<p> After the kidnapping and murder of his son Adam in 1981, John Walsh dedicated his life to advocating for missing children. He became the forerunner of a movement to change the laws of the country so that no parent or child would have to suffer through the same events his family endured. The media frenzy surrounding the case, as well as John Walsh&rsquo;s efforts to make child endangerment and missing children a national issue, helped influence and alter the way the public views the issues of child safety, child kidnapping, and the offenders that harm these children. This research analyzed newspaper articles involving the Adam Walsh murder, and examined rhetorical patterns based on ideas of the social construction of reality, folk devils and moral panics. This research revealed five rhetorical themes the media used when discussing the Adam Walsh case: vulnerability of the victim, description of the offender and crime, transformation of John Walsh, America&rsquo;s lost childhood innocence and the evolution of the criminal justice system. Results showed repeated pattern of descriptive language emphasizing Adam&rsquo;s age for innocence and vulnerability, a distinct evolution of John Walsh as a moral entrepreneur and an overall loss of innocence and safety felt amongst parents and children. </p><p> This research revealed that the legislation developed and passed has been influenced by fear pervasive in society, rather than criminal data. The findings suggests that federal legislation needs to be modified so that there is less invasion into the lives of nonviolent offenders that are less likely to recidivate.</p>

<p> Realignment, instituted in October 2011, was California&rsquo;s latest effort at prison reform by realigning responsibility for prisoners labeled nonviolent, non-serious, and non sex-related from the state to counties. Many of these offenders were in state prison upon conviction of property crime offenses. Realignment had a net decarcerative effect on offenders. Simultaneously, California cities&rsquo; officer staffing levels shrunk during the great recession. To determine what impact realignment may have had on property crime in small California cities, and to identify effective response strategies, property crime and officer staffing data was analyzed and a survey administered to the chiefs of those cities.</p><p> Fifty-six California cities with a population of between 25,000 and 50,000 and their own police departments were studied. This study analyzed data for the full year before and after realignment&rsquo;s implementation, 2010 compared to 2012. Analysis of these data indicated an overall trend of increase in property crimes reported to the police, and a significant decrease in officer staffing pre-and post-implementation. Many of the 36 chiefs who responded to the survey identified realignment as the primary factor in the increase of property crime, closely followed by overcrowding in their local or county jail. Of the response strategies offered in the survey, most chiefs said they had made progress on increasing partnerships with allied law enforcement agencies. Finally, a majority of the chiefs identified increasing partnerships with allied agencies the most effective strategy followed by the creation or reorienting specialized units to respond to the issue of realigned offenders.</p>

<p>Cannabis cultivation has emerged as a developed world phenomenon, making cannabis market participants who embrace import substitution via domestic cultivation an extra challenge to drug law enforcement. Given drug law enforcement's reliance on deterrent measures, this study examined the factors associated with the perceived certainty of apprehension for domestic cannabis cultivation. Through secondary data analysis, it tested Stafford and Warr's reconceptualization of deterrence against an online survey data set constructed by the Global Cannabis Cultivation Research Consortium. The data set's sample consisted of participants at least 18 years of age, who had grown cannabis at least once and were residents of either Canada or the United States. With multiple linear regression analysis, this study found mixed support for Stafford and Warr's theory and moderate support for social learning, social bonding, and criminal self-efficacy theory. In light of such results, policy implications will be discussed. </p>

<p>School resource officer programs, characterized as a major crime control model and violence prevention program have earned the designation as an effective prevention strategy to mitigate against student misconduct and violations of the law. This study explored school resource officers? perceptions of how arrests decisions influenced order within middle and high schools. The purpose of the study was to determine if a relationship existed between factors, circumstances, and the arrest decisions in middle and high schools. It was assumed the officers? decision to arrest or not arrest were dependent upon factors and circumstances that were interconnected to the functionality of maintaining social order within the school setting. The structural-functionalism theory offered a comprehensive approach to explore the relationship between the social structure of schools, functions of school resource officers and the impact of their arrests decisions in creating balance and stability in the school environment. For this study, the dependent variable was the arrest decisions of school resource officers and the independent variables were factors, circumstances and years of experience. The study hypothesized a correlation between the dependent variable (arrests decisions) and the independent variables, which were collapsed into three facets - factors, circumstances and years of experience. Although, it was presumed years of experience would influence arrests decisions, logistic regression analysis revealed it did not influence the arrest decision as much as the facet factors. The study further revealed females were more likely to arrest than males and more students were arrested at the high school level than at the middle school level. Academic achievement and criminal records were considered at the middle school level with little consideration in high school.

<p> Since 1920, the legal position of undocumented immigrants has devolved from &ldquo;worker&rdquo; to &ldquo;alien&rdquo; to &ldquo;criminal alien&rdquo; to &ldquo;national security threat.&rdquo; As the perceived threat level has increased, so has the use of a prison-like immigrant detention system to manage unwanted populations until they can be removed. This paper examines the ways in which immigration law, current policy, public opinion, detention processes, court procedures, and physical isolation converge to not only expedite that removal, but also to hinder and even deter those under removal orders from adequately presenting a case for relief in immigration court. Because the real, lived consequences of those laws and policies are experienced far from the view of those who make the laws, this thesis seeks to provide a window into the fraught process of preparing an appeal for relief from deportation within the limitations of detention.</p><p>

<p> Although human trafficking continues to be a growing problem around the world, there are scarce quantitative methodologies for evidence-based research because it is hard to gather reliable and comparable data on human trafficking. It is also difficult to track patterns in human trafficking on a regional or global scale because the victims are a vulnerable population. Using Datta and Bales conceptualization of modern slavery as the theoretical foundation, the primary purpose of this study was to establish a baseline measurement of trafficking predictors in the Middle East North Africa (MENA) as well as understand the statistical relationship between measurements of corruption, democracy, state of peace, and terrorism on the prevalence of contemporary slavery in the MENA region. Data were collected from the 2016 Global Terrorism Index, 2016 Democracy Index, 2016 Corruption Perception Index, 2016 Global Slavery Index, and the 2016 Global Peace Index and analyzed using multiple linear regression. The results of the study showed that corruption (<i>p</i>=.017) and state of peace (<i>p</i>=.039) were significant predictors for contemporary slavery in the MENA region. Whereas, terrorism and democracy were not significant predictors. The positive social change implications of this study include recommendations to the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC) to create a central repository for the archival of human trafficking data. The creation of this archive will promote a more accurate accounting of a vulnerable population such as victims of trafficking, thereby increasing awareness of contemporary slavery among law enforcement, policy makers, and scholars.</p><p>

<p> Saving lives is the highest priority of catastrophic disaster response. Fundamental to catastrophic earthquake planning efforts is the integration of life-saving federal urban search and rescue capabilities. Four U.S. West Coast State / FEMA joint catastrophic earthquake plans were analyzed and compared for the inclusion of critical federal urban search and rescue requirements. Significant gaps in specific critical search and rescue capabilities information were identified in the quantitative analysis. The planning gaps may decrease the deployment response time of life-saving resources into the incident area. Further analysis indicates a potential national shortfall in the determination of specific requirements in other State / FEMA joint plans, which could potentially delay lifesaving search and rescue activities. Federal urban search and rescue capabilities are ready to support survivors, but identifying time-critical search and rescue teams and equipment ready for rapid deployment into the incident area to save lives remains a challenge.</p><p>

<p> Hacktivist activity is becoming increasingly prominent within the cyber domain and society. The boundaries between cyber terrorism and hacktivism are becoming more unclear. Hackers are becoming more skilled and involved in socio-political matters, not only in the U.S. but also internationally. Terrorist groups like the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS) have found a venue to voice their ideals and recruit via social media. Furthermore, terrorist groups have partnerships with hacktivist groups such as Cyber Caliphates. This practice has pointed particular inclinations that characterize different hacker groups with different events. For this reason, computer security has become a matter of national security in the U.S. and research regarding political and socio-economic trends as stimuli for the increment on hacktivist activity must be conducted. This research explored the issue of profiling hacktivist groups, departing from the analysis of the hacker&rsquo;s motivation as a product of a political and socio-economic environment. As comparative angles of analysis, the literature exposed empirical and factual information that integrated U.S. and international hacktivist events. The final research analysis proposed that U.S. political and socio-economic trends promoted hacktivist activity. Moreover, the research exposed that the existent relationship between extrinsic and intrinsic stimuli with political and socio-economical stressors (i.e., misrepresentation, restriction of freedoms, frustration and aggression) promotes hackers to act as hacktivists. <i>Keywords:</i> Psychological profiling; Professor Riddell, Hackers; Hacktivist; Hacktivism; Political Hacktivism; Socio-economic Hacktivism; Extrinsic stimuli; Intrinsic stimuli; Cyber Diplomacy; Cyber Constitution; Cybercrime Awareness Normalization Unit.</p>

<p> Los asesinatos de j&oacute;venes varones en Puerto Rico son alarmantes y aunque existe temor por la alta criminalidad, esta coexiste con la indiferencia e insensibilidad ante la mayor&iacute;a de las v&iacute;ctimas. El discurso oficialista, acogido por la poblaci&oacute;n en general, categoriza a las v&iacute;ctimas del crimen, entre v&iacute;ctimas &ldquo;culpables&rdquo; y v&iacute;ctimas ''inocentes'', de acuerdo al grupo social de procedencia de las v&iacute;ctimas. Vemos, como unos asesinatos de personas consideradas de bien, atraen la atenci&oacute;n de la mayor&iacute;a de la gente hacia el problema de la criminalidad. Asesinatos que por lo general son resueltos y convictos sus victimarios en un tiempo relativamente r&aacute;pido, mientras otros que ocurren en mayor proporci&oacute;n, no parecen indignar a la mayor&iacute;a de las personas. Esto constituye un ejemplo de este manejo diferenciado en el que <i>unos muertos valen m&aacute;s que otros.</i> El presente trabajo de investigaci&oacute;n pretende provocar una reflexi&oacute;n cr&iacute;tica en torno a los discursos valorativos respecto de los asesinatos en el pa&iacute;s y su cobertura en la prensa, a partir de la forma en que diferentes sectores valoran unos asesinatos sobre otros, de acuerdo con el nivel socioecon&oacute;mico de procedencia de las v&iacute;ctimas. Para esto, utilic&eacute; como estudio de caso del asesinato de la joven Nicole Mu&ntilde;iz Mart&iacute;nez, ocurrido en el mes de agosto de 2003. Esto fue comparado con las experiencias de cinco familiares de varones asesinados y se complement&oacute; con un an&aacute;lisis de contenido de las noticias sobre asesinatos un mes antes y despu&eacute;s del asesinato de Nicole Mu&ntilde;iz. Finalmente, el an&aacute;lisis se realiz&oacute; a partir de la teor&iacute;a de la complejidad. </p>

<p> In 1994 Congress enacted the Violent Crime Control and Law Enforcement Act, which in part gave the Department of Justice, Civil Rights Division (DOJCRD) the power to investigate local law enforcement agencies for Constitutional and civil rights violations. Researchers have found these investigations are expensive, time consuming, and highly intrusive to a law enforcement agency. To understand how these investigations are impacting communities, data were gathered on cities with local law enforcement agencies that have experienced an investigation by the DOJCRD. Using a quasi-experimental, multiple time-series research design with a paired samples <i>t</i>-test, the dependent variables (violent crime and arrest rates) were analyzed for any differences before and after the introduction of the independent variable (the commencement of a DOJCRD investigation). With an established <i> a</i> = .05, adjusting for non-reported crime, and comparing to a non-equivalent control variable (national crime rate), the research findings indicate increased violent crime with the commencement of these investigations. The results also show that arrest rates significantly decreased indicating the possibility of de-policing. The negative impact to communities with increased violent crime rates and decreased arrest rates calls into question the efficacy of DOJCRD investigations. By supporting the recommendation for Congress to repeal this power given to the DOJCRD, this research can lead to positive social change by preventing federal government intrusion into local government that is negatively impacting communities.</p><p>