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Restorative Justice (RJ) is an approach to justice which most often centres around creating a shared dialogue between stakeholders in a given offence. It is often contrasted with traditional criminal justice due to its focus on the personal involvement of those who have been directly impacted by the harm. Popular models of RJ include various types of mediation, conferencing, and circles, each with a slightly different approach toward reaching a settlement between stakeholders. Some of the main goals of RJ highlighted in the criminological literature include healing, reparation, and community-building. However, because of its nature as a diverse and contested subject over the past several decades, there are numerous understandings of RJ. Due to this frequent difficulty in defining and understanding RJ, this thesis attempts to provide some grounding on the subject through the document analysis of four Canadian RJ programs. RJ program documentation was analyzed in order to discover how these programs portray their “services” to the public. Results showed that many of the most prominent themes in the programs were also present in the literature. However, a more important facet of the discussion emerged with further analysis. Using a perspective of governmentalist versus communitarian RJ, the programs were compared to discover that the way in which a program presents itself in online documentation surely does not always encapsulate its core nature in terms of judicial, legal, and correctional involvement. Simply put, a verbal commitment to distancing oneself from the ways of the traditional criminal justice system does not necessarily signify a lack of involvement as it would suggest.

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Although criminality among mentally ill individuals is a well-documented phenomenon, limited research has focused on specific factors that need to be addressed to combat this issue. Utilizing the theoretical framework of Shaw and McKay’s (1942) Social Disorganization Theory, in conjunction with collective efficacy (Sampson et al., 1997) and social capital (Coleman, 1988), different factors were explored in an attempt to discover their relationship with recidivism. Using secondary data from Criminal Justice Drug Abuse Treatment Studies, variables such as homelessness, unemployment, and religious importance were analyzed in relation to rearrest rates from 889 parolees nine months post-release. Marriage, sex, and age were controlled for. A relationship was found between unemployment and rearrest; however, no relationship was found between rearrest and homelessness or religious importance among this sample. Results from this study could contribute to the future implementation of programs aimed at assisting mentally ill offenders who are being released from confinement.

Adolescent alcohol consumption is a topic that has been well-researched to date due to the dangers it can pose. A variety of factors may work to contribute to the habits these adolescents develop. One factor that has not been extensively studied is the impact of locations on drinking decisions. Location provides a perspective on how various social factors can intersect to dictate where and when young people will choose to consume alcohol. Most previous literature has focused on the alcohol usage found at parties or bars, but the current research wishes to expand this idea to other locations, such as a friend’s house and the school setting. By identifying these locations and seeking to determine whether various factors impact drinking choices, we can better understand the problem. The current study did so by utilizing data from the Monitoring the Future (MTF) Project. Results revealed that certain locations were more common than others, and that some demographic and social characteristics may influence this fact. Results are discussed, as are limitations and suggestions for future research.

There are many ways that people can form an opinion about law enforcement even if they have had a personal interaction with someone who works in the field. This idea has always been interesting as there needs to be some type of understanding when it comes to this certain viewpoint. There can be many factors that result in having a certain perspective on law enforcement in general like their background growing up, hearsay from close relatives, friends, and whatever they have seen up close in person. This study is going to aim at a specific area of how people view law enforcement from being exposed to certain types of movies, television shows, and news outlets. This idea has been discussed but it does not really dominate too much of the political arena. This study is designed to examine the perceptions of college students, good or bad, in regard to what they were exposed to growing up watching on television that included law enforcement. Data were obtained via surveys that were given out to 104 students at East Tennessee State University. Analysis revealed that there was no significant relationship between the types of media that the college students watched that shaped their current perceptions of policing.

Two cases were submitted for questioned document examination involving human figure drawings. As there was little information on 'artist' identification in the questioned document examination literature, a sample of 107 individuals was selected to participate in a study. The respondents were requested to draw two cartoons, one naturally and one disguised, in order to determine if standard questioned document examination methods could be employed to identify the 'artists'. The findings indicated that 'artists' of human figure drawings could be identified using standard handwriting identification techniques.

The current research seeks to study and gauge current perceptions of police among college students at East Tennessee State University. As well as studying perceptions of police among students, the research will compare police perceptions among students with student opinions on incarceration. Correlations will be attempted to be observed through various demographical characteristics and similar standardized viewpoints. This will build on prior research from Lim (2015) and others in which college students were used to gauge results around perceptions of police. It is important to understand college student perceptions on police and incarceration as they form the future work force and form a large voting bloc to impact policy in the future. Following this introduction, this thesis will cover an additional four sections.

Each year, hundreds of thousands of youth move through juvenile justice systems in the United States, and the number of female offenders is increasing. At the probation level, there appears to be a lack of services, such as mentoring, mental health services, sex education, and counseling, to meet the gender-specific needs of female juvenile delinquents in rural settings. The purpose of this study was to discover county probation officers' perceptions of girls' needs and the officers' decision-making processes related to recommending services. This case study was based on feminist criminology theory. The research questions sought to learn how probation officers working with female juvenile offenders in a rural county describe their roles in the supervision process and how they decide which gender-specific services are most appropriate. Three probation officers in a rural jurisdiction in a northeastern state were interviewed, and the responses were coded and analyzed using thematic content analysis. Findings indicated that the officers neither viewed girls differently nor felt the need to treat the genders differently, even though their responses revealed that female youth are more often subject to truancy, promiscuity, and running away than male youth. The primary recommendation resulting from the study is to implement gender-responsive programs to meet the diverse needs of delinquent girls. Such programs would offer female youth more guidance and rehabilitation, potentially reducing future offending. This study has implications for positive social change in informing those serving in the youth criminal justice field, and families involved in the system, about the gap in understanding and implementing gender-specific strategies to meet the needs of rural female youth in conflict with the law.

While there is a substantial body of placed-based evaluations of drug enforcement strategies, little is known about the nature and effectiveness of the routine tactics used by local police to target individual drug offenders. This study used a mixed-method approach to build on existing research on the efficacy of drug enforcement by documenting the nature and consequences of street-level drug enforcement at the local level. First, a focus group of drug enforcement experts was conducted to identify the tactics used to generate arrests and various types of evidence believed to strengthen drug cases. Next, official data in the form of police reports and court records were coded from one year of proactive felony drug arrests in a large, urban police department. The relationship between offender-focused drug enforcement tactics and various court outcomes (e.g., felony prosecution, formal conviction, and incarceration) were examined through logistic regression analyses. Results indicate traffic stops were the most frequently used tactic to generate felony drug arrests. However, buy-walks were more effective than traffic stops at receiving felony prosecutions. In contrast, search warrants were significantly less likely to result in prosecution. Implications for research and policy are discussed.