Breaking Barriers: AF Reserve's First Female Chief
ROBINS AIR FORCE BASE, Ga. -- Maj. Gen. Maryanne Miller will assume the leadership of the Air Force Reserve Command at the Museum of Aviation here in a ceremony July 15.
Miller will become the first female in the history of the Air Force Reserve to be Chief of the Air Force Reserve and commander of the Air Force Reserve Command. Before taking command, Miller will be promoted to Lieutenant General. Lt. Gen. James F. Jackson, who retires from the Air Force after the change of command with more than 38 years of military service, has led the Air Force Reserve since 2012.
Miller joined the Air Force in 1981, a distinguished graduate of the ROTC program at The Ohio State University. She is a command pilot with more than 4,800 flying hours in numerous aircraft. She currently serves as the deputy to the chief of the Air Force Reserve in Washington D.C. Prior to her current assignment, she commanded two wings and held numerous staff positions at the unit, Air Staff and Joint Staff levels.
Miller is the latest of many women accomplishing major firsts in the United States Air Force in the past few years. In 2012, the Air Force appointed its first female four-star general, Gen. Janet Wolfenbarger. Most recently, Gen. Lori Robinson became the first woman to command Pacific Air Forces in 2014. Robinson followed at United States Northern Command in May, being the first woman to command a major unified combatant command.
Media members interested in attending Miller’s assumption of command can contact the AF Reserve Public Affairs Office at 478-497-1753 or 478-497-1758.
Rick Lundman Award Recepient
Fraga graduated from The Ohio State University in 2013 with a double major in Criminology and Sociology. She is a 4th year graduate student in the Sociology department at The Ohio State University. Currently, she teaches a section of Introduction to Criminology. Her master's thesis and current research focus is on criminal sentencing and law and society more broadly.
Real-Time Crime Forecasting Challenge
CJRC Associate Director Ryan King is supervising a team of Criminology and Data Analytics students as they participate in the National Institute of Justice’s Crime Forecasting Challenge. The goal of this endeavor is to “harness the advances in data science to address the challenges of crime and justice.” The Portland (Oregon) Police Bureau will release data on calls-for-service approximately once per month between September 1, 2016 and late February, 2017. Students will try to use these data to predict when and where crimes will occur in March through May of 2017. This is a great opportunity for OSU students to apply what they learn in criminology and statistics classes to a real world environment.
How well did our students predict the future? We’ll let you know next summer!
"From the Back-alleys to the Dark-net: New technological capacities for the efficient organization of crime."
By: Scott Duxbury
This study uses structural and statistical network analysis methods to investigate the structural properties and formation of an anonymous virtual drug distribution network. Drawing on prior research of criminal networks and virtual marketplaces, we create hypotheses for the formation of a criminal network that maximizes structural efficiency, but is relatively unconcerned with structural security. We examine this network formation by fitting our data to a power-law distribution and by testing potential mechanisms for preferential attachment. Results from an exponential random graph model (ERGM) support the existence of preferential attachment.
In contrast to prior analyses of criminal networks, we find evidence for a network structure that is formed primarily in respect to needs for distributional efficiency, rather than structural security. Buyers select sellers based on their apparent legitimacy and website reputation. Moreover, sellers who sell multiple products are much more desirable than those who specialize in only one product. Taken in sum, these results provide quantifiable insight to new forms of criminal organization that take advantage of cyberspace. As such, it provides implications for future criminological research examining the organization of crime online and for analyses of virtual black markets.
Brenda Chaney, Senior Lecturer in Sociology Coordinates a TedX Speaker Presentation
Brenda Chaney has been selected to participate in the 6th Annual TEDX Ohio State University. This year’s theme, Precipice, will feature students, faculty, staff, and alumni as speakers and performers who will inspire and challenge our concepts of science, technology, history, and life. Brenda's talk will actually be her students talking. In a unique approach to TEDX, she proposed that "Inside and Outside" students talk about their first class, crossing the precipice that separates Insiders and Outsiders. The Ohio Reformatory for Women is allowing two “Inside" women to travel to campus to participate along with two "Outside" students.
Brenda Chaney is a senior lecturer in sociology. She majored in sociology/criminology because she was interested in what we do to people who break the rules. This interest has led to working in, volunteering in, teaching in, and researching about prison with a special interest in the women who are in prison. She started the Inside-Out Prison Exchange program at the Ohio Reformatory for Women several years ago and also participates in a book discussion group with women serving life sentences.
The “Inside-Out” program was established in Philadelphia in 1997 with the goal of bringing college students and incarcerated people together to study issues of crime and justice within the context of a prison classroom. By bringing these individuals together, the “Inside-Out” program aims to break down stereotypes, prevent recidivism, and lend an experiential learning experience to both college students and incarcerated people that could allow both groups to better understand the intricacies of the criminal justice system. The program has spread to numerous state university and prison systems and is a very active program in the Ohio Department of Rehabilitation and Correction and with cooperative universities.
Brenda teaches for The Ohio State University at both the Columbus and Marion campuses. She just received approval to run her Inside Out class at the Ohio Reformatory for Women in the spring of 2018 through the Columbus campus and will be offering an Inside-Out class through Ohio State Marion this fall at the Marion Correctional Institution.
