Legal Studies Commons^™

Exploring The Merging Of Two Divergent Behavioral Support Systems In Juvenile Justice, Linda Susan Spaulding

Walden Dissertations and Doctoral Studies

In 2016, over 47,000 youths in the state of Florida were served by the Department of Juvenile Justice (DJJ) probation services. While on probation, these youths were exposed to 2 different, and potentially conflicting disciplinary management systems. Youth are under the authority of juvenile probation officers (JPOs), who are bound to a consequence-based management approach. This approach is guided by negative reinforcement. The youths are simultaneously engaged with staff from diversion programs, many of which are strengths-based and guided by positive reinforcement. According to the ecosystemic complexity theory of conflict, exposure to incongruent systems can have negative effects such as …

Security Strategies For Hosting Sensitive Information In The Commercial Cloud, Edward Steven Forde

Walden Dissertations and Doctoral Studies

IT experts often struggle to find strategies to secure data on the cloud. Although current security standards might provide cloud compliance, they fail to offer guarantees of security assurance. The purpose of this qualitative case study was to explore the strategies used by IT security managers to host sensitive information in the commercial cloud. The study's population consisted of information security managers from a government agency in the eastern region of the United States. The routine active theory, developed by Cohen and Felson, was used as the conceptual framework for the study. The data collection process included IT security manager …

Sexual Misconduct In Prison: What Factors Affect Whether Incarcerated Women Will Report Abuses Committed By Prison Staff?, Sheryl Pimlott Kubiak, Hannah Brenner, Deborah Bybee, Rebecca Campbell, Cristy E. Cummings, Kathleen M. Darcy, Gina Fedock, Rachael Goodman-Williams

Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.

A Comparative Analysis Of The United States Supreme Court's Doctrine Of Selective Incorporation And Corporate Constitutional Rights Jurisprudence, Rebecca R. Fate

Honors Undergraduate Theses

With recent and contentious Supreme Court cases dealing with corporate constitutional rights, such as Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission (2010), as well as with the appointment of a new justice, the time is particularly ripe for evaluations of the Supreme Court’s jurisprudence in this area, including predictions about the future of this line of cases. The purpose of this thesis is to establish a better understanding of the historical jurisprudential approach utilized by the Supreme Court to decide corporate constitutional rights by establishing the well-known doctrine of selective incorporation as an appropriate analogy. No other works attempt to frame …

Reasons For Gaps In Crime Reporting: The Case Of White-Collar Criminals Investigated By Private Fraud Examiners In Norway, Petter Gottschalk, Maria Tcherni-Buzzeo

Criminal Justice Faculty Publications

A private investigation is an examination of facts, sequence of events, causes for deviance, and responsibilities for negative incidents. Recent years have seen an increasing use of private internal investigations in terms of the assessment of financial irregularities. The form of inquiry aims to uncover vulnerabilities to unrestricted opportunities, failing internal controls, abuse of position, and any financial misconduct such as corruption, fraud, embezzlement, theft, manipulation, tax evasion and other forms of economic crime. When fraud examiners discover evidence of white-collar crime, they almost always leave it to their clients to decide whether or not to report crime to the …

Adjudicating Death: Professionals Or Politicians?, Stephen J. Choi, Mitu Gulati

Faculty Scholarship

Variation exists in how death examinations take place in the United States. In some counties and states decisions about autopsies and the issuance of death certificates are made by a local coroner who often needs nothing more than a high school diploma to run for election to the job of coroner. In other counties and states, an appointed medical professional performs the death examination. We provide preliminary tests of the difference in performance between death examination offices run by appointed medical professionals compared with elected coroners. We find that death examiner offices in elected coroner states are less likely to …

The American Death Penalty Decline, Brandon L. Garrett, Alexander Jakubow, Ankur Desai

Faculty Scholarship

American death sentences have both declined and become concentrated in a small group of counties. In his dissenting opinion in Glossip v. Gross in 2014, Justice Stephen Breyer highlighted how from 2004 to 2006, "just 29 counties (fewer than 1% of counties in the country) accounted for approximately half of all death sentences imposed nationwide." That decline has become more dramatic. In 2015, fifty-one defendants were sentenced to death in thirty-eight counties. In 2016, thirty-one defendants were sentenced to death in twenty-eight counties. In the mid-1990s, by way of contrast, over 300 people were sentenced to death in as many …

Legal Responses To Nonconsensual Pornography: Current Policy In The United States And Future Directions For Research, Cynthia J. Najdowski

Psychology Faculty Scholarship

Technological advances have created new avenues for the perpetration of sexual violence. The widespread availability of cameras has made it easier to take covert recordings of an individual’s intimate body parts, and whether sexually explicit images are recorded with or without an individual’s consent, growing access to the Internet has facilitated the nonconsensual dissemination of those images. Yet criminal laws have not kept pace with technology in most jurisdictions across the United States, and victims of nonconsensual pornography typically have no avenue by which to seek justice. There have been efforts to reform laws in a variety of jurisdictions, some …

The Complexity Of Public Attitudes Toward Sex Crimes, Laura L. King, Jennifer R. Roberts

Criminal Justice Faculty Publications and Presentations

Previous research suggests that public opinion about crime is nuanced as it has been found to vary greatly depending upon the type of questions asked and the amount of information provided. Few have similarly examined the complexity of public attitudes specifically about sex crimes. A survey was administered to a sample of U. S. residents utilizing the factorial survey method. The results suggested that specific details about the offense, offender, and victim had a significant effect on perceptions. The findings point to discrepancies between policy and public opinion, as well as to the importance of educating the public about the …

What Impact Is Felony Disenfranchisement Having On Hispanics In Florida?, Angel E. Sanchez

Honors Undergraduate Theses

This research produces original empirical estimates of Hispanics in Florida’s Dept. of Corrections (FDOC) and uses those estimates to measure the impact felony disenfranchisement is having on Hispanics in Florida. Research institutions find that data on Hispanics in the criminal justice system, particularly in Florida, is either lacking or inaccurate. This research addresses this problem by applying an optimal surname list method using Census Bureau data and Bayes Theorem to produce an empirical estimate of Hispanics in FDOC’s data. Using the Hispanic rate derived from the empirical FDOC analysis, the rate of Hispanics in the disenfranchised population is estimated. The …

Communities Of Resistance: Welfare Queens And The Infrapolitics Of Black Hair Tutorials On Youtube, Reandra Johnson

Scripps Senior Theses

The author raises the question of what black women do to resist acts taken by the government to control their bodies such as the welfare queen trope. Many authors demonstrate that the welfare queen is used to control black women as a labor force as well as their reproduction. An infrapolitical reading of black hair tutorials is done to analyze the ways that black hair care is a form of political resistance. Robin Kelley's use of infrapolitics to understand actions taken by working class black people is used as a model.

Social Justice In Social-Ecological Systems: Resilience Through Stakeholder Engagement, Frederick I. Lauer

Graduate Student Theses, Dissertations, & Professional Papers

Successful management of social-ecological systems (SES) is predicated on quality collaborative exchanges between project stakeholders and management. The Southwest Crown of the Continent Collaborative (SWCC) Collaborative Forest Landscape Restoration Program (CFLRP) provided an opportunity to explore landscape scale collaborative management and SES outcomes. Global change and future uncertainty of landscapes prompted the SWCC to employ restoration treatment alternatives throughout 1.4 million acres of forests, most of which are publicly held. The SWCC currently monitors environmental and economic variables, with plans to monitor social variables. This thesis formalizes a proposed framework to investigate SES resilience, and explores public engagement as an …

Ideology, Race, And The Death Penalty: “Lies, Damn Lies, And Statistics” In Advocacy Research, Anthony Walsh, Virginia Hatch

Criminal Justice Faculty Publications and Presentations

We use the literature on race in death penalty to illustrate the hold that ideology has on researchers and journalists alike when a social issue is charged with emotional content. We note particularly how statistical evidence become misinterpreted in ways that support a particular ideology, either because of innumeracy or because—subconsciously or otherwise—one’s ideology precludes a critical analysis. We note that because white defendants are now proportionately more likely to receive the death penalty and to be executed than black defendants that the argument has shifted from a defendant-based to a victim-based one. We examine studies based on identical data …

Rewiring The Anger: Learning New Responses In The Therapeutic Community, Emma Marie Burleson

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Extensive research has been conducted in correctional settings on the effects that therapeutic programs that utilize cognitive-behavioral therapies have on recidivism rates and cognitive-behavioral changes among inmates. Research on anger management programs in correctional settings has shown that there are measurable effects on the anger levels of participants based on quantitative pre-testing and post-testing. The present study sought to build on this research in a unique way by conducting qualitative research to examine the personal perceptions of inmates that have graduated from a therapeutic program in a maximum security prison. The study focused on participants’ perceived changes in how they …

Approximate Bayesian Computation In Forensic Science, Jessie H. Hendricks

The Journal of Undergraduate Research

Forensic evidence is often an important factor in criminal investigations. Analyzing evidence in an objective way involves the use of statistics. However, many evidence types (i.e., glass fragments, fingerprints, shoe impressions) are very complex. This makes the use of statistical methods, such as model selection in Bayesian inference, extremely difficult.

Approximate Bayesian Computation is an algorithmic method in Bayesian analysis that can be used for model selection. It is especially useful because it can be used to assign a Bayes Factor without the need to directly evaluate the exact likelihood function - a difficult task for complex data. Several criticisms …

Black Male Probationers' Perceptions Of Juvenile Probation Officers' Role In Reducing Recidivism, Fern H. Clarke

Walden Dissertations and Doctoral Studies

The high recidivism rate of Black male juvenile offenders is a problem in the United States that continues to be of great concern. Probation has gained popularity as being a means of addressing and reducing the high recidivism rates of juvenile offenders. However, there is a lack of research regarding Black male juvenile probationers' perceptions of their probation officers' role in reducing their recidivism. This study examined the following: a) the predictive relationships between Black male probationers' perceptions of their probation officers, their perceptions of the probation officers' job, and their recidivism within 3 years of being place on probation; …

The Risk Principle Paradox: A Multilevel Approach To Examine Which High-Risk Offenders Successfully Change During Rehabilitation Programs, Cole Higley

Open Access Theses & Dissertations

The empirically supported risk principle demonstrates that correctional agencies can reduce recidivism by providing greater supervision and rehabilitation services to higher-risk offenders. The current study examined the paradox that offenders with the greatest risk to reoffend also have the most potential to successfully change; yet, little research has examined why some high-risk offenders succeed in programs, while others do not. Analyses examined whether certain demographic, motivation, and rehabilitative group features were related to program performance and post-release recidivism. Results showed that in certain rehabilitation types, statistically significant interactions were observed, such that the relationship between individual risk and outcome (either …

The Indirect Consequences Of Expanded Off-Label Promotion, Patricia J. Zettler

Faculty Publications By Year

The U.S. Food and Drug Administration’s (FDA) policies have been a battleground for litigation about First Amendment protections for commercial speech. In the last five years, the FDA’s position that “off-label” promotion of approved prescription drugs—when a manufacturer promotes a drug for a use for which the FDA has not approved it—leads to violations of the Federal Food, Drug, and Cosmetic Act has been subject to successful legal challenges. Although the merits of these off-label promotion decisions are well traversed in the literature, this Article explores the potential indirect consequences of recently-recognized protections for off-label promotion. This Article demonstrates that—as …

Politics Below The Surface: A Political Ecology Of Mineral Rights And Land Tenure Struggles In Appalachia And The Andes, Lindsay Shade

Theses and Dissertations--Geography

This dissertation examines how confusion and lack of access to information about subsurface property rights facilitates the rapid acquisition of mineral rights by mining interests, leaving those who live 'above the surface' to contend with complicated corporate and bureaucratic apparatuses. The research focuses on the first proposed state-run large scale mining project in Ecuador, believed to contain copper ores, and on the natural gas hydrofracking industry in three counties in north central West Virginia. Qualitative and visual methods, including mapping, are employed to determine (i.) how the geography of subsurface ownership patterns is changing, (ii.) links between changes in subsurface …

Jailhouse Informants In Canadian Criminal Courts, Olena Beshley

Theses and Dissertations (Comprehensive)

Criminal justice systems in Canada and around the world have been established to deal with matters that require attention, punishment, and justice. An important function of criminal justice systems is the evaluation of evidence presented in the court of law. Evidence from jailhouse informants who testify that they have been privy to confessions of crimes is a contentious issue. Much of the scholarly literature available to date on wrongful conviction cases focuses on causes of insufficient and unreliable evidence obtained through different techniques and from different sources. Despite the high number of investigations into wrongful conviction cases, the subject of …