Black Shootings, Conflict Theory, and Policy Implications

Recently, the news media has reported the deaths of many young, unarmed African-American males who have been killed by police officers who have not been held criminally-responsible for their actions. These events have ignited social tensions, served as a topic of debate for presidential candidates, as well as sparked the Black Lives Matters Movement. Furthermore, when there has been public outcry staged at peaceful demonstrations, many protesters have been arrested or violently put down by police officers. These occurrences are eerily similar to the social unrest and political movements of the 1960s and 1970s, when minorities and other dissident groups were routinely harassed and subjected to extreme violence by local police and other governmental agencies. Conflict theories provide a general framework that allows more insight into these events

Expanding the Practice of Newsmaking Criminology to Enlist Criminologists, Criminal Justicians, and Social Workers in Shaping Discussions of School Violence: A Review of School Shootings from 1992-2013

Newsmaking criminology argues that criminologists should interpret, influence, and even shape the direction of newsworthy information about crime and justice to the extent that they aggressively make their presence known by engaging the media. This article calls for an expansion in the practice of newsmaking criminology to also include criminal justicians, as well as social workers when it comes to the issue of school violence. Recently, a number of shootings have occurred on school campuses in rural, urban, and suburban America. When these shootings are reported, they quickly become politicized and generate widespread attention from parents, law enforcement, politicians, community activists, and policy-makers. However, what appears to be missing from the discussion is input from criminologists, criminal justicians, and social workers who could bring a wealth of knowledge and understanding to these atrocities. This study used a random sample of 129 items from over a twenty-one year period in a content analysis to categorize the spokespersons used by the mass media to discuss school violence and school shootings

Opioid Addiction in Rural North Carolina: A Criminal Justice and Public Health Issue

Opioid addiction and abuse has become a nationwide epidemic in America. Chief among the states where this behavior is most pervasive is North Carolina. Current statistics reveal that not only are addiction, abuse, and untimely deaths owing to overdose (especially from heroin use) are found in urban areas, but these behaviors are also pervasive in rural areas of the state where health experts and criminal justice officials struggle with the challenges of addressing public health and criminal justice consequences that come with drug addiction and abuse such as treatment, prevention, and punishments, respectively. Unlike urban areas that often have adequate resources to address these concerns, this is not the case in rural areas that struggle with more addicts and offenders than resources to manage this current crisis. Because of the complexity of the opioid crisis and many of the past lessons learned from the crack cocaine epidemic of the 1980s, we believe that society can more effectively address the new opioid epidemic by relying on both criminal justice as well as public health strategies

Police Violence Against Black Protesters: A Public Health Issue

With the increased number of documented cases of violence perpetrated by police against protesters of the Black Lives Matter movement, public health officials are starting to list police violence as a health risk or a public health issue for black Americans. Using several timely theoretical explanations, we explore reasons why law enforcement officers routinely inflict violence against black protesters and avoid criminal stigma. Although police use of excessive force and untimely killings of blacks have always been criminal justice issues, the number of negative health consequences that are emerging after violent police confrontations implicates public health concerns. We argue that several strategies can be used to reduce police violence in the future

The Silence of Female Sexual Offending: A Public Health Issue

The idea that females can engage in sexually predatory behavior against children and adolescence is difficult to convey to the lay pubic since most of society believes the notion defies conventional ways of viewing the gendered nature and roles that women traditionally perform. Despite this, scholars and researchers examining child sexual abuse are beginning to report on silent offenders (women and young females) and their victimizations that have been largely ignored by criminal justice personnel who are responsible for holding sex offenders accountable. We argue that female sex offending is more common than believed and is both a criminal justice and a public health issue. We also argue that until society recognizes that sex offending is not a gendered crime, more cases will escape the attention of both criminal justice and public health systems that are in positions to punish and treat where appropriate

Challenges Faced by the Clayton County, Georgia Public Defender’s Office

While the Sixth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution guarantees indigent defendant’s legal representation in state and federal courts, public defenders’ offices are challenged by the lack of resources to represent an endless flow of clients, attract and retain talented counsel, enlist the help of expert witnesses, as well as deliver the best quality defense. This study addresses the daily strain of defending clients who are not always the most cooperative in helping their own defense, but it also reveals the struggles and challenges faced by an urban southern public defender’s office and what changes need to be implemented to improve the public defender system. In the end, this study finds that public defender programs need adequate funding to fully deliver a quality legal defense

Opioid Addicted Pregnancies: A Public Health Issue

While the opioid crisis in the US has been widely publicized, what has not been given equal attention is the increasing number of pregnant women addicted to various prescribed and illegal opioids which has paralleled the current opioid epidemic. Instead of viewing the matter as a criminal justice issue, many experts believe that the issue is a public health problem because of the sheer number of people who are impacted nationwide, as well as the negative health consequences that affect the mothers and infants. We argue that opioid addicted pregnant women is not a criminal justice issue, but rather, a public health epidemic that requires healthcare approaches rather than punitive criminal justice strategies

Paradigm Shift in Responding to Drug Users and Addicts: From a Criminal Justice to a Public Health Approach

Recently, there has been a paradigm shift in the way Americans have come to view drug users and offenders, particularly those affected by the current opioid epidemic. Unlike crack, this epidemic has led to humanistic and compassionate responses to treating the addiction and processing its users. While once stigmatized, demonized, and punished as criminals, today opioid addicts are treated using the medical model. We argue that the new paradigm has ushered in a public health approach, rather than the traditional criminal justice response that brings negative offender processing with adverse consequences. In the end, we believe that the new approach will be effective in treating and reducing opioid use. However, both criminal justice and public health approaches should be applied