Criminology and Criminal Justice Commons^™

Vocational And Life Skills Quarterly Report: Grant Cycle 3, Quarter 4 April-June 2019, Uno Nebraska Center For Justice Research, Katelynn Towne, Michael Campagna

Reports

This report presents quarterly data and evaluation updates for the Vocational and Life Skills Program (VLS) through Quarter 4 of Grant Cycle 3. VLS was created by the Nebraska Legislative Bill 907 in 2014 to reduce recidivism and increase meaningful employment for Nebraskans convicted of a crime. The report contains 1) descriptions of the eight funded programs across the state, 2) a snapshot of program participation across the programs, 3) demographics of the participants served by the VLS initiative, and 4) participation breakdowns and descriptions of the skills participants are gaining through VLS programming. VLS continues to update service providers …

Texas Indian Holocaust And Survival: Mcallen Grace Brethren Church V. Salazar, Milo Colton

The Scholar: St. Mary's Law Review on Race and Social Justice

When the first Europeans entered the land that would one day be called Texas, they found a place that contained more Indian tribes than any other would-be American state at the time. At the turn of the twentieth century, the federal government documented that American Indians in Texas were nearly extinct, decreasing in number from 708 people in 1890 to 470 in 1900. A century later, the U.S. census recorded an explosion in the American Indian population living in Texas at 215,599 people. By 2010, that population jumped to 315,264 people.

Part One of this Article chronicles the forces contributing …

Skinning The Cat: How Mandatory Psychiatric Evaluations For Animal Cruelty Offenders Can Prevent Future Violence, Ashley Kunz

The Scholar: St. Mary's Law Review on Race and Social Justice

In 2017, the Texas legislature amended Texas Penal Code § 42.092, which governs acts of cruelty against non-livestock animals. The statute in its current form makes torturing, killing, or seriously injuring a non-livestock animal a third degree felony, while less serious offenses carry either a state jail felony or a Class A misdemeanor charge.

While a step in the right direction, Texas law is not comprehensive in that it fails to address a significant aspect of animal cruelty offenses: mental illness. For over fifteen years, Texas Family Code § 54.0407 has required psychiatric counseling for juveniles convicted of cruelty to …

Understanding Trauma And Victimization In Women's Incarceration: California's Treatment Response, Marissa Tuttle-Roache

Social Sciences

The purpose of this review is to provide an exploration of past research on women's pathways to incarceration, specifically discussing how this problem affects California women. Using research from various case studies, both quantitative and qualitative, this review examines the correlation between life experiences and incarceration for women. California laws and policies that mitigate the impact incarceration has historically had on women will be discussed. This research provides a better understanding of the treatment needs of incarcerated women and the programs that could provide them with some positive resources to succeed post incarceration and avoid recidivism.

Linguistic Features Of False Confessions And Confessions Not In Dispute: A Corpus Analysis, Lucrezia Rizzelli

Student Theses

Confessions are considered the gold standard of evidence, and yet many cases of false confessions causing wrongful convictions have come to the surface in the past decades. Currently, a method to identify false confessions does not exist and studies focusing on the content of the confessions have found similarities rather than points of distinction. In this study, we approached confessions from a stylistic rather than qualitative point of view, utilizing corpus analysis to outline the linguistic features of two samples of confessions: false confessions (n=37) and confessions not in dispute (n=98). Subsequently, we created a model …

Gender Based Violence In India: An Analysis Of National Level Data For Theory, Research And Prevention, Dhanya Babu

Student Theses

Gender based violence is a human rights violation, both the causes and impacts of which crosses personal, societal and cultural boundaries. Various initiatives to address the problem of gender-based violence have resulted in many countries attempting to quantify the extent of such crimes. The purpose of this present study is to examine nature and extent of GBV in India for prevention policy actions. The National Crime Record Bureau (NCRB) of India publishes a consolidated list of reported crime happenings in the country every year. Recognizing gendered aspect of certain crimes, the NCRB maintains a separate chapter on incidences of crimes …

Next Generation Of Evidence Collecting: The Need For Digital Forensics In Criminal Justice Education, Scott H. Belshaw

Journal of Cybersecurity Education, Research and Practice

Digital forensics poses significant challenges to law enforcement as the information found in a computer system is often present at most crime scenes in the form of computer data and cell phones. Digital evidence contained on common devices, such as cell phones and laptops, includes information that can be pertinent to the investigation of crimes. Law enforcement is increasingly identifying the need to be able to process their evidence internally warranting the exploration of the need for digital forensics training as part of a broader study of criminal justice for future law enforcement practitioners. This paper uses telephone surveys of …

Suffer The Little Children To Come: The Legal Rights Of Unaccompanied Alien Children Under United States Federal Court Jurisprudence, Claire Nolasco, Daniel Braaten

Criminology and Criminal Justice Faculty Publications (Archived)

This article analyses United States (US) federal court jurisprudence to determine the legal rights of unaccompanied alien children (UAC) in various stages of immigration enforcement proceedings. After briefly discussing statistics on UAC in the US, it explains the legal context of US laws governing unaccompanied minors. Through examining 40 cases decided by the 12 US Circuit Courts of Appeals and various federal district courts, the article specifies how these courts interpreted and expanded on the procedural legal rights of UAC upon apprehension by immigration officials, during placement or detention decisions of the Office of Refugee Resettlement (ORR), prior to voluntary …

Stop, Question, And Frisk: A Tool Of Racial Control In New York City, Justice D. Evans

Student Theses

Broken Windows policing through the utilization of Stop, Question, and Frisk has been widely used by the New York City Police Department (NYPD) since the 1990s, as guaranteed by landmark Supreme Court Case Terry v. Ohio (1968). As a result, hundreds of minority citizens have been the victim of routine stops for minor offenses through this aggressive police tactic. This study utilizes 2017 NYPD Stop, Question, and Frisk Data to determine whether broken windows policing, through stop, question, and frisk, operates as a mode of racial control for African Americans in New York City. Through the utilization of chi-square analyses, …

Killing Silence: A Path To Increasing Homicide Solvability In Urban Communities, Dennis Thornton

LSU New Orleans Theses and Dissertations

Relatively low rates of homicide solvability results in law-abiding citizens being forced to co-exist with known murderers, which is detrimental to a community’s psyche. This condition happens disproportionately in neighborhoods where crime is high, cohesiveness among its members is weak, and the citizen/police relationship is little or non-existent. This research sought to understand this phenomenon by asking,” How can murder solvability rates improve in marginalized communities?” and employing four theoretical lenses. Using the city of New Orleans as a case study and holding Social Disorganization Theory constant, Spiral of Silence, Habitus, and Dramaturgy were utilized in an attempt to understand …

Fight, Flight, And Free Will: How Knowledge Of Biopsychosocial Effects Of Trauma Influence Free Will Beliefs And Punishment For Juvenile And Adult Offenders, Rachel Lazar

Student Theses

Justifications for punishment are generally grounded in retribution or consequentialism. Retribution presupposes a belief in free will, claiming that offenders freely and rationally choose to commit a criminal act, and are therefore deserving of punishment. Consequentialism does not necessitate a reliance on free will, and views punishment as means to a valuable end. In recent years, neuroscientific research has challenged the notion of free will, providing one pathway for a public shift away from retribution and towards consequentialism. However, methods by which to instill this doubt in laypeople are still being discovered. To date, no studies have attempted to instill …

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

Graduate Theses/Dissertations

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.

Reviewing The Literature On Staff Misconduct And Specific Responsivity, Ernest M. Oleksy

The Downtown Review: An Interdisciplinary Journal Written and Peer-Reviewed by Mandel Honors College Students at Cleveland State University

Incarceration is a trying time for inmates as they are punished for crimes they committed while free in society. Beyond the legitimate punishment of being imprisoned, inmates may face illegitimate punishment at the hands of prison staff, ranging from ridicule to physical and sexual violence. Apart from the obvious corruption and immorality involved in staff misconduct, such deviance can also result in a dampened responsivity to reentry programming efforts that strive to keep inmates out of prison. In this literature review, I investigate, summarize, and synthesize the corpus that is relevant to how staff misconduct can be a negative specific …

Decomposition Of Pig Carcasses At Varying Room Temperature, Jacqueline Abad Santos

Themis: Research Journal of Justice Studies and Forensic Science

The goal of this study is to assess the qualitative scoring of decomposition scales with statistical analysis while also determining which indoor environment will decompose the fastest. When comparing the three indoor environments, water decomposition appears to be the fastest, but the method of analysis for this study determines that using decomposition scales to analyze such environments may produce statistically insignificant results. For this study, piglets were put in a dry steel tub, a water filled steel tub, and a suitcase. These were recorded using photographs for 25 days and then scored using decomposition scales. The total score was divided …

Scientific Evidence Admissibility: Improving Judicial Proceedings To Decrease Erroneous Outcomes, Leica Kwong

Themis: Research Journal of Justice Studies and Forensic Science

In the United States, Federal Rules of Evidence 702, the Frye and Daubert standards govern the admissibility of scientific evidence in the courtroom. Some states adopted Frye while others adopted Daubert, causing varying judicial outcomes. The verdicts in some cases may be erroneous due to a nationally used standard. Frye has broad criteria of requiring scientific evidence to be generally accepted. While Daubert contains more requirements for the evidence to be admissible, such as peer review, publication, and scientific principles. Daubert, alongside FRE 702, provides a thorough guideline for trial judges who have the gatekeeping role to decide admissibility aiming …

Physical Match: Uniqueness Of Torn Paper, Marilyn Aguilar

Themis: Research Journal of Justice Studies and Forensic Science

In the forensic science field, it is generally accepted that all tears and fractures are unique; however, there is limited scientific evidence to support this. This study tests the claim that all tears are unique, focusing on paper. One-hundred Office Depot brand 3” x 5” blank, white index cards were torn in half by hand. Six halves were randomly removed; the remaining 94 halves were mixed and then matched by a novice using end-match analysis. The removal of the 6 random halves left 44 matching pairs. Of the remaining halves, all 44 pairs were correctly matched. The results show that …

Novice Ideas: Handwriting Comparisons Conducted By An Untrained Individual, Maia Lister

Themis: Research Journal of Justice Studies and Forensic Science

Forensic analysis of questioned documents includes chemical analyses of paper and ink as well as handwriting comparisons. Several elements affect handwriting analyses, including the presence of discriminatory factors that can individualize a handwriting sample and whether the handwriting has been disguised. Five handwriting samples were gathered from six individuals comprising of one reference, three natural unknowns, and one disguised sample per person. A novice conducted analyses on every collected sample and conducted comparisons of the reference sample to the unknown and disguised samples in an attempt to correctly source the unknown and disguised samples. The novice showed a high level …

Justifying Justice: Six Factors Of Wrongful Convictions And Their Solutions, Colby Duncan

Themis: Research Journal of Justice Studies and Forensic Science

There have been over 300 post-conviction DNA exonerations in the history of the United States. While this number may initially seem significant, there is still an unfathomable population of wrongfully convicted prisoners who have yet to be considered for retrials. Unaddressed wrongful conviction cases highlight the unacceptable weaknesses in the U.S. justice system, weaknesses that include poor investigative tactics and the acceptance or allowance of inaccurate and unreliable evidence. This paper will dutifully analyze the causes that lead to wrongful convictions and amply discuss potential solutions, all of which includes eyewitness misidentification, improper forensics, false confessions, informants, government misconduct, and …

The Effect Of Lineup Size On Eyewitness Accuracy, Alyssa Baumann

Augsburg Honors Review

The research investigated the impact of the number of members in a police lineup on eyewitness identification. Participants attempted to identify the perpetrator from either a sequential or simultaneous lineup. The number of members in the lineup differed between 6 members and 12 members, simultaneous or sequential lineup presentation, and target-present or target-absent. In the target-present condition, the research was concerned with correct identifications. Thus, the 6 member simultaneous lineup should yield the most correct identifications. The 12 member simultaneous lineup should yield the second highest. The 6 and 12 member sequential lineup presentation should yield fewer correct identifications because …

The Antebellum Development Of The Penitentiary Debate In South Carolina, Florence Gregorie Sloan

Student Scholarship

The early 19^th century was marked by reform movements aimed at alleviating poverty, reducing crime, decreasing illiteracy, and providing better care for the mentally ill. In the United States, as in Europe, the debate over prison reform arose from the growing public fear that the stability of social institutions and values was crumbling, especially because lawlessness abounded across the country in the Jacksonian era.[1] Reformers sought a way to save and preserve the established social order, and reformers found their cure-all solution in the establishment of penitentiaries, which were institutions that sought to transform the criminal into an …