Ohio State nav bar

Graduate Student Research Symposium

CJRC Logo
November 12, 2015
11:30AM - 1:30PM
Journalism 217

Date Range
Add to Calendar 2015-11-12 11:30:00 2015-11-12 13:30:00 Graduate Student Research Symposium The Criminal Justice Research Center is pleased to announce that it will hold its annual Graduate Student Research Symposium on November 12, 2015 from 11:30 to 1:30 pm in Journalism Building Room 217.   Graduate students, whose applications were selected for CJRC Travel Grants to the American Society of Criminology (ASC) Annual Meeting, will present at the above Graduate Student Symposium.  Additionally, the graduate students will have the opportunity to present their papers the following week at the ASC annual meeting in Washington DC which takes place on November 18-21. Graduate Student Symposium - Presenters and TopicsMichael EnglehartTitle: “We will kill the men and take all the women as wives”: Gender-Based Violence in DarfurThere has been a substantial body of recent research examining gender-based violence during episodes of mass violence. Yet, scholarship has typically focused on violence committed by men against women and has infrequently examined women’s and men’s victimization simultaneously. In this article, we analyze gender-based violence perpetrated against both men and boys and women and girls in the Darfur region of Sudan. We draw upon narratives from 1,136 Darfuri refugees surveyed in Chad in 2004 to analyze these patterns of gender-based violence. In doing so, we identify how victimization constitutes a gendered experience reflecting hegemonic gender prescriptives. Exploring areas of convergence and dissidence permits an opportunity to refine and advance existing theoretical work, elucidating the links between hegemonic gender constructs, power, and mass violence. This furthers our understanding of how and why gender-based violence occurs and has significant policy implications for legal, humanitarian, and health-based responses in the wake of mass violence.Courtney DeRocheTitle:  Searching for a Just Peace in Darfur: Reconciliation and Exposure to ViolenceIn February 2003, two rebel groups known as the Sudan Liberation Army (SLA) and the Justice and Equality Movement (JEM) launched an attack against the Sudanese government in Darfur, the western region of Sudan. These two rebel groups accused the government of neglecting the non-Arab peoples in Darfur, and the Sudanese government responded to the attacks with a complete offensive against Darfuri citizens. Fighting between the military groups has left hundreds of thousands of Sudanese civilians dead and even more displaced from their homes in refugee camps across the globe. Though the conflict began over a decade ago, violence continues between the government and rebel groups, leaving the region in a situation deemed to be a “humanitarian crisis” by the international community.  My research project seeks to understand how Darfuri citizens think peace should be achieved and, specifically, how their opinions about the solution to the conflict are influenced by their exposure to violence.Trent SteidleyTitle:  Gun Rights as a Social Movement Outcome: The Case of Shall-Issue Laws 1980-2010In 2010, thirty-seven states had shall-issue laws regarding concealed carry firearm licenses. Such laws mean citizens not proscribed from holding these licenses shall be issued one when they request one in that state. Yet only seven states had shall-issue laws in 1980. Despite a wide and contentious literature examining associations between concealed carry licenses and violent crime, none have asked why states moved to enact shall-issue laws to begin with. In this paper I argue that the enactment of shall-issue laws is an outcome of political and social movement factors. Guided by theories developed by social movement and political sociology scholars, I employ discrete-time event history analyses to demonstrate that shall-issue laws are outcomes of gun-rights movement mobilization, conservative public opinion, and competitive elections in the United States. I also demonstrate that shall-issue laws are enacted in states experiencing declines in police force strength when violent crime rates rose. These findings suggest that shall-issue laws are enacted due to the persistence of the gun rights movement. It is also possible that states enact shall-issue laws in order to sanction self-help during times of increasing violent crime while collective security via the police is declining. Implications for gun control are discussed.Laura M. DeMarcoTitle:  Defended Neighborhoods and Interracial Crime in U.S. CitiesInterracial crimes and hate crimes are two manifestations of intergroup conflict that have been treated very differently in criminological literature.  However, neighborhood racial residential change likely has important implications for either type of crime.  This paper examines the defended neighborhoods hypothesis, which has only been used primarily in understanding spatial patterning of racially motivated hate crimes, in its applicability to interracial crime more broadly.  The defended neighborhoods hypothesis posits that anti-minority hate crimes are most common in neighborhoods with traditionally white populations that have recently experienced an influx of a minority population.  There are several reasons to believe that racially motivated hate crimes and interracial crime more generally may be similarly patterned.  Using aggregated data about census tract population change in United States cities and interracial violent crimes, preliminary findings suggest that there may be unique patterns in interracial crime disaggregated by race that require new theoretical insight.Emily A. ShriderTitle:  Politicized Policing Practices: Immigration Enforcement, Stop-and-Frisk, and their Use in Revitalization StrategiesWhile much attention has been paid to local efforts to increase immigration enforcement, many cities have worked to limit immigration enforcement efforts in an attempt to improve immigrant-police relations and to create immigrant-friendly cities.  This has been the case in a handful of Rust Belt cities that are trying to use immigration to bolster and revitalize their communities. This provides an interesting contrast with another policing practice that has been used for revitalization ends:  stop-and-frisk.  While cities pursuing immigration as a revitalization strategy have largely avoided participating in immigrant enforcement in order to maintain ties with the immigrant community, stop-and-frisk has been rigorously employed in spite of clear evidence that it has damaged relationships with poor and minority communities.  This paper takes these two practices and compares them on the community relations dimension, as well as several others, to help explain how policing practices are used for political ends.  Specifically, it compares them on policy implementation, ties to federal law, civil rights concerns, their role in revitalization, and their role in local fiscal issues. Journalism 217 Criminal Justice Research Center cjrc@osu.edu America/New_York public

The Criminal Justice Research Center is pleased to announce that it will hold its annual Graduate Student Research Symposium on November 12, 2015 from 11:30 to 1:30 pm in Journalism Building Room 217.   Graduate students, whose applications were selected for CJRC Travel Grants to the American Society of Criminology (ASC) Annual Meeting, will present at the above Graduate Student Symposium.  Additionally, the graduate students will have the opportunity to present their papers the following week at the ASC annual meeting in Washington DC which takes place on November 18-21.

 

Graduate Student Symposium - Presenters and Topics

Michael Englehart

Michael Englehart

Title: “We will kill the men and take all the women as wives”: Gender-Based Violence in Darfur

There has been a substantial body of recent research examining gender-based violence during episodes of mass violence. Yet, scholarship has typically focused on violence committed by men against women and has infrequently examined women’s and men’s victimization simultaneously. In this article, we analyze gender-based violence perpetrated against both men and boys and women and girls in the Darfur region of Sudan. We draw upon narratives from 1,136 Darfuri refugees surveyed in Chad in 2004 to analyze these patterns of gender-based violence. In doing so, we identify how victimization constitutes a gendered experience reflecting hegemonic gender prescriptives. Exploring areas of convergence and dissidence permits an opportunity to refine and advance existing theoretical work, elucidating the links between hegemonic gender constructs, power, and mass violence. This furthers our understanding of how and why gender-based violence occurs and has significant policy implications for legal, humanitarian, and health-based responses in the wake of mass violence.

Courtney DeRoche

Title:  Searching for a Just Peace in Darfur: Reconciliation and Exposure to Violence

In February 2003, two rebel groups known as the Sudan Liberation Army (SLA) and the Justice and Equality Movement (JEM) launched an attack against the Sudanese government in Darfur, the western region of Sudan. These two rebel groups accused the government of neglecting the non-Arab peoples in Darfur, and the Sudanese government responded to the attacks with a complete offensive against Darfuri citizens. Fighting between the military groups has left hundreds of thousands of Sudanese civilians dead and even more displaced from their homes in refugee camps across the globe. Though the conflict began over a decade ago, violence continues between the government and rebel groups, leaving the region in a situation deemed to be a “humanitarian crisis” by the international community.  My research project seeks to understand how Darfuri citizens think peace should be achieved and, specifically, how their opinions about the solution to the conflict are influenced by their exposure to violence.

Trent Steidley

Trent Steidley

Title:  Gun Rights as a Social Movement Outcome: The Case of Shall-Issue Laws 1980-2010

In 2010, thirty-seven states had shall-issue laws regarding concealed carry firearm licenses. Such laws mean citizens not proscribed from holding these licenses shall be issued one when they request one in that state. Yet only seven states had shall-issue laws in 1980. Despite a wide and contentious literature examining associations between concealed carry licenses and violent crime, none have asked why states moved to enact shall-issue laws to begin with. In this paper I argue that the enactment of shall-issue laws is an outcome of political and social movement factors. Guided by theories developed by social movement and political sociology scholars, I employ discrete-time event history analyses to demonstrate that shall-issue laws are outcomes of gun-rights movement mobilization, conservative public opinion, and competitive elections in the United States. I also demonstrate that shall-issue laws are enacted in states experiencing declines in police force strength when violent crime rates rose. These findings suggest that shall-issue laws are enacted due to the persistence of the gun rights movement. It is also possible that states enact shall-issue laws in order to sanction self-help during times of increasing violent crime while collective security via the police is declining. Implications for gun control are discussed.

Laura M. DeMarco

Title:  Defended Neighborhoods and Interracial Crime in U.S. Cities

Interracial crimes and hate crimes are two manifestations of intergroup conflict that have been treated very differently in criminological literature.  However, neighborhood racial residential change likely has important implications for either type of crime.  This paper examines the defended neighborhoods hypothesis, which has only been used primarily in understanding spatial patterning of racially motivated hate crimes, in its applicability to interracial crime more broadly.  The defended neighborhoods hypothesis posits that anti-minority hate crimes are most common in neighborhoods with traditionally white populations that have recently experienced an influx of a minority population.  There are several reasons to believe that racially motivated hate crimes and interracial crime more generally may be similarly patterned.  Using aggregated data about census tract population change in United States cities and interracial violent crimes, preliminary findings suggest that there may be unique patterns in interracial crime disaggregated by race that require new theoretical insight.

Emily A. Shrider

Title:  Politicized Policing Practices: Immigration Enforcement, Stop-and-Frisk, and their Use in Revitalization Strategies

While much attention has been paid to local efforts to increase immigration enforcement, many cities have worked to limit immigration enforcement efforts in an attempt to improve immigrant-police relations and to create immigrant-friendly cities.  This has been the case in a handful of Rust Belt cities that are trying to use immigration to bolster and revitalize their communities. This provides an interesting contrast with another policing practice that has been used for revitalization ends:  stop-and-frisk.  While cities pursuing immigration as a revitalization strategy have largely avoided participating in immigrant enforcement in order to maintain ties with the immigrant community, stop-and-frisk has been rigorously employed in spite of clear evidence that it has damaged relationships with poor and minority communities.  This paper takes these two practices and compares them on the community relations dimension, as well as several others, to help explain how policing practices are used for political ends.  Specifically, it compares them on policy implementation, ties to federal law, civil rights concerns, their role in revitalization, and their role in local fiscal issues.