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Description
Highly publicized cases involving citizen fatalities due to police use of force raise questions about perceptions of danger. Arrest-related deaths due to weapons, accidental injuries, and natural causes remain high year after year. Communities are greatly affected, and mistrust with the police continues to increase when these situations happen. There seem to be inaccurate perceptions that may stem from implicit associations, stereotypes, and social learning. These psychological concepts may provide theoretical explanations of how decisions are made when police officers are faced with danger. Some elements of this decision-making process may include suspect characteristics, officer experience, and police sub-culture. In this review, race/ethnicity and socio-economic status are examined as factors that contribute to police use of force. Disparities in use of force data often involve young, Black males living in low-income neighborhoods. The stereotype that this group is more dangerous than others stems from underlying prejudices and previous situations where Black people are targeted more in certain areas. Training, education, and community outreach programs can assist in mending relations between police and affected communities. Acknowledging these inaccurate perceptions, making the adjustments to police training and community relations, and being open to exploration in future research of other minority groups will assist in eliminating prejudices and creating better connections between law enforcement and the community.
ContributorsGarcia-Johnson, Anastacia Maria (Author) / Szeli, Eva (Thesis director) / Pizarro, Jesenia (Committee member) / School of Criminology and Criminal Justice (Contributor, Contributor) / Department of Psychology (Contributor) / Barrett, The Honors College (Contributor)
Created2017-05
Description
The purpose of this project was to evaluate possible adjudicative causes of wrongful convictions, which were strictly defined as cases where a defendant is convicted for a crime in which they are factually innocent. Most of the existing research on the causes of wrongful convictions suggests that errors occur during the investigative process. However, there is little to no research on how the court system, whose purpose is to catch and correct these mistakes prior to sentencing, fails to do just that. As such, a few possible adjudicative causes were proposed based on existing literature: errors in expert witness testimony, prosecutorial misconduct, representation by the defense, and race. Interview questions were generated based on each of these topics. Four attorneys \u2014 two prosecutors, one public defender, and one private defense attorney \u2014 were interviewed with these questions in order to qualitatively evaluate the legitimacy and the accuracy of these proposed adjudicative causes. The results indicated that attorneys rely on (and believe that jurors rely heavily on) an expert witness' performance rather than their statements and that race does not play a role in the likelihood that a defendant will be wrongfully convicted. Likewise, all four attorneys indicated that both prosecutors and defense attorneys are eager to pursue justice and that no one person is to blame for a wrongful conviction. In conclusion, errors made in the adjudicative process that lead to wrongful convictions might simply be the cause of human error.
ContributorsHietala, Kira Victoria (Author) / DeCarolis, Claudine (Thesis director) / Szeli, Eva (Committee member) / Department of Psychology (Contributor) / School of Criminology and Criminal Justice (Contributor) / Barrett, The Honors College (Contributor)
Created2016-12