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- Creators: School of Criminology and Criminal Justice
- Member of: Barrett, The Honors College Thesis/Creative Project Collection
- Member of: Theses and Dissertations
1. Spirituality and faith are increasingly recognized as important aspects in a personʼs life. National research shows that 66% of people feel counseling should include spirituality. Research with ASU students found that students reflect this statistic, as they feel spirituality is an important part of counseling. Students also feel spirituality is appropriate to include as part of counseling services offered by centers referred to by ASU.
2. There is a need for counseling at ASU. Nationally,approximately1,100 college students commit suicide each year. At ASU, almost one-third of students reported feeling so depressed that it is difficult to function, and 0.9% report having attempted suicide within the past year.
3. Surveys of ASU students indicate that students who describe themselves as being religious are more desirous that counseling include a spiritual dimension. Surveys of campus pastors indicate that over 80% believe there is a need for faith-based counseling and would refer students to a local center.
4. Price is an issue. Indeed, a survey of campus pastors indicated that they believed cost of counseling to be one of the primary deterrents to students seeking help. One way to control costs is to use a mixture of residents and licensed counselors. As in medicine, students must complete coursework along with a period of residency or internship to obtain licensing. Both religious and secular masters programs in counseling exist in the greater Phoenix area. Thus, there is a potential supply of students who could work as residents, permitting RLCC to offer counseling services at reasonable prices.
As a result of recent public attention on school resource officers (SROs), concerns regarding the effects of police presence in America’s schools have emerged. Despite this, little is known about how SROs and SRO programs function within the U.S. This project uses qualitative and quantitative methods to describe the six state-level programs that exist to regulate and fund SROs, as well as analyze the relationship between the schools that receive funding and their student demographics. Program elements were inconsistent among states, though some commonalities were found, such as the usage of the triad model, training sources, usage of a memorandum of understanding (MOU), and lack of regular evaluations or assessments. No relationship was found between student demographics and SRO-funded schools when compared to the overall state. The findings highlight a need for regulation and consistency among SRO programs, as well as more reliable publicly available information regarding these programs.
The purpose of this project was to create a platform where people could tell their stories about how their faith impacted their incarceration and their incarceration impacted their faith. There is no single path to pursuing faith in prison, and each person faces their own challenges and facilitators in doing so. There is power in stories, and we can learn so much from simply listening. Each story told through this project presents a unique experience of pursuing Christianity while incarcerated. This project interviewed three people who had pursued their faith during their time in prison. The goal of these interviews was to hear first hand the experiences of dedicating oneself to Christianity while incarcerated. Their stories were broken up into three sections, pre-incarceration, during incarceration, and post-incarceration to explore how each participant’s faith differed across the three phases. Main topics discussed include what religious services they had access to while incarcerated, what the main challenge they faced in pursuing their faith in prison, and how their faith impacted their reentry into society.
Mental health in the profession of policing is a topic that needs more attention. Many departments have readily available mental health resources however, they are only mandated for officers to use after an incident such as a shooting or suicide has occurred. Shift work, and police culture coupled with the traumatic events that take place on the job negatively impact the mental health of officers and more support is needed for officers to overcome their mental struggles. Through snowball sample interviews of officers and those who work with officers in a mental health capacity, this thesis found that it is evident that most police departments should be more proactive instead of reactive with their mental health support. Police officials should take mental health as seriously as physical health.