Craig Dowdell EXECUTIVE SUMMARY “Beyond those day-to-day tasks of bridging the foreign-domestic divide and matching intelligence with plans … challenges include broader management issues pertaining to how the top leaders of government set priorities and allocate resources.” —The 9/11 Commission Report Although the United States, both in the public and private sectors, has strengthened its…
CHDS Theses: Executive Summaries
Optimize or Die: Implementing Dynamic and Innovative Deployment Models at the Dayton Fire Department
Tyler McCoy EXECUTIVE SUMMARY The fire service is changing at a monumental pace. Over the past 50 years, the fire service has evolved from a firefighting to an all-hazard emergency response profession. This change has led to an increased demand for services and the need for expanded firefighter training. At the Dayton Fire Department (DFD),…
Engaging Children and Youth, Via K-12 School Curricula, to Build a Culture of Disaster Preparedness
Kimberly Hayward EXECUTIVE SUMMARY As impacts from natural disasters continue to increase, large portions of the country remain unprepared for disasters. Although children and youth are disproportionately impacted by disasters, they can also be major assets in preparedness. Reaching children with disaster preparedness information helps build coping skills but could convince their parents and the…
Seminaries in the System: The Effects of Prison Seminaries on Recidivism, Inmate Violence, and Costs
Roy R.D. Dotson EXECUTIVE SUMMARY The U.S. has the world’s largest prison population, and many states are looking for rehabilitation programs that lower recidivism rates, reduce inmate violence, and decrease correctional costs. Rehabilitation is one of the main goals of the correctional system, yet state prisoners reoffend at an alarming rate, with over 76 percent…
You Don’t Have to Live Like a Refugee: An Analysis of Selected Refugee Resettlement Programs to Improve Comprehensive Integration Outcomes in “Free Case“ Refugee Resettlement
Wilhelm Bierman EXECUTIVE SUMMARY Refugee integration is complicated to achieve and hard to measure. Part of the difficulty in measuring the success of integration is due to the lack of an universally-accepted definition of integration by the international community. In the United States, The Refugee Act of 1980 (“the Act”) was the first significant federal…
Regulating Hawala: Thwarting Terrorism or Jeopardizing Stability?
Monika Mali EXECUTIVE SUMMARY Hawala is a way to move money between individuals using a global network of intermediaries. It pre-dates western banking, and despite the collapse of financial markets and regulatory blocks, it has endured for over a millennium. Hawala continues to be employed around the globe because it is convenient, expedient, reliable, and…
Civil Rights Auditors: Defining Reasonable Time, Place, and Manner Restrictions on First Amendment Activities
Gary Cummings EXECUTIVE SUMMARY In recent years, police officers across the country have increasingly encountered citizens who challenge the constitutional boundaries between civil rights and police power. These so-called “civil rights auditors” and “copwatchers” record government officials, including police, with cell phones or body cameras, while baiting or challenging them to cross constitutional lines established…
Reforming U.S. Immigration Policy: A Case for Merit-Based Immigration?
Daisy Garza EXECUTIVE SUMMARY Family reunification has long been a central goal of U.S. immigration policy. While other comparable countries, such as Canada, prefer to admit individuals based on their skills, the United States accepts more individuals due to family ties than any other immigrant visa category. Family-based immigration does not screen potential immigrants for…
Stopping the Next Attack: How to Gain Intelligence from Suspects Detained Overseas
James Fitzgerald EXECUTIVE SUMMARY In broad terms, the United States faces two choices that often compete with each other when a terrorist is captured overseas: bring the person back to the United States immediately to face trial—with all of the procedural and legal protections that go along with such a trial—or hold the person in…
Misinformation Contagion: A View through an Epidemiological Lens
Scott Fenton EXECUTIVE SUMMARY The problem of misinformation in modern society has reached epidemic proportions, with intentional disinformation campaigns and their misinformation fallout becoming a weaponized war of words across the globe. In general, the intent of those behind these assaults is to destabilize democratic states by spreading doubt, fueling discontent, and interfering with fact-based…