REFLECTION

As a student anticipating an undergraduate degree in psychology, I have always been interested in why people do the things that they do. As I a student who will also be obtaining an undergraduate degree in criminal justice, I am even more interested in why people engage in criminal behaviors, especially if they have done so more than once and faced apprehension. The level of success one experiences when trying to become reintegrated into their community can largely impact their recidivism. While punitive measures taken against offenders can be major deterrents for committing the original crime, the manner in which one is welcomed back into society after their period of incarceration can act similarly to affect the decision to reoffend. The presence or absence of these factors can determine the success with which one is able to reintegrate into their community.

For this particular project, societal perceptions of repeat criminal offenders were examined by comparing social responses to repeat offenders. Some areas of interest that were delved into included employment opportunities, interpersonal relationships, entrustment of childcare, and education.

As with any research, I encountered challenges along the way to finding success in this project. I proposed my project formally for the Community Engagement Center a few years ago. At that point in time, my project was entirely different, filled with big ideas that I thought could be brought to fruition with ease. I did not consider facing rejection from outside agencies after I had already had my project approved by my engagement center. I proceeded to propose an entirely new project idea to my original engagement center and they were quick to let me know that I was perhaps no longer on track with what they stood for. I was pointed in the direction of the Creativity Engagement Center, where the proposal process was entirely different in format and just polishing up my proposal took some time. Having it approved was another thing entirely.

The length of this process also allowed for another change to be made to my (now second) proposal, demanding that I cut back and work with a less varied sample size. I learned how to gain approval from the university’s Institutional Review Board on the fly, as I had never taken any courses with instruction on how to do so. I composed an online survey and distributed it, only to see just barely over a quarter of my proposed sample size respond. I had to accept that my project was one that was adaptable, one that would continue to develop and change long after it had been proposed, and that it was one that would still be able to provide incredible experience in this area. I was able to find something that I was passionate about and pull together other areas of expertise from my departments to analyze and study this phenomenon.

Upon having my research approved by the Institutional Review Board, carrying out my survey, and analyzing the results that came through, I was able to register to present at Southern Utah University’s Festival of Excellence, as well as the Rocky Mountain Psychological Association Conference this coming spring.

After having briefly reviewed the raw data from my survey, it became apparent that the average participant felt most comfortable with those who had no criminal history holding various positions in the community. This was followed by those who had committed multiple misdemeanor offenses, with individuals who were reoffending felons being noted as those whom participants on average felt the least comfortable with holding various positions throughout the community. In further analysis, it was shown that the differences between the general comfort participants had with these three groups were statistically significant. This information was found through the completion of a paired samples t-test, a p-value of < 0.001 for all comparisons.

My intentions to collect data on societal perceptions of those who have committed crimes are based on my belief that successful reintegration will aid in lessening reoffending. By studying the struggles that those who have been incarcerated may be facing when they emerge from their sentence period, I have discovered that a societal system of labeling can be most influential in keeping these individuals from succeeding in the outside world.

The hypothesis for this research stated that members of the community would feel less comfortable with an individual who had been imprisoned multiple times for felonious crimes participating in various positions in the community than they would with an individual who had seen jail time multiple times for misdemeanant offenses. This pattern was continued as participants voiced feeling less comfortable with these misdemeanant offenders in various areas of the community than they would feel towards those with no criminal history. The survey that was administered to document these data points purposely did not disclose the seriousness of the criminal offenses for either the felony or misdemeanant accounts. I did not want to project further ideals upon participants.

In doing so, I was effectively able to label a portion of the individuals described in the situations presented in my survey as felons, misdemeanants, and as those with no criminal history. This label alone, without any further information regarding the fictitious individual put forth for the purposes of this survey, allowed participants to make snap judgments based on society’s view of certain types of offenders. All criminals are viewed negatively, but since most participants were able to note that a felon was a more serious crime than a misdemeanor, felons were judged more negatively than misdemeanants. This effectively shows that a label regarding one’s criminal history can impact society’s perceptions of this individual in different areas of the community. On average, felons were those whom participants felt the least comfortable with holding various positions in the community, arguably due to the title of “reoffending felon”.

The EDGE program at Southern Utah University aims to provide students with experiential learning that can be adapted to the individual. Not only is this type of learning commonly marketed through the EDGE program as beneficial and impactful when one is pursuing future careers, further education, and self-growth, this promise comes to fruition for those who are willing to work hard to complete a personalized project. Individualized projects create the necessity for individualized creativity, responsibility, and skills. When a student it able to have a more complete knowledge of a project in this way, it becomes more than a project, transforming into an opportunity to learn in a way that best suits and betters the student. As EDGE stands for education designed to give experience, projects encourage experiential learning outside the classroom. They involve commitment, interdisciplinary work, and creativity and offer in return knowledge that will follow the student throughout their remaining years of education and employment, if not further. Although EDGE is a requirement for many hoping to graduate from Southern Utah University, it would be in the best interest of the student body to refrain from viewing their project as an added requirement and begin viewing it as a springboard from which they can reach their aspirations when completed correctly.