Legal Studies Commons^™

Cross-National Incarceration Rates As Behavior Of Law, Christopher J. Marier

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Incarceration rates vary substantially around the world. However, systematic cross-national comparisons examining such variation are rare. Using Donald Black’s theory of law, and further informed by other theories in the sociology of punishment with conceptual overlap, the purpose of this study is to evaluate the structural and cultural factors that influence incarceration rates around the world. Using data from the World Prison Brief, World Values Survey, CIA World Factbook, and other international datasets, this study evaluates a series of ordinary least squares regressions in 66 nations. This study is one of few macrosocial tests of Black’s theory of law to …

How Can Presidents Properly Calibrate The Terror Threat?, Gabriel Rubin

Department of Justice Studies Faculty Scholarship and Creative Works

Presidential rhetoric has minimally changed from the narrative set by George W. Bush after the 9/11 attacks. Bush’s policies and agenda have also largely remained. This chapter provides proposals for change given the empirical and theoretical findings made in the book. The counterterrorist policy agenda needs to be narrowed and made more precise. The public needs to educate itself about the terror threat to understand that it is not a significant risk when weighed against others. Presidents need to be more careful with what words they use when describing America’s terrorist adversaries and with who they call terrorists. Recalibrating the …

Across Racial Lines: Three Accounts Of Transforming Urban Institutions After A Natural Disaster, James Carter, Nolan Rollins, Gregory Rusovich

New England Journal of Public Policy

At 1:30 p.m. on August 29, 2005, Hurricane Katrina grazed the mostly evacuated city of New Orleans, reserving its most devastating force for coastal Mississippi, just to the east. During the next two days, the federal levees protecting the city failed in multiple places. Sixteen hundred people died in the metropolitan area. Residences and businesses in 80 percent of the city went underwater. Public officials warned residents and business owners that they might not be able to return for two to three months. The scope of devastation in certain parts of the city made ever returning questionable for many residents. …

Rising From Katrina’S Ashes But Still In Crisis: Public Defense In New Orleans, Derwyn Bunton

New England Journal of Public Policy

New Orleans’ nickname “Big Easy” was based on the “anything goes” perception of the city. Feeding this perception was a sense of lawlessness, that New Orleans was a place where the rules changed depending on who you were and who you knew. So when Hurricane Katrina hit the city in August 2005 and tossed everything around—flooding mansions and missions, damaging the Superdome and supermarkets—the storm challenged old perceptions and presented unique challenges. Katrina made at least one thing clear: New Orleans could no longer wait for change, pretend nothing happened, or look back. The city’s survival depended on its ability …

Reconnecting The Broken Post-Katrina New Orleans Criminal Justice System, Graymond Martin

New England Journal of Public Policy

When Hurricane Katrina struck New Orleans and the levees protecting the city gave way in August 2005, an already struggling and weakened criminal justice system collapsed in spectacular fashion.

Damage within New Orleans extended far beyond the loss of physical infrastructure. The city’s population was depleted by more than half. For those who remained or returned within the first year, spirits were crushed, uncertainty abounded, and the hard work of restoration was riddled by anxiety, conflict, opportunism, and battles for precious resources.

Longtime judge Leon Cannizzaro Jr., appalled at the near-complete dysfunction of the local criminal justice system, entered and …

The New Orleans Criminal Legal System: A Flowing River, William C. Snowden

New England Journal of Public Policy

Ask anyone from New Orleans and they will tell you the city has not been the same since the storm. Although the city has persevered through many storms and hurricanes in its three-hundred-year history, this particular storm—Hurricane Katrina—is notorious for the transformation it brought to New Orleans in the years that followed.

The makeup, culture, and rhythm of New Orleans have changed, but so too have the various systems that give the city its tempo—particularly the criminal legal system. Hurricane Katrina was a disaster that revealed deficiencies, abnormalities, and injustices in the New Orleans criminal legal system. Some responses to …

Community Demand For Change And Accountability: A History Of Court Watch Nola, New Orleans’ Community Courtwatching Program, Simone Levine

New England Journal of Public Policy

The criminal justice system, like any other system, is run by insiders: prosecutors, judges, deputy sheriffs, police, clerks, private defense, and public defenders. But system outsiders—victims, witnesses, criminal defendants, and the community in general—have the power to demand respect from that same system and to demand that the system work for them. System insiders have no monopoly on the knowledge and the power to shape the criminal justice system.

The Prosecutor As A Final Safeguard Against False Convictions, Elizabeth H. Webster

Criminal Justice & Criminology: Faculty Publications & Other Works

Prosecutors have helped secure an unprecedented number of recent exonerations. This development, combined with the rapid emergence of district attorney-initiated conviction integrity units (CIUs) raises several questions. How do prosecutors’ offices review postconviction innocence claims? How do they make decisions about the merits of those claims? How do CIU processes differ from non-CIU processes? This study examines the circumstances surrounding prosecutor-assisted exoneration cases through semi-structured interviews with 20 prosecutors and 19 defense attorneys. It draws from a sample of both CIU and non-CIU prosecutors, thereby enabling comparisons. Respondents were asked about their experiences and decision-making structures in specific, post-2005 exoneration …

Digital Forensics Tools Integration, Alexander D. Kim

Theses and Dissertations

As technology has become pervasive in our lives we record our daily activities both intentionally and unintentionally. Because of this, the amount of potential evidence found on digital media is staggering. Investigators have had to adapt and change their methods of conducting investigations to address the data volume. Digital forensics examiners current process consists of performing string searches to identify potential evidentiary items. Items of interest must then go through association, target comparison, and event reconstruction processes. These are manual and time consuming tasks for an examiner. This thesis presents a user interface that combines both the string searching capabilities …

The Effects Of Perceived Motivations And Mental Distress On The Likelihood Of Reporting And Engaging In Self-Protective Measures Among Victims Of Stalking, Daniela Oramas Mora

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

The current study examines how perceived motivations and mental distress affect decision-making among victims of stalking. Although stalking victimization has become relatively common in recent years, with approximately 1 in 6 women reporting to have been victims of stalking at some point in their lives, victims of stalking are unlikely to report to police compared to victims of other violent crimes (NISVS, 2015). Though studies have explored the dynamics of stalking, little is known about the role of the victim’s perception of the offender’s motivation in the victim's decision to report to the police and engage in self-protective measures. The …

The Effects Of The Evidence Preservation System (Eps) On The Storage Of Dna Samples, Devin Doyle

Graduate Student Research Symposium

Storage of collected samples is a concern for all disciplines of forensic science. Without proper storage, especially DNA samples, the DNA will become unusable as it could become degraded, cross contaminated with other samples, etc. Much of the preliminary research revealed that there were very few studies on the storage of forensic samples regarding ideal protocols, let alone those that involved combining as many controlled storage aspects such as temperature, humidity, and UV exposure. This research focuses on the Evidence Preservation System (EPS) by Forensic Solutions, Inc., which is a controlled environment able to be programmed to control temperature and …

“But I’M Standing Inside Right Now And I Need Help”: Security Projects And The Perceptions Of Campus Security, Andrea Corradi, Carrie B. Sanders, James Popham

Qualitative Criminology (QC)

"Acts of violence at institutions of higher education have been heavily publicized, leading security on post-secondary campuses to become a hotbed issue in the media and in the daily lives of those who attend them. With extensive media coverage of events such as the attack on Jeanne Clery, and the mass shootings at Northern Illinois University, Dawson College, and Virginia Tech, many post-secondary schools are working to enhance their security practices. The present study uses Valverde’s (2001; 2008; 2009; 2010; 2011; 2014) security projects framework to examine the lived experiences of security measures on a Canadian urban-integrated campus. Through semi-structured …

Public Opinion Of The Police In 1930s America: A Qualitative Historiographical Study, Willard M. Oliver

Qualitative Criminology (QC)

"Public opinion polls largely developed post-WWII and questions about the police did not appear until the late 1960s. Since then, over 100+ studies have assessed the modern-day public opinion of the police, but none have looked to public opinion from an earlier time period. This study uses a qualitative historiographical approach for assessing public opinion of the police in the 1930s by drawing on the primary source of a letter exchange between two of that eras greatest pulp writers: Robert E. Howard and H.P. Lovecraft. Findings suggest similarities between the 1930s and present day public opinion of the police."

Jennifer E. Cobbina, Hands Up, Don't Shoot, Joshua R. Ruffin

Qualitative Criminology (QC)

"Issues surrounding police use of excessive force continue to be a longstanding debate in the field of Criminal Justice. In the timely boots-on-the-ground work, Hands Up, Don't Shoot, Jennifer Cobbina amplifies the voices of Ferguson and Baltimore protestors by conducting indepth interviews with residents as it relates to their everyday experience with the police. In Hands Up, Don’t Shoot, Cobbina takes an “and” instead of an “or” approach in understanding the experiences often faced by residents of different intersecting identities in these communities. Further, Cobbina provides readers the opportunity to learn of the racialized experiences of these groups …

Out-Of-School Suspensions: Counter-Narratives From The Student Perspective, Karen Mcelrath, Lori Guevara, Zahra Shekarkhar, Joe M. Brown

Qualitative Criminology (QC)

"Out-of-school suspension (OSS) is a major disciplinary tool that has impacted large numbers of students in the United States. Most research into OSS has drawn exclusively on data collected from school records and other “official” sources, and this body of work has contributed to our understanding of suspension decisions by school officials. Considerably less is known about how students experience out-of-school suspensions. This line of inquiry is important because it captures the student voice and reveals a series of counter-narratives that offer alternative interpretations of students’ behaviors that lead to OSS. The aims of this study were twofold: 1) to …

“Everybody Loses:” Understanding Police Roles And Perceptions Of Domestic Violence Calls, Anjali Fulambarker

Qualitative Criminology (QC)

"To better understand police response to domestic violence, it is useful to consider the perspectives of officers themselves. Through exploratory, in-depth interviews and applying the lens of role theory, this study focuses on police officers’ perceptions of their role in responding to domestic violence, their perceptions of the effectiveness of their response, and challenges they face. Findings suggest that, for these participants, there is an overlap in the different roles they inhabit, as well as limitations and barriers to their response. These limitations and obstacles are a signal that officers may be experiencing role overload, which leads to their frustration …

Incapacitated Fatherhood: The Impact Of Mass Incarceration On Black Father Identity, Dara Lewis, Philip Young P. Hong

Qualitative Criminology (QC)

"Despite the growing body of literature detailing the disproportionate social consequences of mass incarceration to black men, many of whom are fathers, insufficient attention has been given to the extent of damage on fatherhood and father identity in particular. This article examines the consequences of mass incarceration on father identity and the performance of fatherhood among a group of black men. Drawing from rich qualitative data, the study uses the lived experiences and perceptions of a group of formerly incarcerated black fathers. This research found that the incarceration experience significantly disrupted the performance of fatherhood among this group of men …

Tasseli Mckay, Megan Comfort, Christine Lindquist, & Anupa Bir, Holding On: Family And Fatherhood During Incarceration And Reentry, Danielle L. Haverkate

Qualitative Criminology (QC)

"The impact of incarceration on families has received increased focus over the past 20 years. The bulk of examinations have narrowed in on the impact of parental incarceration on children (see Wakefield & Wildeman, 2013), the impact of incarceration on parenting (see Hairston, 2002), and the impacts of incarceration on the partners of those incarcerated (see Roy & Dyson, 2005; Turney, 2015). All of this suggests that family functioning is disrupted during periods of incarceration. Despite this, a large proportion of the literature on family relationships during and after prison focuses on incarcerated mothers (see Ferraro & Moe, 2003; Enos, …

What’S After Good?: The Burden Of Post-Incarceration Life, Quintin Williams, Cesraéa Rumpf

Qualitative Criminology (QC)

"In the current era of mass incarceration, an increasing number of people face the challenge of transitioning from prison to society. Researchers of post-incarceration life have produced a detailed account of the collateral consequences of incarceration, noting the numerous barriers people must overcome as they try to return to society. In this paper, we show how stigma continues to be a structuring force in the lives of the formerly incarcerated. We develop the concept of the burden of post-incarceration life, meaning the structural constraints formerly incarcerated people face and the constant work they undertake to demonstrate and attempt to …

Letter From The Outgoing Editor, Lynne Vieraitis

Qualitative Criminology (QC)

"Welcome to the first issue of Volume 9 of the Journal of Qualitative Criminal Justice & Criminology, and my last issue as editor. I am happy to hand over the position to Scott Jacques from Georgia State University, who has a solid record as a qualitative researcher. The journal is in excellent hands, and I wish Scott and his editorial team the best as they continue to advance the journal and qualitative research."