Category: Criminology

In your own words, answer this unit’s discussion questions in a main post (recommended minimum 300 words), and respond to at least 2 peers’ postings (recommended minimum 75 words).
After you have reviewed the Assignment Details below, click the Launch Discussion Board link under the Assignments tab for this unit to open the Discussion Board and make your post.
Use these videos for help on how to post to the Discussion Board:
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Assignment Details
You have worked in a regional crime scene unit for four years. The team recently hired three graduates from a Professional Certification Organization for Crime Scene Investigators. The three graduates’ specialties are firearms identification, blood spatter pattern analysis, and fingerprint comparison. You have been working under their respective specialty supervisors for several years and have been involved in research and live case work.
They have never testified on their own as expert witnesses and they have come to you asking what the credentials are to become an expert witness in a case and who makes the decision that they are an expert witness for that trial.
They also want to know, once they are found to be an expert witness in a trial, does it mean they are automatically considered to be an expert for the same subject in the next trial that they must testify in?
Address their concerns by answering the following:
What are two qualifying conditions that you would recommend the graduates pursue in order to be considered an expert witness in a trial? Why do you believe that these two conditions are important?
Review other student’s answers. Use your discussion board response to share which of their qualifying conditions would you add to yours and explain why.
You are at a friend’s party speaking to someone you just met. They seem interested in knowing how expert witnesses work. How would you explain to them the process of becoming an expert witness and how it applies to different trials?
Discussion Board Reminders:

Discussion paper: the paper will be due (in electronic form) It will be a maximum of 5 typed pages. • You decide your own topics to write on. • You are to write on any criminal procedure topic that interests you. Your paper must include reference to topics we have learned in class and should reference the law and criminal code provisions that you learned in class. • The paper will essentially be an analysis and opinion paper on a criminal procedure based scenario. What do you think of it, how does it accord with the law as you have learned in class; do you think the decision/situation was correct? Etc. • the assignment is to Pick a story in the news and write on it. This is not a case analysis, do not review one single case, for e.g. R v Mann. Cause examples from the class lectures such as cases talked in the lectures.
For e.g. over the spring there was an arrest of a person downtown who had a weapon and the police used force which involved kicking the person. This was videotaped and received wide media coverage. If you chose such a scenario you would want to write about the police powers to arrest, where do they Loading… come from (the criminal code sections), what is the law, did they exercise their powers to arrest properly in your opinion? Etc. NOW BECAUSE I’VE OUTLINED THIS I WILL NOT ALLOW THIS SPECIFIC SCENARIO TO BE A TOPIC USED. • Look to news stories, the internet. Try to restrict your topic to events in Canada, and if possible Manitoba. The Law in the USA is different than our laws, so while the USA may present some interesting topics I don’t recommend discussing them. • Follow the outline to ensure you are addressing a topic we have covered in class. • You must include a copy of the news story you choose, this does not count towards your 5 page limit. I have attached the notes down below. Reference to the lectures. 

Week 3 Project: Hurricane Katrina Preparedness
Two assignments in this course will combine to produce an in-depth analysis of the preparedness, communication, mitigation, response, and recovery coordination among the various public safety and private sector organizations involved in Hurricane Katrina. It will also include a detailed assessment of the Incident Command System (ICS) process used. These assignments give you an opportunity to apply the concepts discussed in this course to a real-world incident.
You will assess the emergency management process used during Hurricane Katrina. Your opinions and thoughts must be supported by resources such as peer-reviewed journals, books, or credible articles on government websites. Carefully evaluate your sources of information.
This first assignment requires you to assess the actions and policies at work prior to and following Hurricane Katrina’s landfall. This assignment should cover the following points:
Identify the agencies responsible for emergency preparedness and response.
Describe the area impacted by Katrina.
Assess the state of readiness prior to Katrina’s landfall and discuss any particular vulnerabilities.
Describe the ICS process. Include information pertaining to the elements of preparedness, communication, mitigation, response, and recovery coordination among the various public safety and private sector organizations specifically involved in Hurricane Katrina.

Assignment Details
Close
Unit 1 – Discussion Board 2 (75 points)
Due: Thu, Jun 13 |Printer Friendly Version
Description
Primary Discussion Response is due by Thursday (11:59:59pm Central), Peer Responses are due by Saturday (11:59:59pm Central).
Primary Task Response: Within the Discussion Board area, write 400–600 words that respond to the following questions with your thoughts, ideas, and comments. This will be the foundation for future discussions by your classmates. Be substantive and clear, and use examples to reinforce your ideas.
Choose a large municipal police department such as Chicago, New York, Los Angeles, or your state police department and discuss the following:
Summarize its history of the use of data analysis.
How are the statistical variables such as the mean, the mode, and the median utilized in analyzing criminal data?
Explain how crime rates are calculated and utilized to address specific issues or problems with the data sets.

Be typed in Times New Roman 12-inch font, double spaced and with 1-inch margins. 
Be 7 pages of text (not including the title page or the references page) 
Have a title page, with your name, student number, date, and course code. 
Have an introduction and conclusion 
Contain in-text citations as well as a references page in APA style reference formatting
Must use the 7 sources 
Be sure to use concepts with precision
Critically discuss the function of psychotropic medications with prisoners/ex-prisoners experiencing mental health struggles.
As a part of your exploration, identify and discuss two recommendations that could ameliorate the lifeworlds/circumstances of the focused population 

Describe the property concepts that underlie property theft crimes. Provide examples to illustrate your thoughts.

A literature review is an essay that reports an on-going “conversation” on a topic among scholars that has been taking place in published books and articles. It identifies major issues and positions of key participants and presents our evolving understanding of the topic.
While the conversation itself has taken place over several years and the topic and list of participants has evolved, a literature review treats the conversation as a whole, giving it a coherence not apparent as the conversation initially unfolded. The participants and their published contributions may have discussed many issues. You need to focus your review on the ones most relevant to your topic.
Goals of a literature review:
Communicating what social scientists have found about your topic – provide the background information necessary for the reader to understand your project.
Provide evidence of depth and breadth – your literature review should show that you know the details of the most important aspect of the studies that relate to your specific topic and that you know of all the studies done that inform your specific topic.
Demonstrate that you can evaluate research – do not simply summarize all the studies, but evaluate their worth for your project.
Develop a general explanation for observed differences or identify potential relationships between concepts
Components of a literature review:
An introduction that provides an overview of the focus and objectives of the review, along with a thesis statement and why your study is important
A set of themes that categorize and make sense of the sources reviewed and develop the thesis (e.g., sources that support a particular position, those opposed, and those offering alternative views). Start with general patterns, findings, themes in the literature. Then move to specific findings – explaining why and how the general patterns and specific findings inform your study. Only criticize a study if your project is designed to address that limitation.
Explanation and evaluation of conclusions reached by key sources, and explanation of how they converge and diverge from the conclusions reached by other sources
A conclusion with reasonable speculations and gaps that emerge after considering the literature as a whole. This conclusion should not only restate your problem/policy/argument, but identify unanswered or inadequately answered questions. (These unanswered questions are your project.)
To accomplish the goals and components of a literature review:
Identify the broad problem area, but avoid global statements; have a clear sense of purpose.
Remember the purpose, read with a purpose, and write with a purpose.
Early in the review, indicate why the topic being reviewed is important.
Be selective – select only the most important aspects of the source for your problem/policy.
Summarize and synthesize each source within the paragraph and throughout the review
Distinguish between research findings and other sources of information (i.e., theory); If citing a classic or landmark study, identify it as such. Indicate why certain studies are important.
Use caution when paraphrasing. If you paraphrase, make sure you represent the author’s information correctly.
If you are commenting on the timeliness of a topic, be specific in describing the time frame.
Discuss other literature reviews on your topic and refer the reader to other reviews on issues that you will not be discussing in detail.
Avoid long lists of nonspecific references; if it doesn’t relate to your topic, cut it.
If the results of previous studies are inconsistent or widely varying, discuss them separately, by thematic findings.
Keep your own voice – start and end each paragraph with how this paragraph’s theme relates to your thesis/argument/problem/policy.
PROOFREAD; do not just spell check
Read your paper aloud to identify problems in flow and awkward phrasing.
If you read over a paragraph you’ve just written and notice that there are only two sources cited in that paragraph, you have summarized too much and not synthesized enough.
Revise, revise, revise. You should write a minimum of three drafts before you turn it in. For this post, you can post your first draft. Take the feedback from your peers to revise, revise, revise, before you include this in your final research paper.
Documenting your sources
The papers you utilize as sources should be cited at appropriate locations within the text (where you are using that information). You must cite any research you used to inform your project, thesis, or question both within the text and in the bibliography. Research should almost always be cited parenthetically. Students give their power away by using too many direct quotes. They often lose their own argument. All the research you use should contribute to YOUR argument, not just summarize someone else’s argument. Make your main point and then cite the journal article in parentheses afterward rather than directly referring to the article. Always avoid including the title of an article and, whenever possible, avoid the author’s name in the sentence. Again, the point is to use existing research to support your argument. Cite the source at the end of the sentence.
When citing a paper, list the authors and the year of publication and nothing else (no page numbers, etc), unless you are taking a direct quote from the paper. In this case, cite the page number where you got the quote. But use as few direct quotes as possible. For example:
Bad: Burke and others (1997) did a study that showed large woody debris is important in providing inorganic nitrogen to streams throughout the entire year. [Notice how this is giving power to Burke et al, instead of focusing on the student’s argument.]
Better: Large woody debris in lowland old growth forests has been shown to provide sustained levels of inorganic nitrogen to streams throughout the summer and winter months (Burke et al. 1997). [Notice that the same information is now being used to push the student’s argument forward.]

YouTube URL: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6jd5AFBwtcw
Examine the psychological dynamics that cause some people to confess.
What are some of the reasons some people might confess to crimes they did not commit? Be sure to provide real-word examples in your answer.
Make sure you cite your research in proper APA format.

term project, an 8-12 page APA Style paper. Your paper should have at least 8-12 pages of substance, not counting the cover and reference pages. Please be sure that your paper is a Word Document (.doc) uploaded to the
assignment section as an attachment. Students will be required to use at least three scholarly – (peer-reviewed)- sources. Students have access to peer-reviewed.
write about its relevance to police ethics. Be thinking about identifying the major talking points about your topic that are important to review. Critically assess the literature on the subject. I am looking for critical thinking and a clear indication that you have a grasp of the literature.
Do not include quotes in your work.
I want to see your critical thinking skills on display and not a string
of quotes written by published authors. Your analysis is what is needed
for a successful paper. In other words, the peer-reviewed sources used in the paper should be paraphrased, cited in proper APA format, and reflect critical thinking.

Assignment Details
You are an intern working with a state crime scene investigation team that has statewide jurisdiction and gets called in by county and municipal authorities for crime scene analysis and laboratory support. A number of larger cities in the state have their own crime scene units. Because crime scene investigators (CSIs) get called into court to testify as expert witnesses, your unit has a lot of opportunities to testify in court. The state you live and work in has assumed the Federal Rules of Evidence Rule 702 as their own for expert witness testimony. They also have the Frye Standard (common in many states).
You will be presenting a paper to the State Division of the International Association for Identification Conference in the Capital next week. You will be presenting a paper on the topic of the admissibility of expert witness testimony in court.
Address the following in 3-4 pages:
How would you define what makes someone an expert witness?
Who can be an expert witness? Explain.
What restrictions are placed on expert witnesses?
How are lay witnesses and expert witnesses different? Explain in detail.
Explain the Daubert Rule in contrast to the Frye Standard, and disclose which one of the two would allow for the identification of more expert witnesses if they were used exclusively.
Please refer to the following Grading Rubric for this assignment.
Assignment Reminders:
Please submit your assignment.