understanding of local histories as inseparable from broader social structures. We conclude that in an era of contested curricula, Reparations Won provides the structure needed to grapple …

'Punishing Death Dealers': Examining Claims To Expand The Death Penalty To People Who Deal Drugs, Joshua H. Stout

Faculty Publications - Criminal Justice Sciences

In 1988, the Anti-Drug Abuse Act authorized the use of the death penalty for individuals who committed murder while involved in certain federal drug crimes. In recent years, as America has grappled with rising opioid overdose deaths, there has been an increase in calls for expanding murder charges and capital punishment for individuals who deliver drugs that result in an overdose death. Utilizing content analysis of news media and presidential speeches, this paper explores the claims-making process surrounding the arguments in favor of sentencing people who deal drugs to death during the 1980s and the contemporary opioid crisis. Findings demonstrate …

Constructing And Deconstructing Homelessness: Challenging The Stigmatization Of The Unhoused Through Lived Experience, Brenna Jones

Theses and Dissertations

As homelessness rises across the United States, public discourse plays an important role in shaping how the housing crisis is understood and addressed. This study examines how homelessness is constructed through local media narratives and how these constructions shape the experiences of unhoused individuals. Using a case study of Greater Bangor, Maine, this research combines a critical content analysis of 315 news articles from the Bangor Daily News (2020-2025) with in-depth interviews with 18 unhoused and precariously housed individuals. The findings demonstrate how media portrayals construct homelessness as a stigmatized identity associated with disorder, addiction, and danger. These narratives contribute …

Preventing Suicide In Jails: Examining Community, Facility, And Individual Differences, Mijin Kim, Victor J. St. John, Jason Szkola

Faculty Publications - Criminal Justice Sciences

Suicide remains the leading cause of death in U.S. correctional facilities, underscoring the importance of identifying factors contributing to elevated risk. Drawing on national data on jail fatalities from 2011 to 2019, this study examines suicide risk across macro-level (community infrastructure), meso-level (facility characteristics), and micro-level (individual vulnerabilities) domains. Multivariate regression analyses indicate that, at the micro-level, being young, White, male, unconvicted, or serving a short length of stay increases suicide likelihood. Rural isolation is associated with higher suicide rates, whereas overcrowding is linked to lower rates. Interaction models further demonstrate that rural jails without overcrowding experience the highest suicide …

“…They’Re Still Blaming It On The Person Being Lazy”: Stigma In The Lives Of Precariously Housed And Unhoused People, Brenna Jones, Brian Pitman

Graduate Research - Criminal Justice Sciences

Housing is increasingly a market exploited by corporations and what Samuel Stein calls the Real Estate State. Consequently, the state continues to target those impacted by these policy choices with removal and further stigmatization to clear the way for profit-making, which is tied to the housing market. The process of removal is accomplished through various forms of stigmatization and dehumanization, first at the public and institutional level. These stigmas then trickle down to intra-community and self-stigmatization. In all, these stigmas serve to justify and maintain the evolving status quo of homelessness and precarious housing, deflecting the blame of this “crisis” …

Carceral Consequences And Perverse Perks: Care And The Disciplinary Alternative School, Kaitlyn J. Selman

Faculty Publications - Criminal Justice Sciences

Drawing on in-depth interviews with current and former students, parents, teachers, and staff members connected with three alternative schools in one Kentucky, USA school district, this work contributes to the theorization of carceral care. Instead of reducing the alternative school, its processes, and its functions down into a dichotomized question of good or bad, productive or violent, we come to see the dialectical nature of carcerality and the logics of care. Specifically, the negative consequences that students are subjected to are justified and internalized by the (perverse) benefits of attendance, thus dissipating from the realm of critique. As such, I …

Artificial Intelligence And Illicit Drugs: A World Of Possibilities, Ralph A. Weisheit

Faculty Publications - Criminal Justice Sciences

Large scale drug production and distribution organizations (DTOs) are businesses. As such they face many of the same challenges faced by legal businesses, such as the creation of new drugs, supply chain issues, and identifying new markets. The legal business world is finding creative ways to meet those challenges utilizing artificial intelligence (AI). This discussion uses a horizon scan methodology to suggest how current and anticipated applications of AI in the legal business world might be adapted by large-scale illicit drug trafficking organizations. The focus in this discussion is on its potential application for the largest organizations that control the …

Unreadable, Unfindable, And Incomplete: Evaluating Prea Information In State Correctional Handbooks, Jessie L. Krienert, Jeffrey A. Walsh, Caitlyn Donnelly

Faculty Publications - Criminal Justice Sciences

The Prison Rape Elimination Act (PREA) was enacted in 2003 to prevent sexual abuse in correctional settings through a zero-tolerance framework. While all states formally acknowledge PREA, the accessibility, clarity, and completeness of the information provided to incarcerated individuals remain uncertain. This mixed-methods study evaluates PREA-related content in 62 state correctional handbooks from 49 states, assessing three core dimensions: readability, findability, and substantive content. Grounded in compliance theory and institutional betrayal, the analysis focuses on how correctional institutions communicate PREA protections, prevention strategies, and reporting procedures. Results reveal that most PREA content exceeds the literacy levels of the intended audience, …

Normalizing Delinquency And Risky Behaviors In Adolescents: An Application Of Neutralization Theory To Parents, Audrey Cheatham

Theses and Dissertations

Sykes and Matza’s Neutralization theory (1957) was originally developed to explain juvenile involvement in delinquency, with extensions of this theory being used to understand crime in other offending groups. Although neutralization theory has been widely applied to offenders, far less research has examined how neutralizations may be used by non-offending groups. This study applies Sykes and Matza’s framework to parents to explore whether neutralizations are being employed to justify risk taking or delinquent behavior among their adolescent children. This study also examines how parents differentiate risky behavior from delinquent behavior, as well as their attitude towards seven major risk factors …

Perceptions And Treatment Decisions For A Drug Offender Based On Social Class, Cocaine Type, Personal Characteristics, And Compassionate Love: A Vignette Study, Yasmin A. Odeh

Theses and Dissertations

Problem: The shift from a focus on rehabilitation to the more punitive, “tough on crime” approach to illegal behavior in the U.S. has been enacted in no small way by policies connected to the use and abuse of drugs. The disparities between crack and powder cocaine—two chemically similar substances—have headlined this shift (Vagins and McCurdy 2006). However, research is scarce on laypeople’s approval of deterrence approaches for drug offenses, including as a function of types (e.g., powder vs. cocaine possession). This study examined people’s perceptions of prosecutorial decisions for drug offenders—whether they are punished, rehabilitated, or both—and whether people perceived …

The Continued Insignificance Of Genocide In Criminological Inquiry, Grace Allbaugh, Susan Woollen, Jacqueline L. Schneider, Joanne Savage

Faculty Publications - Criminal Justice Sciences

This study aimed to explore publications appearing in criminology journals that studied the crime-type of genocide. The study of crime encompasses a wide range of topics. Largely, it is confined to traditional forms of crime like assault, murder, rape, robbery, burglary, and theft that take place at the local level. Criminologists have been studying international crimes, such as human trafficking, terrorism, piracy on the high seas, and wildlife trafficking amongst other crimes that span geo-political boundaries. What remains somewhat a mystery is the sparse research by criminologists worldwide on the crime of genocide. Our research explored the presence of studies …

School Copaganda In The Us South: Tinsel, Twinkle, And Police-Youth Programming, Hannah Carson Baggett, Kaitlyn Selman

Faculty Publications - Criminal Justice Sciences

Told in schools across the US for decades, Officer Friendly is a story about policing. Through the literal reading of books like Miss Frances’ 1953 Your Friend the Policeman, visits from McGruff the Crime Dog, and even the ever-expanding TikTok world of dancing SROs, the story remains the same: police keep us safe from the bad guys. In this paper, we draw on data from school and police social media accounts in a community in Alabama to expose the bad faith underpinnings of this story, and how it functions through ‘friendly’ police-youth programming in schools. This story relies on at …

Explaining The Relationship Between Intimate Partner Violence Victimization And Human Immunodeficiency Virus Status In Transgender And Nonbinary Individuals, Kimberly A. Ingold, Brent Teasdale

Faculty Publications - Criminal Justice Sciences

Study Questions: Previous research has shown that human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) status and intimate partner violence (IPV) victimization are correlated. Furthermore, it has been consistently reported that transgender individuals are at an increased risk of experiencing IPV victimization and testing positive for HIV compared to cisgender individuals. However, past research examining the potential explanations for the correlation between HIV status and IPV victimization in transgender individuals using a large and inclusive sample is nonexistent. Subjects: A total of 12,592 transgender and nonbinary individuals from across the United States were included in the analyses. Methods: Through a bivariate probit analysis of …

Causes Of Police Officer Career Apprehension Following George Floyd, Michael T. Rossler, Charles Scheer

Faculty Publications - Criminal Justice Sciences

Police workforce retention has become a persistent managerial concern. The public response to recent events of police misconduct have fueled the perception that police may be seeking other career paths following the murder of George Floyd in 2020. Despite growing evidence, current research has been unable to ascertain what conditions may prompt officers to voluntarily separate from police work following Floyd’s murder, or whether the impact varies across demographic groups. Drawing upon a survey of over 600 police officers across eight police departments in the United States, the current inquiry examines what percent of officers reported reconsidering their career following …

Idle Hands Are The Devil's Workshop? Exploring The Connections Between Prison-Work Release Programming, Post-Release Employment And Recidivism, Ryan Maranville

Student Research – Stevenson Center

This paper focuses on evaluations of employment-based reentry programs. It begins with an overview of recidivism, touching on the both theory and empirical research framing employment as a pivotal factor in the reentry process. Next, it reviews the limited assessments of work-release programming and their findings. The final sections examine the structural factors which complicate reentry, specifically low wages and community disorganization. And identifies the benefits of incorporating qualitative methods in criminological research as it relates to evaluating programs, their impact, and tying findings to program adaptations and future implementation.

An Intersectional Examination Of Criminally Involved Women Of Color With Mental Illness, Cailin Rosemary Mcdermott

Theses and Dissertations

Women, people of color, and people with mental illness are fast growing populations in the criminal justice system. However, research tends to overlook the women of color with mental illness who exist at the intersection of these statuses. The current thesis attempts to apply an intersectional framework to the analysis of the narratives of these multifaceted women to explore the ways that their varying positions in society interact to shape unique life experiences. I analyzed a secondary data set of semi-structured life-course interviews with 65 women on a Seriously Mentally Ill (SMI) probation caseload. Implementing a grounded-inspired approach, the interviews …

Police Body-Worn Camera Perceptions Pre/Post Deployment, Aaron Veerman

Theses and Dissertations

The purpose of this study was to determine if officers’ perceptions of Body-Worn Cameras (BWCs) changed over the course of a six-month pilot program. Officers from a Midwest police department were surveyed prior to or shortly after receiving their BWCs (Pre-Test) and again approximately six months later (Post-Test). Once completed, independent samples t-tests, mean comparisons, and Pearson’s correlations were used to analyze the data. This study did not produce many significant differences in officers’ perceptions over the course of the study, according to t-test results. However, several significant differences were found after each shift was analyzed separately. Overall, less than …

Do College Students’ Perceptions Of The Police Differ By Education Level And Major?, Lashanti Wilson Brown

Theses and Dissertations

Little is known about the impact that higher education has on students’ perceptions of the police, especially with respect to justice education. This study examines perceptions of the police among college students at Illinois State University. It questions how differences in education levels, major, race, age, and gender affect student perceptions about the police. A 55-question online survey was administered to 451 students at Illinois State University.

Results revealed that those with more education did not have significantly different contact with police officers than those with less education, however, they were significantly more likely to report negative attitudes towards the …

Pretrial Release And Failure-To-Appear In Mclean County, Il, Jonathan Monsma

Student Research – Stevenson Center

Actuarial risk assessment tools increasingly have been employed in jurisdictions across the U.S. to assist courts in the decision of whether someone charged with a crime should be detained or released prior to their trial. These tools should be continually monitored and researched by independent 3^rd parties to ensure that these powerful tools are being administered properly and used in the most proficient way as to provide socially optimal results. McLean County, Illinois began using the Public Safety Assessment-Court^TM (PSA-Court or simply PSA) risk assessment tool beginning in 2016. This study culls data from the McLean County Jail …

Assessing The Experiences Of Women Who Have Suffered Intimate Partner Violence Living In Shelters, Queencilla N. Hammond

Theses and Dissertations

According to the Centers for Disease Control on National Intimate Partner and Sexual Violence in 2010, more than 1 in 3 women (35.6%) and more than 1 in 4 men (28.5%) in the United States have experienced rape, physical violence, and/or stalking by an intimate partner in their lifetime. Throughout history, someone they knew has most often victimized women. Over the past thirty years, feminist organizers of the domestic violence (DV) movement powered public awareness regarding the prevalence of intimate partner violence (IPV) dominantly. This led to the development of a network of shelters and other support services for victims, …

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 …

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 …

The Perceptions Of Illinois State University Students Regarding Sexual Assault On Campus, Brittany Lee Acquaviva

Theses and Dissertations

The prevalence of sexual assault on college campuses is a continued epidemic within the United States. The increase of literature on this topic highlights the risk factors and perceptions that students hold on sexual assault. Previous findings have been able to aid in the creation of educational programs to be administered by universities to their students on commonly misconstrued topics within sexual assault and consent. This research adds to existing literature with its investigation on perceptions of sexual assault that Illinois State University students old. Specifically, this study looks at the beliefs and values that students hold about sexual assault, …

Veterinarians And Their Perception Of The Treatment Of Animal Abuse Cases In The Criminal Justice System, Dustin A. Richardson

Theses and Dissertations

Americans love their companion animals. In 2015, nearly two-thirds (65%) of all households in the U.S. housed at least one pet (APPA, n.d.). This love does not translate to policy, however, as many animals are left defenseless. Interestingly, the Animal Legal Defense Fund (2016) has ranked Illinois’ animal protection laws as the strongest in the nation for the last eight years. Extant animal abuse research is almost exclusively concerned with the ramifications that the abuse has for humans, and there is a dearth of social science research that examines veterinarians and the criminal justice system. Extremely limited research on this …

An Examination Of The Evolution Of Racially Biased Pretextual Investigatory Stops And Their Legitimacy In Policing, Brett A. Lacey

Theses and Dissertations

This thesis examines the use of tactics originally purposed as a component of the Drug Enforcement Agency’s Operation Pipeline and their evolution since their creation in the 1980’s. The paper provides a history of investigatory policing stops regarding the argument of Epp et al. (2014) that primarily relied on Police Chief magazine and Remsberg’s Street Survival. Epp argues that the methods used in investigatory stops are an invasion of privacy, use racial profiling, and have proliferated from a tactic used in the war on drugs to combat drug trafficking to a routine day-to-day policing tactic. Through the use of a …

The Impact Of Employment On Probationer Recidivism, Clayton T. Cottle

Theses and Dissertations

There is increasing need to understand and improve rates of recidivism in all fields associated with the Criminal Justice system. This research investigated the influence that employment status and job stability have on probationer recidivism. For this project, recidivism is defined as any arrest within four years after the termination of probation. Results from this study indicate that obtaining and sustaining employment can reduce the likelihood of recidivism in probationers. Additionally, the findings suggest that job stability is indicative of increased desistance. Findings from this study lend support to the notion that there is an employment-crime relationship. The findings of …