Ben Steiner Excellence in Corrections Student Paper Award

This award is supported by generous donations from members and related organizations. You can find information on the donors and how to donate here.

This award is presented in recognition of the most outstanding student research paper. Eligibility is limited to papers that are authored by one or more undergraduate or graduate students and have not been previously published or accepted for publication at the time of submission. Papers written with faculty members are not considered for this award. All authors must be students at the time of submission. Submissions will be judged on five evaluative criteria, including: the overall significance of the work; its research contribution to the field; integration of prior literature in the area; appropriateness and sophistication of the research methodology; and overall quality of writing and organization of the paper. Papers should not exceed 30 pages of double-spaced text. References, tables, and figures are not included in the page limit. A financial prize will be given as part of the Benjamin Steiner Excellence in Corrections Student Paper Award. Nominations are due on August 31, 2024 and should be submitted to Jill Viglione, Student Paper Award Chair, at jill.viglione@ucf.edu. Please put “Ben Steiner Excellence in Corrections Student Paper Award Nomination” in the subject line.

Prior Student Paper Award Recipients:

2023	Amanda Witwer “Discretion and Disagreement: A Longitudinal Study of Departures Under Presumptive and Advisory Sentencing Guidelines”
2022	Yiwen Zhang “Did the Prison Industrial Complex Deliver on Its Promise? Prison Proliferation and Employment in Rural America”
2021 (co-winner)	Shannon Magnuson “Separate, But Not That Different: Restricted Housing Unit (RHU) Reform for Individuals with Severe Mental Health Diagnoses.”
2021 (co-winner)	Stacie St. Louis “Bail Denied or Bail Too High? Disentangling Cumulative Effects by Pretrial Detention Type and Release.”
2020	Sadé J. Lindsay “The Prison Credential Dilemma: How Formerly Incarcerated Men Navigate the Labor Market with Positive Credentials from Prison”
2019	Kendra Clark “Rethinking Prisonization: A Longitudinal Investigation of Adherence to the Convict Code across Stages of Incarceration”
2018	Jennifer Peirce “From necessary to arbitrary: The evolution of prisoner-led governance and shifting perceptions of violence in Dominican prisons”
2017	Michael Gibson-Light “Ramen Politics: Informal Money and Logics of Resistance in the Contemporary American Prison”
2017	Honorable Mention: Matthew Clair “Resources, Navigation, and Punishment in the Criminal Courts”
2016	Elisa Toman “Extending research on the victim-offender overlap: Linking prison misconduct and in-prison victimization”
2016	Honorable Mention: Timothy Edgemon
2015	Katherine Kempany “An initial examination of legal and extra-legal influences of discretionary probation revocation decisions.”
2014 (co-winner)	Jill Viglione “Probation officer use of client-centered communication strategies in adult probation settings.”
2014 (co-winner)	Christina Stewart “Processing and punishment: Examining the relationship between time to disposition, mode of conviction, and sentence severity.”
2014	Honorable Mention: Nathan Link “Longitudinal associations between child support debt, employment, and recidivism after prison”
2013	Ryan Labrecque “An alternative perspective on offender risk prediction: The advantages of subgroup norming.”
2012	Kimberly R. Kras “Social support for sex offenders: How does social support impact the success or failure of sex offenders returning to the community?”
2012	Honorable Mention: Michelle S. Phelps “Reconceptualizing the scale of punishment: State variation in mass probation”
2012	Honorable Mention: Christopher Kelly “Putting the community back into therapeutic community: Examining the role of the treatment group in prison-based substance abuse treatment.”
2011	Ben Grunwald “Questioning Blackmun’s Thesis: Does Uniformity in Sentencing Entail Unfairness?”
2011	Honorable Mention: Christopher Kelly “Putting the community back into therapeutic community: Examining the role of the treatment group in prison-based substance abuse treatment.”
2010	M.J. Gathings and Kylie Parrotta (Co-award recipients) “Accounts as impression management: A qualitative examination of sentencing proceedings.”
2010	Jennifer Lynn Owens (Co-award recipient) “Capital punishment in the lone star state: A county level analysis of contextual effects on sentencing.”
2009	Jeannette Hussemann “The impact of gender and culture on perceptions of imprisonment among prison officers.”
2008	Gerald P. Pezzullo, Jr. and Danielle Rousseau (Co-award recipient) “The criminal construct: An examination of race, gender, and social context on plea questions.”
2008	Patricia D. Breen (Co-award recipient) “Does process matter in military sentencing? A study of the trial penalty in air force courts-martial.”
2007	Derrick Franke and David Bierie “Legitimacy in corrections: A randomized experiment and qualitative assessment of a boot camp and prison”
2006	Patrice K. Morris “Imprisoned in Jamaica: An exploratory analysis of inmate adjustment to prison life.”
2005	Chandra Mullins “Who is punished more harshly? An examination of race/ethnicity, gender, age, and employment status under U.S. Federal Sentencing Guidelines, 1998-2002.”
2005	Honorable Mention: Leonidas Cheliotis “How iron is the iron cage of new penology? The role of human agency in the implementation of criminal justice policy.”
2004	Dae-Hoon Kwak “The interaction of age, gender, and race/ethnicity on juvenile justice decision making in Nebraska: the comparisons of White, Black, Hispanic, and Native American.”
2003	Kimberly Collica “Levels of knowledge and risk perceptions about HIV/AIDS among female inmates in New York state—Can prison-based HIV programs set the stage for behavior change?”
2002	Not Awarded
2001	Brian Daniel Johnson “Judicial discretion and guideline departures: The conditioning effects of modes of conviction.”