The Panels

The Academy of Criminal Justice Sciences Conference Day 1 –

Unfortunately there is no way to pick out the horrible panels from the good ones. Out of the three panels that I attended today, only one of them was close to interesting.

The first panel I attended was all about the last statements from death row; whether or not death row inmates expressed any form of apology to family members or to the victim’s families present at the execution. It was interesting to see the breakdown of the United States and how the presentations examined the history of anthropological apologetic attitudes of the Southern population especially. They found that people in the South tended to show remorse more towards the victim’s families and apologize to everyone involved in the situation.

The second panel I attended with the girls was about dealing with terrorism in countries such as Iraq and what to do when the United States leaves the country, and how the government is formed and controlled after the United States pulls out. Awful panel. The last part of the panel presentation was about Muslim radicalization in the Caribbean. This part of the panel was pretty good. It was kind of refreshing to talk about terrorists that aren’t from Iraq or Afghanistan for a change.

Oh, and the final panel I attended with Kristen, we ended up leaving, which is unfortunate because the topic sounded interesting: Criminal Policy and Procedures in Canada. The slides were jam packed with too many graphs (and if I learned anything from Dr. Barnes it is that you shouldn’t have more than 2 graphs or tables per slide!) and the presenter wasn’t doing a very good job keeping all of the statistics separated. We weren’t the only ones that left.

Erika had the privilege of speaking on behalf of a Alpha Phi Sigma member running for the groups vice president position. Alpha Phi Sigma is the honor society for Criminal Justice students across the country. Unfortunately due to funding none of the students from UNR could make the conference. Erika read her speech for her, and we all got to spend some time with the group and how their elections ran.

After we finished up with the events that we all wanted to attend, we went and checked out the mall that was connected with the hotel underground. Pretty awesome stuff. I bought some cheapie underwear and socks for half of the price that the hotel was going to charge me to wash them (NECESSITY!). It was nice to feel comfortable again. :)

We ate at a nice little Irish Pub super close to the hotel and the food was amazing. Rae and Kristen ate a lamb shank, Erika thoroughly enjoyed her steak and I ate every last bite of my seafood linguini. It was super good. We hung out there for a while and drank a bottle of wine before we went upstairs for a movie!

THere was also a student luncheon at the basement of the hotel that we attended. There were a couple of people sitting at our table from Texas. As if the world couldn't get any smaller, they knew a couple of people that are employed with APD from college.

I still have no suitcase; but I will hopefully get it tomorrow; they said it’s usually a 24 hour turn around.

Hopefully tomorrow the panels are better, or I just pick better ones to attend!