Gender, Security and Mobility in

Paris, France

Grace Alt
Majors: French Cultural Studies and Political Science
Faculty Advisor: Professor Naa Oyo Kwate

Gender equality has become an increasingly core part of the international conversation on sustainable societies in the 21st century. Upon an intersectional study of gender, security, and mobility issues, I became increasingly intrigued by the everyday, lived experiences of women in cities. What exactly about a public urban environment makes women feel afraid or uncomfortable, and why are these experiences so different for men? This research is a small piece of the exploration into the aspects that inhibit safety in urban environments when gender is evaluated as a core component. Using Paris as a case study, this project looks at public transportation as a mechanism of accessibility and its influence on gender security. The resulting analysis highlights room for policy change, addressing the key components of spatial environments in metros, busses, and trams that stimulate gender-exclusive fear and restrict women’s mobility.

Crimmigration Politics:

The Development of Converged

Punitive Systems

Luke Hinrichs
Major: Economics and Political Science
Minor: Philosophy
Faculty Advisor: Professor Lisa L. Miller

Immigration policy is not only grounded in the regulation of the size and demographics of the United States population, but also reflects conceptions of national identity, social order, and international relations. Recently, scholars have drawn attention to the ways in which law enforcement and immigration control have increasingly overlapped as the lines between the two systems of immigration and criminal justice have blurred. This paper: explores how immigration policies, procedures, and discourses have become increasingly criminalized; identifies the key developmental periods of the relationship between immigration and criminal law; and characterizes the nature of the relationship between the systems. I conduct a literature review to establish a timeline of critical events in the development of federal immigration policy and identify key periods of criminalization, track the use of “criminal alien” and “immigration control” from 1880 to 2008, and incorporate an analysis of the immigration and crime laws between 1947 to 2012. My study identifies critical developmental events and constructs a new framework for understanding the nature of the converged punitive system of crimmigration.

A Comparative Analysis of

Sentencing Practices:

The United States and Portugal

Hena Mehta
Majors: Political Science and Criminal Justice
Faculty Advisor: Professor Milt Heumann

The US and Portugal operate under two distinct legal systems and retain separate ideas as to how often incarceration should be used as a sanction for offenders. Among others, plea bargaining, sentence lengths, and appellate review, can be argued as the notable differences that lay the framework to better understand why the two countries practice different ideals. This basic framework, I find, ultimately points to a bigger conclusion about each country’s perspective on what proper offender punishment looks like, most especially with drug crimes. This divergence stems from each country’s trust in different legal models that they believe is the best approach in handling offender behavior; Portugal believing in a more rehabilitative model, which implements shorter sentences, resorts to incarceration less, and strictly focuses on offender rehabilitation, whereas the US pushes for the opposite – longer sentences and emphasis on incarceration as the readily viable form of punishment.

Alternative Criminal Justice Systems:

A Game Theoretic Analysis

Adriana Scanteianu
Major: Mathematics
Minor: Urban Studies
Faculty Advisor: Professor Andrey Tomachevskiy

There are many flaws in our current criminal justice and carceral system, but perhaps the most gripping is the exclusion of victims’ input regarding the resolution of interpersonal violence. This research aims to create and analyze game theoretical models of the current criminal justice system, as well as a restorative justice bargaining model similar to that pioneered by Danielle Sered at her organization Common Justice in Brooklyn, NY. Current justice system games were developed using a modified Prisoner’s Dilemma, while the restorative justice bargaining model was created by cooperative modifications to the Ultimatum Game. Although the restorative justice bargaining model did not suit all crimes or situations, this research found that involving both victim and defendant in resolution bargaining can lead to a more just outcome. Results also indicated that defendants facing longer prison sentences are more likely to choose the restorative justice bargaining approach over traditional methods. Much work and experimental practice remains to be done to elucidate how effective restorative justice is in the real world.