Education is known for being powerful in reducing poverty, improving health, promoting healthier economies, and providing peaceful and productive opportunities for young people worldwide. It’s a key to success that has been threatened in the state of Arizona through low funding, teacher shortages, and a lack of resources. Inadequate learning environments further educational inequalities and hinder academic achievement among students. In finding a solution, the objectives of education policy in Arizona are analyzed from an economic and equity standpoint.

This project consists of a police officer training manual and supplemental paper. The goal being to address current flaws in police officer training and implement new ideas in the area of communication, stress management, and cultural awareness. Utilizing expertise from qualitative interviews as well as support found in existing literature this project was able to create a training curriculum that has the potential to lessen the gaps in police officer training.

Eyewitness misidentification is one of the leading ways people get wrongly imprisoned and later exonerated by DNA evidence (The Innocence Project, 2023). It can develop at the very first stages of the investigation and it can continue throughout the case. Eyewitness testimony is impactful in a courtroom to say the least, so when it has been handled improperly and there are biases then it can become detrimental to the Criminal Justice System. In order to address the issue as a whole, there needs to be further dissection as to where and what can cause eyewitness bias and faulty memory. Causes of eyewitness misidentification can be seen through police procedures such as lineups and interviews, as well as previous bias that the eyewitness holds (Laney & Loftus, 2023). Though there is training that police officers receive about eyewitness identifications, the study by the Police Executive Research Forum gave evidence that the majority of departments and agencies do not have strict guidelines or even written procedures on methods of identification (Police Executive Research Forum, 2014). The qualitative research conducted had three people with different levels of involvement with the Criminal Justice System answering questions about eyewitness misidentification. From those interviews, it could be concluded that police officers do receive training and they do understand there are certain ways they can mitigate their influence over the eyewitness. However, it was gathered that there must be a miscommunication and lack of education being given to police officers. Though they are trained to act a certain way with eyewitnesses, they do not know why and it makes them complacent. Education is a large part of reform, as well as using more reliable identification methods.

Even though criminal justice outcomes frequently receive more media, public, and research attention than civil legal outcomes, civil legal outcomes are equally important in ensuring fairness, accountability, and justice for both individuals and society as a whole. This provides individuals an avenue to pursue justice and restitution for civil wrongs, protects civil rights, and compensates those who have been harmed financially. This study examined the relationship between regional implicit racial bias and racial disparities in outcomes of real-world civil trials. In particular, I explored whether the racial composition of the attorneys on the defense teams or race of the plaintiff predicted plaintiff verdicts and greater damage awards. I hypothesized that all-White defense attorney teams and plaintiffs would win their cases at higher rates and would subsequently be awarded more in damages than their non-White counterparts, especially in regions reporting high levels of implicit racial bias. Using real-world civil trials and Project Implicit Race IAT data, I conducted logistic and linear regression analyses to test the effects of race and regional bias on trial outcomes. The results showed that the likelihood of a pro-plaintiff verdict increased when the defense team included at least one non-White attorney. That is, more racially diverse defense teams won their cases less then all-White defense teams. Additionally, I found that the likelihood of a pro-plaintiff verdict decreased in regions reporting relatively higher levels of regional implicit racial bias. Future research aimed at understanding and reducing disparities and bias in the legal system should be extended to include civil trials and both attorney and client demographics.