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criminal justice

Legal Research with Nexis Uni

criminal justice, law, reference databases September 21, 2020 Library Resources, Matt Dilworth, Research mdilwort

With major cases coming in front of the Supreme Court, laws – and possible judicial changes to them – are often in the news. How laws change or are reapplied in the court system is a significant point of scholarly interest, and an exceptional database for exploring the law is Nexis Uni (formerly called Lexis Nexis Academic). Nexis Uni contains a lot of different types of material – news articles, law reviews, even corporate information – but its main strength lies in legal studies. It is not as valuable for ‘code’ law (statutes passed by a legislature, which are typically straightforward, albeit very lengthy and archaically worded – amounting to lists of ‘don’t do this, or you will be fined … Continued

Crime games: Carrie Mier and her use of board games in Criminal Justice course

Carrie Mier, criminal justice, experiential learning, games March 2, 2020 Frances Yates, Programs mdilwort

This Faculty Feature series highlights innovative teaching and educational engagement at IU East, and connects content to interesting library resources. Our first profile is about Assistant Professor of Criminal Justice, Dr. Carrie Mier. Her teaching and research areas include drug issues in criminal justice, violence and victimization, and criminal theory. Mier applies experiential and service learning in her courses. We interviewed her for information to highlight the use of board games in the Criminal Justice “Theories of Crime and Deviance” (CJUS P200) course. Why use board games in the classroom? Mier’s interest in board games began about seven years ago, with the Pathfinder series. Her collection steadily grew over time until now there are more than 50 games of all … Continued

‘Freedom’ to Read on the Inside

censorship, criminal justice, e-books, free resources, open access, prisons December 23, 2019 books, Matt Dilworth mdilwort

What do you do if you want a book, but can’t pay for it? The answer is obvious – get it from the library. But not all libraries are created equal, and some lack the resources to acquire the material their patrons need. In particular, prison libraries are more dependent on donations of books than public or academic libraries are, which generally enjoy more public support and stable funding. This isn’t a small problem – almost 2.3 million people in this country are in prison; and 47,000 in Indiana. However, recent technological advances have resulted in many states issuing e-readers to prisoners, similar to educational initiatives in schools. This allows incarcerated people to maintain more of the human connection the … Continued

Crime Camp at ALA

ala, crime camp, criminal justice, KT Lowe July 3, 2017 outreach, Programs mdilwort

The American Library Association Annual Conference, held this year in Chicago from June 22 through June 27, featured 144 poster presentations on a variety of topics. Among them was a poster I created, entitled ”Interdisciplinary Community Service and the Library: Crime Camp.” The conference usually attracts roughly 14,000 librarians from across the country, and this was my first presentation in front of a national audience. Nervous? Never! Crime Camp was originally developed in 2014 as an interdisciplinary partnership between the library and the criminal justice department. As it continued into 2015, however, the library sought out sponsorships and participation from community partners as well as the assistance of other departments. I also wrote a scenario for the 2015 and 2016 … Continued

Law and Criminal Justice Questions

criminal justice, reference databases June 9, 2014 Library Resources, Matt Dilworth, Research mdilwort

For the last few weeks, we’ve been looking at how to get the most out of scholarly resources for each discipline taught at IU East, and this week we’ll look at criminal justice. Many of these methods will build off of the general techniques we explored earlier, but some are unique to this field. Like medicine, law is another type of information that you don’t want to leave to the free web. There’s a lot of misinformation and commercial material out there, and it can be hard to determine fact from advocacy. Fortunately, there are plenty of good, reliable tools – and all of our criminal justice-related sources can be found here. Databases like SocIndex or ProQuest Criminal Justice are … Continued

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