Immigration courts fail to live up to courtroom ideals. Around 2009, proposals were offered to address the problems of these troubled courts. My study illustrates the inevitable linkage between court reform proposals and conceptions of fairness and efficiency, and ultimately justice. I ask: (1) From the perspective of attorneys defending immigrants' rights, what are the obstacles to justice? How should they be addressed? And (2) How do proposals speak to these attorneys' concerns and proposed resolutions? The proposals reviewed generally favor restructuring the court. On the other hand, immigration (cause) lawyers remain unconvinced that current proposals to reform the courts' structure would be successful at addressing the pivotal issues of these courts: confounding laws and problematic personnel. They are particularly concerned about the legal needs and rights of immigrants and how reforms may affect their current and potential clients. With this in mind, they prefer incremental changes - such as extending pro bono programs - to the system. These findings suggest the importance of professional location in conceptualizing justice through law. They offer rich ground for theorizing about courts and politics, and justice in immigration adjudication.

This thesis examines the Mexican federal judiciary and the problem of corruption in this institution, particularly related to cases of drug trafficking. Given the clandestine nature of corruption and the complexities of this investigation, ethnographic methods were used to collect data. I conducted fieldwork as a "returning member" to the site under study, based on my former experience and interaction with the federal judicial system. I interviewed 45 individuals who work in the federal courts in six different Mexican cities. I also studied case files associated with an important criminal trial of suspected narco-traffickers known in Mexico as "El Michoacanazo." My study reveals the complicated nature of judicial corruption and how it can occur under certain circumstances. I conclude that the Mexican federal judiciary has become a more professional, efficient, and trustworthy institution over the past fifteen years, though institutionalized practices such as nepotism, cronyism, personal abuse of power, and gender inequalities still exist, tending to thwart the full professionalization of these courts and facilitating instances of misconduct and corruption. Although structural factors prevent full professionalization and corruption does occur in these courts, the system works better than it ever has before.

This research is about urban homeless people's vulnerability to extreme temperatures and the related socio-spatial dynamics. Specifically, this research investigates heat related coping strategies homeless people use and how the urban environment setting impacts those coping strategies. Semi-structured interviews were conducted with homeless people in Phoenix, Arizona during the summer of 2010. The findings demonstrate that homeless people have a variety of coping strategies and the urban environment setting unjustly impacts those strategies. The results suggest a need for further studies that focus spatial environmental effects on homeless people and other vulnerable populations.

Risk assessment instruments play a significant role in correctional intervention and guide decisions about supervision and treatment. Although advances have been made in risk assessment over the past 50 years, limited attention has been given to risk assessment for domestic violence offenders. This study investigates the use of the Domestic Violence Screening Inventory (DVSI) and the Offender Screening Tool (OST) with a sample of 573 offenders convicted of domestic violence offenses and sentenced to supervised probation in Maricopa County, Arizona. The study has two purposes. The first is to assess the predictive validity of the existing assessment tools with a sample of domestic violence offenders, using a number of probation outcomes. The second is to identify the most significant predictors of probation outcomes. Predictive validity is assessed using crosstabulations, bivariate correlations, and the Receiver Operating Characteristic (ROC) curve. Logistic regression is used to identify the most significant predictors of probation outcomes. The DVSI and the OST were found to be predictive of probation outcomes and were most predictive of the outcomes petition to revoke filed, petition to revoke filed for a violation of specialized domestic violence conditions, and unsuccessful probation status. Significant predictors include demographics, criminal history, current offense, victim characteristics, static factors, supervision variables and dynamic variables. The most consistent predictors were supervision variables and dynamic risk factors. The supervision variables include being supervised on a specialized domestic violence caseload and changes in supervision, either an increase or decrease, during the probation grant. The dynamic variables include employment and substance abuse. The overall findings provide support for the continued use of the DVSI and the OST and are consistent with the literature on evidence-based practices for correctional interventions. However, the predictive validity of the assessments varied across sub-groups and the instruments were less predictive for females and offenders with non-intimate partner victims. In addition, study variables only explained a small portion of the variation in the probation outcomes. Additional research is needed, expanding beyond the psychology of criminal conduct, to continue to improve existing risk assessment tools and identify more salient predictors of probation outcomes for domestic violence offenders.

This dissertation examines how violent fantasizing influences the behavior of a brutal sub-class of murderers--mass and serial killers. Specifically, fantasy gives the perpetrator a profane catharsis due to his or her inability to cope with reality. The researcher identified, four common fantasy scripts: (Revenge Fantasy; Sexual, Sadistic and Misogynistic Fantasy; Suicidal-Homicidal Ideation; and Search for Validation through Infamy and Media Attention Fantasy) that more or less, play into the motivations and actions of mass and serial killers. Thus, it is important to understand why and how the killer moves from an all-consuming imaginative space to actually harming others. The methodology used for this research was "ethnographic content analysis" and, to a lesser extent, empirical phenomenology and semiotics. Source materials that were analyzed included: artifacts generated by the offenders prior to commission of their crimes (e.g., diaries, manifestos, blogs, drawings, photographs, and videotapes); official findings of governmental review panels; other public documents; survivor, witness or family accounts; news reports; and work conducted previously by other academics. This dissertation is particularly novel, in that the role of fantasy has not received much critical analysis with respect to mass murder. Likewise, the researcher's examination of current theory on the ontogenesis of moral dysfunction led to an original interpretation in the works of criminologists, Eric Hickey and Lonnie Athens. From a synthesis of Hickey's trauma-control theory and Athens' esoteric constructs of "self" and "other" a more cohesive understanding of the homicidal personality emerged. Essentially, the researcher argues that the intersection of early derailing influences and pervasive life losses result in a fragmented concept of self, which the now deeply unstable individual seeks to validate through violent fantasy and homicidal acts. It is further proposed that these findings may lead to future inquiry into: methods for early intervention and diversion of an at-risk population; and where the foregoing is impractical, better methods of detecting, mitigating the harm caused by and quickly apprehending these particularly violent offenders.

The United States prison population is rapidly rising. Consequently, more families are losing loved ones to the system. While many researchers have focused on women of incarcerated men and children of incarcerated parents, none have looked at the partners of incarcerated women. This paper explores the issues and challenges of prison visitation for the significant others of women incarcerated at Perryville Prison in Goodyear AZ. It is known that prison visitation is important for supporting and maintaining romantic relationships. It is also beneficial to the prison institution. Visitation assists in social control and high inmate morale; both of which lower the instances of violent acts. However, it has been reported that visitation is a daunting task for the visitors. Many sources of information and data were used for this study; formal and informal interviews with family members and others with prison visitation experience, government websites that contain visitation policies, online forums for family and friends of inmates to discuss their concerns, existing research literature, direct observations, and discussions with scholar experts and prison activists. These resources act as a window to visitation at Perryville. With insights derived from symbolic interactionism and previous research guiding the project, it was found that visitation is a good experience for the significant others, incarcerated women, and Perryville. However, the troubles the significant others have with money, the institution and social support strongly suggest that these men encounter hurdles that make the positive act of visitation at times nearly impossible.