Linkages Between Community Mental Health Services, Homelessness, and Inmates and Probationers With Severe Mental Illness: an Evidence-based Assessment; Normalized Deviance and Social Construction of Scientific and Technical Fraud

Analyzing connections between cultures and organizations is vital to understanding complex systems. In criminal justice systems, individuals interact with organizations various goals, from health treatment to punishment to rehabilitation.
In the technical research project, the team worked with several Charlottesville area criminal justice organizations to construct a complete data set that combined information from each source. The team used this data set to analyze the movement of individuals between different organizations and provide insights to the contributing organizations. The team was able to analyze connections and paths between organizations that could only be found using the unified data set.
The STS research project explores how deviant cultural norms can lead to unethical behavior. Unethical conduct can result in physical and economic damages and harm the reputations of technical fields. Solely asking individuals to act ethically is inadequate. Engineering organizations and companies have often used codes of conduct to try to promote ethical behavior. However, often these same organizations allow actions that lead individuals to act unethically. The research paper analyzes situations where accepted practices seem to have been partially responsible for ethical scandals. This analysis shows that, when cutting corners becomes the norm, the increased likelihood of fraud can be as significant a danger as failures resulting from deviation from standards.

School of Engineering and Applied Science
Bachelor of Science in Systems Engineering
Technical Advisors: K. Preston White, Loreto Alonzi, Michael Smith
STS Advisor: Catherine Baritaud
Technical Team Members: Carolyn Weiler, Claire Deaver, Emily Ledwith, Emma Hand, Henry Bramham, Noah O’Neill