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.
Police use of force is a controversial practice on both the political stage and by scholars of criminal justice. Scholarly research has highlighted best practice for police departments’ use of force policies. Diverging from these policies may produce ineffective and harmful use of force practices within departments. Because of these potential consequences of police departments diverging from research-based evidence, it is necessary to identify when recommended policy is not being utilized. The purpose of this study is to identify whether there are points of dissent or congruence between criminal justice scholars and police departments with regards to use of force policy. Efforts have been made to empirically identify best practices of use of force policy. The findings of this study indicate that points of dissent do exist in the policies of police departments in the U.S. and the policy recommendations of criminal justice scholars. The implications of these findings include reform to the use of force policies of police departments to more accurately reflect the policies recommended by scholars in the use of force.
Police use of force is a controversial practice on both the political stage and by scholars of criminal justice. Scholarly research has highlighted best practice for police departments’ use of force policies. Diverging from these policies may produce ineffective and harmful use of force practices within departments. Because of these potential consequences of police departments diverging from research-based evidence, it is necessary to identify when recommended policy is not being utilized. The purpose of this study is to identify whether there are points of dissent or congruence between criminal justice scholars and police departments with regards to use of force policy. Efforts have been made to empirically identify best practices of use of force policy. The findings of this study indicate that points of dissent do exist in the policies of police departments in the U.S. and the policy recommendations of criminal justice scholars. The implications of these findings include reform to the use of force policies of police departments to more accurately reflect the policies recommended by scholars in the use of force.
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.