In the United States, approximately 400,000 youth are in out-of-home care in the custody of child protection systems (CPS). They are incarcerated, but not as punishment for a crime. States place youth in CPS custody for many different reasons, centered around legal determinations of families’ failure to provide adequate care. Such youth are forcibly separated from their biological (“bio”) families and required to live in shelters, group homes, and foster households at the threat of arrest. Through the socio-legal concept of parens patriae, the government assumes responsibility for their safety and development. In other words, the state assumes the role of parents to children it places in CPS. Still, despite years of social work research, three fundamental questions remain about CPS for criminology. First, criminologists are beginning to recognize the overlap between criminology and CPS but lack a theoretical framework for analyzing that intersection. Second, the proper role of the state in youth development and the measurement of its relative success are of central importance to criminal justice, but at best loosely defined. Finally, this dissertation asks: how do entering CPS custody, growing up in state care, and (someday) exiting CPS shape the experiences and perceptions of CPS youth? Given the attenuated social processes associated with CPS, criminologists might expect youth to experience significant barriers to transitioning successfully to adulthood. At the same time, therapeutic assessment and treatment in CPS should ameliorate those barriers. This dissertation addresses that theoretical paradox in eight chapters. After an introductory overview, Chapter Two posits social control, social support, and agency over the life course as a theoretical framework for understanding the implications of growing up in CPS. Chapter Three details the phronetic and ethnographic approach of the study, designed to encounter the perspectives of youth themselves in their “natural” setting. Chapters Four through Seven present findings from interviews with participants in an arts-based therapy program for youth in CPS (n=33). Chapter Eight concludes the study with a discussion of the implications of this work for criminological research, juvenile justice policy, and youth who grow up in CPS.

The author in this paper takes a further examination at the current 21st century policing policies in recruitment, selection, education, training, and use of force. This paper goes back in time to look at how policing first started and how policies have changed over the years. This paper also takes a look at The President's Task Force on 21st Century Policing and how this was the first step towards evidence-based policing. The current 21st century policing policies are not evidence-based that have no support behind them and are no longer working for police agencies. The author also goes into small detail about gender equality within policing and how police departments can change their policies to ensure this. The author implements eleven new evidence-based policing policies in recruitment, selection, education, training, and use of force for police departments to follow. The author proposes a model process that is grounded in the latest research and evidence. It creates a road map for other police agencies to follow to ensure that only the best qualified individuals are hired, and once hired, they are properly trained, supervised, and taken care of to ensure they are professionals throughout their career. All of the new implemented evidence-based policies have been researched and have facts to support their success in police agencies. The hope is that police departments will follow these new evidence-based policies with the research support and implement these policies in their departments in hopes to improve policing and to improve officers work ethic.

In the wake of in-custody deaths of civilians at the hands of police officers, body-worn cameras (BWCs) have entered the national conversation as a possible tool to increase officer accountability, build trust, and potentially prevent these incidents. Current research looks promising, as rates of complaints filed against officers tend to drop after BWCs are implemented; however, any research surrounding the subject is still new and there are few existing empirical studies that focus on BWCs. The success or failure of BWC pilot programs going forward will have a large influence on future law enforcement policy and officer-citizen interactions. In this study, surveys were administered to officers from the Spokane, WA Police Department throughout 2015 and the Tempe, AZ Police Department from 2015 to 2016. The surveys gathered officer opinions on a range of issues, such as how they believe citizens and officers will act in the presence of a BWC, their use in completing incident reports, and their role in collecting and presenting evidence. This paper examines current police officers' views on BWCs, their possible benefits and setbacks, and how their implementation might factor into law enforcement practices.

Despite disciplinary actions by police departments, the use of force continues to be a prevalent aspect of police misconduct. High-profile cases reported by the media have put police departments under intense pressure to find a solution for this issue. One of the highly publicized potential solutions is the implementation of body-worn camera. The question this paper attempts to answer is: does the implementation of a body-worn camera program have a significant effect on the number of use of force incidents?

Body-worn camera technology is a relatively new player in the field of criminal justice. As much as they are being reported on or discussed, in reality, body-worn cameras have not been in use long enough to have strong empirical support. Recent studies outlined some of the perceived benefits and costs of the body-worn cameras. Research has been done on both officer and citizen perceptions of the cameras, but little has been done in regards to other stakeholders, especially those in the criminal justice system. This study takes 13 interviews of community and criminal justice stakeholders in Tempe, Arizona and examines trends to identify unifying themes. The study found that 11 out of 13 stakeholders believed that the positives of the body-worn cameras outweighed the negatives. There was agreement among the parties that the strongest benefit of the cameras would be the transparency that it provides police departments, while most regarded the largest negative to be a lack of available resources to deal with the amount of data produced. As this is a small qualitative dataset, further research should be conducted about stakeholder perceptions in other cities, as well as solutions to some of the concerns raised by Tempe interviewees.

Though problem-oriented policing and hot spot policing are both effective modern policing strategies, some critics have argued that the risk of crime displacement can outweigh the returns of hot spot policing, ultimately rendering it inefficacious. However, a growing body of evidence suggests that crime displacement is not only uncommon, but significantly rarer than diffusions of benefits. As diffusion is a desirable side effect of any policing strategy, it follows that police officers should use the phenomenon to their advantage. Using the data and methodologies of a number of hot spot policing studies—especially Koper’s (1995) research on temporal diffusion—this paper proposes a number of simple steps a police department can take to maximize their department’s effectiveness in high-crime areas.

The relationship between stress and policing has long been established in literature. What is less clear, however, is what departments are doing to help officers deal with the stress that comes with the job. Looking at a small Southwestern police agency and using a modified version of Speilberger’s (1981) Police Stress Survey, the present study sought to examine stressors inherent to policing, as well as to identify departmental services that may be in place to help officers alleviate those stressors and whether or not police officers would choose to take part in the services that may be offered. The findings suggest that a shift in stress in policing is occurring with operational stressors being reported at higher levels than organizational stressors, contrary to previous research.

Although prior research has identified negative consequences from marijuana use, some states are legalizing marijuana for medical use due to its medical utility. In 2010, the State of Arizona passed medical marijuana legislation, yet, to date, little research has been published about the specific population characteristics of medical marijuana users or their criminal activity. The purpose of this study is to present the characteristics of medical marijuana users and examine the relationship between medical marijuana use and crime, including substance use, by comparing four groups which are medical marijuana users with authorized medical marijuana ID card (authorized medical marijuana users, AuMM users), medical marijuana users without authorized medical marijuana ID card (non-authorized medical marijuana users, NonAuMM users), illegal marijuana users without authorized medical marijuana ID card (non-authorized marijuana users, NonAuM users), and non-marijuana users (Non-users). Data were collected from a sample of recently booked arrestees in Maricopa County, Arizona through the Arizona Arrestee Reporting Information Network (AARIN) project. A total of 2,656 adult arrestees participated in the study. Findings show that authorized medical marijuana users were more likely to be male, younger, and high school graduates. Medical marijuana users, on average, were likely to acquire more marijuana and spend more money on obtaining marijuana compared to non-authorized marijuana users. Whereas the authorized medical marijuana users had a higher probability for DUI and drug selling/making than non-marijuana users, non-authorized medical marijuana users had a higher probability for involvement property crime, violent crime, DUI, and drug selling/making than non-marijuana users. Authorized medical marijuana users were less likely to use meth compared to non-authorized medical marijuana users and non-authorized marijuana users. This study suggests that it is important to recognize the non-authorized medical marijuana users under medical marijuana policy as well as the DUI regulations and medical insurance.

Once perceived as an unimportant occurrence in living organisms, cell degeneration was reconfigured as an important biological phenomenon in development, aging, health, and diseases in the twentieth century. This dissertation tells a twentieth-century history of scientific investigations on cell degeneration, including cell death and aging. By describing four central developments in cell degeneration research with the four major chapters, I trace the emergence of the degenerating cell as a scientific object, describe the generations of a variety of concepts, interpretations and usages associated with cell death and aging, and analyze the transforming influences of the rising cell degeneration research. Particularly, the four chapters show how the changing scientific practices about cellular life in embryology, cell culture, aging research, and molecular biology of Caenorhabditis elegans shaped the interpretations about cell degeneration in the twentieth-century as life-shaping, limit-setting, complex, yet regulated. These events created and consolidated important concepts in life sciences such as programmed cell death, the Hayflick limit, apoptosis, and death genes. These cases also transformed the material and epistemic practices about the end of cellular life subsequently and led to the formations of new research communities. The four cases together show the ways cell degeneration became a shared subject between molecular cell biology, developmental biology, gerontology, oncology, and pathology of degenerative diseases. These practices and perspectives created a special kind of interconnectivity between different fields and led to a level of interdisciplinarity within cell degeneration research by the early 1990s.