Criminology and Criminal Justice Commons^™

Variability In Eligibility And Outcomes: A Cross-Comparison Of New York City Mental Health Courts, Caitlin Sanders

Student Theses

Mental health courts (MHCs) represent a critical diversion mechanism for justice-involved individuals with serious mental illness (SMI), yet substantial variability in eligibility criteria, assessment practices, and program structure limits our understanding of how court-level policies shape participant access and outcomes. This exploratory study provides the first systematic cross-borough comparison of all five New York City MHCs, achieving a 100% response rate across courts. Using an adapted version of a statewide MHC survey instrument, data were collected from court representatives via structured survey administration and supplemental interviews. Findings indicate significant variation across courts in legal and clinical eligibility criteria, assessment personnel …

Drug Seizures, Entry Points, And Social Vulnerability In The Us, Taryn Eddy

Discovery Day - Daytona Beach

Drug trafficking into the United States remains a significant homeland security challenge, shaped by transportation infrastructure, border dynamics, and community vulnerability. This study conducts a spatial analysis of U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) drug seizure activity in relation to major transportation entry points and county-level social vulnerability. Using ArcGIS Pro, drug seizure data are mapped by CBP Field Office and overlaid with key infrastructure layers, including land ports of entry, international airports, seaports, and interstate highway corridors. County-level Social Vulnerability Index (SVI) data from the CDC/ATSDR are incorporated to assess whether areas experiencing high seizure activity are also characterized …

How Does Earning A 4-Year Degree Affect Promotion Rates Among Municipal Police Officers?, Anna Brumfield

Discovery Day - Daytona Beach

How does earning a 4-year degree affect promotion rates among municipal police officers?   The importance of a 4-year degree for law enforcement officers has been a topic of interest in a number of studies throughout the recent decades; however, significantly less research has been conducted to understand the relationship between earning a degree and the possibility of career advancement in municipal police officers. In the past, the need for higher education in this field was considered negligible; but studies have been conducted that point to the possible value of college experience and more specifically a 4-year degree. This value has …

Public Blame And Prevention Preferences Following K-12 School Shootings: Mean World Beliefs And Doomscrolling, Jennifer L. Lemanski, Gordon A. Crews

Communication Faculty Publications

This study examines how routine digital media use shapes public blame attribution and prevention preferences following K-12 school shootings. Drawing on Mean World Syndrome (MWS) and research on doomscrolling, the study investigates whether habitual exposure to threatening and sensationalized content is associated with patterns of digital engagement and interpretations of responsibility for school shooting events. Using a nationwide survey of U.S. adults (N = 540), the study measured MWS, doomscrolling tendencies, political orientation, blame attribution, and engagement behaviors such as seeking information, sharing, and commenting on school violence–related content. Canonical correlation analyses indicate that higher levels of MWS and doomscrolling …

Why Do We Need To Prove That Pigs Feel?, Aranza Vera-Espinoza, Nancy Harlet Esquivel-Marín

Animal Sentience

Birch's framework manages uncertainty but overlooks the likelihood that citizen panels have speciesist biases that reduce precaution to mere harm-management even in species that undoubtedly feel.

Artificial Intelligence And Law Enforcement: Transforming Current And Future Policing Operations, Decision-Making, And Public Trust, Chad Taylor

Certified Public Manager® Applied Research

Artificial intelligence is having a major impact on our society. Many of our industries are attempting to grasp the benefits of this technology, and law enforcement is no different. Investigative, efficiency and administrative tools are all utilizing artificial intelligence to some degree. However, new tools bring new concern from communities. This article will investigate how artificial intelligence is being integrated into current and future law enforcement operations and decision-making. It will also investigate how AI affects public trust and what the profession needs to do to build community confidence. Regardless, artificial intelligence is a technology that is here and will …

Sex Buying, Sex Trafficking, And Organized Crime: Introduction To A Special Issue, Marcel Van Der Watt, John A. Winterdyk

Dignity: A Journal of Analysis of Exploitation and Violence

No abstract provided.

Race, Sex, And Age Disparities In Homicide Clearance Rates In Tennessee: An Intersectional Approach, Teliyah Cobb

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Demographic factors can influence homicide solvability. This study examines the relationship between victim characteristics and homicide clearance rates in Tennessee from 2001 to 2023. Using an intersectional approach, it assesses whether victim characteristics both individually and in combination are related to case solvability. Variables of interest include: (1) victim race, age range, and sex; (2) year the case was reported; (3) crime type; (4) whether the case was cleared; and (5) the circumstances leading to clearance. A total of 11,534 homicide cases from the Tennessee Incident-Based Reporting System were analyzed.

Findings indicate that individual victim characteristics do not significantly predict …

Disrupting The Bonded Economy Of Sex Buying, Sex Trafficking, And Organised Crime Through Policy Change, Dellene Clark

Dignity: A Journal of Analysis of Exploitation and Violence

Emerging criminological research underscores how the economic drivers of trafficking for sexual exploitation reinforce organised criminal markets while reproducing the structural vulnerabilities of those in prostitution. Using South Africa as a case study, this article argues that evidence-based legislative reform is necessary to confront the systemic conditions that enable exploitation. It contends that achieving substantive equality requires recognising the criminogenic role of sex‑buyer demand in sustaining trafficking pipelines and criminal profitability. The Swedish/Nordic demand‑reduction model illustrates how asymmetrical criminalisation can suppress demand, reduce reliance on trafficked persons, and diminish the financial incentives that underpin organised crime. Such an approach reorients …

What Counts As Data? Empirical Legal Research With India’S Ecourts Portal, Lubhyathi Rangarajan, Sakshi Rai, Nikita Bansal

Socio-Legal Review

This Notes from the Field (‘NFF’) studies an attempt to build a nationwide dataset of cases instituted under the Unlawful Activities (Prevention) Act, 1967 using the eCourts portal, an open access state-led digital repository of all judicial records across India. It uses this experimental attempt to create new methodological and epistemological ways of thinking about data when undertaking socio-legal research. The paper argues that the appearance of judiciary-led digital transparency and visibility masks deeper concerns with data integrity. Through a process of manual data extraction across than 3,647 court complexes on the eCourts portal, the study reimagines technical failures and …

Breaking Point: Exploring Side Bets, Support, And Pension Investment As Predictors Of Turnover Intention In Urban Policing, Kenneth M. Quick, Kevin T. Wolff

Publications and Research

Guided by Becker’s side-bet theory, this study examines turnover intentions among officers in the New York City Police Department by assessing pension investment and affective commitment as accumulated organizational “side bets,” alongside job satisfaction, perceived organizational support, and workplace conditions. Data was drawn from an online survey of 1,454 officers. Population weights based on gender, race/ethnicity, and rank were applied to improve representativeness. Weighted multinomial logistic regression models examined predictors of turnover intention, while second-difference tests of average marginal effects (AMEs) assessed whether workplace factors operated differently across tenure groups. Results indicate that perceived organizational attitudes and workplace conditions significantly …

Ice Arrests In The Mountain West, 2025, Cason Noll, Caitlin J. Saladino, William E. Brown Jr.

Criminal Justice

This fact sheet presents data from the Prison Policy Initiative briefing on Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) arrest data for the five Mountain West states of Arizona, Colorado, Nevada, New Mexico, and Utah from January to October of 2025.  This fact sheet reports the number of ICE arrests by location and arrest rates per 100,000 residents in each Mountain West state.

Race, Ethnic, And Gender Disparities In Human Trafficking Risk, Identification, And Investigation, Emily D. Walker

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Youth and human trafficking remain significant and complex issues. Existing literature suggests that trafficking risk, victimization, and identification are shaped by structural and social context, creating differential impacts across demographic groups, such as racial, ethnic, and gendered groups. Yet, current research has yet to fully capture the complexity of victimization across groups. This dissertation consists of three interconnected studies examining youth trafficking investigations. Using a mixed-methods approach and administrative data from Florida Department of Children and Families (DCF), this dissertation address three objectives (1) examining potential variation in documentation of trafficking risk, victimization, and narrative framing of youth trafficking investigations …

In Search Of Protective Factors Against Gun-Carrying For Black Male Youth: A Dissertation- Sectional And Longitudinal Analysis Of Secondary Data, Kevin Edward Antwi

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

This study examines the relationship between risk and protective factors and gun carrying among Black male youth using both individual-level and population-averaged effects. Grounded in the risk and protective factors framework and the ecological systems model, the study explores how protective factors at the individual, peer, school, and community levels influence gun carrying at a single point in time and over time. This research aligns with the Grand Challenges of Social Work by preventing gun violence and informing prevention efforts. Using the baseline and 11 waves of data from the Pathways to Desistance Study, the analysis identifies factors that reduce …

Perceptions Of Legitimacy In Three Forms Of Probation Supervision For People With Serious Mental Illness, Sophia Sarantakos, Emily Claypool

Qualitative Criminology (QC)

"In the context of criminal-legal community supervision, standard and specialized probation officers are often tasked with coordinating services for adults diagnosed with serious mental illness (SMI) on their caseloads. The coordination of services varies across different programs including traditional probation, specialty probation, and mental health court. Given the proliferation of programs focused on mental health in the criminal-legal system, the perspectives of front-line workers or street-level bureaucrats in criminal-legal agencies are a rich source of information about what is happening on the ground and could provide insights into the potential translational barriers of policy to practice. A deeper examination of …

From Acrimony To Forgiveness: How Adolescents Make Sense Of Childhood Maltreatment, Katherine Irwin

Qualitative Criminology (QC)

"This paper examines 16 adolescents’ narratives about the abuse they experienced during childhood. To date, most research examining child abuse (CA) survivorship and recovery has been conducted with adults who look back on their early experiences. Consequently, this study fills gaps in our knowledge by offering a youth-centered view of survivors’ efforts to cope with CA. The data come from a 12-year qualitative study of a group counseling program for high school students in Hawaiʻi. The findings revealed that a minority (n = 2) of the teens had negative views of their lives and futures, while the majority (n = …

A Content Analysis Of The Sutherland Address, 2001-22: A Qualitative Exploration, Phillip Shon

Qualitative Criminology (QC)

"Previous indicators of scholarly influence have been primarily quantitative, measuring a scholar’s influence through citation counts. This body of literature has overlooked the reflections of distinguished scholars, such as the recipients of the Sutherland Award, in the discipline as a form of scholarly influence. The current paper examines the Sutherland Address from 2001 to 2022. The key findings indicate that the majority of Sutherland Addresses reproduced existing sociological canons, while a minority of Sutherland Award winners explicitly rejected Sutherland’s sociological assumptions and their influence on criminology. Such findings suggest that Sutherland exerts a hidden influence on the recipients of the …

A Qualitative Analysis Of Gender Inequality In Southeast Missouri Law Enforcement Agencies, Madeline Marie Whistler, Christopher Bradley, H. Hamner Hill

Qualitative Criminology (QC)

"Does gender inequality impact the careers of female law enforcement officers in the Southeast Missouri region? Using a qualitative single instrumental case study, seven cis-gendered female law enforcement officers who were employed at local law enforcement agencies within the Southeast Missouri region were interviewed to investigate the central research question. Four themes emerged from the data that illustrated their experiences: sexual exploitation and harassment, a lack of work-life balance, the presence of gender stereotypes, and patriarchal hierarchy and male dominance in the workplace. The findings suggest that the experiences of female law enforcement officers are heavily impacted by the behavior …

A Plea For Open Access To Qualitative Criminology: With A Python Script For Anonymizing Data And Illustrative Analysis Of Error Rates, Scott Jaques, Andrew Wheeler

Qualitative Criminology (QC)

"Qualitative researchers are expected, sometimes required, to publish their data open access (OA). This is for the sake of science, impact, and social justice. Yet, understandably, qualitative criminologists are worried about what this means for their workload and their ability to protect subjects’ confidentiality. To be solutions-oriented, we developed an open-source Python script for anonymizing qualitative data. It uses named-entity recognition and fuzzy-rule based merging to identify and replace personally identifiable information (PII) with unique pseudonyms. This tool doesn’t eliminate the need for manual work, but it reduces the cost and associated risk. In this article, we describe and explain …

The Unspoken And The Unseen: An Analysis Of Victim Gender And Linguistic Framing Of Sexual Assault In Judicial Discourse, Sarnika Ali

Quantitative Social Science Undergraduate Senior Theses

Sexual assault is a profound legal and social crisis. However, it is also fundamentally a linguistic one. The words used, or conspicuously not used, to describe victims, perpetrators, and their actions are not neutral arbiters of fact. They are powerful mechanisms that shape perceptions of harm, attributions of blame, and assignments of credibility. The central battleground for survivors is credibility, and while a “credibility discount” is often applied to female victims, the male victim is rendered nearly invisible. This research is therefore guided by one central, overarching question: how does a sexual assault victim’s gender influence the judicial language used, …