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- All Subjects: Criminal Justice
- Creators: School of Social Transformation
- Creators: Spohn, Cassia
- Resource Type: Text
Addressing this gap in the literature, this study provides the first rigorous empirical examination of the inmate-level characteristics that influence punishment outcome following guilty institutional misconduct proceedings. Guided by criminal sentencing literature, the inmate- level characteristics are divided into groups of legal factors, quasi-legal factors, and extra-legal factors. Representing a significant advancement beyond prior research, this study operationalizes punishment outcome in two ways – as an interval-level ordered sanction severity scale and as individual punishment categories. A series of multivariate models with sample selection corrections are estimated to model the direct and interactive effects of the legal, quasi-legal, and extra-legal inmate characteristics on punishment outcome.
Results of the fully-saturated direct effects models reveal a consistent pattern across both operationalizations of the punishment outcome. The legal factor of misconduct offense and the prosocial behavior quasi-legal factors of working a prison job and program involvement are significantly related to punishment outcomes. The quasi-legal factor representing criminogenic risk and the extra-legal factors of inmate gender and race/ethnicity are not significantly related to punishment outcomes. When the direct effects models re-estimated on samples split by inmate gender and race/ethnicity, however, the extra-legal factors of gender and race/ethnicity condition the effects of some of the legal and quasi-legal factors on punishment outcome. Results of this study suggest that, holding constant the effect of legal misconduct-related factors, disparities exist in post-disciplinary sanctioning based on inmate race/ethnicity and gender.
Expectation for college attendance in the United States continues to rise as more jobs require degrees. This study aims to determine how parental expectations affect high school students in their decision to attend college. By examining parental expectations that were placed on current college students prior to and during the application period, we can determine the positive and negative outcomes of these expectations as well as the atmosphere they are creating. To test the hypothesis, an online survey was distributed to current ASU and Barrett, Honors College students regarding their experience with college applications and their parents' influence on their collegiate attendance. A qualitative analysis of the data was conducted in tandem with an analysis of several case studies to determine the results. These data show that parental expectations are having a significant impact on the enrollment of high school students in college programs. With parents placing these expectations on their children, collegiate enrollment will continue to increase. Further studies will be necessary to determine the specific influences these expectations are placing on students.
The United States Supreme Court decided Ramos v. Louisiana in 2020, requiring all states to convict criminal defendants by a unanimous jury. However, this case only applied to petitioners on direct, and not collateral, appeal. In this thesis, I argue that the Ramos precedent should apply to people on collateral appeal as well, exploring the implications of such a decision and the criteria that should be used to make the decision in the case before the court, Edwards v. Vannoy (2021). Ultimately, I find that because the criteria currently used to determine retroactivity of new criminal precedents does not provide a clear answer to the question posed in Edwards, the Court should give more weight to the defendant's freedoms pursuant to the presumption of innocence while considering the potential for any disastrous outcomes.
Despite countless research reports, research studies, and studies of human psychology verifying that the Reid Method interrogation tactics used by police in the United States cause false confessions, the method is still heavily accepted and used on suspects everyday. This research paper will look into the Reid Method interrogation tactics, their connection to false confessions in order to establish a basis for repealing and replacing the Reid Method with an alternative interrogation technique. This paper will show that the guilt-presumptive nature of the Reid Method leads to innocent individuals falsely confessing and spending years in prison. Evidence of this phenomenon will be shown through research papers, studies, case examples, and an interview with a false confession expert Dr. Richard A. Leo. The Reid Method is problematic and jeopardizes the presumption of innocence for every citizen in the United States and should be repealed by an alternative interrogation technique called P.E.A.C.E in order for justice to be renewed.