@BucknellU #Expert Available to Discuss Influence of Video Games and Pop Culture on Society in Aftermath of #Newtown
Bucknell University
As investigators begin to piece together a profile of Connecticut school massacre gunman Adam Lanza, much is being speculated about his possible Asperger’s Syndrome diagnosis. But to suggest a tie between autism and violent, sociopathic tendencies is to undermine the large body of research and progress that’s been made in understanding the disorder, says autism expert and Executive Director of the Kinney Center for Autism Education and Support at Saint Joseph’s University Michelle Rowe, Ph.D.
Since the early 1970s school shootings at American elementary, secondary and higher education institutions have been a painful reality for American society. After each incident – like the recent attack in Newtown, CT – there is voluminous dialogue about what can be done to prevent the next, such tragedy. But can anything realistically be done to prevent these horrific crimes?
Community support has remarkable benefits for people coping with traumatic mass shootings, according to an American-Finnish research study.
Melissa Jonson-Reid, PhD, professor at the Brown School at Washington University in St. Louis, is director of the CDC-funded Center for Violence and Injury Protection. She responds to the tragedy at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Connecticut.
Award-winning law school course sends students into local detention facilities teach mediation skills to juvenile detainees, help them avoid life of incarceration.
University of Texas at Austin sociologist finds school exclusion policies and lack of support from teachers contribute to high dropout rate among students who have been arrested.
Civil asset forfeiture allows law enforcement agencies in many states to seize property or assets of a criminal suspect and proceed to have them forfeited to the government even if the individual is never convicted of the original charge. Professors study the practice that requires no criminal conviction.
In every corner of the Internet, high-tech "phishers" are baiting their hooks as the holiday season begins, hoping to lure a prize catch--the account data and personal information of unsuspecting computer-users all across the country.
A new criminal justice initiative today released a study showing that 200 or more wrongful convictions have been thrown out since 1989 in California, costing those convicted more than 1,300 years of freedom and taxpayers $129 million.
The last few months leading up to an election can be a critical, political game changer. One right or one wrong move can quickly change a candidate’s standing at the polls. New UC Berkeley research suggests that judges who are elected, rather than appointed, respond to this political pressure by handing down more severe criminal sentences – as much as 10 percent longer –in the last three months before an election compared with the beginning of their terms.
Contrary to what police, politicians and the public believe, research by a University of California, Riverside criminologist has found that the state's three-strikes law has done nothing to reduce the crime rate.
A new book by a retired faculty member in the Western Illinois University School of Law Enforcement and Justice Administration (LEJA) focuses on the importance of voting. According to LEJA Professor Emeritus Clyde Cronkhite, "Law Enforcement and Justice Administration: Strategies for the 21st Century" (published by Jones & Bartlett Learning), in the republic form of government, laws and how they are enforced are meant to be a reflection of the will of the majority.
Virginia Tech human development research studies how incarcedation affects the inmate's family.
In 2009, U.S. Army sergeant John Russell killed five fellow soldiers at a clinic in Iraq. His defense team has been telling his story ever since. Now, an exclusive interview presents the other side.
Adolescents who are tasered by law enforcement officers do not appear to be at higher risk for serious injury than adults, according to new a new study from Wake Forest Baptist Medical Center researchers.
A free high-tech tool to combat the wildlife poaching crisis was offered to grassroots rangers by a consortium of conservation organizations at the World Conservation Congress.
Black women in poor neighborhoods have faced increasing violence because public policy has focused on unconditional punishment, not prevention, according to a new book by a public policy expert at the University of Illinois at Chicago.
A scientific instrument featured on CSI and CSI: Miami for instant fingerprint analysis is forging another life in real-world medicine, helping during brain surgery and ensuring that cancer patients get effective doses of chemotherapy, a scientist said here today at the 244th National Meeting & Exposition of the American Chemical Society, the world’s largest scientific society.
A symposium that showcases chemistry’s pivotal role in righting some of the highest-profile cases of innocent people proven guilty unfolds today at the 244th National Meeting & Exposition of the American Chemical Society, the world’s largest scientific society. It features presentations by forensic scientists, attorneys and others who used science to right wrongs, freeing innocent people and saving the lives of prisoners on death row.
A University of Utah survey of judges in 19 states found that if a convicted criminal is a psychopath, judges consider it an aggravating factor in sentencing, but if judges also hear biological explanations for the disorder, they reduce the sentence by about a year on average.
New report shows significant differences in demographics and abuse patterns of substance abuse treatment admissions in rural versus urban communities.
Researchers at the Mandel School of Applied Social Sciences at Case Western Reserve University reflected on the results of an initiative called the Fugitive Safe Surrender Program (FSS) that started in a single house of worship and since spread across the country and touched more than 35,000 lives.
An analysis of jailhouse phone calls between men charged with felony domestic violence and their victims allowed researchers for the first time to see exactly what triggered episodes of violent abuse.
A new University of Houston (UH) experiment takes an unconventional look at the treatment for domestic violence, otherwise known as intimate partner violence (IPV), by focusing on changing the perpetrators’ psychological abuse during arguments rather than addressing his sexist beliefs.
Policies that reward abstinence from terrorism are more successful in reducing such acts of violence than tactics that aim to punish terrorists, suggests a new study in the August issue of the American Sociological Review.
Researcher says states with stricter gun laws report fewer deaths by firearm, but Internet availability can undermine that.
A new study by the University of Chicago, in partnership with the Chicago Public Schools and local nonprofits Youth Guidance and World Sport Chicago, provides rigorous scientific evidence that a violence reduction program succeeded in creating a sizable decline in violent crime arrests among youth who participated in group counseling and mentoring.
A new method of drug testing developed by researchers at RTI International makes it possible to detect a wider range of synthetically-produced ‘designer’ drugs.
William P. Bozeman, M.D., an associate professor of emergency medicine at Wake Forest Baptist Medical Center, and colleagues reviewed 1,201 cases of real-life Taser uses by law enforcement agencies but found none in which the devices could be linked to cardiac complications, even when the Taser probes landed on the upper chest area and may have delivered a shock across the heart.
Drug traffickers who want to leave the “game” behind often struggle to do so because they fear loss of power and status, a new study shows. Those who do leave the illegal drug trade often do so because of a complex mixture of issues including fatherhood, drug use and abuse, and threat of punishment by authorities or fear of retaliation. Researchers concluded that traffickers need ways that allow them to leave the drug business without surrendering their entire identity.
A Kansas State University researcher is finding that racial profiling can involve an additional factor: gender. The researcher is analyzing police actions during routine traffic stops to understand how race and gender are connected.
Two experts discuss how to keep rural teens involved in the community this summer, turning them into productive citizens.
Three faculty members of Florida State University’s College of Criminology and Criminal Justice — Kevin Beaver, Abigail Fagan and Brian Stults — are among the nation’s most productive criminology and criminal justice scholars, according to a study that uses academic rank to reveal both rising academic stars and the top stars overall.
David Finkelhor, director of the Crimes against Children Research Center and professor of sociology at the University of New Hampshire, is available to provide expert commentary during the child sexual abuse trial of former Penn State football coach Jerry Sandusky.
Only a quarter of all reported cases of child abuse are found to have sufficient evidence to take action, with higher-income children in rural areas more likely than their urban counterparts to have a report of child abuse substantiated, according to new research from the Carsey Institute at the University of New Hampshire.
Of approximately 9,000 executions that took place from 1900 to 2011, 270 of them involved some problem, according to a study by Amherst College professor Austin Sarat, who created a database of all the “departures from the protocol of killing someone sentenced to death” in the past 111 years.