School of Criminology and Criminal Justice

The current use of social media platforms has expanded to wider audiences, including police departments and other law enforcement agencies. The vast material being posted online may lead to it being used by police departments due to social media information being open-sourced. The following study will investigate the police’s use of social media data by collecting qualitative data from crime analysts through the International Association of Crime Analysts (IACA). Participants completed an openended survey describing their experience with collecting data from online social media sources and how it is used to assist with police activity. The results have implications for future research, such as further exploring the methods by which police are expanding their data collection. Caution may be required when sharing information online. Results from the study may inspire future research regarding the privacy and ethical considerations of using social media data collected from the public.

This thesis is a single ethnographic qualitative case study on gender, focusing on the parallels between gender and historical inequities of social, economic, political, and power oppression. The study metaphorically examines the systolic and diastolic reading of approximately 100 years of injustices. Virginia Artrip Snyder, the subject of this study, is a woman, practitioner, and advocate. The timeframe is from the 1920s to the present. The researcher examined a variety of samples, which included Virginia's documents, files, news clippings, books, letters, community involvement, and the criminal justice system. Virginia's family donated the data to the Spady Museum in Delray, Florida, and Florida Atlantic University (FAU), Virginia’s alma mater. The results demonstrated that Virginia was a victim of both domestic violence and the criminal justice system. Virginia sharpened the saw by educating and serving, thus demonstrating that one person can make a difference. As activist George Santayana said, "Those who do not remember the past are condemned to repeat it."

High-profile police use-of-force events, like the deaths of Trevon Martin, Freddie Gray, Alton Sterling, and George Floyd, have increased scrutiny towards law enforcement, and many believe that racial disparities in the justice system are caused by biased decision-making. The subsequent protests and civil unrest have furthered the divide between the police and members of the public, which has damaged police legitimacy and led to depolicing and militarization. This study pilot tests the impact of implicit bias on decision-making for a student sample with a decision-making simulator and an experimental design with random assignment. Simulated police-public contacts, substantively, were found to be very complex and largely guided by legal factors; however, stressful stimuli can affect decision-making. The forthcoming protocol and methodology, moreover, provide insight to decision-making and create a framework to guide future research.

Wrongful convictions have occurred throughout the United States’, but it was not until the creation of the Innocence Project in 1992 that these cases were re-examined. Like other facets of the criminal justice system, racial disparities are present in exoneration research. Studies have found the rate of exoneration is slower for African Americans compared to other races and represent a disproportionate number of rape exonerations relative to their share of the population. Actual compensation is rarely included in analysis, because total compensation awarded has been a black box till now. This is the first study addressing these gaps, by calculating actual compensation for wrongfully convicted sexual assault exonerees and examine racial disparities between awarded compensation. Findings indicate African American exonerees receive significantly more, around $574,657, compared to white exonerees. Implications include evaluating interrogation techniques, updating DNA databases, testing forensic evidence, and calling for states and territories to have compensation statutes.

This study examined drug court participants’ lived experiences with addiction and recovery from the southern part of the U.S.. Results of the study answered the following: how do drug court participants discuss their lived experiences with each of the following key recovery concepts: accountability, unmanageability, and relapse?
Recorded focus groups explored the a priori recovery concepts. Focus groups were used for identifying themes, and how participants apply these themes to recovery. Audio files were transcribed and coded using NVivo 1.5 software for data analysis.
The findings also present emergent themes which allowed participants to articulate their lived experiences as more than a disease, but as a recovery process. Drug court programs must prioritize the curriculum to reflect on the experiences depicted to effectively aid in recovery. Lastly, conducting the same focus groups throughout the duration of the program may be beneficial to properly track progress.

Prosecutors have high levels of discretion. Responsibilities of a prosecutor range from appropriate charging decisions to safeguarding principal criminal procedures. Understanding prosecutorial discretion is crucial since most convictions result from guilty pleas. Social scientists have analyzed empirical data on the influence of extra-legal characteristics during initial charging and sentencing stages. However, few have examined the interaction between case law and empirical research regarding a prosecutor’s perception concerning a defendant’s rights throughout case processing. Consequently, not much is known about how prosecutorial discretion impacts a defendant’s constitutional rights under the fifth and fourteenth amendments, specifically the Due Process and Equal Protection Clauses. This thesis evaluates prosecutorial discretion and provides a comprehensive analysis of how laws shape sociological theories and legal concepts. Implications of these analyses are discussed through the context of case law, theory, and research.

A set of informal street codes that govern inner city environments in the U.S. have been identified by scholar Elijah Anderson. Anderson’s street code has been analyzed in a variety of ways, including via rap lyrics. This analysis documented how reflective culture and the street code is within a nontraditional source - music. By researching a Mexican sub-genre of music known as narco corridos, I extend this work with a qualitative lyrical content analysis. Using a sample size of 100 narco corridos sourced via the music application Spotify, Anderson’s framework was used as a starting point to uncover themes of violence, poverty, and respect. Findings support the existence of the street code in a violent Mexican subculture. To conclude, using music as a nontraditional academic source can be a powerful way to analyze and comprehend crime and culture in other areas of the world.

Rehabilitating incarcerated individuals has become a focal point within corrections, with a variety of programs being implemented within facilities to assist individuals as they return to society from incarceration. Programs such as prison-based animal programs (PAP) provide incarcerated individuals a number of benefits that range from learning an employable skill to psychosocial benefits, which stem from the human animal interactions. Importantly, the current study aims at expanding knowledge on the current, limited literature that exists on public perceptions and opinions towards PAP programs. The importance in measuring the level of support for programs of this nature lies in the role public opinion plays in criminal justice policymaking, being that the public has been reported as having a level of influence on policymaking. A sample of 230 Florida Atlantic University students were surveyed concerning their perceptions towards PAP programs, focusing on whether these programs are beneficial to incarcerated individuals. The focus of this thesis was to examine whether students support PAP programs within correctional facilities and to analyze the differences in perceptions based on multiple demographic characteristics.

Human trafficking is a heinous human rights violation, impacting as many as 40.3 million people around the globe (Global Slavery Index, 2018). In the United States of America (USA), the Trafficking Victims Protections Act of 2000 (TVPA), and its subsequent reauthorizations, comprise the bulk of the federal response to human trafficking. As a result, federal policies have received a lot of praise and scrutiny in the literature.
However, less is known about statewide legislative efforts to combat human trafficking. To fill this gap, the current study analyzes state human trafficking statutes through content analysis. Overall, state legislation could best be described as a hodge-podge of laws related to three themes: 1) conceptualizing human trafficking, 2) victim centeredness, and 3) perpetrator centeredness. Accordingly, several recommendations are made that would reduce inconsistency and increase implementation of evidence-based policy.

It is an axiom among both researchers and the public that American perceptions of the police are racially divided. Previous studies have traditionally focused on interracial perceptions, and have found support for social variables (e.g. education) and legal variables (e.g. prior arrest). The current study seeks to determine if legal oppression or social oppression are better predictors of negative attitudes toward the police among a sample of black university students. Ordinary least squares regression seeks determine which set of factors better predict police perceptions. This intra-racial examination allows future research to parse nuances among police perceptions in the black community. The implications of these results and future directions are discussed, in particular for the continued development of a black criminology (Unnever, Gabbidon, & Chouhy, 2019).