Barrett, The Honors College Thesis/Creative Project Collection

In order to best approach the paradoxical concepts of exonerations and wrongful convictions in the determinate system of US courts, both court agents (i.e. attorneys and judges) and citizens that interact with it must increase their understanding of the various perspectives found in the process. Through the use of an app for mobile devices, information from the perspective of these court agents can be easily accessible for anyone, serving as a valuable learning tool for not only individuals that strive to work in the justice system, but citizens that will possibly interact with it in the future as well.

The Arizona Civic Education Project is a cross-college collaboration supported by the Maricopa County Community College District to design, develop, and distribute publicly available, interactive, and engaging multimedia modules about Arizona State Government and the justice system. The modules aim to consist of high quality, professionally produced, value- neutral, fact-based, and bias-free videos, lesson plans, printable materials and activities that explain how Arizona state government is structured and how the justice system works in Arizona. The modules also identify and teach the audience how to deal with encounters within the justice system through lessons about the courts and dealing with the police. In addition to the resources we create, links are provided with attribution to other free resources that have been developed by other organizations. The targeted audience for this project is high school and college students attending public high schools and community colleges. In 2015, Arizona legislature passed the American Civics Act (House Bill 2064). This bill requires students to pass a civics test based on the United States Immigration and Naturalization civics questions. Students are required to score 60% or higher in order to graduate from high school or obtain a high school equivalency certificate. The Arizona Department of Education along with help from the Maricopa County Education Service Agency and Arizona educators have developed a mostly multiple-choice version of the required test. The modules provide helpful information that pertains to the civic test along with additional informational useful to students and educators alike.<br/>There were a few goals kept in mind when assembling the modules and collecting information to put them together. The most important thing is to fairly and effectively educate<br/>2<br/>students about their rights and the place they can hold in their own government. The youth in America, and specifically Arizona, with one of the lowest rated public education systems in the country1, needs to better understand the justice system and the way it works in order to really be able to better understand and decide the role they play in it as they grow into the adult population. We also aimed to teach students, mostly young adults, how to navigate being involved with the law and situations they may find themselves in like being arrested or having to go to court. The videos included in the related modules teach students what to do if they’re ever arrested and go over important legal actions that could affect their outcome. It was also important to provide instructors with a fair and trusted curriculum that can be taught across the state. With a shortage of qualified teacher in the state, it is impossible to provide students from all different districts and background with the same content. With the mandated civics test required to graduate from high school, it’s important that students get a fair chance at passing despite their living conditions or resources. With the modules we provide, passing the civics test along with managing other issues that pertain to young Americans, become attainable and don’t require as much additional time spent outside of school hours. The additional topics covered within our modules also provide information regarding resources that students will find useful for their families and loved ones. Students in compromised neighborhoods may have family and loved ones dealing with court cases and the justice system. Overall, we wanted to provide an unbiased, all-inclusive curriculum that can be used across the state to help students learn about all aspects of the government in Arizona.

For this thesis, I analyzed the discourse and content of Proposition 22, a California law which defined all workers utilizing gig-based apps to sell services as independent contractors meaning they were not legally entitled to certain protections such as minimum wage. The law was overturned in court in 2020, however, the advertisements in favor of and discourse behind the law has had a continued impact on all workers. Because of this it is important to examine and conceptualize the ideologies behind the law in order to understand how it was able to pass in a state which tends to vote in favor of increasing employee rights and regulation of industries. To do so, I utilized two methods of analysis, a discourse analysis of legal documents and a content analysis of advertisements. The former revolves around analyzing the discourse and ideologies around two versions of the legislation which were shown to the public, while the latter analysis categorizes and examines the implications of various advertisements utilized by companies to support the proposition. Ultimately, gig companies created an effective campaign that was able to repackage neoliberal deregulation for the general public while actively misrepresenting information around the law leading to long lasting effects that continue to harm workers while lining the pockets of investors despite its overturning.

Driver’s licenses are central to many people's livelihoods, allowing us the ability to travel for work, education, healthcare, and all other essentials of life. Often, however, driver’s licenses are suspended as a means of enforcing traffic violations. About two years ago, Arizona significantly changed the civil traffic enforcement landscape in the state as it passed a law—S.B. 1551—that, in part, made it so individuals could no longer receive driver’s license suspensions for failing to pay a civil traffic fine. This study aimed to examine how this legal change has impacted civil traffic enforcement in Tempe, Arizona. As part of this work, I helped my thesis supervisor with overseeing student groups in one of his online courses in a research project that centered around studying the community impacts of driver’s licenses suspensions. I met with my thesis supervisor to coordinate how the project would be implemented, assisted students with learning how to use data analysis and visualization tools, and edited the paper of the student group selected as the top team so that they could share their findings with members of the Tempe Municipal Court. Coinciding with the research done by these student groups, I also conducted my own analysis, using traffic data provided by the Tempe Municipal Court to be able to determine how the passage of S.B. 1551 was affecting civil traffic trends related to failure to pay dispositions, if at all. Overall, I found that S.B. 1551 presented implications for both accountability and equality related to civil traffic enforcement. To the enforcement concerns, the number of failure to pay dispositions rose after the passage of SB 1551. With traffic fines being a central means for punishing and deterring traffic violations, people no longer being compelled to pay them may present issues for regulating traffic safety. However, this study also demonstrated that, had S.B. 1551 not been implemented, driver’s license suspensions for failure to pay dispositions may have disproportionately and adversely impacted communities in Tempe by socioeconomic status and race. Hopefully, this project can guide policymakers in setting civil traffic enforcement policy, taking into account both the enforcement and equitability implications, as well as to serve as a starting point for future research on the topic.