The United States of America has the highest incarceration rate in the world per capita. In 2019, the American criminal justice system held almost 2.3 million people in prisons. The current prison system is failing us. Eighty percent of prisoners return to jail within 5 years of being released because the prison system focuses on punishment, not rehabilitation, making reintegration into society nearly impossible for released criminals. Solitary confinement, abuse and a lack of resources only make this worse. Roughly 600,000 prisoners are released every year, back into your community to interact with your children and family, after years and years of sensory deprivation, violence, and being medically neglected. Unfortunately, there are hundreds of contributing factors and products of the mass incarceration crisis, but the most threatening and in need of attention are: the overcriminalization of drugs, inmate treatment and living conditions, the arrest and trial process, the prioritization of punishment over rehabilitation, and long sentence lengths for non-violent offenders.<br/><br/>The goal of my project is to bring awareness to this often overlooked problem. Throughout my research, I faced many unsettling emotions including fear, anger and deep sadness. While I do not wish to cause you pain, I noticed the impact my emotions had on my response to this issue. Therefore, I included disturbing content in my design to bring out similar emotions in you, because you should be fearful and angry about what is happening in our country.
Change within the cannabis industry could lead to drastic improvements in social justice. Ever since marijuana was first regulated in the United States in the early 1900s, it has been used as the justification for the excessive incarceration and disenfranchisement of targeted groups, specifically, Black and Latino populations. Now, the growing popularity of marijuana, from both the recreational and entrepreneurial perspective, has led to the legalization of recreational cannabis in 15 states. <br/>Although this enterprise is highly profitable and alluring for consumers and business owners, the problem of underrepresentation of minority owned businesses within the industry still remains. This underrepresentation symbolizes the unjust ability for this enterprise to capitalize on those victimized by past drug regulations and on a larger scale, how it perpetuates institutionalized racism. The criminalization of marijuana not only allows for certain groups to remain successful in this booming billion-dollar operation, but also ensures that others remain unseen and left behind. <br/>This thesis aims to show the ways in which the legal cannabis industry can expand and encourage minority-owned businesses to venture into the sector. In this paper, I will attempt to outline the history of cannabis regulation and anti-drug campaigns, and illustrate the lack of diversity within the cannabis industry. I will also touch upon the remedies and reparations for racial inequality and how public policy can address entrepreneur’s demands in future policy considerations and industry practices.
Making Use of Massinger seeks to provide a framework by which educators can facilitate more meaningful discussion about premodern and early modern texts including playwrights like Shakespeare and Phillip Massinger. Establishing modes of engaging with literature (and thus the uses of literature) from the scholarship of Dr. Rita Felski and Dr. Ayanna Thompson, this project analyzes a study conducted by Haley Rominger on ASU undergraduate students on their reactions to Phillip Massinger's play "The Roman Actor". Ultimately this study showed that a deeper dialogue was attained in discussing topics that had modern implications such as race, gender, and power dynamics.
Period Poverty is an issue affecting millions of people in the US alone, and in the face of this inequity, many public and private initiatives have been created to address this problem with varying degrees of success. By surveying students and interviewing public and community administrators, we have uncovered how these systems can improve to most effectively meet the needs of the communities they seek to serve. While often the primary complaint of menstruators who utilize these resources are that they are often understocked, this paper explores many other improvements which students would benefit from - such as more streamlined communication systems, improved quality and variety of products, and more efficient operational relationships.
Period Poverty is an issue affecting millions of people in the US alone, and in the face of this inequity, many public and private initiatives have been created to address this problem with varying degrees of success. By surveying students and interviewing public and community administrators, we have uncovered how these systems can improve to most effectively meet the needs of the communities they seek to serve. While often the primary complaint of menstruators who utilize these resources are that they are often understocked, this paper explores many other improvements which students would benefit from - such as more streamlined communication systems, improved quality and variety of products, and more efficient operational relationships.
There are unfortunately very few curricular guides that focus on community engagement within the higher education of landscape architecture. A Beginner’s Guide to Community Engagement in the Curriculum of Landscape Architecture and Urban Planning to Improve Social Justice and Sustainability helps resolve this issue and serves as a resource to students, educators, designers, and more. The guide centralizes a diverse collection of resources, guides students through learning materials, shares insight, and proposes potential community engagement methods. The booklet aims to help readers understand the importance of community engagement in design and shares different curricular approaches to introduce the work to students.
In this thesis report, I aim to explain the realities of humanitarian efforts to implement solar panel systems in rural communities, the challenges they face, and why they fail. I will also compare case studies of both unsuccessful and successful projects, which will lead to a proposed solar panel system design for a single home completed in collaboration with Arizona State University's Engineering Projects in Community Service (EPICS) Program for the Shonto Solar project.