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- All Subjects: Organized crime--Mexico.
- Creators: Sweeten, Gary
Description
The Zero Tolerance Policy began appearing in secondary schools in the early 1990's. In the late 1980's, crimes committed by juveniles were at an all-time high. Fears that the violence would spill onto campus propelled lawmakers and school officials to take preventative measures. With the creation of the Gun-Free School Zone Act of 1990 and Gun-Free Act of 1994, any individual caught with a weapon on campus would be found in violation of the Act and be punishable by law. In addition to the Acts, School Resource Officers (SROs) became more prominent on campus. SROs were originally on campus to teach drug prevention programs, however SROs began to take on more of a disciplinary role to support the Zero Tolerance Policy. Furthermore, educators began turning towards SROs to handle less serious incidents such as behavioral outbursts. As SROs took a more active role, arrests among students started to rise. Many think this is a direct pathway to our criminal justice system, more commonly known as the school-to-prison pipeline. This pipeline disproportionately affects African Americans. This paper will examine the creation, aims and purpose of the Zero Tolerance Policy as well as what incidents helped create and install the policy. This paper will look at what the Zero Tolerance Policy looks like since it has been enacted. Moreover, there will be a focus on which students are affected the most and if this policy will lead to criminal justice contact in the future. Lastly, alternatives to the Zero Tolerance Policy will be discussed and if the policy can be improved or should it be eliminated.
ContributorsSoto, Tatyana E. (Author) / Sweeten, Gary (Thesis director) / Stolzenberg, Stacia (Committee member) / School of Social Work (Contributor) / Barrett, The Honors College (Contributor)
Created2016-05
Description
Mexican drug cartels have been a difficult group to get official data on because of the clandestine nature of their operations and the inherent dangers associated with any type of research on these groups. Due to the close relationship that the United States and Mexico share, the United States being a heavy demander of illicit drugs and Mexico being the supplier or the transshipment point, research that sheds light on cartels and their effects is necessary in order to solve this problem. A growing concern is that cartels have been seeking to improve their international infrastructure. This could potentially be done by partnering with gangs located in the United States to help with the distribution of drugs. The author uses data from the 2009 and 2010 Arizona Gang Threat Assessment and three sets of analyses (dummy variable regression, change score, multinomial logistic) to shed light on the possible partnership between cartels and U.S. based gangs. Primarily using the varying level of intervention strategies practiced by police departments throughout the state of Arizona, this study is exploratory in nature, but attempts to find the effectiveness of intervention strategies on "cartel affiliated" gangs, as identified by federal authorities, and how police departments respond towards these same groups. With the current data, there was no significant evidence that suggests that intervention strategies were less effective on "cartel affiliated" gangs or that police departments were responsive towards these “affiliated” gangs.
ContributorsMora, Victor, M.S (Author) / Sweeten, Gary (Thesis advisor) / Wang, Xia (Committee member) / Katz, Charles (Committee member) / Arizona State University (Publisher)
Created2015