ASU Electronic Theses and Dissertations
This collection includes most of the ASU Theses and Dissertations from 2011 to present. ASU Theses and Dissertations are available in downloadable PDF format; however, a small percentage of items are under embargo. Information about the dissertations/theses includes degree information, committee members, an abstract, supporting data or media.
In addition to the electronic theses found in the ASU Digital Repository, ASU Theses and Dissertations can be found in the ASU Library Catalog.
Dissertations and Theses granted by Arizona State University are archived and made available through a joint effort of the ASU Graduate College and the ASU Libraries. For more information or questions about this collection contact or visit the Digital Repository ETD Library Guide or contact the ASU Graduate College at gradformat@asu.edu.
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- All Subjects: criminology
Description
Participatory action research (PAR) is a methodology that emphasizes the importance and benefits of doing research with people rather than on people. A PAR approach prioritizes people-centered work that can help facilitate change within communities. Past work has utilized a PAR approach to research in corrections, but less is known about how PAR can be used as an intervention in prison. There are also certain aspects of the carceral setting which bring into question whether PAR would be as effective as it is in free communities. The current study uses data from semi-structured interviews with 200 incarcerated women in Arizona to explore whether incarcerated women perceive that including people in prison in the design and implementation of a program is going to enhance that program. Participants are presented with one of four vignettes describing a scenario in which new programs are brought to the prison. Vignettes contain a single variable measure who designed and taught the programs and had four conditions: correctional staff, incarcerated women, university researchers, or incarcerated women alongside university researchers (akin to a PAR scenario). A series of questions are asked after the scenario that measure perceptions of program quality. Results indicate mixed support for the PAR approach to programming and call for PAR researchers to be clear on the intended effects of the approach, particularly as it is applied to social change and developing programming in a prison environment.
ContributorsMcKenzie, Genevieve Beathe (Author) / Wright, Kevin A (Thesis advisor) / Telep, Cody W (Committee member) / Young, Jacob Tn (Committee member) / Arizona State University (Publisher)
Created2022
Description
The influence prison staff have on experiences of incarcerated individuals is important for maintaining professional and respectful interactions. These interactions maintain the legitimacy of the institution and in turn influence responses to staff by incarcerated persons. However, correctional scholars often suggest that interactions with staff are typically not positive and ultimately contribute to the negative experiences reported by those incarcerated. Additionally, it is important to recognize that experiences may be racialized as different racial identities come with varying experiences, stigmas, and expectations. These realities leave the challenge of identifying ways to improve these interactions and subsequently the overall experience of incarceration. Acknowledging the positive interactions with staff that may go unnoticed within prisons can inform on better practices for fostering positive, professional staff-incarcerated relations. To address these positive aspects, this study thematically analyzes the responses of 200 incarcerated women to the question “tell me about your best experience with a member of staff in this prison.” Major themes were then condensed into ‘instrumental’ or ‘relational’ groups based on their connotations in order to conduct a multinomial logistic regression to predict likelihood of reporting a certain type of support based on racial identity. Results of this study contribute to an area of research that centers the humanity and complexity of interactions between staff and incarcerated women. Findings of this study have important implications for the practices that prison staff could be leveraging as means of improving the experience of incarceration.
ContributorsKlemm, Alexis Nicole (Author) / Wright, Kevin A (Thesis advisor) / Telep, Cody W (Committee member) / Montes, Andrea N (Committee member) / Arizona State University (Publisher)
Created2023
Description
Policing is often described as a craft in which officers develop their own working style through a process of apprenticeship and time spent handling unique citizen interactions. For police, experience is thought to be integral in nearly every facet of their role including developing suspicions, making discretionary decisions, defusing potentially dangerous situations, or using coercion. With that being said, the study of police experience itself has received scarce attention and a number of limitations are present within the work that does exist. The current study advances police research on multiple fronts. First, it centers on reframing police experience in a more precise manner, with special attention paid to identifying and detailing how shift, crime area, duty assignment, and training experiences accumulate and vary across officers. Second, it examines the impact of police work experiences on officers’ perceptions of confidence. Third, an additional qualitative approach is included to provide context for how work experiences impact officers’ confidence in performing job related tasks. Using data collected from a large metropolitan police department located in the western portion of the United States, the results add much to what is known about how police experience is acquired throughout a career and how it is related to officer self-efficacy. Independent variables such as officer tenure, the number of shifts an officer has worked in their career, the completion of additional in-service training, and duty experience were all significant predictors of increased confidence in performing different service-oriented, order-maintenance, and law enforcement tasks. To explain these findings, the officers’ qualitative responses largely focused on how exposure and repetition at handling unique situations made these experiential factors important to the development of confidence. Finally, these results are translated into a number of policy recommendations and avenues for future research.
ContributorsSomers, Logan J. (Author) / Terrill, William (Thesis advisor) / Telep, Cody W (Committee member) / Young, Jacob Tn (Committee member) / Arizona State University (Publisher)
Created2021
Description
The opioid crisis has become one of the most persistent public health crises in America, killing over 100 people a day. The opioid crisis emerged in the late 1990s and 2000s when opioid overdoses began to dramatically increase due to prescription painkillers. Heroin subsequently became a popular drug that was obtained through illicit markets in 2010. More recently, fentanyl, a potent and illicitly manufactured synthetic opioid, has driven a notable increase in the number of opioid overdose deaths. The opioid crisis has impacted many communities across the country. However, some communities are more susceptible to higher rates of opioid use. In order to determine which neighborhoods in Tempe, Arizona are more vulnerable to opioid use the author uses Tempe Emergency Medical Services (EMS) calls for service data and American Community Survey data to address two research questions: 1) What sociodemographic factors at the census-tract level are associated with calls for service to opioid related incidents and 2) are aspects of the physical environment associated with calls for service to opioid related incidents (e.g. vacant units, lack of complete plumbing, multiple unit housing structures)? Understanding community-level risk and protective-factors is essential for furthering the discussion on interventions that aim to address problematic opioid use in vulnerable communities. The current study finds that communities that are economically disadvantaged, and have a higher percentage of units that are vacant have more EMS calls for service to opioid related incidents. However, counter to the proposed hypothesis of social disorganization theory, residential instability was associated with fewer calls for service to opioid related incidents (i.e. higher levels of residential transience). Additionally, racially and ethnically diverse communities had fewer calls for service to opioid related incidents albeit statistically non-significant. These findings have implications for future research and for possible policy implications directed at reducing opioid overdoses.
ContributorsWatts, Seth (Author) / White, Michael D (Thesis advisor) / Chamberlain, Alyssa W (Committee member) / Telep, Cody W (Committee member) / Arizona State University (Publisher)
Created2021