Dominique Ellis

Parole Boards, Mental Health, and Punitive Legislation: An Exploratory Analysis Dominique Ellis

Mentor: Logan A. Yelderman Psychology Department

Introduction: Our project, “Parole Boards, Mental Health, and Punitive Legislation: An Exploratory Analysis,” has been underway since Fall 2020. I hired Dominique Ellis as the undergraduate student researcher to aid in this project. She has been an absolute asset and joy to work with. Below, I outline the aims and address our progress on each. Materials and Methods: So far, we have conducted a content analysis of over 30 parole board websites and collected data on parole board composition, term length, and commissioner details. We have also begun to pull down parole decision reports from parole boards and download pdfs of the available reports. We are currently submitting an IRB form to request further data from the parole boards and will begin looking up state statutes in the Spring of 2021. Dominique has developed several databases to organize this information so we can categorize this information efficiently. Results and Discussion: We have not yet finished data collection and do not have any results to present at this time. We should have this by the end of the semester. Conclusions: Data collection in this project has gone smoothly, and we are anticipating a very novel and needed contribution to the literature. Dominique has worked very hard and has been an excellent resource and help. I look forward to finishing up the project and the results we obtain.

Awardee and Student:

Dr. Logan Yelderman is an assistant professor of psychology and is a social/legal psychologist. His research interests lie at the intersection of social psychology, religion, and law, emphasizing legal decision-making. Recent additional interests include water conservation and energy management. Dominique Ellis is a senior majoring in psychology. She has taken several of Dr. Yelderman’s classes, including forensic psychology.