News

CCJ Undergraduate Student Research

Violence, Taxes and Public Safety Rank High in UNF Poll: A new UNF poll, led by criminology and criminal justice Chair Dr. Michael Hallett, shows that Jacksonville residents are very concerned about violence on the First Coast and also feel the proposed property tax reduction in Florida will threaten resources for public safety. Hallett was interviewed by The Florida Times-Union, WJXT Channel  4 and WOKV 690 AM radio about the poll. Go to http://www.unf.edu/development/news/mediarelations/tv_news_coverage/index.html#ViolencePoll to watch the May 3 Ch. 4 interview and go to http://www.jacksonville.com/tu-online/stories/050107/met_166773228.shtml to read the May 1 Times-Union article.

Dr. Hallett discusses details of the poll project with CCJ Capstone students, Spring 2007.

Dr. Michael Hallett just finished his third book, titled Private Prisons in America: A Critical Race Perspective (University of Illinois Press) due out in January. The book traces the historical emergence of for-profit imprisonment in the United States back to the era of convict-leasing after the Civil War and makes comparisons between present-day criminal justice practices and those prevalent during the post-bellum South. Specifically, in the aftermath of the Civil War, draconian increases in penalties associated with crimes committed by freed slaves (vagrancy, loitering, and petty theft) caused a dramatic rise in the number of African American prisoners available for exploitation by private entrepreneurs. In a similar way, more recent changes in laws associated with the “war on drugs” in the United States, dramatically increased penalties for drugs used disproportionately by African Americans—resulting in dramatic increases in the imprisonment of African American men and prompting for-profit imprisonment schemes to relieve prison overcrowding. Thus, just as past explorations of “new punishments” reveal the criminal justice system as a mechanism for social control of specific groups rather than for crime control in general, this book draws on the work of David Garland, George Rusche & Otto Kirchheimer, Randall Shelden (see: sheldensays.com), and Michel Foucault. Other recent work by Dr. Hallett appears in the Journal of Offender Rehabilitation, Punishment & Society and textbooks exploring women & crime, trends in criminal justice policy, and racial bias in punishment. He will be teaching Explanations for Crime spring semester 2006 while continuing his research projects underway in the City of Jacksonville.

Dr. Kareem Jordan just finished his very first book, titled “Violent Youth in Adult Court: The Decertification of Transferred Offenders” (LFB Scholarly Publishing: Criminal Justice Series), which will be published in January 2006. In this book, he highlights the importance of exploring the highly under-researched area of juvenile decertification, a process whereby youth who initially were waived to adult court are decertified (i.e., reverse waived) to juvenile court. More specifically, the book focuses on three main areas. First, the predictors of juvenile decertification in Pennsylvania were identified. Second, he compared court outcomes (i.e., conviction, incarceration, and case processing time) between decertified and non-decertified youth. Third, he compared the two groups of youth in terms of offender recidivism. In addition to the quantitative analyses, he conducted a supplementary qualitative analysis, where prosecutors, defense attorneys, and judges in three Pennsylvania counties were interviewed about their views on juvenile decertification and Pennsylvania’s Act 33 statute, which automatically transfers certain violent offenders to the adult criminal justice system. Dr. Jordan also has published other articles in Criminal Justice Studies: A Critical Journal of Crime, Law and Society. He currently is exploring, and will soon be researching, juvenile justice issues in Duval County, Florida. During the Spring 2006 semester, Dr. Jordan will be teaching Juvenile Delinquency and Juvenile Justice, Minorities and Crime, and Methods of Offender Treatment.

Dr. Stan Swart presented a paper entitled "The Disappearance and Re-Emergence of Victimless Crime" at the Southern Criminal Justice Association Convention in early October, 2005.  He will present a paper updating his "Power Model of Juvenile Justice" concept at the Academy of Criminal Justice Sciences Convention in Baltimore in February, 2006.  Stan remains active in the United Faculty of Florida chapter, especially in the role of Benefits Chair.  He will be teaching two of his favorite classes in the Spring, 2006, Semester: "History and Philosophy of Corrections" (cross-listed grad/undergrad) plus "Security and Society."  The latter is an undergraduate course, but Stan will accept a few grad students on an independent study basis.

Dr. Jennifer Wesely’s most recent work is derived from a major grant from the National Institute of Justice (NIJ) for which she is a Co-Principal Investigator. This grant looks at complex intersections between women’s experiences of violence and homelessness in the four largest metropolitan areas in Florida, including Jacksonville. Both quantitative and qualitative methods were utilized, and the results from Dr. Wesely’s in-depth interviews with homeless women have already begun to be published, as evidenced by the 2005 manuscript, “The pertinence of partners: Examining intersections between women’s homelessness and their adult relationships,” found in American Behavioral Scientist. Dr. Wesely’s research agenda is oriented towards social justice and disadvantaged populations, including domestic violence victims and sex workers, along with the homeless. Her work is found in journals like Gender & Society, Deviant Behavior, Journal of Contemporary Ethnography (JCE), Violence against Women, and Qualitative Inquiry (forthcoming) among others. She is currently examining how various marginalizations and cumulative violence experienced by homeless women and exotic dancers feeds into a context in which they engage in criminal violence. This challenges early criminological theorizing, which still persists, that portrays women who are violent as biologically “unnatural” or pathologically as “mad,” “sad” or “bad.” Such stereotypic and one-dimensional constructions de-politicize women’s violence, divorcing it from individual, institutional and structural contexts of inequality, domestic violence, victimization, poverty and social exclusion. In Spring 2006, Dr. Wesely is teaching Family Violence, Explanations for Crime, and Women and the Legal System.