2002 ASC Annual Meeting Abstracts
Meeting | Title Index | Author Index
A B C D E F G H I J K L M N O P Q R S T U V W X Y Z
A
A Bathroom in Brooklyn and a Wood Fence in Wyoming: “Showing and Hiding” Gender in High Profile Crimes
Through a content analysis, assisted by Karen Cerulo’s work on violence (1998), of two high-profile crime cases, this paper examines gender in crimes which involve men. Newspaper accounts of the murder case of Matthew Shepard by Aaron McKinney and Russell Henderson as well as the torture case of Abner Louima at the hands of Police Officer Justin Volpe are examined in the light of recent theorizing of gender and, more specifically, masculinities. These accounts are an instance of, what Bourdieu calls, “one of those cases where the visible, that which is immediately given, hides the invisible which determines it.” This paper argues that while sexuality and race are certainly salient aspects, gender has a more profound influence on the structure of these crimes. Insights from newsmaking criminology applied to these cases illustrates the ways in which news both “shows and hides” gender, while directing attention elsewhere and, therefore, aiding in the reproduction of gender violence.
A Behavior Genetic Evaluation of Family Influence on Friends’ Deviance: Evidence for an Active Gene-Environment Correlation
That friends resemble each other in their behaviors is not surprising. Much (though not all) of this resemblance appears to result from traits that they may have shared before coming into contact with each other. If “birds of a feather flock together,” where do the feathers come from? And why do similar birds find each other? This study used the National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent Health (Add Health) to examine two contrasting explanations for the resemblance between adolescents on smoking and drinking behaviors: a family socialization hypothesis and a gene-environment correlation (also known as a gene->environment effect) hypothesis. Covariance matrices were computed on the friends of siblings, i.e., one score of a pair was sibling A’s friend’s substance use and the other was sibling B’s friend’s substance use. In a biometric model, parameter estimates yield a heritability of friends’ substance use of 64%; the estimated nonshared environmental variation on substance use was zero. We interpret these results as indicating an active gene-environmental correlation, whereby genetic dispositions may lead to a selection of particular experiences, including substance-using peers. These indirect genetic effects may account for an association between children’s family background and their friends’ substance use in adolescence. > >
A Case Study of a Serial Offender From the Criminal Events Perspective
This paper presents a case study of a serial offender who engaged in around two hundred rapes, four murders, and one attempted murder. This participant has recently been apprehended and is awaiting trial in a county jail. The relatively young literature on serial offenders has understandably concentrated amost exclusively on offender motivation, often from a bio-psychological or psychiatric perspective. A more comprehensive understanding of serial offending, however, should uinclude not only offender motivation, but also variables associated with victimization and the social context of the criminal event(s). The criminal events perspective is based on the assumption that theoretical traditions concerned exclusively with offender motivation, victimization, or the social context of crime should be combined to study all forms of crime, and serial offending should not be excluded from this. For this case study data is available to conduct such an analysis. Data sources include semi-standardized interview data, police reports, the participant’s autobiographical writing, newspaper articles, and police interrogations of the participant and his last rape/attempted murder victim who survived.
A Case Study of Transnational Organized Crime: The US/Ukraine Research Partnership
Collaborating US and Ukrainian researchers examined organized crime, drug trafficking, economic crimes, and trafficking in women over a two year period. In addition to some most interesting findings, the project illustrates a host of joys and sorrows related to trying to do cross-cultural and comparative research.
A Cluster Analysis of Urban Drug Markets as Characterized by Arrestees
: Very little work has been done in the area of comparing the characteristics of drug markets across cities. The ADAM program collects data on the characteristics of drug markets in approximately 35 U.S. cites. Using ADAM data, we will construct theoretically meaningful accounts of observed geographic variation in these markets. Outside of the ADAM framework, there have been geographic analyses of drug markets using GIS and ethnographic explorations in specific cities. However, there have been no identification of geographic clusters or typologies across large numbers of cities. This paper will focus on examining the clustering of urban communities by the characteristics of their drug markets. Once these clusters are developed, based mostly on U.S. Census demographic factors, we will examine the characteristics of these market typologies. Based on our earlier work, we will operationally define drug market stability to measure both structural and interactional stability. We will then illustrate how such measures of stability can be used to compare particular drug market types. For example, preliminary analysis suggests that large East Coast cities with historically high rates of crack use exhibit higher levels of structural and interactional stability, as compared to large methamphetamine markets based in growing Western U.S. cities.
A Comparative Evaluation of an Adult and a Juvenile Drug Court
This paper reports the preliminary results of a comparative evaluation ofthe Rappahannock Regional Adult and Juvenile Drug Court in Virginia. The analysis includes several factors, such as demographic data, offensehistory, drug-use background, treatment programs, program costs, and outcome data. The analysis involves individuals at various stages of completion of both the adult and juvenile drug-court programs. Comparisons will also be made with a sample of individuals who qualified for inclusion in the drug court, but who did not participate. The paper concludes with comparisons to other published evaluations of drug courts in the United States.
A Comparison of Citizen Perceptions of Unfair Treatment by the Police in Los Angeles and Washington, D.C.
This paper compares citizen perceptions of unfair treatment by the police in Los Angeles, California, and Washington, DC. We present findings from two related studies of citizen contacts with the police in the Los Angeles and Washington, DC. metropolitan areas. To measure the effects of region, personal encounters with the police, neighborhood context, race and other personal attributes, researchers interviewed a stratified sample of 1,300 households from each of the two study sites. The sampling and survey methodologies were consistent across sites. Three distinct types of areas were examined: census block groups containing mostly (more than 80%) black households, block groups containing mostly Hispanic households, and block groups containing mostly white households. The survey was designed to gather information about the frequency and nature of citizen contacts with police, including both citizen and police initiated contacts. Respondents were also asked questions measuring their perceptions of whether police services are applied differentially to individuals and neighborhoods depending on race and other extralegal factors. Building on earlier survey findings from the Los Angeles study site, we use a multilevel analysis to examine individual and neighborhood factors that predict perceptions of unfair treatment.
A Comparison of Comparative Proportionality Review in Punitive Damage Cases With That in Death Sentence Cases
In recent years the U.S. Supreme Court has demonstrated its close attention to the issue of punitive damage awards in civil cases. The Court has held that excessive punitive damage awards violate constitutional due process guarantees, that an appellate court in reviewing punitive damage awards should sue a de novo standard rather than the more deferential abuse of discretion standard. Furthermore, the Court has instructed courts evaluating a punitive damages award to consider penalties imposed in comparable cases. This attention can be contrasted with the attention the Court has demonstrated in death penalty cases, particularly with its treatment of comparative proportionality review (CPR). CPR requires the reviewing court to compare the death sentence in a case to similar cases to determine whether the sentence is excessive. However, as a consequence of the Court’s disparagement of CPR, states that continue to independently require this review do not implement it in a meaningful manner. This paper will examine the impact of the recent Supreme Court case law on appellate review of punitive damages with special interest in wrongful death actions. A comparison between the impact of this line of cases will be made to the CPR procedures in state courts.
A Comparison of Juvenile Murder Trends in the U.S. and Canada
This paper will compare the Canadian and U.S. juvenile murder rates between 1980 and 1999 to develop a better understanding of each. Initial findings show that the U.S. juvenile murder rate increased between 1985 and 1993 and then decreased through 1999 while the Canadian rate remained essentially constant. The overall U.S. juvenile murder rate was three times the Canadian rate during this period; this ratio was higher for male juveniles (3.6) than for female juveniles (1.9). U.S. and Canadian juvenile murder rates were most similar for juveniles under age 13. The highest overall juvenile murder rate in Canada was for infants under age 1, while in the U.S. the highest rate was for juveniles age 17. While the proportion of U.S. juveniles murdered with firearms increased from less than 40% in the early 1980s to about 61% in 1992, this proportion remained about 20% in Canada throughout the period. A greater proportion of murder victims under age 2 were killed by parents in Canada (82%) than in the U.S. (69%).
A Comparison of the Structure of Adolescent Problem Behavior in the United States and Australia
Past research suggests that youth problem behaviors, such as substance abuse, school problems and delinquency, reflect a single underlying dimension of behavior. However, few studies examine the structure of problem behavior in samples from different countries. This study explores this issue in two representative probability samples of youth (ages 12-17) from Maine and Oregon in the United States (N = 33066) and Victoria, Australia (N = 8695). We hypothesize a three-factor solution, representing three separate constructs: school antisocial behavior, delinquency, and substance use. Confirmatory factor analyses examine the degree to which these constructs represent the data for each independent sample. Data were analyzed separately for youth ages 12-14 and 15-17 to account for possible differences in the latent structure for younger versus older adolescents. Preliminary results indicate that the data may be best represented by two factors; school-related problems do not appear to be distinct from the other two constructs. Implications for understanding problem behavior across cultural and developmental groups will be discussed.
A Comparison of Violent and Nonviolent Juvenile Sex Offender Careers
The overlap and relationship between violent and nonviolent juvenile sex offending remains a relatively unexplored segment of delinquency phenomena. Do kids who commit nonviolent sex offenses tend to also commit violent sex assaults, either conterminously or subsequently? Are some types of nonviolent sex offenses, such as obscene phone calls, more correlated to violent sex assaults than other nonviolent sex offenses, such as statutory rape? These questions will be investigated using longitudinal data sets that allow the tracking of juveniles’ entire case histories, or careers, with the juvenile court. In three areas of the country- Utah and Washington States and Maricopa County, Arizona-case information on juveniles is stored from the first time the juvenile is referred to court (which could be as young as age 7) until the juvenile ages out of the juvenile justice system (at their 18th birthday) and any new cases would be referred to criminal rather than juvenile court. The data sets also permit investigation of some fundamental aspects of sex offending careers: whether there were prior offenses, whether prior offenses were sexual in nature, the age of onset for offending careers, the number of cases brought against juveniles across the span of their careers, and comparison of sex offenders’ careers with other juvenile person offenders.
A Conceptual Framework for Evaluating Community Justice Partnership Initiatives
With the rapidly growing interest in the utility and effectiveness of initiatives that give voice to citizen concerns and enables community restoration alongside public safety goals, it is increasingly critical that evaluations understand the dynamic processes involved in the implementation and maintenance of partnerships between justice agencies and community organizations. The central question behind the research presented is “What are the factors that facilitate and strengthen the ability of community organizations to participate in community justice partnerships?” The paper is based on a study that reviewed the role of community organizations and the myriad of contextual issues–social, economic, political and spatial–that challenge or foster their ability to effect positive change. The presentation lays out a framework for understanding the multiple levels and dimensions of capacity building among justice agencies and community organizations for community justice outcomes. The research is designed as a baseline to begin to establish the correlates of successful community justice programs and initiatives.
A Contemporary Comparison of U.S.and German Homicide: Houston, Texas and Baden-Wurttemberg
A series of recent research projects have examined the dynamics of criminal homicide in Houston/Harris County. These have included comparisons to other cities (i.e. Chicago) and to county-level studies (BJS, 1993), regarding (1) the legal disposition of homicide cases, based upon the victim-offender relationships, (2) spousal sex ratios of killing, and (3) intimate partner homicide risk for women from partners who are not their children’s biological fathers. The proposed round table presentation/discussion takes these earlier projects a step further by focusing upon research conducted during the summer of 2002, via the Max Planck Institute for Foreign and International Criminal Law. This research compares the dynamics of homicide between Houston/Harris County and the State of Baden-Wurttemberg, Germany; areas proximate in geographic size, yet culturally quite different.
A Content Analysis of Sports Entertainment: Why the WWF Stands for Why We Wound Females
The professional wrestler has become a cultural icon in the United States over the past few years and is often romanticized in the media, the public imagination, and by children. Professional wrestling, once viewed as low-income entertainment, has perforated popular culture and has become a multi-billion dollar industry. The target audience for this form of sports entertainment, televised over 15 hours per week, is pre-teen and teenage males, who account for approximately 15 million viewers. Particular focus is placed on the Work Wrestling Federation, the more popular of the wrestling associations, the role women play in sports entertainment, and the violence perpetrated against women. The researcher develops a typology of women’s roles and general male-female interaction scenarios present in the WWF. The research arges that this exploration is important due to the increased role of television in the socialization process and the desensitization and even normalization of violence against women in the media.
A Context for Deviance: Understanding Drug Use Inside Prison
Elements from differential association and social learning theory were incorporated into a contextual model to explain drug use inside prison. Data came from self-administered questionnaires given to over 1,000 inmates in 30 correctional institutions throughout Tennessee, Kentucky, and Ohio. Hierarchical linear modeling (HLM) was used to examine the impact of correctional context on individual behavior. Preliminary results indicated that learning or association variables from both the micro and macro level significantly explained drug use inside prison. A contextual, social learning model of prisoner drug use is recommended for future research.
A Control Theory of Gender Difference in Delinquency
Social control theory has been widely criticized due to its lack of attention to female crime. Despite these criticisms, we contend that there has been no systematic attempt to explain gender differences in crime utilizing a theoretical perspective that remains true to control theory’s fundamental assumptions. We draw on Risman’s (1998) work in arguing that gender inequality is created and maintained on three analytically distinct levels: the individual, interactional, and structural levels. We develop a control theory of gender difference in offending that explains how female subordination originated in human societies, and how it involves greater controls being placed on females’ behavior through gender socialization, interactional expectations, and institutional arrangements. While most analyses of gender inequality advocate increasing freedsoms accorded to women, we argue that this can only occur if the freedoms accorded to men are decreased. If, for example, men are held just as responsible as women are for the care of children and others, we are likely to work to socialize boys to be just as concerned for the opinions and feelings of others as women are. As a result, we would expect crime rates among men to decreae, and for crime rates as a whole to decrease.
A Cooperative Exploration of the Impact of Race on the Legal Process
Research has documented a disparity in correctional trends between Black and White populations. Some literature attributes this difference to differential rates of arrest and type of offense committed. The following research augments this dialogue by exploring characteristics of arrests, charging, and sentencing for Blacks and Whites in Monroe County, Indiana. With Blacks constituting only three percent of the population in this area it is of interest to compare their representation in this local justice system to national trends. The sample used in this analysis is drawn from cases processed in the criminal justice system for the year 2000. This research is unique in that it was initiated through a cooperative effort between practitioners, academics, and area community leaders, following the findings of an earlier task force, which documented evidence of racial disparities in Monroe County. Our investigation has benefited from unrestricted access to booking information and prosecutorial files. A quantitative analysis of this primary data enriches our understanding of racial disparity in this particular locale and allows us to posit some possible explanations for why such differences exist, as well as what we might learn from areas in which we find similarity, rather than disparity.
A Cross-National Comparison of Drug Offenses at Each Stage of the Criminal Justice System, 1990-1997
This paper examines the extent, variation and changes in drug trafficking, drug possession and total drug offences in criminal justice systems around the world between 1990-1997. The Fifth and Sixth United Nations Crime Surveys were utilized to determine drug crime trends. Total drug crimes, drug possession, and drug trafficking offenses were examined at each of the following stages of the criminal justice system: apprehension, prosecution, conviction and prison admissions. The questions that are addressed include: 1) where, geographically, are drugs a more significant proportion of the recorded, prosecuted, convicted and imprisoned crimes; 2) how has the share of drug possession and trafficking offenses changed over time; and 3) are drug offenses more likely to be filtered out in some countries rather than others. Case summaries and means were used to assess differences, and the sign test was used to test whether international trends were statistically significant in terms of the number of countries increasing or decreasing the proportion of drug offenders.
A Dollar and an American Dream: A Time-Series, Propositional Test of Institutional Anomie Theory
In Crime and the American Dream, Messner and Rosenfeld (1994) explicate a theoretical inter-relationship of culture, social structure, and crime in contemporary American society. They assert that the social structure is dominated by economic concerns, while the culture is characterized by an exaggerated “fetishism of money” as the primary measure of achievement. The theoretical mechanisms through which this cultural success goal operates on crime are posited to be both direct, by encouraging people to employ technically efficient illegal means to obtain money, and indirect, by devaluing non-economic social institutions that subsequently diminishes their ability to exert social control over individual behavior. This paper will examine several propositions of institutional anomie theory using state-level, time-series data. The models estimated will investigate the effects of proxy measures of the “fetishism of money” and educational valuation on robbery rates.
A Feminist Critique of Domestic Violence Theories
An investigation of the domestic violence literature reveals two fairly distinct theoretical camps: feminist researchers, who conduct primarily qualitative analyses that reveal pervasive male-perpetrated partner violence, and “family violence” researcjers, who conduct primarily quantitative analyses that reveal typically mild, mutually-perpetrated partner violence. In response to this dichotomy, Johnson (1995) suggested the existence of two forms of domestic violence: Patriarchal terrorism and common couple violence. In the current analysis, the authors evaluate Johnson’s theory as well as other domestic violence theories using a feminist theoretical perspective. Specifically, the authors will evaluate the importance of making distinctions between types of domestic violence, and will provide a discussion of the utility of these various theories in explaining violence among same-sex intimate partners.
A Five-Year Analysis of Participants of the San Joaquin County Drug Court in California
This is a 5-year analysis of the data about participants of the San Joaquin County Drug Court in California from 1995 to 1999. The purpose of this research project is to understand drug offenders’ needs, their views of the drug court, and effectiveness of the drug court program. A preliminary statistical analysis reveals that the gender ratio by average of the drug court participants is 3:1. A striking finding is that African Americans are over-represented in the drug court program. The percentage of African Americans of the county population was 6.7% according to the Census 2000 data, however, the percentages of African Americans who were drug court participants ranged between 26% and 32%. Most of the drug court participants used heroin or cocaine. Statistical analyses are still in progress to test correlations between variables such as race and use of drugs, completion of program, and so forth. Findings of the research will contribute to the knowledge base of drug offense and treatment as well as the research base of drug courts. Further formulation of theoretical perspectives in explaining effectiveness of the San Joaquin County Drug Court in particular and drug courts in general will be explored.
A General Strain Theory of Prison Violence and Misconduct: An Integrated Model of Inmate Behavior
Explanations of prison violence and other forms of misconduct have been dominated by three competing models: 1) the “deprivation model,” first popularized by Gresham Sykes, 2) the “importation model,” first popularized by John Irwin and Donald Cressey, and 3) the “coping model,” first popularized by Hans Toch. We propose that these three seemingly competing models can be integrated under the conceptual umbrella of Agnew’s “general strain theory” (hereinafter GST)> GST enriches the deprivation model by revealing three distinctive categories of strain. GST also encompasses the importation model in hypothesizing that criminal cultural values and affiliations will structure the response to the strains of imprisonment. And GST incorporates the coping model in its emphasis on how social support, social capital, and human capital can blunt the effets of potentially criminogenic strains. Finally, GST is sufficiently btroad to include factors (e.g., emotions, self-control) in the explanation of prison maladjustment not covered by the three main models of prison inmate behavior. In short, GST offers a broad, integrated framework for reconceptualizing our understanding prison violence and misconduct.
A Life of Crime: The Hidden Truth About Criminal Activity
A study was recently conducted in 34 prisons across England and Wales, in which 1,884 male prisoners (excluding sex offenders) who had received a custodial sentence during February and March 2000 were interviewed about their levels of criminal activity prior to their custody. The response rate to the survey was 90%. The questionnaire itself was divided into two main sections. The first concentrated on influencing factors, such as inmate’s lifestyle (drugs and alcohol consumption), demographic, socio-economic and criminological factors, while the second section dealt with offences that had been committed during their time at liberty over the previous 18 months. Detailed questions were asked about the range of offences that had been committed and the frequency of offending. The interviews with offenders also included the completion of a Life Events Calendar. The Calendar was used to collect offending patterns for three offences; domestic burglary, theft of cars and theft from cars, that were to be looked at in more detail. The Calendar was also used to collect in-depth information about the respondents’ lives over the 18 months prior to the survey, to enable the research team to construct a more complete picture of their lives and behavioural patterns. Evidence from the survey suggests that the completion of a Life Events Calendar enables the respondent to draw a more detailed and considered snapshot of their life, which leads to a more accurate assessment of their behaviour. In the case of offending behaviour, this often has the effect of down-weighting original estimates of crimes committed. The issue of the truthfulness of respondents was a major concern before the survey. The research team believed that the majority of respondents, over nine in ten, were able to recall events of the past 18 months both honestly and accurately, despite the complexity and sensitivity of the questionnaire content. The preliminary results of the survey were first published in the 2001 International Journal of Market Research (43)2: 217-40, which was a compilation of Award winning conference papers to the Market Research Society.
A Longitudinal Analysis of Hate Crimes Recorded by Law Enforcement Agencies in Texas 1994 to 2001
The paper presents a longitudinal analysis of hate crimes reported in Texas from 1994 to 2001, as defined by the Hate Crime Statistics Act. Data for the years 1994 through 2000 have been coded and a descriptive analysis has been conducted. The 2001 data will be available in May of 2002 and should add a new dimension to the data set as it will includes incidents reported after September 11, 2001. The paper is predicated on two principal research questions. First, have there been any noticeable changes in trends regarding hate crimes in Texas from 1994 through 2001? Second, are there significant variations in the characteristics of hate crimes depending, in particular, on the motivation for the hate crime. This includes, among other variables, the type of crime, characteristic of the offender, characteristics of the victim, number of offenders, number of victims, place where committed, and geographical area.
A Longitudinal Study of Fear of Crime in a Canadian City
This study compared fear of crime perceptions between the years 1984 and 1994 in the Canadian city of Winnipeg, Manitoba. Our project also examined whether any differences in reported fear were correlated with Winnipeg official crime rates. Fear data came from urban surveys conducted in 1984 and 1994, and involved 1,383 respondents. Police reported crime rates were obtained from Uniform Crime Reports. The data showed no differences from 1984 to 1994 in reported general fear rates, assessed by asking how safe individuals felt walking alone in their neighbourhoods at night. There were, however, substantive and significant differences found for offense-specific fear indicators that asked respondents to assess worry about burglary, armed theft, coat being stolen, being cheated and sexual assault. All of the five offense- specific fear indicators showed increases from 1984 to 1994. Increases in fear were found to be most closely related to the violent crime rate, but not property or other categories. Implications of study findings and recommend areas for future research are discussed.
A Meta-Analysis of the Use of Force in Policing
High profile publicized cases of the police use of force in arrest situations have emerged nationally in the past 20 years. These incidents have heightened concern about the police use of force and have spawned numerous research studies in an effort to quantify those arrest variables associated with using of force. Using a meta-analysis methodology, this paper examines 45 empirical use of force research studies in policing since 1980. The analysis will address the nature of the police use of force, patterns in the findings of these studies, the impact of these studies in policing and the community, administrative and policy implications, and considerations for future research.
A Mind’s Eye on Mental States
“The thought of man shall not be tried, for the devil himself knoweth not the thought of man.” In the criminal law, “mind” is a mystery. It seems for the foreseeable future, it will remain as such. Doctrines specifying the different levels of culpability generally do not reflect the surges of scientific discoveries on mental processes. At the same time, what people intend, think, and believe are paramount to assessing guilt. In some cases, it can mean the difference between life and death. How odd for a legal system to base so much on something about which it seems to know so little. With notable exceptions, the criminal law generally presumes that intentional conduct is the result of a free and conscious choice. The law’s emphasis on free will, however, coexists with some acknowledgment that not all individuals have the same choices available to them nor the same capacity to choose. The law’s differential treatment of actors’ varying states of conscious awareness exemplifies this approach. In the 1960’s, James Marshall proposed an intriguing eight-level continuum of how the law classifies consciousness, ranging from behavior entirely devoid of intent to that motivated by the unconscious to behavior at the height of conscious intention: (1) pure accidents; (2) reflex actions; (3) acts arising from the unconscious; (4) actions resulting from stress, such as panic and hysteria; (5) behavior instigated by hypnosis or other types of suggestive influences; (6) acts stemming from the acquisition of cultural or group norms, or from social interactions; (7) acts that have foreseeable consequences; and (8) conscious acts with conscious intentions. This continuum illustrates that intentional behavior comprises a mix of conscious and unconscious choices; those acts on the lower end are more heavily weighed toward the unconscious whereas those on the higher end are more heavily influenced by conscious elements. Marshall’s proposal of the varying mixes of conscious and unconsciousness thought processes is based primarily on psychoanalytic conceptions. This article focuses on the new science of consciousness, which is devoid of a psychoanalytic frame, as a way of suggesting how it can enlighten the criminal law’s mens rea standards. It re-examines Marshall’s continuum in light of this research and specifies alternative ways of approaching it as well as the criminal law’s current representations of “mind.” Increasing revelations about the unconscious question the validity of our accepted notions of criminal culpability and their historical derivations. Such revelations also conflict with the understandable tendency for legislatures and judges to favor established legal doctrine, however scientifically askew, in lieu of new psychological research that can challenge set paradigms. Regardless, there comes a point when the law must accept the “modernity of the mind” to keep up the reality of a changed world and the people who live in it. If the criminal law can confront and modify outmoded mens rea standards, it can join science with a more nuanced, and more just, view of the human mind.
A Model of War Crimes Perpetrated During the Bosnian Conflict
The recognition by the European Community and the United States of Bosnian independence from the former Yugoslavia on April 6, 1992, was followed one week later by an order by the Bosnian Serb government for mobilisation for war. Between April 1992 and December 1992, thousands of Bosnian Muslims, Bosnian Croats and other non-Serbs were seized by Serb forces and transferred to camps and detention afacilities. There, a number of these individuals wre subjected to acts of degradation, torture and inhumane treatment, and as a result several members of the Army of the Serbian Republic of Bosnia-Herzegovina have been recently indicted by the International criminal tribunal for the former Yuugoslavia. This paper presents the results of an analysis of the official transcripts of these hearings. Content analysis of the transcripts yielded information on a number of specific acts either directly committed, or ordered by officers of the above army. These variables were subjected to Smallest Space Analysis, which provided a visual representation of the inter-correlations among items. The analysis revealed a structure inherent in these acts which has many parallels with work on the crime-scene behaviour of serial killers (e.g. Lundrigan, 2000). A model of war crimes committed during the Bosnian conflict is presented in which the role of the victim and nature of the aggression perpetrated appears to be a key factor in explaining crimes against humanity.
A Multi-Level Analysis of Prosecutorial Discretion: The Dismissa of Criminal Homicide Cases
Variations in the prosecutorial decision to dismiss an arrest charge of criminal homicide or to go forward with the case are considered. A multi-level analysis is provided of the effects of the region of the country, location of the homicide-private residence of the offender or victim, public building, open space, or secluded area-the social characteristics of the offender and victim, their social relationship, and the legitimacy of their meeting on the decision to dismiss the case. Data are drawn from Murder in Large Urban Counties, 1988 (BJS, 1996). Logistic regression techniques are used to analyze the 2,030 cases of single offender- victim homicides. The findings show wide regional variations in the propensity to dismiss criminal homicide charges. Imbedded within the regional differences in prosecutorial discretion are the effects of the physical location of the homicide, its structural characteristics, and legitimacy of the offender-victim contact on the decision to dismiss the case.
A Multi-Level Assessment of Students’ Feelings of Safety: Modeling Differential Effects of Neighborhood and School Social Organization
Few studies of contextual effects attempt to model the effects of multiple contexts that may work in conjunction or in opposition vis-Â…-vis the outcome examined. Methodological advances and newly available data facilitate a study of multiple contexts to differentiate proximal and distal influences on outcomes. Using multi-level modeling and merged data from the Project on Human Development in Chicago Neighborhoods and the Chicago Public Schools, we estimate effects of school and neighborhood social process and structure on student feelings of safety. We hypothesize that positive feelings of safety are increased by higher levels of attachment and social organization in school as well as higher levels of neighborhood social organization. Preliminary findings suggest that significant variation exists across schools and neighborhood clusters, though nearly all of the variation is found within schools. Local neighborhood social organization appears insignificant as a predictor and mediator of feelings of safety, suggesting the importance of school attachment and structure to this aspect of students’ mental health.
A National Mailout Survey of State Level Laws and Policies Regarding Incarcerated Fathers Payment of Child Support Obligations
This quantitative study provides a national overview of child support policies for fathers incarcerated in state-operated prisons. This National Survey of Incarcerated Fathers and Child Support was mailed to: A) The Commissioner of the Department of Corrections and B) The Director of Child Support Enforcement in each of the 50 states and the District of Columbia. A modified version of Dillman’s Total Design Method (2000) was implemented with three time-series contacts with respondents. With a response rate of 88% this study collected a representative sample of responses in major U.S. jurisdictions to questions concerning the number of incarcerated fathers, child support policies, and the agency’s awareness of the inmate child support dilemma. A total of 90 representatives, 46 child support representatives and 44 corrections representatives, from 51 jurisdictions participated in the study. The extrapolated data show national estimates that 15% of adult males incarcerated in state-operated institutions have child support obligations. The study found that half of agencies responding do not know the number of incarcerated fathers with child support obligations in their state yet of the 49 states responding, 21 have a policy in which the incarcerated father is obligated to continue to pay child support during incarceration.
A National Survey of Police Policies and Practices Regarding the Criminal Investigation Proce3ss: Twenty-Five Years After RAND
We know very little about the police criminal investigation process in the United States, and most of what we do know is based on limited and outdated data. Yet the process itself directly affects both the police-public relationship and the workload of the rest of the criminal justice system. To obtain more current and comprehensive information about the process, we conducted the first-ever nationally representative survey of more than 3,000 state, sheriff and municipal law enforcement agencies. Our poster session highlights the final results of the survey regarding organization, patrol officer and investigator roles, investigation management, investigative support, and investigative effectiveness. Our final report is available at our web site, www.ciol.org, which also provides summaries of prior investigations-related research, a newsletter reporting developments related to investigative matters, and a list-serve for the exchange of information regarding the investigation process.
A New Gateway to Treatment: The Criminal Justice System and Drug Treatment Referrals 1992-1999
The percentage of clients referred to drug treatment by agents of the criminal justice system has climbed steadily since 1992. This poster will display trend data from the Treatment Episode Data Set, demonstrating that the criminal justice system now refers a greater proportion of clients to treatment than any other referral source. Point estimates from the Uniform Crime Reports will be used to contextualize this finding and implications will be identified. The data points for this presentation were gathered from the output of an innovative on-line analysis system made available to the public by the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Data Archive at the Inter-university Consortium for Political and Social Research. This system which is freely available (at http://www.iscpsr.umich.edu/SAMHDA/das.html) allows researchers to rapidly analyze large datasets on the World Wide Web without downloading files or relying on specialized statistical software. The poster will identify other datasets of interest to criminologists available on this system and illustrate the utility of the tool.
A Paradigm Shift in Police Domestic Violence Intervention: From Specialized Units to a Full Spectrum Police Response
The advent of grants has been the catalyst for the implementation of specialized domestic violence units within police departments. The vast problems with these units have resulted in a limited and fragmented response system. Literature and practitioners acknowledge the vital role of the first responder or patrol officer but few police departments expend the resources to provide them with the expertise level of a ‘specialized’ domestic violence officer/detective. The findings of domestic violence research have contributed a wealth of knowledge of which practitioners remain largely unaware. Generally, models which claim to incorporate the community are simply incorporating the community of practitioners and the lay-citizen. The full spectrum response model not only eliminates the shortcomings of specialized units it seeks to build on research findings and utilize the first-hand knowledge of the patrol officer and entails training of all police department personnel. An advisory committee composed primarily of first responders oversees the design and implementation of policies/procedures and coordinates the community component. Because every member of a community has a certain degree of accountability for the crime, involvement of community groups, agencies and businesses are essential in the search for solutions and prevention.
A Picture is Worth a Thousand Words: Newsmagazine Cover Photos of Children as Ideology
Compelling photos on the covers of newsmagazines provide images of current social problems and issues. The importance of these images may not be contingent on the article inside, and indeed many who see these covers never read the associated article. The covers may serve as reference points for policy makers and the general public when thinking about specific events, groups and social problems. Photos of children may be a particularly powerful conveyor of ideological messages, because they represent the future for our society. Powerful images of child victims and offenders may shape how many view the crime problem in the United States. This study will do a content analysis of the covers of the three most popular newsmagazines (Time, Newsweek, U.S. News and World Reports) in the United States between 1990 and 2000. Particular attention will focus on the race, age, sex and socio-economic background of the children portrayed, and will determine what types of individuals have become the cover children for social ills or social advances. For example are white females over-represented as ‘innocent victims’ and minority children, particularly males, portrayed as ‘at-risk’ or ‘delinquent’?
A Political Geography of Civil Abatement and Gang Injunction Strategies in Southern California
In Los Angeles and other urban areas throughout the United States, the formation of street gangs and associated violence has reached epidemic proportions during the 1980s and 1990s. In Los Angeles, gang membership increased from 30,000 in 1980 to approximately 150,000 countywide in 1998 consisting of approximately 1,000 gangs (Alonso, 1999). With gang membership increasing, gang-related crimes in the late 1980s and early 1990s in Los Angeles County reached unprecedented levels. Despite this sharp steady decrease in gang crime, strategies to suppress gangs have become increasingly popular among Los Angeles prosecutors. The district attorney’s office claimed that the drop in gang crime could be attributed to the implementation of civil abatement strategies – most notably gang injunctions. There are very few empirical studies concerning the impact of gang injunctions. This research attempts to is address the impact that gang injunctions have had on crime and whether displacement has been a result. A large-scale GIS analysis of crime in and around 24 gang injunction areas in Los Angeles County will be conducted. Secondly, using the crime data and drawing from 1990 and 2000 Census data, this research will attempt to describe and characterize what types of communities are subject to gang injunctions and how certain communities are selected for this action. Preliminary findings suggest that characteristics of the surrounding community can influence the implementation of an injunction against an adjacent gang.
A Pooled Cross- Sectional Time Series Analysis of State Corrections Expenditures From 1974 to 1996
The dramatic increase in American state prison populations over the last three decades has sparked considerable research interest. Numerous studies have examined variation in prison populations. However, few have examined variation in state corrections budgets, and none have studied annual changes in state corrections expenditures both over time and across states. The present study uses pooled cross- sectional time series statistical models to assess the roles of economics, social demographics, crime, and partisan politics in explaining variation in annual, state-level corrections expenditures for the fifty American states from 1974 to 1996. Results suggest that crime, demographics, state budgetary pressures and partisan politics all play a role in determining variation in state correctional expenditures across states and over time.
A Portrait of Reentry in Maryland
In 2001, The Urban Institute embarked upon a multi-year, multi-state study of prisoner reentry entitled, Returning Home:Understanding the Challenges of Prisoner Reentry. The pilot was launched in March of 2002 in the State of Maryland, where over half of released prisoners who were sentenced to greater than one year return to the City of Baltimore. The dense concentration of released prisoners in Baltimore City reflects a nationwide trend of released prisoners being increasingly concentrated in a few geographic areas. In 1998, almost 50 percent of released prisoners returned to just five states. Within states, more and more prisoners are returning to counties that contain the central city of a metropolitan area. In 1996, about two-thirds of the 500,000 released prisoners returned to these “core counties”- up from 50 percent of the 220,000 releases in 1984 (Lynch and Sabol 2001). This trend suggests that a greater number and higher concentration of prisoners are returning to metropolitan areas like Baltimore City. The reentry process may be affected not only by individual characteristics, but also by the characteristics of the place to which released prisoners return, particularly in neighborhoods to which a large number of prisoners return. As part of Returning Home, we will examine the importance of place in prisoner reentry by looking at state-level, city-level and neighborhood-level data for each of our study states. The results will be compiled into a monograph for each state. We propose to present the monograph from our pilot study state, entitled A Portrait of Reentry in Maryland, at the 2002 American Society of Criminology Conference in November. The Maryland portrait is due to be completed by June 2002. A Portrait of Reentry in Maryland will complement the other data collected as part of our full research strategy. Primary data collection for Returning Home includes interviews with prisoners before and after they are released, interviews with family members of prisoners once before and once after the inmate’s release, focus groups in neighborhoods to which large numbers of prisoners return, and interviews with key community stakeholders and local and state policymakers. The Maryland Department of Public Safety and Correctional Services (MDPSCS) will provide administrative records and additional data for the sample. The portrait paper will supplement the largely predictive focus of these data collection strategies with a descriptive picture of reentry in Maryland. The portrait paper will describe the what, why, who and where of reentry in Maryland, beginning with background information on the State of Maryland’s sentencing statutes, philosophies, and practices — including incarceration and release policies and practices. Using data provided by MDPSCS, we will provide an overview of all prisoners (who were sentenced to greater than one year) released from Maryland State prisons during the 2001 calendar year and returned to Maryland. As well as describing demographics and conditions of release, we will describe where in Maryland these prisoners return. Neighborhood maps will be included in these portraits to reflect the flow of prisoners leaving prison and returning home to specific areas within the City of Baltimore. In addition to providing a general overview of the reentry phenomenon in Maryland, the portrait paper is an opportunity to explore the neighborhood to which a prisoner returns and how the characteristics of the neighborhood may affect his or her reentry process. As mentioned above, the majority of released prisoners in Maryland return to Baltimore City. A preliminary look at the MDPSCS data suggests that releasees may be even more concentrated in a small number of neighborhoods within Baltimore. We will look at the economic and social conditions of Baltimore City as a whole, as well as those in neighborhoods that are absorbing a large number of released prisoners. A detailed list of indicators to be used and data sources follows. References Lynch, J., Sabol, W. 2001. Prisoner Reentry in Perspective. Crime Policy Report, vol. 3. Washington, D.C.: Urban Institute Press.
A Portrayal of Gay and Lesbian Battering in Contemporary Abuse Textbooks: A Content Analysis
Teaching a family violence course within a criminal justice program can be both an exhilarating and challenging experience. Most students have some familiarity with the issues of family violence, child abuse, and elder abuse and are very willing to share their perspectives ont hese issues in class and on writing assignments. Some even share their own personal experiences with intimate violence. Based on my own experience, gay and lesbian domestic violence, or homsexuality in general, remains one of the final frontiers of scholarly review in a criminal justice educational context. When I began the section of the course on this topic, many of my students responded with intrigue and confusion, some not realizing that this type of violence could occur among these individuals. This response from students prompted my inquiry into this issue future. This paper will focus on the coverage of gay and lesbian battering in family violence and domstic violence textbooks. A thorough congent analysis will be performed on the most widely used books in these types of courses. This analysis will center on the scope of the coverage (i.e., is there a separate chapter(s) devoted to this issue?) as well as the depth of the coverage (i.e., the number and scope of individual issues covered in each chapter. The outcome of this analysis will shed light on the further need of researchers, scholars, and teachers not only to research and write about this issue but to educate our students about this growing problem,
A Potential Theoretical Explanation For Hate Crimes
This paper identifies and assesses two fundamental impediments that have been encountered in the study of hate crimes, namely, the lack of a consensual definition and poor empirical data from which to draw characterizations of actual hate crimes. Despite these problems, several statistical trends have emerged concerning who is the most likely victim and who is the most likely perpetrator of these crimes. The paper suggests that these statistical trends provide support for an integrated approach for explaining hate crimes. The paper concludes with exploration of the necessary components of an integrated theory of hate crimes.
A Preliminary Report on the Validity of Self-Reported Tobacco and Marijuana Use in the NHSDA
General population surveys are major sources of social indicator data in the U.S. Oftentimes, there is no other way to gather this type of information in a meaningful way other than asking people about their behavior or their attitudes. The U.S. government has recognized this in using survey methodology to collect social indicator data on drug use in several major national studies, of which the longest running, largest and most comprehensive study is the National Household Survey of Drug Abuse (NHSDA). This paper uses data from the first year of a 2-year study being conducted in conjunction with the NHSDA, which seeks to fill a void in our knowledge about the validity of survey data on drug use among the general population. Several studies have examined the validity of self-reports of drug use with criminal justice and/or treatment populations. These studies have found significant under-reporting of recent drug use as validated by bioassays of urine and/or hair specimens. Unanswered, however, is the validity of self-report in a general population survey. Results from criminal justice and treatment populations, who are much more likely to be involved with drugs, have limited generalizability. The only way to definitively determine the validity of self-reported drug use generated by survey methods is to survey a large enough percentage of a representative subset of the general population using both state-of-the-art survey procedures and collecting criterion measures. This was the goal of the Validity study.
A Profile of HIV/AIDS-Related Issues Among Female Offenders in New York State
At the end of 1999, 21,341 (2.1%) male inmates and 2,300 (3.4%) female inmates were known to be HIV positive in state prisons. The rate of HIV infection was higher among females than among males in all regions and in most states. New York State reported the largest number of male and female HIV positive inmates (6240 and 760 respectively), with 21.5% of the total female inmate population in New York State being HIV positive (Bureau of Justice Statistics, 1999). As part of a NIDA-funded research study, which is examining HIV service and access needs among criminal justice populations, interviews (n=300) are being conducted with offenders at various stages of the New York State criminal justice system. Thirty percent of these offenders (n = 90) are female. Findings’ pertaining to key HIV/AIDS-related issues among female offenders, such as knowledge, high-risk behaviors, violence, health and mental health service access, will be presented and discussed. Implications for criminal justice program planning will also be addressed.
A Quasi-Experimental Study of the Impact of Additional Training on Correctional Officer Turnover
Staff turnover is a perennial problem in the management of correctional institutions. In addition to the managerial issues involved with this level of turnover, high correctional officer turnover has been linked to security related issues such as elevated rates of violent incidents and disciplinaries involving both inmates and staff. Organizational research on realistic job previews and the literature on coping with work stress suggest that increasing the time new recruits spend in training may be one way in which turnover can be reduced. However, relatively little is known about the concrete effects of training on correctional officer retention. This paper reports on the results of a study designed to test the impact of increased recruit training on turnover during the first year of employment in the correctional system of a southern U.S. state. Controlling for the state’s unemployment rate, type of institution, as well as attitudinal and socio-demographic indicators, this study measures the effect of the longer training program as compared to the former shorter training program on the retention rate of correctional officers.
A Randomized Study of the Baltimore City Drug Treatment Court: Results From the Three-Year Follow-Up
This paper summarizes data from a three-year follow-up study of the Baltimore City Drug Treatment Court. The study randomly assigned 235 eligible offenders to either drug treatment court or traditional court processing between February, 1997 and August, 1998. Official record data were collected on recidivism, treatment, supervision, and time spent behind bars through 36 months following randomization. In addition, follow-up interviews were conducted with the stuy participants to measure the relative importance of the different mechanisms through which drug treatment courts might work. Previously reported analyses of the one- and two-year official record data showed that the drug court program reduced criminal offending among program participants. Although the amount of services received by the average drug court subject was not as high as intdnded, drug court subjects were significantly less likely than control subjects to re-offend. The current research assesses whether the promising findings from the first two years of the study persisted through the third year. it also seeks to enhance understanding of the mechanisms contributing to the effectiveness of drug courts. Interview data are used to test the mechanism(s) leading to crime reduction, including probation supervision and monitoring, personal accountability for behavior, drug treatment and other servicrs, and perceptions of procedural justice.
A Re-interpretation of Social Theory from the Perspective of Hermeneutics
Interdependence between theoretical understanding and praxis is addressed as an issue over which the citizen should have agency in public discourse. Criminologists have a particularly important role in reinterpreting plausible theoretical approaches in language accesible to the local community, and in conceptually relating the theory to permutations of political solutions open to address the issues. This is crucial to the field of criminology, for the very nature of the concept of crime is dependent upon the interpretations and reinterpretations to which we subject both our theoretical approach and the underlying assumptions on which it is founded. Our conclusion that the ordinary citizen must be prepared to accept responsibility and to engage in effective public discourse on the basic issues of how crime shall be defined and how we will deal with control locally, nationally, and in a global context, is based on an experimental community forum drawn from our college students in a Los Angeles community. They were persuaded to explore with us just how such public discourse might effectively take place through actually engaging in the forum.
A Reassessment of Minority Overrepresentation in Connecticut’s Juvenile Justice System: Progress?
A major issue facing juvenile justice practitioners and policymakers across the country is the overrepresentation and disparate treatment of minority youth in the juvenile justice system. In 1993 the State of Connecticut Office of Policy and Management (OPM) and its Juvenile Justice Advisory Committee (JJAC) awarded a grant to Spectrum Associates Market Research (Spectrum Associates) to conduct a comprehensive study of minority overrepresentation in the Connecticut juvenile justice system. Based on the study’s findings, the JJAC developed a series of recommendations to address the observed disparities. In 1999, the JJAC and OPM awarded Spectrum Associates a grant to repeat its study and contrast the new findings to the 1993 baseline study. Our study used quantitative research methods to examine police, court and corrections decision-making for Black, Hispanic and White juveniles to determine if and where disparate decisions occurred, and whether observed differences remained when controlling for offender and offense characteristics. Moreover, our reassessment study determined whether disparities observed in our 1993 baseline study were reduced by system actions undertaken in the six year period following our baseline study. The proposed ASC paper provides a synopsis of the findings from the reassessment study.
A Reevaluation of Homicide: Using Disaggregated Data and Spatial Analysis
To date, homicide research has returned inconsistent and unstable findings. It has been surmised that the main reason for this is that most research tends to use large, aggregated samples. Therefore, researchers have been able to discuss general trends of homicide, but have been unable to glean accurate predictors of this phenomenon. Nonetheless, predictors tend to fall in two camps–structural versus cultural. This too poses a problem as predictors might coexist. That is to say that structural factors influence cultural factors and vice versa. The purpose of this paper is to examine disaggregated homicide information in order to ameliorate some of these inconsistencies. This paper examines information from individual homicide case files in the county of Riverside between 1991 and 2001. Specific information such as place of incident, time of incident, relationship between victim and offender, and so on will be geographically coded, and correlated with census block group data. The results found that homicides predictors vary based on spatial location and are grouped within specific areas.
A Reexamination of Sentencing and the Crack/Cocaine Debate
There has long been a debate about the different levels of sentencing for crack and cocaine offenders. The debate stems around the fact that more affluent people are inclined to use cocaine, which they can easily afford, and less affluent people are more inclined to use crack, the cheaper cocaine derivative. This paper examines the relationship between cocaine offenders, crack offenders, and the sentences each type of offender receives at the federal level. Findings, which support previous research, indicate that there is indeed disparity in sentencing between each type of offender. Policy implications are also discussed.
A Semiotics of Detective Work
Despite considerable growth in the industry of police studies, which has done much to enhance our understandings of many of the social and technical aspects of policing, the work of police detectives and the practices employed in the investigation of crime remain comparatively neglected and under-researched. In this paper I want to explore the extent to which concepts derived from semiotics and blended with a more interpretative sociological epistemology can usefully be employed in understanding some key aspects of the work of crime investigators. In the opening section of the paper I outline the literatures on detectives and semiotics in order to identify their respective key themes. I then move on to consider some empirical data from two studies concerning the investigation of homicide to demonstrate how a number of semiotic concepts assist in the interpretation of the data. I conclude by mapping out some of the key implications of this semiotics of detective work and consider how the preliminary sketch laid out in this paper might be developed.
A Spatial Analysis of Neighborhoods, Land-Use, and Crime Rates: Do We Reap What We Zone?
Routine activity theory suggests that neighborhood-level activity patterns influence crime rates, and that the convergence of a motivated offender, a suitable target, and the absence of a capable guardian results in the increased likelihood of criminal events. Further, routine activity theorists suggest that neighborhood land-use patterns are related to neighborhood crime rates and that these criminogenic land-uses influence crime in two ways: (a) by inhibiting an area’s social control capacity, and (b) by attracting particular types of routine activities. This paper examines the land-use crime relationship with three research questions. First, which land-uses have a direct influence on crime? Second, as disadvantaged neighborhoods often have higher crime rates than more advantaged areas, do land-uses mediate the effects of disadvantage on crime? Finally, do neighborhood social characteristics and land-use patterns interact to increase crime? To address these issues, this research uses census, tax parcel, and crime data from three cities, which vary in terms of size and racial composition. GIS and spatial regressive models are used, and initial results indicate that land-use may indeed mediate some of the effects of social characteristics on crime and that some land-uses have greater impacts in disadvantaged neighborhoods.
A Statewide Evaluation of Ohio’s Drug Courts: Characteristics and Outcomes
Drug courts developed out of an organizational need for an alternative to incarceration. These courts attempt to reduce substance abuse and recidivism through techniques such as monitoring, alternative sanctions, and treatment. Evaluations of drug courts around the country are beginning to emerge, and although the outcome results are encouraging not all courts are showing a reduction in rearrest rates. The fact remains that despite the rapid expansion of drug courts, their growing prevalence, and popularity, little is known about the ability of the drug court model to achieve its objectives in a variety of circumstances. The current study will explore the characteristics and outcomes among 7 adult and 3 juvenile drug courts across the State of Ohio. This research adds to the literature by examining the impact of drug court programming on recidivism across jurisdictions.
A Strategic Plan for Crime Prevention Research and Evaluation
In 2001, the National Institute of Justice commissioned Steven Lab to develop a strategic plan for crime prevention research. This roundtable session will include short presentations on the background for this effort, the process used to develop the plan and the recommendations for future research resulting from the plan. The definition used to guide the proposed plan is: crime prevention entails any action designed to reduce the actual and perceived level of crime and/or the perceived fear of crime. This planning effort excluded any programs or initiatives which directly target work with adjudicated offenders, or offenders who have begun processing through the formal criminal justice system (sometimes referred to as tertiary prevention). The planning effort also excluded a wide range of programs and issues which receive significant attention from other agencies or sources, both within and outside the Department of Justice. The plan has the following general parameters: 1) it proposes a mix of both community-wide initiatives and smaller scale targeted prevention activities; 2) it proposes a mix of basic research programs along with specific evaluation projects; 3) it incorporates a call for yearly investigator initiated research specifically targeting prevention issues; and 4) it assumes that many initiatives should consider joint funding with NIJ and other agencies. Time will be allotted for discussion.
A Study of Short- and Long-Term Effects of Family Characteristics on Victimization Risk
This research investigates the influence of family conditions on general victimization risk. Victimization research has typically looked upon the family as a context in which victimization occurs, but has seldom considered the broader significance of the family for determining the risk of victimization. In light of the similarity between the sources of offending and victimization, we believe that the family may be an important determinant of victimization risk in both the short- and long-term, just as it is for criminal behavior. Routine activities theory may help explain how family conditions can influence victimization risk in the short term. Recent developments in victimization theory suggest that family conditions during childhood can have a long-term effect on risk as well. We use the 1976 and 1983 waves of the National Youth Survey to determine whether the family actually plays such an extensive part in victimization risk. If the family does have a long-term effect, then our results have important implications for the development of victimization theory.
A Study on Violence at School in the U.S. and Korea
This study intends to give an overview of what is known about the violent phenomenon around the school and to reveal the extent and nature of juvenile victimization around schools in the U.S and Korea. To better understand the causation of the violence, this study also examine the relationship of hypothesized predictors related to school with delinquent behavior. Based on the general strain theory (GST), this study points to another major source of strain and its effect on delinquency. In particular, as the GST has argued that strains from various sources are most responsible for the delinquency in a certain society, higher education oriented school culture is addressed, as a major source of strain on adolescents in Korean society. This study employs a national sample data gathered by Korean National Institute of Criminology to address the issues above. The results support that school, as the major source of strain, has a direct and indirect effect on delinquency. This study suggests a new direction for the development of strain theory, and implications for future research on GST are discussed.
A Systematic Review of Drug Court Effects on Recidivism
The “get-tough on crime” strategies of the past two decades have inundated the court system, probation offices, jails, and prisons with a significant number of offenders convicted for drug crimes and suffering from drug addiction. Drug courts, first developed in 1989 in Dade County, Florida, have been proposed as a solution to this problem by diverting drug offenders from the traditional court system and its sanctions. Drug courts were designed to use the authority of the judge to increase offender compliance with drug treatment. In most drug courts, the judge closely monitors the progress of the drug offender (generally referred to as a client) and doles out sanctions for drug use relapse, failure to attend treatment, or other drug court infractions. The atmosphere of the drug court is non-adversarial and provides a case management function, connecting drug abusers with appropriate treatment programs. Drug courts have become wildly popular. As of January 2002, there were nearly 800 established or recently implemented drug courts in the United States (Drug Court Clearinghouse, 2002), with over 400 being planned. This popularity may stem in part from the perception that these courts hold drug offenders accountable for their irresponsible behavior (i.e., they are tough) yet at the same time provide drug abusers with access to needed treatment programs. A review of the drug court literature conducted by the General Accounting Office (1997) concluded that the existing evidence was insufficient to draw any firm conclusion on the effectiveness of these programs with respect to recidivism. Belenko (2001) also drew a cautious, albeit positive, conclusion on the impact of drug courts on long-term drug use and criminal offending. Past reviews have not, however, utilized systematic review
A Systematic Review of Psychosocial Interventions for Personality Disorders
I am being funded by the UK NHS to do a Systematic Review of Psychosocial treatments of Personality Disorders. This review will look at treatments in all settings where people with Personality Disorders would be situated. These settings are likely to include prison, secure hospitals and the community. At the moment, my Draft Protocol is being revised through the editorial process of the Campbell Collaboration Crime and Justice Group. Dr Anthony Petrosino (CCJG) has suggested that the Lead Reviewers within the group submit a paper and present their reviews at one of the Presidential Panels, which Professor Doris MacKenzie is organising, during the ASC meeting in Chicago, November 2002. This paper consists of my draft Protocol and following in the next section, a brief report of a pilot study, which I conducted in order to test the Draft Protocol’s robustness. I would present the preliminary results of my finished review at the ASC meeting in November 2002.
A Test of General Strain Theory Using Incarcerated Women: An Examination of Duration, Recency and Clustering
Agnew’s General Strain Theory has been the focus of many empirical tests. Unfortunately, the data used to conduct the majority of these tests has been less than ideal. In particular, these studies have either used cross-sectional data or longitudinal data with a long lag period between collection points. While these types of data are acceptable to test some of the assumptions of GST, they are inadequate to test the assumptions that strain is a proximal cause of delinquent behavior and that strain has a more detrimental effect when it is clustered, recent, or longer in duration. The study at hand uses the appropriate data to test these assumptions of GST. Specifically, GST will be tested using longitudinal, individual-level data collected from a sample of 200 women in a city detention center. The data are retrospective and were collected for each month of a 36-month period, using a Life Events Calendar.
A Test of Turk’s Theory of Norm Resistance Using Observational Data on Police-Citizen Encounters
Turk (1969) postulated that conflict between authority figures and their subjects is more likely when there is close agreement between cultural norms (the law as it is written) and social norms (the law as it is enforced). This paper uses data collected as part of an observational study of the police in Indianapolis, Indiana, and St. Petersburg, Florida, to test Turk’s theory as it relates to overt conflict in police-citizen encounters. It builds upon the work of Lanza-Kaduce and Greenleaf (1994, 1995, 2000) who used police records to apply Turk’s theory to police-citizen encounters in domestic disturbance cases.
A Theoretical Analysis of Motor Vehicle Theft “Hot Spots”: Incidence, Occurrence, Prevalence and Prevention
This study will examine motor vehicle theft (MVT) “hot spots” from an environmental criminology perspective. Three existing theoretical perspectives from the criminological literature will be relied upon: 1) social disorganization will be useful in assessing and understanding the underlying community characteristics that are conducive for creating MVT hot spots; 2) “Broken windows”/disorder contributes to the understanding by showing the role of a breakdown in community social controls and the implications of physical decay in communities; and 3) routine activities theory sheds light on how motivated offenders and suitable targets intersect in the absence of capable guardians. This study asserts that a theoretical explanation for where and why MVT occurs is available by looking at community characteristics and systemic processes that occur to make areas conducive, even prone to MVT. The findings of this study will help generate policy implications, increase public awareness, and be beneficial in the development and implementation of situational crime prevention strategies.
A Theoretical and Empirical Examination of Female and Male Desistance From General Delinquency
Over the past hundred years, many criminological theories have emerged seeking to explain criminal behavior. Unfortunately, most of the early theorists focused on examining male offending rather than female criminal behavior. Within the past decade, life course criminological theories have emerged that address both male and female offending patterns. A unique aspect of life course criminology is its emphasis on the criminal career framework. According to the criminal career approach, desistence is a significant aspect of offending cateers to explore empirically when examining the life-course of deviant individuals. However, patterns of desistence have been largely ignored in criminological research. The little empirical research that has been conducted on desistance from criminality has focused primarioy on males. Therefore, little is known about female desistance patterns and whether there are gender differences in the factors associated with desistance. Using data from the National Youth Survey, this investigation advances previous research by examining female and male desistance patterns from general delinquency. The theoretical, research, and policy implications of this research will be discussed.
A Youth Part as Legal Innovation and Legal Circumvention: Judicial Interactive Strategies when Juveniles are Tried as Adults
This paper bears the fruit of over a year’s worth of close ethnographic observation, attending the calendar day of Judge Michael A. Corriero. In 1992, Judge Corriero established a Youth Part where he could preside over all the juveniles in New York County who are tried as adults (under the 1978 Juvenile Offender (JO) Law). As often as possible, Judge Corriero utilizes Alternative to Incarceration Programs and grants Youthful Offender (YO) Status that prevents the young defendants from being permanently saddled with a felony conviction. Verbatim documentation of the verbal interaction between Judge Corriero and the young defendants imparts rich anecdotal evidence; it will allow the panel audience to feel a part of the unfolding drama of the courtroom process. My research findings will focus on four areas: 1) the social construction of childhood in the context of this Youth Part; 2) the methods and strategies that Judge Corriero has innovated in his Youth Part to accomplish an interactive rehabilitative process; 3) the strategies to involve the young people’s family in the Youth Part; and 4) strategies used to deal sensitively and constructively with the challenges of both male and female adolescent gender issues.
Abortion, Gun Control, Suicide, and Capital Punishment: Prisoners on Life
This research seeks to examine the extent to which demographic and social characteristics of prison inmates predict a prolife stance on a variety of social issues. For the purposes of this research, a pro-life stance is defined as a personal orientation in which individuals seek to protect and prolong rather than shorten or end the life of another. The pro-life scale is comprised of measures of inmate support for capital punishment, assisted suicide, abortion, and gun control. Data collected from 309 male inmates housed in a close-security prison in southwest Ohio indicate that several variables incuding religiosity, ethnicity, education, and masculintiy predict pro-life attitudes.
Abstaining From Drug Abuse: Is It Possible to Win the Drug Cycle?
In this paper I report on findings from a qualitative study of 39 ex and current prisoners who had participated in an innovative detoxification and rehabilitation programs in the Israeli prison system. (IPS). The study focuses on the social support networks of ex-convicts and their impacts on rehabilitation after prison. What factors do ex-prisoners see as important in stopping the drug cycle? How important do they describe social support network in this process, and which social support network do they see as most important in predicting future recidivism and drug use? Results from these interviews shows that there is a need for a continuum of treatment after release from the prison. Interviewees also expressed the importance of their spouse been treated when a detoxified ex-prisoner returns to his family. The study also shows that the motivation of an individual, in the process of detoxification, and rehabilitation, plays a major role in the ex-addicts efforts to avoid renewed drug use and incarceration.
Abuse, Neglect, and Child Delinquents’ Risk for Violent Offending
Over a period of 2« years, 180 children under age 10 were referred to an early intervention program for committing a chargeable offense. A salient feature of these child delinquents was the extent of their involvement with Child Protection Services. An analysis of the prevalence of maltreatment indicated: (1) chronic neglect was far more common than either sexual or physical abuse; (2) neglect often occurred in isolation, but abuse seldom did; and (3) the joint occurrence of neglect and abuse was systematically related to the risk for violent offending, not neglect or abuse alone. Increasing severity of neglect was related to the likelihood of physical and sexual abuse, and the percent of child delinquents with a history of severe neglect increased dramatically as the risk for violent delinquency increased. There were no gender differences in these results. In sum, it was the joint occurrence of neglect and abuse, and the severity of neglect, that was related to child delinquent’s risk for escalating into serious and violent juvenile delinquency. These findings have fundamental implications for intervention programs that target child delinquents, since chronic neglect is associated with causal risk factors for delinquency as well as with resistance to services that would reduce the risk.
ACE — A County Directed Approach to Comprehensive Intervention
Ramsey County ACE is a comprehensive intervention for child delinquents under age 10 who have multiple serious risk factors for future serious and violent offending. A key feature of the program is an Integrated Services Delivery Team (ISDT) at the county level that promotes collaboration across jurisdictional lines, including Child Protection Services, Mental Health Services, Financial Services, and Corrections. The county also contracts with agencies in the communities where children live to provide direct services through a case management model. Case managers with low caseloads (12-13 families) put together a package of services that is aimed at reducing risk factors and promoting healthy development. This paper will review how the model is used to tailor services to children’s needs while retaining accountability for outcomes at the program level. Modifications that improve effectiveness include monthly case reviews by the psychologist and social worker on the county ISDT, setting concrete short-term goals, and conducting quarterly assessments of progress using a standardized clinical measure. Educational workshops on delinquency also help equip case managers to be more effective. Preliminary evidence of the program’s effectiveness will be reviewed along with a summary of how barriers to change increase with the child’s assessed level of risk.
Addressing the Needs of Mentally Ill Offenders: San Diego’s Connections Program Evaluation
Since the late 1980s, inmates requiring mental health services have almost doubled, due in part to deinstitutionalization, as well as the passage of legislation that narrowly defines who is eligible for involuntary treatment. In response to this situation, the California Legislature passed Senate Bill 1485 that provided funding to counties to expand or establish a continuum of swift, certain, and graduated responses to reduce crime and criminal costs related to mentally ill offenders. San Diego County successfully competed for these grant funds and created the Connections Program to provide intensive case management to local probationers using the principles of Assertive Community Treatment (ACT), as opposed to the standard level of service. While this model of care has been extensively researched and found to be more effective than traditional case management for severely mentally ill individuals, it has never been studied with this population of jail inmates. As part of the project eligible clients are randomized to either Connections or the comparison group. SANDAG is responsible for conducting the process and impact evaluations of this project. This presentation will include preliminary findings including a profile of clients, a description of their needs, as well as outcome measures at program exit.
Adjudicated Males’ Modus Operandi Trajectories From Ages 15 to 30
Studies that have explored the characteristics of the perpetration of the offense generally tend to focus on a specific type of crime. This study aims to establish the main types of modus operandi for some periods of the life course and to identify trajectories of modus operandi followed by delinquents. A sample of adjudicated males followed from adolescence thought youth is used in this paper. Five trajectories are identified. Although three of the five trajectories show an upward slope concerning the level of sophistication, most pathways illustrate considerable fluctuations; this observation reveals some disorganization in the modus operandi.
Adjudicated Males Self-Reported Criminality Trajectories From Adolescence to Midlife
There is a large consensus among criminologists concerning the main trajectories of offending: common, adolescence-limited, and chronic or life-course persistent offending. However, the studies rarely go beyond youth and they use samples representative of the population. In this study, we study the period from early adolescence through maturity and a sample of adjudicated males. To identify trajectories, we use the analytical strategy describe in the previous paper. Offending is measured with onset and variety and we distinguish serious and minor offending for four data points: 15, 17, 30 and 40. Five trajectories are identified: late minor criminality, adolescence aggravated criminality, chronic low major criminality, adolescence explosive criminality, and childhood chronic criminality. The external validity of these trajectories is assessed with personality measures.
Adolescent Dating and Anti Social Behavior: The Birds, Bees, and Delinquency
One of the unique positive correlates to delinquency is adolescent dating. Adolescents who date frequently also appear more involved in misbehavior. While the positive association has been recognized, little is known about this indelible correlate. In this paper we test various theoretically derived hypotheses that link dating to delinquency. We view this link as potentially important since dating and sexual behavior in adolescences represents an important life-course transition that bridges adolescence to adulthood. Data for the analyses come from the National Longitudional Study of Adolescent Health (Add Health)-a nationally representative sample of 6,504 adolescents. The relationship between adolescent dating practices and delinquency will be analyzed in conjunction with levels of physiological maturity, school performance, intellectual/cognitive functioning, as well as personality and neighborhood characteristics.
Adolescent Perceptions of Fear and Safety within School: A New Perspective on Social Bonds
Hirschi’s (1969) Control Theory has found continued support over the years, and has been found by other researchers to explain variation among students’ involvement in delinquent behavior, risk-taking behaviors, and drug use. Also, perceptions of fear among students has garnered great attention in light of recent school shootings, and has been associated with increased anxiety, avoidance behaviors, and social withdrawal. This paper utilizes self-report surveys administered in 2001 to a sample of 8th grade Delaware students, and examines how perceptions of concern and safety among students are related to social bond components. School involvement and commitment are integral components to social bond theory. If heightened perceptions of fear among students are negatively associated with social bond components, perceptions of fear may contribute to an increase likelihood of a student’s involvement in delinquent behavior, risk-taking behavior, and drug use. Findings support an association between perceptions of fear and social bond components. However, the strength of the relationships among the components and fear vary. Findings and suggestions for future research are discussed.
Adolescent Social Capital: Contextual and Peer Effects on Behavioral Investment Strategies
In research on adolescent development, academicians increasingly recognize the importance of studying effects of neighborhood and school contexts, parenting styles, peer groups, and the alleged benefits of social capital. However, few studies analyze adolescent outcomes using an explicit conceptualization of adolescent decision-making, adolescent-level capital, or adolescent-driven strategies. Among older adolescents in particular, treating the adolescent as ego is a necessary step in understanding the effects of contexts, the influence of peers, and the impact of capital on adolescent outcomes. Using the National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent Health (Add Health) and multi-level modeling, I explore a multi-contextual approach to adolescent behavior by focusing on the concept of adolescent investment. I test a theoretical framework incorporating interrelationships among adolescent investment strategies in family, neighborhood, and school environments on adolescent behaviors (i.e. prosocial and problem behaviors). I hypothesize that investment strategies are shaped by: existing levels of capital; strategies modeled by influentials (e.g. parents, peers, neighbors); and, adolescents’ perceptions, aspirations, and experiences vis-Â…-vis investment environments. Preliminary findings suggest that higher levels of attachment within each context are the strongest predictors of student investment into prosocial behaviors. The effects of adolescent network structural characteristics are equivocal.
Adolescent Victimization and Offending: Specifying the Role of Peer Groups
One of the most consistent findings from research on adolescent crime is that the peer group is an important determinant of juvenile delinquency, but we do not know whether peer groups influence adolescents’ risk for criminal victimization or whether they affect the dynamics of the victim-offender overlap. This research uses a routine activity framework to investigate (a) whether and how peer groups influence adolescents’ risk of criminal victimization and (b) how peer groups influence the relationships between victimization and offending. The study examines two dimensions of adolescents’ peer groups, their structural characteristics (e.g., density and centrality) and their social characteristics (e.g., the extent of offending and victimization among peer group members). Data for this research come from the National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent Health.
Adolescents Towards Parents: An Evaluation of a Treatment Program
Adolescent violence in the home represents a different, yet important, category of intrafamilial violence. Many of those families are often unnoticed by health professionals and other service providers. Early identification of the problem and providing intervention for those families are necessary to stop the increasing cycle of family violence. The study evaluates the effectiveness of a treatment program in preventing adolescent aggression towards family members. The program is designed for youths who display threatening or abusive behaviors specifically towards family members. Data include law enforcement and Juvenile Court Services referrals, dangerousness and communication skills inventories, family needs referral tracking sheets to various service providers, and client progress summaries for approximately 100 juveniles and 150 families.
Adult Correctional Education Programs: A Systematic Update on Recent Studies
In an effort to contribute to our knowledge of “what works” in correctional practices, this project evaluates the empirical research on adult educational programs from the early 1990s to the present. The studies are rated according to the characteristics of their research methodologies (e.g. presence of control groups, methods of subject assignment, and statistical significance of differences) and their conclusions concerning the effects of educational programming on post-release recidivism and disciplinary problems.
Adult Drug Courts: An Assessment of Program Effectiveness
What began in 1989 as an experiment by the Dade County (Florida) Circuit Court has evolved into a national movement to sentence substance abusing offenders to “Drug Court.” This paper focuses on an evaluation of the Saint Joseph’s County Substance Abuse Program (CSAP) in South Bend, Indiana, a drug court in operation since 1997. Unlike many traditional treatment and justice programs, CSAP views becoming sober as just the first step toward making positive lifestyle changes. The unique and highly structured approach of the progra focuses on education, employment, and community service, working with clients for a minimum of 12 months. In our process evaluation, we explore several questions including: (1) Have the program goals and objectives been met? (2) Did the program reach the intended target population? (3) Were the services provided as proposed? And (4) What specific challenges have been encountered and how have they been addressed?
Adventures in Developing Risk Assessment Instruments: Research Design and the Impact of Public Policy Concerns in Validation Studies
Risk assessment instruments can be useful tools to assign youth to appropriate levels of supervision and to identify and track dynamic risk factors so youth receive appropriate treatment to assist them with making the changes needed to reduce the risk of recidivism. However, instruments need to be both (1) reliable and (2) valid for the population for which they are used-in this case, juveniles at various decision-making points (e.g., intake, pre-placement) at the Maryland Department of Juvenile Justice. Conducting validation studies lead to some practical and interesting questions: How do public policy concerns get incorporated into a validation study? What preliminary information is most useful to the agency? What validation design makes the most sense for the particular agency? This paper starts with a discussion of basic reliability and validity issues and concludes with a discussion of various issues pertaining to conducting validation studies when working with government agencies that have multiple and sometimes competing concerns.
Adverse Effects of Sanctions
Defiance-theory (Sherman, 1993) offers an explanation for the adverse effects of criminal sanctions. Instead of focussing on the instrumental features of sanctions or the characteristics of offenders, the main concern of defiance-theory is the interaction between offender and sanctioning agent. According to the theory a sanction will have an adverse effect if a poorly bonded sanctioned offender perceives the sanction as unfair and stigmatizing. Instead of shaming himself the defiant offender will react with anger. Under these conditions a criminal sanction is likely to increase future offending. In this study defiance-theory is theoretically differentiated and empirically tested. Therefore, quantitative and qualitative data about experiences with the police was collected from a sample of secondary school students and a sample of incarcerated youth. In this paper a revised model of the theory will be discussed and some preliminary analyses will be presented.
African-American Men Post Release: Identifying Issues That Influence Repeated Incarceration
Avoiding re-incarceration can be challenging, but it may be even more difficult for African-American men who both experience disproportionate rates of incarceration and the effects of racism. A descriptive, exploratory study was conducted exploring subjectivity, agency and masculinity as described by 17 formerly incarcerated African-American men. Post structuralist theories of gendered subjectivity, anti-racism, and Bourdieu’s theory of habitus were used to understand how African-American men understood their experiences during and following incarceration, and how incarceration influenced their functioning in families, kinship groups, and communities following incarceration. One area explored was what contributed to study participants’ inability to remain out of prison. The inability to find a meaningful, living wage, and steady employment was cited as contributing to returning to a criminal lifestyle. The inability to secure adequate housing, the need for assistance in organizing one’s daily life activities around community corrections and employment requirements, and a lack of sustained and ongoing counseling by men of color about drug use and lifestyle choices were other barriers that study participants thought contributed to recidivistic behaviors. Implications for policy development, and implications for individual, family and community health will be presented.
After-School Programs: Does Structure Matter?
Previous research has indicated that the grouping of high-risk youth in unstructured programs can have detrimental effects on delinquency and other problem behaviors. This paper examines program structure and whether the level of structure (high, medium or low) is related to delinquency and other problem behaviors as previous research had suggested. Using data from the Maryland After-School Community Grant Program, this paper examines the level of structure for 14 after-school programs participating in two consecutive years of program observations. This paper details the changes in the level of structure for these programs from observation year one to observation year two. Finally, this paper explores the relationship between the level of program structure and the level of problem behaviors for 29 after-school programs (14 programs with two years of program observations and 15 programs with one year of program observations).
Against Criminal Justice: Ideological Struggles, Political Battlefields and the Need for Critical Cultural Criinologies
The study of crime is a highly contested and problematic terrain. Since at least the emergence of the “new criminologies” in the early 1970s, criminologists of the “critical” type have struggled to recondeptualise their subject matter in classrooms, conference sessions and publications. In addition to attempts to break free of the undue focus on “nuts, sluts and perverts”, they have firmly resisted the cultural inducements to become pragmatic planners of the prison-industrial empire. Sadly, during the same time, there was a reactionary trend in the academy; the emergence of criminal justice education. Unfortunately, driven largely by an intolerant public, the need/desire for financial support from the federal and state governments, and college administrators who view students as “customers”, the pendulum has swung toward an increasingly pragmatic criminal justice/war on crime orientation. This paper addresses both the ideological and conceptual struggles over the “ownership of crime” as well as the everyday/night experiences of two relatively young critical cultural criminologists in their struggle to prevent criminology from becoming wholly an epistemology of the State.
Against Criminal Justice: Ideological Struggles, Political Battlefields and the Need for Critical Cultural Criminologies
The study of crime is a highly contested and problematic terrain. Since the emergence of the “new criminologies”, criminologists of the “critical” type have struggled to reconceptualise their subject matter in classrooms, conference sessions and publications. In addition to attempts to break free of the undue focus on “nuts, sluts and perverts”, they have firmly resisted the cultural inducements to become pragmatic planners of the prison industrial empire. Sadly, during the same time, there was a reactionary trend in the academy; the emergence of criminal justice education. Unfortunately, driven largely by an intolerant public, the need/desire for financial support from the federal and state governments, and college administrators who view students as “customers”, the pendulum has swung toward an increasingly pragmatic criminal justice/war on crime orientation. This paper addresses both the ideological and conceptual struggles over the “ownership of crime” as well as the everyday/night experiences of a relatively young critical cultural criminologists in his struggle to prevent criminology from becoming wholly a State epistemology.
Age and Homicide: Evidence for Persisting Self-Help “Honor” Institutions Among White Southerners and American Indians
Aggregate analyses of homicide conducted by many authors at city, county, and state levels illustrate that both structural variables (e.g., poverty, inequality, and education) and regional variables (that are used as proxies for “subcultures of violence or honor”) are significant predictors of interpersonal violence. Other studies have shown that a large proportion of cases involving interpersonal violence are dispute-related (rather than predatory), and thus are related to the types of institutions available for individuals to resolve disputes peacefully. FBI homicide data are used to analyze the relationship of age and dispute-related violence among White and Native American males from different cultural regions of the United States. Poisson regression is used to test the specific hypothesis that regional institutions of social control influence age-specific homicide rates. Results show that dispute-related homicides do vary with age-older males from areas identified by historians as having strong honor institutions relative to peacemaking institutions are more likely to be homicide offenders. The relationship between honor institutions and the emergence of third-party peacemaking institutions is discussed, and competing hypotheses are evaluated for explaining age variation and regional patterns of violence.
Aggressive Behaviour in a Public Setting: The Influences of Provocation and Personality on the Decision-Making Process
In most integrative criminological research the actual empirical link between the community level and the individual level is not addressed directly. It has been suggested by some that the link between levels of analysis is the difference between individuals in their perception of behavioural alternatives, when faced with temptations and provocations. This hypothetical “perception of alternatives” link has never been addressed in an empirical way due to considerable methodological problems. In this paper I present findings from a study on 200 males (18 to 22 years of age) that was designed to explore differences (between people) in perception of alternatives when faced with the same provocation in a public setting. This is a three level study (community, situational and individual characteristics) but I will focus here on the situational level and the individual. Aggressive behaviour in a public setting is, therefore, explained in terms of the level of provocation and in terms of some key individual variables like self-control, personality, guilt etc. The results suggest that there are three different types of people. Inactive group, they seem to be more or less immune to the provocation level and remain passive throughout. Reactive group, they will react violently when faced with overt aggression. Proactive group, they seem to respond in a linear relationship to the level of provocation (they start to increase their violent responses as soon as the provocation level increases). I will present findings regarding these three groups and will explain them with references to some key individualistic variables.
Aging Inmates: A Convergence of Trends in the American Criminal Justice System
During the last 30 years, longer prison sentences and reductions in the use of parole have resulted in rapidly expanding numbers of offenders within the American correctional system. Today’s corrections system must deal not only with increased numbers of offenders but an increased variety of offenders as well. One such category of “special needs” offenders are elderly inmates. Inmates who reach “old age” present unique management challenges as they experience unique adjustments and accommodations to prison life. Of particular relevance to policy makers is the basic question: what is to be done with this special population that represents a strain on the resources available in the American correctional system? Some have advocated the early release or medical release of those “elderly” inmates who no longer pose a threat to society. However, victim advocacy groups and state and federal correctional policy indicate that early release is not the predominate trend. Insights gleaned from gerontology will be used to assess various programs and policies that might benefit both the “older” inmate and society as a whole.
AIDS and Family Life We Still Climbin’: HIV/AIDS-Infected African-American and Latino Parolees and Their Female Partners Doing Re-Entry
My paper complements research on parole performance of prisoners by addressing how re-entry from prison presents both HIV/AIDS-infected African-American and Latino parolees and their female partners with problems in status transition as well as new stresses stemming from the men’s HIV/AIDS status. Given this, my paper explores how these parolees and their female partners perceive each others’ reactions to the virus and the ways in which they together confront the difficulties of re-entry. Since this paper concerns men’s and their female partners’ subjective perceptions and assessments of their experiences, it is based on the administration of in-depth unstructured interviews to HIV/AIDS-infected African-American and Latino parolees who have been released from upstate New York prisons and their female partners who reside in New York City. My findings offer a window of opportunity into identifying a constellation of factors that exert considerable influence on how parolees and their female partners simultaneously handle the virus and the stressors associated with parole in a manner beneficial to themselves and to each other.
Alcohol and Drug Use Disorders Among Juvenile Detainees
The connection between substance use and juvenile delinquency is well known. Researchers estimate up to 90% of detained youth have used drugs, alcohol, or both, and that many may meet criteria for one or more substance use disorders. The use of alcohol and drugs becomes a disorder when use continues despite impairment in social, psychological, or physical functioning. Some individuals also experience physiological symptoms such as increased tolerance and withdrawal. The literature suggests that combinations of two or more substance use disorders (e.g. concurrent alcohol and marijuana disorders) have much worse outcomes than single substance use disorders. However, there has never been a large-scale study of multiple substance use disorders among detained youth. We present rates and combinations of alcohol, marijuana and other drug use disorders from the Northwestern Juvenile Project. The study sample consists of 1829 randomly selected juvenile detainees, 1172 males, and 657 females, ages 10-18. Fifty percent of detained youth meet criteria for at least one substance use disorder, and 20.4% have two or more substance use disorders. In addition, 45.62% of youth with a drug use disorder also meet criteria for alcohol use disorder, and 80% of those with alcohol use disorder also meet criteria for one or more drug use disorders. We discuss the implications of these findings for treatment and intervention strategies and for juvenile justice policy.
Allocating Discretion in Presumptive Sentencing Guidelines Systems: A Cross-State Comparison
Since 1980, ten states have implemented presumptive sentencing guidelines. Designed to ensure neutrality and consistency in sentencing decisions, presumptive guidelines restrict or require admission to prison for certain offenses or offenders and specify sentence lengths within narrow ranges. Many commentators argue that such guidelines decrease the discretion of sentencing judges relative to both prosecutors and legislators and effectively shift control over sentencing decisions to earlier stages of the criminal justice system. These critics maintain that the goals of presumptive guidelines may be undone by this “hydraulic displacement of discretion” since charging decisions remain formally unregulated and rigidly prescribed sentence ranges fail to account for case-specific factors. However, the aggregation of all presumptive guidelines systems under a single theoretical critique masks the ways individual states allocate discretion among actors. For example, while Pennsylvania gives prosecutors unchecked discretion to seek higher sanctions upon notice to the court, Oregon retains wide judicial discretion to decide between probation and incarceration for marginal offenders. This paper examines the construction of presumptive guidelines across ten states, comparing the ways states allocate discretion within the system. Through statutory and legal analysis and interviews with sentencing guidelines commissioners, the paper evaluates state-level mechanisms employed to retain or restrict judicial and prosecutorial discretion in sentencing, the role of appellate review in maintaining judicial discretion, and the goals of guidelines commissions in allocating discretion across actors.
Alternative Justice Social Control Policy for New Emerging Millennium
AMERICA’S PRESENT CRIMINAL JUSTICE SYSTEM (CJS) OUR FORMAL SOCIAL CONTROL ENTITY FOR ADULT CRIME AND VIOLENCE IN SOCIETY IS COUNTER PRODUCTIVE. CJS NEITHER CONTROLS CRIME, NOR PROVIDES PUBLIC SAFETY, NOR PROTECTS FROM VICTIMIZATION. OPERATIONALLY CJS EXERTS A CRIMINOGENIC IMPACT UPON SOCIETY. EMPHASIZING APPLICATION OF PUNITIVE STRATEGIES AT THE MICRO LEVEL TO INDIVIDUAL “BAD” ACTORS ENSNARED BY THE SYSTEM CJS CREATES ONLY AN ILLUSION OF EFFECTIVE CRIME CONTROL. MACRO LEVEL ETIOLOGICAL FACTORS ARE IGNORED ALLOWING ADVERSE SOCIETAL CAUSAL CIRCUMSTANCES CONDITIONS TO EXACERBATE. AN ALTERNATIVE NON-VIOLENT, SYSTEMIC CHANGE ORIENTED SOCIOLOGICAL JUSTICE SOCIAL CONTROL POLICY WHICH CONCENTRATES ON ALTERING CAUSAL CONDITIONS AND CIRCUMSTANCES FACTORS PROACTIVELY TO PRECLUDE EMERGENCE OF CRIME AND VIOLENCEN FOR NEW MILLENNIUM IS PRESENTED
Alternative Police Intervention: Contributions of Freire’s Dialogical Pedagogy and Catastrophe Theory in Generating the ‘Third Way’
The objective of this research is to explore feasible alternatives to police intervention and conflict resolution. Although there is currently instruction offered to police on conflict resolution and de-escalation, it does not adequately desribe the various underlying mechanisms at play during a conflict. The intended results of my research is to provide positive proactive measures that police officers can apply to various conflict situations that they encounter. Concurrently, my research will provide a description of the “pocket of compromise,” the so-called “third way” described in catastrophe theory. It will also provide an integration and application of dialogical pedagogy. The pocket of compromise, according to catastrophe theorists, is the surfacing of a brief moment, a space, during a conflict that can serve as a dynamic (far-from-equilibrium) space within which to diffuse the situation and end the confrontation in that very instant. It can also be a moment to help create a positive bond between the two disputants that would prevent future conflicts.
American Drug Warriors: Effects of U.S. Military Involvement in Columbian Domestic Interdiction
In the mid-1980s, provisions of the Posse Comitatus Act were modified allowing the U.S. military to participate in drug interdiction in Latin America. Since then, U.S. armed forces have been engaged in the Colombian domestic “war on drugs,” often in concert with American law enforcement. This paper examines the objectives, efficacy, and legal implications of escalating U.S. military involvement in Colombian drug enforcement, and its potential for net-widening militarization of U.S. global drug enforcement policy and practice.
American Jihad: Odinism, Prison Gangs and the Threat of Racial Holy War
While the world is focused on terrorism stemming from Islamic fundamentalists, there is another religious terrorist group that seeks to overthrow the American society. Odinists have emerged out of the skinhead and white supremacist movement as “cultural heritage” organizations, based on Nordic mythologies. They have grown out of adult prison subcultures, modeling themselves after Muslim groups. Many Odinists have a clear agenda of “Rahowa”, or Racial Holy War. Rahowa ranges from simple racial separatism to the destruction of the Jewish people and all those not loyal to the Aryan cause. This paper explores the terrorist tendencies of Odinists. Based on interviews with members of Odinist groups and penitentiary workers, the paper presents evidence that a significant threat exists.
American Militias: State Level Variations in Militia Activities
The militia movement first entered the consciousness of American society in the Spring of 1995 following the bombing of the Alfred P. Murrah federal building in Oklahoma City. Presently, the militia movement is perceived by much of the media and public as a deviant social movement which poses a potentially significant violent threat to the social order. This study seeks to fill the void int he literature by studying, on the state level, the variation in the distribution of militias and in the level of militia groups activities. To these ends the focus of this presentation is on the militia movement’s distribution and levels of activities across the United States during the years 1994 and 1995. Specifically, the project seeks to answer the following question: What differentiated states that had more militia organizations (which conducted more activities in the years 1994 and 1995 from those states that had lesser numbers of militia organizations?
American Skinheads and “Mud People”: Construction and Justification of Bigotry Through the Media
American skinheads emerged in 1980s mainly out of resentment of white youths who were alienated from mainstream society. Their aim is to establish a white power structure in a belief that they are the chosen ones. Skinheads’ campaign of violence has spawned a number of deaths and grieving families across the nation since their inception. Because young people feel a need to establish their identity, and be provided with positive rewards, they become vulnerable to skinheads’ ideology on race and white supremacy. One of the essential aspects in understanding and potentially resolving this phenomenon may come from a rather unexpected area: The media. Young people may be exposed to harmful ideology through television, newspapers, and the Internet. In this sense, society may have a heavier burden to provide youth with the environment where they could receive positive messages on diversity as well as an apparatus to firmly establish one’s identity, especially through the media. Beginning with an overview of American skinheads, this paper discusses justification of harm with the emphasis on the effects of the media. A connection between justification of harm and the needs of youths who decide to join skinheads are also discussed.
Americanization of Criminal Justice in Europe?
Based on a case study of the Netherlands, this paper examines the claim that the public sphere in Europe has undergone fundamental changes as a result of what is often referred to as a process of ‘Americanisation’. Such changes concern, among other things, the political system in which the electorate is increasingly viewed as a marketable commodity and the media, for whom the public service ideal has made way for consumer-based programme policies. Criminal justice is a field in which these tendencies not only come together, but that has itself witnessed developments that are similary described as Americanisation, both with regard to ideologies of crime, criminal law and punishment, and the ‘selling’ thereof to the public through the interaction between politicised issue-making and commercial media logic. The Netherlands is particulary suitable for testing this claim as it has always been regarded as a prime example of a consensual and concilliatory society, with a stable political system, socially responsible and public-minded media, and an exceptionally tolerant penal climate.
An Analysis of Judicial Decision Making Research: What do We Know About the Influences on Judges?
Judges are in a unique position in the American criminal justice system. Unlike many other actors in the criminal justice system, judges are not responsible exclusively for representing the state’s interest. Ideally, their function involves the search and maintenance of justice. In addition, judges have at least as much, and perhaps more discretion than other actors in the criminal justice system. The various factors which may or may not influence a judge’s decisions has been a topic of interest in the literature for some time. This paper examines the empirical literature concerning judges’ decisions in an attempt to determine our current understanding of the various influences on these decisions.
An Analysis of the Impact of Interscholastic Athletics on the Delinquency of High School Girls
Manyu contemporary crime prevention programs such as youth athletic leagues are predicated on the hypothesis that sports can reduce the probability of delinquent behavior either through character development or as an informal social control by increasing the opportunity costs of delinquency. Interscholastic athletic programs are also predicated on similar assumptions. Many of these programs, however, are clearly designed for boys. Do they have similar effects on girls? It is incumbent upon public policy analysts to determine the effectiveness of such programs for girls. Previous studies generally find a negative association between athletics and delinquency utilizing a cross-sectional research design. however, the observed relationship could be spurious if antecedent variables affect both athletic participation and delinquency. This paper utilizes panel data from the National Education Longitudinal Study (NELS) to examine the causal relationship berween female athletic participation and delinquency. The NELS data permits separate estimates of factors that predict participation in various high school sports from estimates of the effect of that participation on delinquency. An instrumental variable approach is used to disentangle the self-selection effect from the subsequent effect of athletic participation on delinquency. Results are presented on the impact of participation in particular sports on delinquency.
An Analysis of the Influence of Sensation Seeking, Religiosity, and Peer Relations on Deviant Inclinations
The present study examines how religiosity, peer relations and sensation seeking relate to deviant inclinations for whites and nonwhites. It is hypothesized that sensation seekers are attracted to deviant activities, less religious and have unsteady relationship with their peers. Further, it is hypothesized that sensation seeking can account for the effects of religiosity and peer relations on deviant inclinations. The above hypotheses are tested using data collected from a nationwide sample of 737 college students.
An Assessment of the Relation of Climate to Adolescent Academic Motivation
Recent research indicates that social support positively affects the social adjustment of adolescents. However, this support is often not present in the lives of adolescents who are not academically motivated, at risk of school failure, and/or more likely to engage in problematic behavior in the school setting. During this presentation, the results will be discussed from a study designed to examine the role of climate in the etiology of academic motivation, which is an early indicator of poor school performance, school suspension, school dropout, problematic behavior, as well as juvenile delinquency. Using a large and diverse sample of Philadelphia Public System Middle School Students (N=7547) this research focused on whether students who perceive their school as a community are more academically motivated than students who did not. The results are then discussed in relation to the development of intervention strategies to enhance academic motivation.
An Ecological Study of the Effect of Race on Suspensions and Expulsions in the Schools
The perception of unsafe schools and the concern for student welfare amongst the public has led to the quick implementation of safe school policies across the nation. Yet, in the rush to address the violent acts of a few, no research has evaluated the impact of the movement on both punishment policies and the civil rights of students. This study examines the effect of ecological variables on the number of suspensions and expulsions at school. It is hypothesized that institutional racism and other ecological factors affect the number of suspensions and expulsions in schools. Data were obtaiuned from the Interuniversity Consortium for Political and Social Research. The major aspect of this research is a macro level examination of the relationship between the percentage of African American students in a school and the number of suspensions and expulsions. The findings support the author’s primary claim that the higher percentage of African American students in school is associatd with an increase of the number of suspensions and expulsions given in school.
An Empirical Assessment of Ronald Akers’ Social Learning Theory of Crime and Deviance as it Pertains to Youth Drug Use
This study tested the components of differential reinforcement and differential association as casual indicators of youth drug use. Data was derived from the National Household Survey on Drug and Alcohol Use (1997). The population consisted of 7,488 respondents, aged (12 to 17). Independent variables consisted of four different scales including Parental Differential Reinforcement, peer Differential Reinforcement, Parental Differential Reinforcement 2, and Differential Association. in addition to these social earning variables, the control variables of Age and Gender were also measured. The dependent variables consisted of three drug-use indexes for lifetime use, use in previous year, and use in past month. The social learning variables were significant across all three models, with error reduced in predicting the level of drug use by 33.5% for lifetime use, 32.9% for previous year use, and 28% for past month use. Differential Association was found to be the social learning variable that accounted for the most variance, with approximately a 2:1 ratio compared to the next strongest social learning variable Peer Reinforcement. Age of the respondent was found to be the strongest indicator of drug use for all three indexes.
An Empirical Examination of Attitudinal Fragmentation in Poklice Culture
Police scholars have long postulated about the importance, and existence, of police culture. While the majority of research has centered on explaining a single police culture, recent work has begun to question the cultural homogeneity of police officers. Using survey data collected in two municipal police departments, as part of the Project on Policing Neighborhoods (POPN), this paper examines attitudes that are said to be part of “the” culture of policing, in assessing the degree to which these attitudes are representative of a single culture or are more fragmented in nature.
An Empirical Test of Institutional Anomie Theory
Messner and Rosenfeld’s (1997) institutional anomie theory of crime has greatly contributed to the understanding of the complex relationship between social institutions and crime. In addition, Chamlin and Cochran (1995), Messner and Rosenfeld (1997b), and Savolainen (2000) have found significant support for the institutional anomie perspective. However, past measures of both the cultural and structural components of the theory have been incomplete. This article provides a comprehensive test of Messner and Rosenfeld’s institutional anomie theory of crime. We hypothesize that the exaggerated importance of monetary success directly increases instrumental crime rates and indirectly increases instrumental crime rates through the devaluation of non-economic institutions. We also hypothesize that commitment to legitimate means to obtain wealth and material goods varies inversely with instrumental crime rates as well as moderating the effect of exaggerated importance of monetary success on instrumental crime rates. We use aggregated data from a nationally representative sample of geographic areas to measure three major latent constructs of institutional anomie theory: the devaluation of non-economic institutions, the strength of non-economic institutions relative to the economy, and the participation and involvement in non-economic institutional roles.
An Evaluation of Chicago’s First Defense Legal Aid Program
State of Illinois law (725 ILCS 5/109-1) allows for public defenders only after first court appearance, leaving many arrestees unrepresented between the time of their arrest and their initial court appearance if they cannot afford to hire counsel. To address the needs of arrestees who are unrepresented by counsel, First Defense Legal Aid (FDLA) provides free lawyers to almost anyone arrested by the Chicago Police Department (CPD). An organizational evaluation was undertaken by the Center for Research in Law and Justice (CRLJ) at the University of Illinois at Chicago (UIC). CRLJ conducted a multi-method study that included a survey, interviews, field observations, and secondary data analysis. The goals of the FDLA program evaluation were to (1) conduct an assessment of FDLA’s current structure and operations, (2) determine the problems they are addressing using several criteria such as the quality of the collaborative relationships, service delivery, ability to reach targeted group(s), and client satisfaction, and (3) investigate what impact (if any) FDLA has regarding the quality of justice afforded the target population. The results indicated that FDLA is effective in reaching its target population, but the investigation into case impact was inconclusive. Challenges to implementing the research design will be discussed.
An Evaluation of Citizen Perceptions of Community Policing Related Activities in Rural Oklahoma.
Much of the evaluation research that has assessed community oriented policing strategies has primarily been conducted in large urban communities. The objective of the present research was to access community oriented policing in a small and rural Oklahoma town. A survey was administered to citizens (n=299) prior to the implementation of community oriented policing, and a post survey was administered (n=275) two years after the implementation of community oriented policing. The survey addressed four main areas, (1) citizen concerns; (2) citizen perception of safety; (3) quality of police services, and (4) quality of drug related services. The data revealed that the citizens’ attitudes and perception after the implementation of community oriented policing were unchanged in most categories with the exception of mean differences in the quality of drug related services, and concerns about residential burglaries. The paper addresses implications, issues and concerns regarding community oriented policing strategies in small and rural communities.
An Evaluation of the Gender Appropriateness of a Drug Treatment Program: What Makes a Program Gender Appropriate
The Delaware Criminal Justice Council received a grant from the National Institute of Justice to conduct a process evaluation to assess the gender appropriateness of a Therapeutic Community model used at the Baylor Women’s Correctional Institute (Baylor) and the CREST North and South TC treatment programs. Baylor is a level V women’s prison, CREST North is a TC treatment work release program and CREST South is a TC work release program housed on the campus of the Sussex Correctional Institution (a level V prison). A Level V prison is one in which the facility is secured and prisoners do not have the capacity to leave. Level V prisons hold people who sentenced to more than one-year incarceration for the commission of misdemeanors or felonies. The evaluation included the use of data analysis on the 1999 key program at Baylor, individual interviews with the women currently participating in the Baylor Key program, curriculum analysis and focus groups with the participants in the Baylor, CREST North and CREST South treatment programs. The goal of the research and interviews was 1. To assess what the participants thought about the program; and 2. To determine if the women thought the programs met their needs specifically based on gender.
An Evaluation of Virginia’s Drug Screening, Assessment, and Treatment Initiative: Preliminary Findings of Implementation and Impact
During its 1998 and 1999 sessions, Virginia’s General Assembly passed sweeping legislation mandating that many offenders, both juvenile and adult, undergo screening and assessment for substance abuse problems. Under the new law, offenders who commit their crimes on or after January 1, 2000, must undergo a substance abuse screening and, if applicable, a comprehensive substance abuse assessment. The purpose of this legislation is to reduce substance abuse and criminal behavior among offenders by enhancing the identification of substance-abusing offenders and their treatment needs and by improving the delivery of substance abuse treatment services within the criminal justice system. Responsibility for conducting screenings and assessments is shared by several state agencies, including the Department of Criminal Justice Services, the Department of Corrections, the Department of Juvenile Justice, and Virginia’s Alcohol Safety Action Program. Virginia’s Department of Criminal Justice Services Research Center has been charged with evaluating both the implementation and impact of this legislation across all agencies involved in this initiative. This paper discusses this on-going evaluation process and addresses how well this initiative has been implemented across the commonwealth and within participating agencies during the first several years of existence, preliminary indications of program impact on offenders and the criminal justice system, and recommendations for enhancing continued administration of the screening and assessment process.
An Event History Analysis of Divorce, Delinquency, and Family Structure
I will use the Child/Young Adult sample of the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth-1979 to determine the effectsof past familial disruption and current family structure on adolescent delinquency. Is the timing of the disruption ore important in determining adolescent delinquency, or is the number of disruptions, or the current family structure. In addition, I will use hierarchical modeling techniques to determine the amount of variance explained by individual families. The respondents are nested within families, and as such share common traits which can explain the heterogeneity of the responses. Also, this study will examine if the effect of family structure has changed much in the past 15 years, by adding interaction terms for possible cohort effects.
An Examination of Academic, Policy and Social Considerations of Correctional Eduction and Offender Recidivism: Lessons for the 21st Century
There has been a serious lack of examination of academic, policy and social considerations of correctional education and offender recidivism. The very few studies that have attempted to carryout such examination, have done so in passing without much attention to academic, policy and social considerations of correctional education and offender recidivism. They seemed to stop at a point where a more detailed examination of academic, policy and social considerations of correctional education and offender recidivism is needed (Hobler, 1999; Robinson, 1990 Mandel, 1963). To fill this gap, an examination of academic, policy and social considerations of correctional education and offender recidivism will be the focus of this study. An examination of these considerations is too important, and too costly to ignore.
An Examination of Levels of Undetected Sexual Offending
Within the past decade, a considerable amount of attention and funding has focused on sexual offenders and their victims. Legislative initiatives, fueled by public sentiment, have been enacted with the goal of protecting victims from these sexual predators. However, past research supports the notion that sexual offenses are widely under-reported, subsequently rendering much legislation futile at protecting its community members. This paper represents an effort to examine the level of undetected sexual offending committed by incarcerated sexual offenders. In addition, it seeks to determine what effect community registration, notification and civil commitment statutes might have on sex offenders’ lives post-release. Consenting sexual offenders completed the survey during their group therapy sessions. This research utilizes survey data to examine how undetected offending effects the efficacy of current sexual offending legislation. In addition, policy recommendations are made in relation to the findings from the survey.
An Examination of Offense Specialization With Self-Report Data: A Statistical Model, Test, and Replication
This study develops a new approach for studying specialization in property versus violent crime that (1) distinguishes this specialization from the general propensity to offend and (2) permits researchers to determine relationships of explanatory variables to both general propensity and specialization. We use these methods to examines whether a range of crime correlates influence the likelihood that an adolescent will specialize in either property or violent crime. We define specialization in terms of the variety of crimes that an offender commits. While relatively few studies use this definition, existing research that does faces many limitations that make conclusive results unlikely. One of these limitations is the inability of available statistical techniques to easily control for multiple independent variables. We employ hierarchical linear modeling to implement our approach with two sets of longitudinal data: the Monitoring the Future study and the Montreal Youth Project. This analysis strategy enables researchers to control for many independent variables and to determine whether these factors influence participation in violent or property crime. We report preliminary results from these analyses and speculate on future directions for specialization research as well as other applications of this analysis technique.
An Examination of the Mediation Pathways From Child Maltreatment to Antisocial Behavior in Youth
There is strong evidence that child maltreatment increases risk for adolescent problem behaviors, including delinquency, substance use, and violence. Researchers now must turn to investigating the mediating and moderating mechanisms that link child abuse to these later behaviors. Using data from the Lehigh Longitudinal Study we previously investigated several factors as possible mediators of physical child abuse in the prediction violence among adolescents. With hypotheses drawn from several social developmental theories, structural equation models examined the degree to which abuse was mediated in the prediction of violence through youths’ bonds to family, commitment to school, involvement with antisocial peers, and attitudes about violence. The model included a measure of family socioeconomic status, as well as youths’ gender and age as controls on violence. Findings suggest that abuse (whether measured prospectively or retrospectively) is heavily mediated in its prediction of later violence and that a sizeable proportion of the variance in violence is accounted for. Extending these earlier analyses, this study will examine a fuller array of individual/psychological, family, school, and peer variables as possible mediators of abuse on violence, delinquency, and substance use and explore possible gender differences in prediction models. Implications for theory, policy, and practice will be discussed.
An Experimental Study of the Maryland Correctional Boot Camp for Adults
The current research is an experimental study of a correctional boot camp for adults. The principle objective of the study is to qualitatively and quantitatively evaluate whether this correctional boot camp that combines treatment with a military atmosphere produces more favorable outcomes than a comparison facility, which also emphasizes treatment but without a military component. In order to address this objective, 300 participants will be randomly assigned to the two programs. Information regarding their attitudes, experiences, demographics, criminal history and changes they made during their time in these facilities, will be gathered in three-time phases: Prior to the random assignment, immediately prior to release and after release. This presentation will describe the two different programs in the facilities, the sample characteristics of the study participants and a comparison of the boot camp and Skills Center participants on the pre-test measures.
An Experimental Study of the Maryland Correctional Boot Camp for Adults: Research Design and Process Evaluation
A substantial body of evidence indicates that offenders sent to boot camps do not have significantly different rates of recidivism when compared to offenders serving traditional sentences (e.g., probation or prison). However, initial evidence suggests that boot camps incorporating therapeutic programming may be effective in reducing rates of recidivism. Therefore, research must address whether combining treatment with the military environment of boot camps yields lower recidivism rates than alternative correctional programs emphasizing treatment (e.g., prison treatment program). In addition, it may be too early to draw final conclusions about the impact of boot camps on later recidivism given that no study of adult programs has used an experimental design to evaluate boot camps versus some alternative. To address these issues, the current study will randomly assign adult inmates to either the Maryland boot camp, a well-established program with a strong treatment emphasis, or to an alternative correctional facility also emphasizing therapeutic programming but without a military component, to assess the impact on recidivism as well as antisocial attitudes and values. In this presentation, we will describe the experimental research design and present results from our process evaluation. This will include a description of the adult boot camp and the comparison facility as well as preliminary data on the characteristics (e.g., demographic, criminal, drug/alcohol, and employment history, etc.) of study subjects based on the self-reported questionnaire administered prior to random assignment.
An Exploratory Analysis of an Interdisciplinary Theory of Terrorism
The literature on terrorism makes many references to the identity and states of mind of the terrorist, his ability to adaptively choose from among a limited range of tactics, and her willingness to make strategic choices that form the basis of political violence as a wholly instrumental act. The purpose of this dissertation is to explore the socially constructed identity basis of terrorism. I define terrorism and then examine the relationship between identity, and its sources, social learning, resource mobilization, opportunity, and strain, as causes of terrorism. In this dissertation I am using anti-abortion terrorism as a proxy for terrorism in general. After integrating the different identity approaches I derive six hypotheses and subject them to evolutionary and cross-sectional empirical analysis. The empirical analysis is followed by four case studies and a content analysis of pro-life ideational material and definitions. The results of all three forms of analysis suggest preliminary support for an identity-based theory of terrorism.
An Exploratory Study of Male Young Offenders, Male Peer Support, and the Sexual Objectification of Females
The sexual, physical, and psychological abuse of women is a diverse area of resarch currently characterized by an influx of studies documenting the incidence and prevalence of such abuse. Wihin the Canadian context, little attention has been allotted to male abuse of female intimates before marriage. In fact, adolescent dating relationships may very well be a learning ground for woman abuse among older couples. A growing body of literature suggests that male peer support is a key explanatory factor of woman abuse in dating relationships (Schwartz and DeKeseredy 1997; Totten 1996; Kanin 1985, 1967). One avenue through which male peer support of violence against women can be demonstrated is via the sexual objectification of women. Drawing on narratives from in-depth, personal interviews with thirty-six male young offenders at an Ontario, Canada secure custody detention center, the presentation explores some of the resources provided by the respondents’ male peer groups that encourage the sexual objectification of females. The importance of integrating the research findings wqhen developing youth programs will be discussed.
An Exploratory Study of the Effects Family Stressors and Structure on Juvenile Justice Outcomes
To date little research has included an analysis of how family stressors and structure compare with system factors in terms of their influence on juvenile justice processing. This study examines the effects of family stressors and structure on juvenile justice outcomes by using data collected from two different sources: poklice contact files and probation files. The final sample includes 338 cases from juveniles who had their first petition from 1995 to 1997. This exploratory study will examine: 1) which factors are relevant in determing juvenile case processing for different groups of juveniles; and 2) how those factors might suggest other types of sanctioning outcomes for those juveniles.
An Exploratory Study of the Violent Victimization of Women: Race/Ethnicity, Situational Context, and Injury
We address the considerable knowledge gap on the victimization of women of different racial and ethnic backgrounds by utilizing the large number of cases available in the National Crime Victimization Survey (1992-2000). With it, we examine the risk and protective factors associated with violent victimization among non-Hispanic white, non-Hispanic black, Hispanic, Asian/Pacific Islander, and Native American women. We then describe in more detail the violent incidents against these women, and examine risk and protective factors for various levels of injury resulting from these incidents. Results highlight the usefulnss of disaggregating women by race. For example, we find that the strongest risk factor of violent victimization among women is living in a household with one adult and children. When we disaggregate by race, we find further that this risk is greatest for Asian (and Pacific Islander) women. Also, we find that living in public housing is a risk factor for black and Hispanic women, but not for other women in our sample or for men. An assessment of the context of violence suggests that different circumstances coincide with the victimization of different groups of women. in particular, evidence suggests that Asian women may experience more “random” episodes of victimization. As a whole, our results provide compelling support for race/ethnicity-specific models of victimization.
An Information-Theoretic Analysis of Offending Over the Life Course
Several fully- or semi-parameteric methods have been proposed in the literature that purport to mitigate the ill-effects of population heterogeneity on inferences regarding state-dependence when estimating longitudinal or panel data models. Most, if not all, are maximum likelihood based methods. These methods have desirable properties only asymptotically. Moreover, when behavioral parameters may be unstable over time, allowing this instability without mak-ing a-priori assumptions about its functional form can increase the dimentionality of the problem thereby decreasing the efficiency of likelihood based estimators. In this paper a semi-parameteric information-theoretic method is proposed that can be used to recover information about the evolving impacts of time-stable and time-varying characteristics while permitting persisting population heterogeneity without making any a-priori distributional assumptions re-garding the unobserved heterogeneity nor the error structure. The method is applied to a simple dynamic binary choice model using the Cambridge delinquency study and possible extensions are discussed.
An Innovative Court Program for Juvenile Domestic Violence
In recent years juvenile domestic and family violence has become a growing problem, while state laws and courts have largely ignored the issue. While the dynamics of teen and adult intimate violence is quite similar, the protections offered by the law are dramatically different. This paper describes an innovative court-based intervention program, and presents an evaluation of its effectiveness. In 1999 Santa Clara County Superior Court established the first Juvenile Domestic and Family Court program in the nation, with a dedicated court docket and probation unit, specialized services for offenders and victims, and interagency collaboration. The juvenile and adult records of the minors in the program and a comparison group were tracked over two years, using a quasi-experimental design and sample retention strategies. About half of the youth had a history of family violence or child abuse. The offenders who completed the court- based program had significantly lower recidivism rates than the minors in the comparison group. These results show the importance of a pro-active juvenile court response to the growing problem of juvenile domestic and family violence.
An Innovative Program for Child Delinquents: Translating Research Into Practice
Ramsey County ACE is an innovative multifaceted program that targets child delinquents under 10 at high risk for serious, violent, and chronic juvenile (SVJ) delinquency. The program is based on research regarding the causes of SVJ delinquency and its developmental pathways. This paper describes how a metropolitan county transformed research and policy recommendations into practice. It provides instructive information for researchers, policy makers, and practitioners interested in advancing innovative research-based delinquency prevention programs.
An Integrated Multilevel Approach to Juvenile Delinquency in Korea
The juvenile studies in Korea have been lacking the mid-range approaches focusing on the characteristics and differences among communities, neighborhoods or schools. Even if some of the studies have dealt with the school and community problems, they lack the interests in the geographic, neo-institutional and community-oriented appreciation. Rather, even the interests on the mid-range approach have been regressed to the individual problems in such a way that problem is not a community or a school that fails to cultivate youths, but a youth who fails to adapt to school programs and community circumstances. This paper focuses on the effects of both levels (school level and individual level) on the individual deviance itself. Results show that school effects are manifested in different ways for different types of delinquency. Also, there is a different effect of linking paths in such a way that the community model is less likely effective than opportunity model. Also, cross-level interaction effects exist for delinquent friends so that the effects of delinquent friends on individual deviance appear to be different among schools. Finally, while the loosening link effects are more likely to be manifested in the middle school, the inducing link effects are more likely to be manifested in the high school.
An Integrated Systems Theory of Antisocial Behavior
This paper presents a new theory of crime organized around the “integrated systems perspective.” Findings related to antisocial behavior from various levels of analyses and numerous academic disciplines are summarized and presented in the form of propositions for theory testing. The integrated systems theory of antisocial behavior put forth in this paper goes at least two steps further than most other integrated theories: first, I explicitly state propositions that can be tested with empirical evidence; and second, I visually diagram the relationships between criminogenic factors. The theory offered here is meant to explain why an individual would be more likely to commit antisocial behaviors generally rather than to explain any particular type of criminality. The behaviors of most interest are maladaptive behaviors that are violent and/or aggressive in nature.
An Opportunity Model of Adolescent Delinquency
There are both individual and aggregate opportunity theories of delinquency that suggest that certain individual and structural factors increase the likelihood of delinquency. The current research uses data from the National Longitudinal Survey of Adolescent Health to examine the relationship of several structural and individual level opportunity factors to delinquency. The current research tests a series of hypotheses pertaining to opportunity and delinquency. For example, I argue that for urban or metropolitan adolescents, the presence of certain structural factors amplifies the effects of certain individual-level opportunity factors that are themselves of particular importance, such as time use, income, and mobility. Hierarchical linear modeling techniques are used in order to determine both individual and structural effects on delinquency. Structural factors from both the neighborhood (e.g., land-use) and the adolescents’ schools (e.g., level of parental monitoring) are considered, with the school serving as the dominant context.
An Opportunity Model of Police Homicide Victimization
Macro-level research on homicides of police has focused on the influence of structural features of areas that generate criminal motivation. The implicit assumption has been that criminogenic conditions (e.g., high levels of poverty, economic inequality, broken families, population mobility) increase crime, which in turn increases police risk of homicide victimization. With few exceptions, macro-social theories to explain spatial or temporal distributions of police homicides mirror traditional theories of offender motivation developed to explain crime and victimization generally. Traditional theories of offender motivation, however, ignore routine activities and lifestyles of persons that facilitate or impede opportunities for crime and victimization. Similarly, models developed to explain homicides of police largely ignore how organizational differences across police departments, or variation in “routine work activities,” influence opportunities for the victimization of field officers. This study advances research on violence against the police by incorporating both structural covariates and routine work activity factors in a model of police homicide victimization. Based on criminal opportunity theory, it is hypothesized that differences in levels of exposure and physical and social guardianship across 190 municipal law enforcement agencies in four time periods influence opportunities for homicides of police net of structural conditions (proximity) of the jurisdictions in which they are located. Given the generally inconsistent results obtained in previous research, particular attention is paid to issues of collinearity among regressors, clustering, and the rare-event count nature of the dependent variable.
An Outcome Analysis of a New Jersey Day Reporting Center
Despite considerable growth in the use of community alternatives to incarceration, few programs falling under the broad heading of “intermediate sanctions” have been subjected to empirical analysis. With few exceptions, most evaluations that have been conducted are plagued by a number of methodological shortcomings which, in part, have contributed to the absence of a firm understanding of what types of community-level alternatives to incarceration may be most effective in reducing recidivism. Accordingly, using a large sample of paroled offenders from a day reporting center in New Jersey over a four-year time period, along with a matched sample of parolees under standard parole supervision, we conducted an outcome evaluation to determine the program’s efficacy. The implications for correctional policy and future evaluations are discussed.
An Overview of Protection Order Statutes Across the Nation
The purpose of this investigation is to evaluate protection order statutes across the nation. Research indicates that protection orders have become a common resource for victims of domestic violence. As such, the authors plan to examine the history of protection order legislation in each state, as well as the current status of state protection order laws (e.g., whether they are covered under civil statutes, criminal statutes, or a combination of both). After data collection is completed, the information will be compiled and analyzed for the purposes of providing a comprehensive overview of protection order statutes across the nation.
Analysis of Computer Crime Characteristics
According to the analysis of crime characteristics, the major kinds of computer crime are distribution of pornography and copyright infringement. The crime scene is mainly residence. The number of cases cracked down is increasing, yet the criminals will continue until being discovered. The motivation is mainly for profit. The offenders are mainly male, and always proceed solely. The average age is quite low; profession is mainly student and unemployment. The average level of education is higher than college, and the criminal record is first offense. Residence is mainly urban, and there are many handicapped involved. The cases are currently processed in few criminal justice agencies. The funnel effect emerges obviously, and the punishment is quite lenient, but the ratio of probation and fines is high.
Analysis of Crime Shooting Statistics: A Review of Shootings and Various Demographics in the City of Wilmington, 1996-2000
The Delaware Criminal Justice Council has been involved in the tracking of shooting data for the City of Wilmington for the past seven years. In 2002 the Criminal Justice Council released a report that analyzed the shootings over a five year period (1996 – 2000) looking at 12 different variables including victim / offender comparisons, victim / offender past criminal histories, the motives for shootings, types of weapons, time and day of shootings and location of shootings. The presentation will review the limits in criminal statistics and use of shooting information to reduce shooting incidents in a mid size city.
Analyzing Recidivism Success Rates
In the Summer of 2001, the Arizona Department of Juvenile Corrections(ADJC) began an innovative process to convert a traditional criminology measure i.e., recidivism, into a useful management information tool. This innovative process has involved the computation of recidivism success rates by ADJC secure school, housing unit and parole office. Recidivism has been defined as return-to-custody in the ADJC or Arizona Department of Corrections (ADC). The disaggregation of return-to-custody rates by secure school, housing unit and parole office was a bold step insofar as it took a somewhat common measure of correctional success i.e., recidivism, and applied it to units within an organization. This paper is intended to describe some of the research conducted to date within ADJC and to also provide a brief plan of where the project is headed in the immediate future. This paper is presented as the basis for a proposed presentation to a Presidential Panel Session at the November 2002 session of the American Society of Criminology. It is hoped that a peer review of the paper emanating from this presentation will yield additional benefits for ADJC efforts to infuse research findings into departmental decision making.
Analyzing the Gender Gap in Fear of Crime
In the fear of crime literature there is a consensus that female gender is the strongest predictor of fear of crime and that, despite their lower objective risk of victimization, women consistently report higher levels of fear. Consequently, scholars have focused on explaining the gender gap in fear of crime and its negative consequences for women. Some researchers argue that women are disproportionately affected by fear of crime which ultimately restricts women’s freedom to participate in various aspects of social life (Madriz 1997). In doing so the role that fear of crime does (or does not) play in mens lives is largely ignored. In this paper, I apply a risk assement model (Ferraro 1995) to fear of crime and explore how gender influences assessments of risk and employment of risk reduction tactics for both men and women. Relying on both qualitative and qualitative data this paper attempts to unravel the role of gender on fear of crime and perceived risk of victimization. The quantitative data is provided by the most recent survey conducted by the Bureau of Justice Statistics, Fear of Crime and Community Policing Survey which surveys residents in twelve U.S. cities. The qualitative data includes interviews of approximately sixty New York City residents from two diverse neighborhoods. Combining approaches will provide a fuller understanding of the effects of gender on fear of crime.
Anti-Hate Crime Policy Development: A Coordinated European Strategy
The European Commission on Racism and Intolerance (ECRI) is a formal mechanism established in 1993 through which the European Union seeks to protect human rights. Its actions are intended to cover “all necessary measures to combat violence, discrimination and prejudice faced by persons or groups of persons, notably on grounds of race, colour, language, religion, nationality and national or ethnic origin” (ECRI, 2000: 1). This investigation seeks to analyze the impact of ECRI focus on Germany and France, nations with significant problems of minority integration. Two reports have been produced for each country, with specific recommendations intended to facilitate the inclusion of populations of color and Muslims. Both nations have responded with policy initiatives and dialogue. The structure and process of the ECRI are evaluated as models for combating hate in the 21st century.
API Youth Violence Prevention Center
The Asian/Pacific Islander Youth Violence Prevention Center is collaboration between the University of Hawai’i at Manoa, and the National Council on Crime and Delinquency. The ultimate goal of the API Center is to prevent and reduce youth violence among the Asian/Pacific Islander population and to position communities to become proactive in creating a safe and healthy environment for themselves. This presentation and paper will discuss how partnerships between and among investigators from a variety of disciplines, including public health, medicine, sociology, ethnic studies, psychology, women studies, criminal justice and community-based and grassroots organizations can impact the growing number of API youths and families being consumed by the justice system and underserved by other agencies.
Applications of Network Analysis in Evaluating Comprehensive Community Initiatives
In this presentation, we implement network analysis techniques in two study sites to examine changes in collaborative networks between the planning and implementation phases of Comprehensive Strategy for Serious, Violent and Chronic Juvenile Offenders (OJJDP, 1995). We study the collaborative networks between the “core organizations” using five measures of inter-organizational relationships: any interaction, frequency of interaction, any conflict, frequency of problems, and overall give and take. We implement a simple pre/post design to study changes in these measures between planning and implementation phases in the two sites. The expectation implicit in the Comprehensive Strategy framework was that the gains in collaborations achieved during the planning phase would carry over to the implementation phase. The inclusive planning process was intended to “help create consensus on priorities and services to be provided, as well as build support for a comprehensive program approach that draws on all sectors of the community for participation (OJJDP 1995).” Collaborative planning was, therefore, expected to lead to the specification and implementation of a continued collaborative approach to risk-focused delinquency prevention and graduated sanctions. Using network analytic techniques, we examine whether the changes in collaboration are sustained into the implementation phase. Basic descriptive statistical analyses are used to assess change over time. The primary results are presented using simple descriptive techniques for each of the five measures.
Applying Deterrence Theory to Driving: Assessing the Impact of Legislation Authorizing Vehicle Impounds by Law Enforcement
Many jurisdictions have adopted legislation that authorizes law enforcement to impound vehicles driven by individuals suspected of certain offenses, such as driving under the influence of intoxicants. In 1999, the City of Seattle implemented an ordinance authorizing law enforcement to impound vehicles driven by individuals with a suspended license, regardless of vehicle ownership. The paper will present preliminary findings from an evaluation of the impact of this legislation. Specifically, the study assesses whether vehicle impoundment has produced the general and specific deterrent effects anticipated by supporters of the legislation. Data for the evaluation are primarily drawn from police records, court case filings and convictions, state driving records, and tow company records.
Applying General Strain Theory to Juvenile Sex Offenders
Various studies have been used to identify why people commit sexual offenses, but most have dealt with adult offenders. An increasing number of studies show that juveniles are committing sexual offenses at higher rates than in the past, and that that many offenses continue to go unreported. As with other violent crime, the vast majority of sex offenders are male. We investigate juvenile male sex offenders from the perspective of General Strain Theory, using data obtained from 274 juveniles in state custody in Oklahoma during the summer of 2001. We focus on a subset of juvenile males who have committed some sort of sexual offense. According to General Strain Theory, there are three major sources of strain: the failure to achieve positively valued goals, the loss of positive stimuli, and the presentation of negative stimuli (Agnew 1985). We will identify and examine external stimuli, including stressors and strain, as well as other factors, which could substantiate the usefulness of using General Strain Theory to understand juvenile sex offenders. Our findings will be useful in developing programs for reducing sex offenses among youth.
Are All Latino Batterers the Same? An Exploratory Look at Puerto Rican, Brazilian and American Born Abusers in New England
This exploratory study of domestic violence in New England examines the influence of country of birth on a sample of Latino batterers. A comparison of 140 Hispanic batterers born in the United States, Puerto Rico, Brazil and other South American nations reveals significant differences between the groups. Abusers from Puerto Rico are significantly more likely to have a criminal history of domestic violence and substance abuse. They are also less likely than other Latinos to be married to their victims. These findings are congruent with prior studies, which conclude that levels of American acculturation appear to be associated with patterns of abuse among Hispanics. Our study emphasizes the importance of researchers treating Hispanics as a heterogenous group rather than a homogenous one.
Are Changes in U.S. Crime Rates Time Reversible?
This paper considers whether changes in annual U.S. crime rates are time reversible. If a series of observations is reversible, the process that generates it forward in time is identical to the process that would generate it backward. Irreversibility can result from a nonlinear process or from a linear process with non-Gaussian innovations. Series with asymmetric cycles are irreversible, as are series that switch between distinct causal regimes. Current thought on why crime rates rise and fall implicitly assumes reversibility, but several recent findings challenge this idea. The paper applies tests for time reversibility to changes in the homicide rate between 1925 and 1999, and to changes in other serious crimes between 1933 and 1999. In each case, the tests are consistent with the reversibility hypothesis. The findings thus support conventional explanations of crime rate trends, and suggest that the past values of each series provide a reasonable guide to the future.
Are Police Recruitment Testing Instruments Discriminatory?
Behavioral and psychological-related testing and instruments in police recruitment have been suspected of being racially discriminatory. Unfortunately, such arguments lack supports of empirical studies and such race-related adverse impact of recruitment-related testing has not yet sufficiently researched in the criminology arena. This study’s results showed that there was statistically racial difference in psychological testing, but such difference was disappeared while controlling of other variables such as socio-economic status of police candidates.
Are Social Cohesion and Collective Efficacy Related to Victims’ Resource Assess Decision Making in Response to Crime: A Multi-Variate Model of Victim Access Patterns to Resources
There is a growing body of research on how social cohesion and collective efficacy function to create a sense of community and agency among people. However, there is a paucity of research on whether social cohesion and collective efficacy effect how victims of crime access services in response to a victimization experience. Based on a sample of 1000 victims of crime in a major urban centre, this paper will present a multi-variate model that will outline a series of independent variables, such as age, education, socio-economic status, type of victimization, victim-offender relationship, victim’s drug and alcohol problem profile, and perceptions of the responses by criminal justice agents, that are related to victims’ decisions to access a wide range of community resources. In addition, this model will include the intervening relationship of social cohesion and collective efficacy on this decision making process. Based on Robert Sampson’s work on social cohesion and collective efficacy and crime patterns, we hypothesize that higher levels of social cohesion and collective efficacy are related to higher levels of victims’ access to resources in the community. Our model will attempt to distinguish the following four types of victim access patterns: high access, moderate access, low access, and no access.
Are They Crime or Patriotism – A Case Study on Politically and Socially Motivated Cyber Attacks
Of many different types of cyberterrorism, the politically and socially motivated cyber attacks are the most debated. Unlike traditional hackers, the specific cyber attackers with strong nationalism spontaneously normally don’t have strong economical or recreational interests when they launch the viruses and e-attacks on the opposite governmental and commercial websites, especially toward the websites claimed to be their enemies, no matter where the location of Internet Service Provider (ISP) is. Because of wide gap of economic and military power, for example, sometimes cyber war is the only way for the hackers in the less developed countries to make catharsis for their dissatisfaction on developed countries’ insolence and arbitrariness, as well as their strong statement of political disagreement on the sensitive issues, such as human right, weapon control and environmental protection. Their counterparts also fight back with the e-tombs. Correspondingly, the cyber attacks or war start among the conflicting parties as a result. Through the discussion, this study tends to explore its nature, characteristics, and outcomes and calls on the attention for that.
Are Within-Individual Causes of Delinquency the Same as Between-Individual Causes?
This paper investigates causation using a new method in criminology. Since the influential research of Glueck and Glueck (1950), almost all studies of the causes of delinquency have compared risk factors of delinquents and non-delinquents or have correlated risk factors with levels of delinquency. In both cases, between-individual differences in risk factors are compared with between-individual differences in delinquency. There is, however, another way to investigate the causes of delinquency, by comparing within-individual changes in risk factors over time with within-individual changes in delinquency over time. This method has rarely been used, because it requires repeated measures of both risk factors and delinquency in a longitudinal study. Nevertheless, it is arguably a better way of studying causes. In order to advance knowledge about these two different methods of studying the causes of delinquency, this paper compares — for the first time in criminology as far as we are aware — between-individual and within-individual correlations between risk factors and delinquency. Because of their novelty, these analyses are mainly illustrative. This paper also compares results obtained with simultaneous correlations (where the risk factor and delinquency are measured at the same time) with forward-lagged correlations (where the risk factor is measured before the delinquency).
Aren’t They All the Same: A Critical Comparison of Available Introduction to Criminal Justice Textbooks and Materials
Within the last decade the number of textbooks available for adoption and use in Introduction to Criminal Justice courses and the number of students enrolled in these classes have increased substantially. Because of this the competition among publishers is intense. The publishers have become highly responsive to the needs of instructors and students by providing numerous ancillary materials and web support. A few even offer multiple texts and special focus bundling options. The purpose of this research is to critically compare and contrast the available textbooks within three dimensions – the depth and balance of their scholarship, the learning aids available to students, and the pedagogical materials available to instructors. The research however does not attempt to rank order the textbooks. The analysis reveals that, while the available textbooks are relatively consistent within the three evaluative dimensions, there are important differences among them. These differences are potentially important to instructors within the contexts of their individual teaching objectives or institutional demands.
Arrestee Responses to Questions of Drug Use: An Assessment of Reliability by Race/Ethnicity
Included among the various methods of learning about the extent of drug use among the criminal population, is the Arrestee Drug Abuse Monitoring (ADAM) program, funded by the National Institute of Justice. In a number of sites across the country, ADAM researchers, on a quarterly basis, ask a sample of those recently arrested a series of questions about their drug use, including most recent use. Respondents are also asked, at the completion of the interview, to provide a urine sample, as a validation measure. In this paper, we examine the reliability of responses within the survey and the reliability and validity of answers given to questions about recent drug use. In this paper, using ADAM data from a southeastern city, we focus our attention on the question of whether response reliability varies by arrestee race/ethnicity.
Arson as a Type of Crime — Victims, Offenders, and Prevention in Finland
This paper deals with arson and its prevention in Finland. Arson will first be viewed in the light of history and criminological theory. The second part of the paper contains the results of an empirical study on arson. The material has been collected from different official sources. For example, the offenses data base of the police, the so-called “Accident data base” of the Ministry of the Interior, and the data base of trials have been used. In addition, the documents of the preliminary investigations of the police have been utilized. According to the preliminary results, approximately one-third of all fires are arson. Most often the offenders are young, undereducated males. What is surprising is that arson is more common in some prosperous cities, where, for example, the unemployment rate is unusually low. After the information came out about the preliminary results, a strong discussion about arson started in the country. The Ministry of the Interior decided to create a new Arson Prevention Program.
Arson Homicides in Chicago: Searching for Glitter in Ash
Although arson-associated homicides are infrequent, they often prove to be very difficult and costly cases to investigate, solve, and prosecute. Further, most arson data is based on juvenile populations, thereby providing little applicable data for adult homicide incidents. Using data from the Homicides-in-Chicago data-set, a quantitative analysis is conducted to determine basic patterns and trends, with consideration for future research, and possible implications for the criminal investigation.
Assessing Attitudes About Violence Toward Animals: Public Opinion Poll Results From Texas
Non-human animals are a relatively ignored population of victims in criminological research. Despite a growing body of evidence linking animal cruelty to violence toward humans and increasing knowledge of the undue pain and suffering that animals experience at the hands of humans, research on such crimes is severely lacking. In this study, public attitudes about violence against animals and the criminal justice response to such acts are examined. Included as part of the annual Texas Crime Poll, in which a state-wide representative sample was employed, questions specifically gauging the perceived severity of numerous violent acts against non-human animals as well as the preferred criminal justice response were asked via questionnaires distributed by mail to 750 households. A descriptive analysis is presented and factors related to attitudes about violence toward animals are examined and discussed. Finally, the relationship between attitudes toward animal cruelty and general attitudes toward violence is examined.
Assessing Police Officers’ Decision Making and Discretion
The purpose of the paper is to investigate police officer decision-making and discretion in police-citizen encounters, within a particular focus on police and minority interactions. Specifically, the paper reports on a test of the deference exchange theory and investigation of the actions taken during police-citizen contacts. The paper looks at the police officers’ formation of suspicion. The analytical phase of the research includes transitional or conditional probabilities of the actions in each encounter. A critical assessment of the encounter will be determined by eliciting opinions from three sources including officers, observers and a sample of subjects to rate each encounter from the standpoint of language, gestures, and actions, among other cues. The rating is based upon the officers’ actions or reactions (verbal or non-verbal). It is hypothesized that police officers have been trained to not take personally the insults or attacks that they may experience in an encounter with an officer. However, the research question is when do they react appropriately and inappropriately? Further, what are the characteristics that predict when their behavior and the outcome of the encounter?
Assessing Program Evaluability
Evaluability assessments are most commonly thought of in connection with decisions on whether evaluations of existing programs are likely to be productive, given program characteristics such as program administration, data availability and quality, etc. We argue that the evaluability assessment approach can be extended to evaluations, and programs, that haven’t yet been started. For a given program, what elements will set the limits on how accurately we can measure its performance and impact, or whether we can do so at all? What will be the incremental costs of incremental increases in rigor? How can we determine an optimal allocation of evaluation resources in a particular instance?
Assessing Risk: Putting Pieces of the Puzzle Together
Child delinquency has increased in the metropolitan areas of Minnesota in recent years. In the City of St. Paul alone, police write an average of 125 reports per year on children under age 10 who commit delinquent offenses. Many more child delinquents are returned to their parents without a police report being filed. Until ACE, police were frustrated by their lack of options. This presentation will describe how ACE uses a collaboration with police and schools to identify child delinquents in the community so that they may be connected with services. The process includes direct referrals by police; indirect referrals from schools by calling the police; a review of the offense by a County Attorney to ensure that it meets the criteria for charging (except for age); and scheduling a confidential screening meeting under provisions in the child protection statutes. Of 226 children referred over a two-year period, 174 (77%) met the criteria for charging. One in five of these children reside in the suburbs. Four in ten of the referring offenses happened at school. Statistics will be presented on the pattern of referrals by schools and police, characteristics of the children referred, and the types of offenses they committed. The response to the program by police and schools will be discussed.
Assessing Risk in Lethal and Non-Lethal Intimate Partner Violence
Using data from the Homicide in Britain study and a separate study of men convicted of assaulting their intimate female partner, this paper explores the individual, contextual and situational factors associated with intimate partner violence. The recently completed Homicide in Britain study yielded a number of data sets, including intensive information on 866 cases of convicted murderers. Using these data we compare men who have killed intimate partners (n=106) with those who have killed in other circumstances (n=680). This comparison reveals that men who kill intimate partners are, for example, much less likely to have ‘untoward’ experiences in childhood and criminogenic backgrounds than men who kill others. Situational factors also vary. Men who kill intimate partners are more likely to be employed and less likely to be drinking at the time of the murder than men who kill in other circumstances. Overall, the comparisons reveal that intimate partner killers are rather more ‘conventional’ than men who kill in other circumstances. When intimate partner killers were compared to men convicted of assaulting their partners (n=122), the results also suggest that intimate partner killers are likely to be more conventional than men convicted of assault and that ‘contested’ relationships, particularly those characterised by estrangement, constitute a significant risk factor for intimate partner murder.
Assessing Scholarly Productivity in Criminal Justice
In this paper, we present criminal justice faculty productivity findings from a study of members of the ASC and ACJS. Productivity measures are useful in determining the rankings of university departments and institutions, gaining financial support, and attracting prospective students. Productivity is also a major consideration in the hiring, promotion, and tenure of faculty members. In the current study, we used multiple quantitative and objective measures to assess the productivity of criminal justice scholars who participated in a two-part study of the field. Productivity is measured in terms of the number of scholarly publications, state, federal and foundation grants and awards/distinctions. Institutions were classified as Research or Doctoral I and II according to the 1994 criteria from the Carnegie Foundation Classification of Institutions of Higher Learning. Because Research and Doctoral I and II universities tend to emphasize research and publications, we hypothesize that those faculty members who currently hold positions at Research and Doctoral I and II institutions will show greater productivity in terms of number and quality of scholarly publications and number and dollar amount of state, federal and foundation grants.
Assessing the Deterrent Effects of Sex Offender Laws
In response to public concern about sex crimes throughout the 1990s, policy makers enacted sex offender registration and community notification laws. The intention of these laws is not only to ease the public’s fear of sexual victimization but, more importantly, to deter persons from committing sexual offenses. However, after almost a decade of implementation, little research has been conducted to determine the effectiveness of these laws in reducing the frequency and prevalence of sex offending in communities. This research uses Illinois criminal history data from 1980 to 2000 to determine the degree to which sex offender registration and community notification have deterred the previously convicted sex offender from re-committing sex crimes and prevented non-sexual offenders from committing an initial sex offense. Answers to these research questions will help inform policy makers who wish to develop legislative interventions that exercise maximum control on sexual criminals.
Assessing the Effectiveness of Juvenile Drug Treatment Courts: The Difficulties of Calculating Recidivism Rates
The past decade has witnessed an explosion of juvenile drug courts. What began as an experiment has quickly grown into one of the most common practices of treating and punishing substance abusing juvenile offenders. Assessing the effectiveness of this punishment alternative has become increasingly more important as drug courts are increasingly scrutinized at state and federal levels for continued funding. The purpose of this paper is to discuss the effectiveness of a juvenile drug treatment court after four years of operation. Recidivism rates as of the end of the fourth are discussed, as are retention and completion rates, in-program relapse and recidivism rates, and other characteristics of the courts’ operation during this time frame. In addition, the difficulties of data collection and rate calculation will also be discussed.
Assessing the Impact of Columbine on Students’ Fear of Victimization: A Randomized Experiment
On April 20, 1999, the most deadly act of school violence in the United States to date occurred at Columbine High School in Littleton, Colorado. One consequence of Columbine appeared to be an increased fear of victimization at school among students nationwide. The basis for this conclusion, though, has been limited to information from public opinion polls taken after the incident and anecdotal evidence. This research provides a more systematic assessment of the impact of the shootings at Columbine High School on students’ fear of victimization as well as their protective behaviors by using data from a nationally representative sample of students.
Assessing the Levels of Capriciousness and Systematic Decision-Making Involved in the Automatic and Prosecutorial Certification Process in Virginia
In this presentation, we examine both the capriciousness and systematic factors involved in the automatic and prosecutorial certifications decision-making in Virginia. In the case of automatic certification, juveniles, age 14 to 17 years, who are charged with capital murder, first degree murder, second degree murder, lynching, or aggravated malicious wounding are automatically waived to circuit (adult criminal) court, pending a hearing on probable cause. For prosecutorial certification, juveniles, age 14 to 17, who are charged with certain violent offenses, can be waived directly to circuit court on the motion of the prosecutor, pending a hearing on probable cause. As described by Feld (2000, p. 126): “Proponents of the direct-file strategy claim that prosecutors can act as more neutral, balanced, and objective gatekeepers than either ‘soft’ judges or ‘get tough’ legislators (McCarthy, 1994).” This presentation provides an opportunity to examine such a claim. In addition, it also provides an opportunity to describe certification practice under prosecutorial and automatic certification. Some of the research questions that arise when considering automatic or prosecutorial certification include: Are a majority of “certifiable” offenders actually certified? Are there a systematic set of factors used in deciding whether to certify or retain a juvenile? What mechanisms do the key decision makers use in order to retain a certifiable offender in the juvenile court? Is the decision to certify capricious? Note: Although juveniles charged with any felony can be transferred to circuit court, juveniles charged with felonies other than those identified for automatic and prosecutorial certification must first go through a transfer hearing that determines their appropriateness for transfer.
Assessing the Linkages Between Strain, Types of Anger, and Eating Disorders: Testing and Extending General Strain Theory
General strain theory (GST) holds that stressful life events lead to anger, which in turn provokes a variety of adaptive responses that are intended to alleviate the strain and anger. These responses include crime and deviance. This paper tests the adequacy of GST as an explanation for eating disorders. Strain measures and measures of trait and situational anger are used along with scales of different types of anger expressions to test the theory’s ability to explain bulimia and anorexia in a sample of college – aged women. The theoretical implications of the results are discussed.
Assessing the Physical, Psychological, and Behavioral Impact of Computer Crime Victimization
This paper focuses on measuring behavioral and health outcomes experienced by victims of Internet-facilitated fraud as reported to the Internet Fraud Complaint Center (IFCC), a cooperative initiative of the National White Collar Crime Center (NW3C) and the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI). While social scientists and criminal justice practitioners have studied the impact of criminal victimization on subsequent behavioral and health outcomes, research has focused on the violent crime victim. Scant attention has been paid to the victims of white-collar crime, even though repercussions from their experiences can last for years. In a recent survey by the California Public Interest Research Group and the Privacy Rights Clearinghouse, over half of victims reported their cases as ‘unresolved’ after nearly four years; of those who had a successful resolution, the average life of a case was twenty-two months. This current study will gauge psychological, physical, and behavioral outcomes experienced by victims of a variety of ‘electronic’ white-collar crimes. The results will help practitioners to better understand victimization recovery patterns and the corresponding services that need to be afforded to this population of individuals.
Assessing the Student Field Experience in Criminal Justice
It is now common for criminal justice/criminology programs to include at least one course that allows undergraduate students to participate in a field experience, internship, or co-op. This paper will present the findings of a study that explores student and field supervisor views of the expectations, roles, and competence of students who participate in this important educational experience. Students were asked open-ended questions about expectations and field experience goals, career goals, and what was gained by their field experience. Work site supervisors were asked 20 fixed-item questions and 6 open-ended questions about how the students performed and how the students impacted their agency. The results of the study will be described and implications for similar learning experiences explored.
Assessing the Validity of Self-Reported Drug Use: The Role of Individual- and Aggregate-Level Characteristics
An accurate understanding of drug use is an important antecedent to appropriate and effective enforcement, correctional, and treatment decisions. While drug use is most commonly measured using self-report surveys, the validity of responses is challenged because of the illicit nature and inherent social undesirability of the behavior. Self-reports are therefore commonly verified using the results of a urinalysis. Recent studies have illustrated that concordance rates between self-reports and drug tests may vary according to the type of drug used, situational factors, respondent characteristics and geographical site. While contextual factors that predict drug use, such as socioeconomic status and urbanization, have been of interest to researchers, there has been no indication of the role, if any, of such factors on the accuracy of drug use disclosure. Based on the social desirability hypothesis and elements of social disorganization theory, this study expands prior conceptions to include an analysis of aggregate-level characteristics on the validity of self-reported drug use. Using data from the Arrestee Drug Abuse Monitoring (ADAM) Program and aggregate-level census data, the proposed study seeks to measure the influence of individual and ecological characteristics on the disclosure of self-reported drug use.
Assessing Two Modes of Legal Pressure in Coerced Treatment: Deferred-Prosecution vs. Deferred-Sentencing
The Drug Treatment Alternative to Prison Program (DTAP) was initiated in 1990 to divert non-violent repeat felons with drug problems into community-based residential treatment. The program has been able to achieve relatively high treatment retention and reduced post-treatment recidivism. Assumptions of DTA’s design is that the certainty of impending punishment motivates defendants to remain in treatment. In January 1998, DTAP model changed from a deferred-prosecution program that holds the indictment in abeyance to a deferred-sentencing program in which all defendants, prior to being admitted into treatment, now enter a plea and are informed of the length of their sentence. A quasi-experimental design is used to compare 120 DTAP participants, admitted treatment prior to January 1, 19978 (Deferred Prosecution-DTPA), with 120 DTAP participants admitted to treatment after January 1, 1998, (Deferred Sentencing-DTAP). The goal is to determine whether greater certainty of punishment has had any effect on treatment engagement and retention.
Assessment of the Sources of Stress and Its Effect on Job Satisfaction Among Correction Officers in South Korea
In the functioning of correctional institutions, corrections officers play a crucial role because they create and maintain the environment within the prison and have direct contact with inmates (Glaser, 1964; Thomas, 1972). Recognizing the importance of corrections officers’ role in correctional institutions, many issues related to corrections officers have been examined. Among these issues, researchers have increasingly paid attention to the area of correctional officer stress and stress-related problems. Studies found that corrections officers experience excessive stress, which leads to physical illness, burnout, family problems or the inability of corrections officers to perform their duties in ways that compromise institutional safety, cost money, and create stress for other staffs (Finn, 2000). However, most of the studies that examined the causes and negative consequence of corrections officers’ stress were conducted in the Western countries. Very few studies have examined stress and stress related-problems among corrections officers in other countries. The present study, therefore, examines the sources and the extent of stress among corrections officers in South Korea and the effect of these on job satisfaction.
Assimilation and Adaptation: Effects on Drug Use Among Immigration Youths
Research has indicated that immigrants, adults and youths, are less likely than the native born to be involved in crime and delinquency. Literature aklso suggests that immigrants can assimilate to the conventional as well as the deviant cultures. This paper examines differences in drug use (alcohol, marijuana, and cocaine) among youth from different immigration generations searching to understand the influences of the assimilation process on drug and alcohol use.
Attitudes Toward Crime Victim and Police Officer Injury and Disability
Incidents of sexual assault and forcible rape remain among the least reported forms of interpersonal violence, according to the National Crime Victimizations (NCVS) survey and the Uniform Crime Reporting (UCR) National Incident-Based Reporting System (NIBRS) data. For example, 1995 Bureau of Justice figures indicate that of more than an estimated 355,000 rape and sexual assault victimizations, only approximately 110,000 were reported to law enforcement. A significant majority of the research into the causes, conditions and characteristics of sexual offenses, offenders and victims examines the sexualized nature of these crimes. This essay considers rape and sexual assault in a deeper context as an act of war, a gender-based, hate-motivated form of violence and how it is supported by societal organizations such as the media, criminal justice system and other cultural institutions. Rather than limiting the exploration of rape as an isolated single-perpetrator or gang-related street crime, sexual assault must be considered from a global perspective and the ways in which entire populations offend examined at the institutional and systemic levels. Despite the so-called “sexual revolution” of the 1970’s, discussing the topic of sex remains bound by taboo. By expanding the categorization of rape and sexual assault beyond the sexual realm, forthright dialogue is greatly facilitated and effective educational programs enable prevention, treatment and victim services to be created and made more accessible to the public.
Attorneys and Mental Health Professionals: Examining Attitudes Toward the Insanity Defense
The purpose of this study is to examine variables that predict levels of support for the insanity defense. A self-administered survey was completed by 107 respondents, consisting of assistant district attorneys, public defenders, and mental health professionals in an urban area of Pennsylvania. This paper will reveal findings on the variables that directly predict attitudes toward the insanity defense, as well as the results of models that examine interactions between these variables.
Atwater v. City of Lago Vista: The Right to Arrest for Traffic Violations
Since the early 1990s, the Supreme Court has increased the influence of the police, especially involving issues of the Fourth Amendment related to automobiles. Atwater v. City of Lago Vista held that the Fourth Amendment does not forbid a warrantless arrest for a minor criminal offense punishable only by a fine. This case will be discussed as it relates to the current climate of policing and the Supreme Court. The potential implications for police and the public will also be addressed.
Auditing Alcohol-Related Crime and Disorder: Conceptual and Methodological Issues
The 1998 Crime and Disorder Act is the legislative cornerstone of the British Labour government’s policies for reducing crime and disorder. A key component of this Act is a requirement for local ‘partnerships’ to conduct three-yearly audits. Thus to a significant extent the ‘shape’ of local crime and disorder problems is determined by these partnerships. This paper draws on recent resarch carried out for the Home Office and discusses the key conceptual and methodological issues surrounding attempts to assess the nature and amounts of alcohol-related crime and disorder. The paper argues that although partnerships will find a lack oif ‘hard’ quantitative data, the response need not be one of defeatism and inertia. There are other forms of crime and disorder that are also impossible to quantify accurately, for instance, domestic violence, racial harassment and white-collar crime. Within an audit culture, the danger is concluding that because something cannot be measured accurately it cannot count as a problem.
Australian Gun Control: Assessing a Massive Gun Buy-Back
In 1996 in response to the largest of a series of mass homicide incidents (in Port Arthur with 35 victims), the federal and state governments of Australia agreed on a broad plan of gun control, implemented over the following twelve months. The new controls included prohibitions on certain categories of firearms, to be supplemented by a large-scale buyback of those weapons. Three features of this experience make it of interest to U.S. gun control scholars. First, in a federal system there was unanimous agreement by all the relevant governments to make changes that were very consistent across states, rapidly implemented and extremely far -reaching. It offers an instance of gun control in a situation of high salience, with strong political support and competent execution. Second, the gun buyback program was vastly larger and better funded than comparable efforts in the United States. About 650,000 guns were bought back an average price of $US300 each; this may have represented 20 percent of the total stock of firearms. Third, there is little evidence that the interventions much affected the extent of violent crime. Unfortunately, with only 8 jurisdictions and three years of post-intervention of data and no useful sub-state data, it is impossible to do a powerful evaluation. There were no reductions in homicides or suicides, only a shift toward less use of guns. Given that the newly prohibited guns, the object of the buy-back program, were not much used in either homicide or suicide before the prohibition or buy-back, this is hardly surprising and is consistent with evidence from the British experience in 1988 and 1997.
Automobile Accidents and False or Exaggerated Injury Claims
Fraudulent or exaggerated injury claims presented in the course of automobile accidents in New York State is an increasing concern that affects the economics of all New York State consumers. The National Insurance Crime Bureau estimates fraud is present in 16.44% of claims. A 1995 study by the Rand Institute for Civil Justice concluded more than 35% of people hurt in auto accidents exaggerate their injuries, adding $13-18 billion to the nation’s annual insurance bill. The study examines variables relevant to fraudulent injury claims to seek a pattern of auto insurance fraud. The variables are sociological and geographical makeup of the injured parties, types of injuries, vehicle design, the motor vehicle damage appraisals and medical documentation. Based on the data that we have collected and reviewed, the results will be presented to insurance companies and consumer advocate groups, and consumers directly in an effort to educate the people about these trends in order to combat and reduce false or exaggerated claims.
Available Resources for Youth Violence Prevention in Health Care Settings
The unique position of primary care providers in youth violence prevention has been a topic of interest in the health sector. In order to identify ways to best facilitate these health care providers’ role in violence prevention, it is prudent to view existing practices and encounter settings to provide realistic recommendations for violence prevention that can be implemented into primary care without compromising the treatment of illness. Our study utilizes a case-study design in two different sites. The ethnographic component consists of observations of system and provider-patient interactions, while the second component is a document analysis that reviews the existing policies and regulations and patient files. With this data, our specific aims for this study are two-fold. First, we seek to describe the violence prevention related services (screening, patient education/counseling and referral) currently taking place in practices that service communities and families considered at-risk for violence. Second, we seek to identify existing but under-utilized resources in these health care settings that can be used to promote primary prevention of violence among young persons. This study will form the basis for the development and evaluation of a comprehensive violence prevention and intervention program for community health clinics.
B
Bad Behavior or Bad Policy? Recidivism Trends in Release Cohorts 1993-2001
Recidivism analyses typically follow a specific cohort of released offenders over a period of time, usually between one and three years. Because most recidivism analyses focus on single release cohorts, they fail to acknowledge changing trends in success or failure over time. This study proposes to examine re-incarceration trends of all felons released from Tennessee Department of Correction (TDOC) jurisdiction between 1993 and the present. We include all offenders within TDOC jurisdiction including felony offenders serving sentences in prison and local jails (felony offenders in Tennessee with sentences of less than seven years may serve their time in a local facility). Thus, our analysis includes 90,000+ offenders released directly from state prisons and local jails, and who are released to parole, probation or no community supervision. Preliminary analyses suggest an increasing rate of re-incarceration over time for all released offenders except those who expire their sentences and serve no period of post-release supervision. Consistent with some national trends, it appears that increases in the use of technical violations accounts for the increases in the failure rates of later release cohorts. Given the direct and indirect costs associated with housing offenders in an institutional environment, an increasing rate of re-incarceration has strong implications for corrections and other criminal justice agencies.
Bad Cops: A Study of Career Ending Misconduct in the New York City Police Department
This paper will report on a National Institute of Justice study of all 1,543 New York City police officers who were dismissed (n=863), terminated (n=349), or forced to resign or retire (n=331) for reasons of misconduct during the 22 years 1975-1996. The researchers have identified questions of theoretical and operational significance through a survey of the literature, through consultation with a project advisory committee of police scholars and former police administrators, and through consultation with NYPD administrators and focus groups of NYPD commanders, supervisors, and patrol officers. The authors were granted access to the NYPD’s personnel orders and files, which were searched to identify both involuntarily separated officers (“IVs”) and a same-sized (n=1,542) random sample of their police academy cohorts (“controls”). A methodological advisory committee assisted in preparation of coding instruments that captured data on officers’ pre-employment histories and career experiences, including their disciplinary records. All human subjects concerns were identified and approved by the appropriate institutional review boards. Under the supervision of the authors, NYPD staff members were trained and employed to review all files and to code the data. Random validity and quality control checks were conducted, and demonstrated acceptable results. Once coded, the data were analyzed to describe the characteristics and experiences of IV officers, the manners in which their careers ended, and the variables upon which they differ from control officers. Differences between IV and control officers in the distribution of these variables’ values served as tests of the hypotheses we had generated.
Balancing Zero Tolerance and Juvenile Justice: Issues for Rational Juvenile Justice Policy
In the last 103 years juvenile justice has become increasingly more procedural and formal, and public attitudes toward youthful offenders have changed. Although the juvenile justice system was originally intended to provide youth with an alternative to adult criminal court (i.e., diversion), there has been a significant transformation in policies toward youth. Specifically, society seems inclined to demand more accountability of youth and more punitive approaches to delinquent behavior. In trying to understand and assess the current state of juvenile justice in the United States, it is instructive to understand the effects of ideology, politics and the media on juvenile justice policy (Merlo and Benekos 2000). These themes serve as lenses and help focus on the forces that have “reformed” juvenile justice. They provide a framework for viewing the systemic evolution that has occurred. The conservative “get tough” attitude that characterized criminal justice policy since the late 1970s has been incorporated into policies for youth. From changes in juvenile statutes which abolish confidentiality provisions and allow juvenile offenders’ names to be published to the incorporation of a balanced and restorative justice model, most legislatures have reevaluated perceptions of youth and reformulated policies toward youthful offenders. One measure of these changes is the increase in the number of youth in out-of-home placements. Puzzanchera reports that between 1989 and 1998, the number of adjudicated youth that received such placements increased 37 percent from 119,700 to 163,800 cases (2002:1). Even though crime rates for adults and juveniles have continued to decline (Snyder 2000), punitive attitudes persist and fear of crime remains a salient public concern. Simultaneously, politicians have seized the crime issue and have proposed harsher sanctions toward juvenile offenders. Candidates for public office understand the importance of shibolleths that emphasize strict sanctions for youth and they embrace them. The media have also influenced perspectives of youth and helped to solidify the belief that youth are like “mini-adults” who should be held to the same standards and subject to the same punishments. For example, findings from a Canadian survey suggest the widespread nature of these changes and the “considerable pressure to impose harsher penalties on juvenile offenders” (Tufts and Roberts 2002:46). In her study, Sprott (1998) found that a majority of respondents opposed a separate system for youthful offenders and perceived that youth in the juvenile justice system received sanctions that were too lenient. While studies such as these also find that the public is not well informed about juvenile justice policy, nonetheless, the “views of the public and the reaction of politicians are clearly linked in a spiral of punitiveness” (Tufts and Roberts 2002:48). In this prevailing climate of intolerance, zero tolerance policies have become popular solutions to the complex problems of adolescent behaviors. A survey of college students found that a majority supported zero tolerance policies and drug testing in high schools (Merlo, Benekos and Cook 2001). School policies that mandate expulsions for weapons (i.e., mandatory sentences for youth) have captured media attention, often for their excessiveness in punishing youth for innocent behaviors (e.g., bringing nail clippers to school; sharing mints). Students who have minor violations can be punished as severely as students who bring weapons to school (New York Times 2002). Incidents such as these prompted one parent to say that “Zero tolerance doesn’t mean zero judgement or rights” (New York Times 2002:A23). This underscores that reactionary policies that restrict discretion and emphasize punishment may actually distort justice and be an iatrogenesis that does more harm than good (Miller 1996). Utilizing these three themes, ideology, politics and the media, this paper identifies four perspectives that characterize attitudes toward youth and policies that have been developed to respond to youthful offenders. In particular, we examine: the conservative ideology which has transformed attitudes toward youth; the adultification of youth and the concomitant changes which permit youth to be waived or transferred to adult court and to be subject to the same sanctions as adults; violent youth and the victimization of youth including school violence; and disproportionate minority representation in juvenile justice and the increase in female juvenile offending. In this critique of the juvenile justice system, the authors discuss recent trends that reaffirm rational policies and therapeutic interventions. They offer support for policies that seek to expand innovations that maintain emphasis on prevention, early intervention and jurisdictional separation.
Bar Behavior: A Social Learning Approach
Much of the recent analysis on bar behavior has focused on the criminality occurring within and around bars using a routine activities theory approach. This analysis will look at bars as a place of acceptable deviance using Aker’s Social Learning Theory rather than a place of criminal behavior. The authors will draw support for the theory using observational data collected at a local bar.
Barbarians at the Gate: Theory’s Fresh Strategy for Rebuffing the Empiricists
Despite calls for greater attention to formalized theory construction, falsifiable propositions, and theoretical integration, the link between criminological theory and research seems increasingly tenuous. Empiricists argue that theory lacks sufficient power to contextualize research and that exploratory methods such as data mining and factor analysis deserve greater respect in refereed journals. This paper reviews the current state of substantive theory in criminology and recognizes the limitations of formalization and integration strategies. Theory’s central role to the development of a scientific discipline is reinforced and the important difference between “theory as tool” and “theory as explanation” is illustrated. Theorists charge that methodologists slight theory, but here it is shown that theorists have long neglected conceptual development. Finally the paper outlines how a renewed focus on the improvement of concepts can restore theory’s relevance to researchers and amplify substantive theory’s power of explanation.
Bars, Brawls, and Blocks: The Relationship Between Alcohol Sales and Assaults
We examine the effects of bars, and other alcohol-selling business on felonious assaults for the city blocks of a midsized Midwestern City. This research extends previous work by Roncek and that by Costanza et al. The effects of alcohol-selling businesses are controlled for relevant socio-demographic and housing characteristics. The bar effects examined include not only effects on the city blocks on which they are located, but also diffusion effects to areas adjacent to the bars. To help identify if the effects of bars or taverns are due to their distinctive social climates rather than merely to the availability of alcohol, we control for the presence of other alcohol-selling establishments. The number of other businesses such as restaurants, fraternal organizations, sports arenas that sell alcoholic beverages for consumption on-site and the number of businesses that sell these for consumption elswhere are additional control variables. We find that: (1) bars have a significant effect on the number of assaults; (2) bars have a statistically significant diffusion effect; (3) that other on-site businesses have no effects, but (4) that the offsite alcohol-sale business do.
Battered Women and Mandatory Medical Reporting Laws: Perceptions and the Influence of Demographic and Situational Characteristics
Several states have passed laws that require medical personnel (doctors and nurses) to report injuries they suspect are the result of domestic violence to the police. Few studies have explored the varying perceptions of battered women concerning the approval, perceived benefit and impact on seeking medical care of these policies. This study demonstrates that battered women’s views on mandatory medical reporting laws are influenced by demographic characteristics and situational circumstances. In other words, these universal policies that fail to consider the unique situations of battered women may result in a decreased likelihood of seeking medical care. In light of these findings, policy-makers should consider modifications to mandatory reporting laws that require the consultation and consent of battered women along with other “non-law enforcement” measures to address domestic violence.
Battered Women’s Help-Seeking: Silenced and Sanctioned
Since the inception of the battered women’s movemement in the 1970s, victim-based programs, social service agencies, and law enforcement entities have increasingly turned their efforts toward addressing domestic violence. Rallies, fundraisers, and public service announcements have also abounded. So much attention has been focused on intimate partner violence that it would appear as if every woman who needed assistance and protection would be able to find it. This paper counters such perceptions through the narratives of nineteen residents at a domestic violence shelter in the Phoenix-metropolitan area. These women were by definition active and successful help-seekers as they had all obtained bed space at an emergency shelter However, their explanations of help-seeking, while numerous, were overwhelmingly fraught with failure, disappointment, and disenmpowerment. Concerns over the current status of the battered women’s movement, administrative practices in victim-based agencies, and continued societal complacency toward domestic violence are among the issues addressed.
Begging the Question: Juror Participation in Criminal Cases
Over the last five years, the state of Colorado has reviewed the practice of jury trials and has recommended substantial reforms in the conduct of jurors. One of the most controversial recommendations was to permit juror questioning of witness during trial. Originally, this questioning occurred exclusively in civil cases. However, the Colorado Supreme Court and the State Court Administrators Office collaboratively implemented a pilot project that was designed to determine whether juror questioning in criminal trials denied the Constitutional right to a fair trial by an impartial jury. This paper will discuss the results generated from an evaluation reviewing the impacts of juror questioning in criminal trials. Results will include a discussion of the utility of juror questioning and how the introduction of this process affected the overall trial experience. Data were collected from attorneys, judges and jurors in approximately 150 cases. Various examples of questions submitted by jurors and impressions of the process will also be presented.
Behavioural Coherence in Violent Group Activity: A Circumplex Model of Interpersonal Processes in Group Sexual Violence
This study provides a descriptive analysis of the behaviours of offenders in 76 cases of group sexual violence. Cases were derived from police records and other archival sources (e.g. law reports and media accounts). Core elements of the offence include a surprise attack on the victim, travelling from the approach location to a new rape location, and vaginal penetration. A multivariate analysis revealed behavioural variation according to three interpersonal themes (dominance, co-operation and hostility) that have been previously identified in studies of lone sexual assault (Alison & Stein, In Press) and in conventional interpersonal reklationships (Wiggins, 1996)(. Dominancre was exemplified by forcing submission upon the victim (e.g., binding and gagging) and the commission of additional non-sexual offence actions during the attack such as stealing from the victim. Co-operation reflected a pseudo-intimate treatment of the victim, forcing compliance and participation (e.g., kissing, and forcing the victim to participate in the attack). Hostility involved overt acts of violence (e.g., using a weapon to harm the victim and post-mortem mutilation). Point-Biserial correlations with other aspects of the offences (e.g., mobility of the group, post-offence treatment of the victim) provided additional support for these conceptually different styles of committing gang rape. The presence of the interpersonal styles demonstrates that gang rape represents a distorted and violkent interpersonal process that emerges not just at an individual, but at a group level.
Being a Parent and Acting Like One: The Role of Parental Status and Parenting Responsibilities in Predicting Relapse and Recidivism Among Drug-Involved Female Prison Releasees
Many incarcerated drug-involved women are parents. The effects of parental status and parental participation have not been extensively examined in predicting the likelihood of relapse or recidivism. In this paper we examine a sample of 250 female prisoners in Delaware who have been released from prison and followed for over 3 years. The sample respondents receive a baseline interview at the time of prison release, and they are followed up at 6 months, 18 month, and 42 months after release from prison. Some of these women participated in drug treatment programs while in custody, and the effects of program participation are also considered in the analyses. In this paper, we first describe the parental status and roles of these female offenders at the time of prison release. The data support the conclusion that most women releasees do have parental roles and expectations for providing care when they are out of prison. Multivariate logistic and OLS regression models utilizing the panel data suggest that active involvement in parenting roles has effects on long term success in avoiding relapse and recidivism, net of any effects of treatment participation. Discussion centers on a consideration of variables that seem to specify or moderate the role of parental status and involvement in predicting likelihood of remaining drug free and arrest free.
Best Practice for Structuring Effective Reentry: The Role of the Reintegrative Continuum in Transitioning and Normalizing Confined Youth
Program development activities within the Intensive Aftercare Programs (IAP) research and development initiative led to a conceptualization of the community reentry process now being referred to as the reintegrative continuum. It is within this structural framework that the IAP model of intervention was implemented in pilot sites nationwide over a demonstration period of five years. This paper will explore the theoretical and empirical evidence favoring the division of the youth correctional system into three distinct, yet overlapping phases: 1) pre-release planning and associated activities during confinement, 2) structured transitioning spanning confinement and community reentry, and 3) long-term, community-based reintegration activities. An argument will be presented for viewing the reintegrative continuum as a structural best practice for effective normalization of high risk youth returning to the community. Strategies will be examined about how specific evidence-based treatment modalities and supervision techniques can be appropriately integrated into this framework through the use of an overarching case management approach. Implications for program development and evaluation will be explored.
“Best Practices” in Crowd Control: Recent Lessons Learned
Couch, McPhail, McCarthy and others have discredited traditional explanations of crowd behavior, typically attributed to LeBon, Park and Blumer, upon which much of contemporary police and military crowd control doctrine has been based. This has created a substantial crowd control research agenda and a demand for replacement strategies by crowd control practitioners. To help fill this vacuum, Justiceworks, at the University of New Hampshire, has been perfecting a lessons learned “case study” technique allowing analysis of “event” data from disparate sources. By reorganizing information from verified accounts into a standardized format and subjecting the resulting data to statistical analysis, the researchers have been able to discern patterns in these events and to derive generalizable lessons learned. By applying this methodology to recent events including the Olympic Beer Riot, the New York WEF protests, and the Seattle WTO Protest, the researchers are identifying law enforcement actions that have led to violent behavior in crowds, law enforcement actions that have avoided, deterred, or alleviated violent behavior in crowds, and technologies/techniques that have been effective in preventing and stopping violent behavior. Findings to date will be presented including those concerning pre-event negotiation, paramilitary policing, and use of less than lethal weapons.
Beyond 911 and the Myth of Reactive Policing
This paper is an empirical examination of the widely held claim that the work of contemporary urban police patrol forces in America is overwhelmingly reactive in nature. This paper reports how much patrol work is self-directed by officers, how officers spend their self-directed time, and how patterns of self-directed patrol work have changed in the last twenty years. Data from the Project on Policing Neighborhoods (1996/1997) and the Police Services Study (1977) are analyzed. The research shows that urban policing is not so reactive as the received wisom suggests, that patrol officers often have interludes between assigned calls of an hour or more, that much of that time is still spent on preventive patrol or other casual, non-problem-focused activity, and that even twenty years earlier, police work in America’s urban areas varied considerably in the extent to which it was “driven by the radio.” The implications of these findings for future research and policy making are discussed.
Beyond Apology? Domestic Violence and Critical Questions for Restorative Justice
This paper will explore key issues that remain under-developed in the retorative justice literature from the perspective of victim’s interests and victim safety. In particular the paper will draw on empirical research concerning domestic violence, including the emerging literature on men’s responses to their violence, to demonstrate the need to temper the enthusiasm for restorative justice by asking some hard questions about its practices. Central to this analysis are questions of safety, expectations about the victim’s role in restorative justice, the appeal to apology and forgiveness, trust, accountability and resources. The focus on victim’s interests should not been understodd as promoting a punitive response nor as necessarily endorsing all aspets of victim’s rights campaigns. Nor should an expressed commitment to victim’s interests be misunderstood as being unsympathetic to critical scholarship aimed towards minimising the harmful impact of criminal justice intervention on offenders, including men who perpetrate domestic violence. (I take it as the responsibility of any criminologist with a critical sensibility to challenge the unthinking reliance on criminal justice and law more generally, and to recognize its potential to have damaging effects. Likewise we need to resist the equally uncritical rejection of law and criminal justice as having nothing to offer.) However, it is in the interest of the future development of policy and practice in this domain to scrutinise the claims made by restorative scholars and to guard against harms that might be wrought by an uncritical embrace of restorative justice.
Beyond HotSpots: Crime Reduction Today and Tomorrow Through Community Mobilization and Governmental Change
America under-rewards, overly punishes, and has a short attention plan. This is a society that overly simplifies focusing more on problematic individuals and less on the environments that produced them. We are divided between those whom lean toward equality or freedom not recognizing as did DeTocqueville that at best these two conflicting values can be optimized. It is necessary to look at crime reduction not only in the here and now but fifteen years out. Crime prevention through criminal justice agencies collaborating with each other and with the community is an impressive move forward. But it remains to become clear that building communities that work is a more important goal than simple crime reduction in the short term. Such changes require changing legislative mandates and funding for governmental agencies. It requires future oriented crime reduction by restructuring to minimize sexual, physical, and mental child abuse and ensuring that children have learned to read by the third grade in order to read to learn by the fourth grade. It requires communities that work. America looks to solve problems of social order through a strong state, a weak society, and a great deal of individual freedom. For quality of life to improve order needs to be achieved through a weaker state, stronger communities, and an increased commitment to equality of opportunity. This paper will examine a variety of sub-disciplines in sociology that lay the foundation to support this argument.
Beyond Offender Profiling: An Investigative Psychology Framework for Psychological Contributions to Police Investigations
The usual model that is assumed for the contribution of psychological or related behavioural science knowedge to a police investigation is that an expert is brought from outside into the enquiry, to offer advice directly to the investigation. The one to one contact between the ‘expert’ and the ‘detective’, so beloved of crime fiction, has found its way into police practice in the use of ‘profilkers’ all over the world. The present paper argues that a more productibe model for such contributions is one in which they are integrated into the processes police have available for conducting investigations. That is the provision of ongoing training to the police and support systems, rather than ‘expert opinions’ offered in a ‘one-off’ fashion on a case-by-case basis. This model draws attention to the need for a fully-fledged scientific discipline that will generate processes and theories for contributing to police investigations that have their roots firmly within empirical, scientific procedures. A framework for this ‘Investigative Psychology’ (I.P.) is presented. Examples of recent empirical studies illustrating the specific contributions that I.P,. is making to the police investigative process are summarized. These cover both rare and serious crimes suich as Serial Killing and more widespread crimes such as arson and burglary.
Bioterrorism or the Drug War: A Public Health-Criminal Justice Trade-Off
Thank the drug war: Prisons and jails are bloated. Triple epidemics of HIV, TB and Hepatitis C are building. Rape, an element key to maintaining social order, potentiates disease transmission. Proverty means that this majority has no health care history. we are wasting our human resorces to build low-immunity epicenters surrounded by barbed wire. For what? Preparing our response to possible future biological weapons attach requires effective and unprecedented cooperation betweel law enforcement and public health agencies. Consider what we must figure out: 1) the signs and sympotoms that can be used to distinguish and verify bioterrorist attacks of anthrax, smallpox, and who knows what else, from more benign modes of disease transmission; 2) the communication networks that will be triggered to engineer linked law enforcement and public health responses at various levels within communities, regions, natiuons, and all their borders and ports should a case of disease be categorized as a war crime; 3) procedures for preventing further attacks and for circumscribing disease transmission through treatment and, if necessary, quarantine. And all must be carried out with a fierce attention to civil rights, especially equality under the law. We’ve got a lot of work to do. We need to shift our focus from the conventional wars being waged at home and abroad and work towards protecting the world’s citizens from the real monsters.
Birth Cohort Research in China
This research reports the initial findings of a study of 5,341 Chinese born in 1973. We discuss the methodological and strategic problems associated with doing research in China and report on the basic comparisons between those identified as offenders and a matched control group from the sample.
Black and Blue in Nashville
This study investigates the impact of race on policing in Nashville, Tennessee. It looks at how black police officers interpret and impose racial profiling on minority suspects, and their interpretations of the differences between policing minority communities and white communities. It also investigates police interpretation of police brutality and police force imposed on minority suspects. The study is a qualitative study in which interviews are conducted in focus groups of police officers in Nashville. There was a comparison done of black and white police officers on the aforementioned topics. Once the study is completed we hope to investigate the results of these interviews and conclude by supporting our hypothesis that states: there will be no difference between the way black and white officers feel about racial profiling, excessive use of force, and police brutality in minority communities.
Black and White in Blue: Racial Distinctions Within a Common Police Identity
This research, based on survey data, informal interviews, and 20 months of participant-observation research, focuses specifically on the attitudinal similarities and differences of white and black police officers working in a high-crime “ghetto” in Baltimore, Maryland. Qualitative and quantitative data gathered while the author served as a uniformed police officer show significant racial differences in the attitude of white and black police towards the role of police in society, departmental politics, and the minority community. Elements of a common police identity, such as conservative social beliefs and opposition to “ghetto” culture, preceed officers’ entry into the department and exist without lessening differences between white and black police.
Black Police Associations
Black Police Associations are new to England and Wales. Their growth within constabularies has been fast and substantial however. This paper will explore the prelimary findings of a two year funded research project about the role of Black Police Associations within England and Wales. The historical circumstances that led to the establishment of the associations will be analysed and the ways in which they may change the context of race relations within constabularies discussed. Crucially, black police associations articulate racialised relations in particular ways. ‘Race’ is constructed within the police workforce through, as Barth put it, the affirmation of social boundaries between ethnic groups. This conceptual framework, which is central to the research project, will be explored.
“Black Threat” and Discrimination Against Minorities in the Imposition of Detention
Using statewide data from 1997, this paper explores the impact of the percentage of minorities within a county’s youth population on the likelihood of minority children receiving detention pending their adjudicatory hearing. The results are generally supportive of racial threat theory and indicate that Black children are more likely to be detained pending their adjudication if they reside in a county with a relatively high percentage of minority children. Possible alternate causes and the continuing need for research are also discussed.
Blended Sentencing of Juveniles in Minnesota: Processing and Recidivism Models
he National Center for State Courts (NCSC) and the Supreme Court of Minnesota (MSC) evaluated the practice of juvenile-inclusive blended sentencing in Minnesota (called Extended Juvenile Jurisdiction or EJJ). Blended juvenile sentencing has generated a lot of interest as a prime example of the “reform” movement in juvenile sentencing because it is a sentencing innovation that attempts to bridge the gap between the adult and juvenile justice systems. This research and evaluation project provides objective information about this innovation by accomplishing two objectives: (1) Examining the decision-m,aking processes that results in dispositions of Adult Certification, EJJ, or strictly juvenile processing for juvenile offenders by determining the influence of legal and extralegal variables on decisions made at critical stages of processing and (2) assessing the effectiveness of the three dispositional alternatives (Adult Certification, EJJ, or strictly juvenile) in deterring subsequent delinquent/criminal behavior. To accomplish the first objective, logistic and multinomial logistic regression models were used to identify the factors that influenced (1) the decision to motion for EJJ status or adult certification and (2) the final type of disposition (Juvenile, adult or blended). Recidivism data comparing post-dispositional outcomes for offenders with EJJ, adult and juvenile dispositions were analyzed using Cox regression.
Blending Theories of Organized Crime With the Life Course Perspective: The Value of Biographical Accounts of the Early Life Experiences of Identified Gangsters
So little attention has been given to life course patterns of acknowledged associates of organized crime. Although some attempts have been made to apply life course theory in the contest of white collar and other types of special offenders introduce new possibilities for organized crime studies. This paper blends developments in the life course perspective with four traditional theories of organized crime, focussing mainly on individual choice and material culture theory. It draws on earlier research that mined autobiographies and biographies of 52 identified gangsters. It recognizes limitations of secondary source evidence, but resolves that such documents may provide the only readily available information for new theory constructions. Data from these sources offer opportunities to consider life course perspectives in connection with existing organized crime theories. Suggestions are offered as to the apparent connections and disconnections between the two theoretical areas, and how we may overcome the limitations of the data.
Bloodstock: Reflections on the Execution of Timothy McVeigh
This paper offers some critical reflections on the execution of Timothy James McVeigh at the U.S. Federal Penitentiary in Terre Haute, Indiana, on August 11, 2001–the most publicized and controversial case of capital punishment in American history, if not world history. The observations are based on my seven-year research on McVeigh and the Oklahoma City bombing; my role as an anti-death penalty activist, media analyst for the execution, and citizen of the Terre Haute community. The execution drew more than 3,000 media representatives from around the globe, creating a superficial celebrity culture that offered varying degrees of insight into McVeigh, the bombing, and criminal justice processes. These insights ranged from the well-informed to hyperbolic to premeditated stupidity, Fredrich Nietsche’s piercing term for a social condition effecting the clogged, the anesthetized, the numb. What these analysts missed, generally, were the unintended consequences of the execution: the brutalization effect (an increase in local murder rates, animal sacrifices, etc.), the important changes made to the proportionality rule in federal death penalty cases, McVeigh’s deliberate strategy to effect these changes, and–maybe most importantly–the martyrdom of Timothy McVeigh within the international racist right.
Bouncer: Exploring a Drugs Culture in a London Nightclub. A Work in Progress
The paper is about ecstasy and cocaine use and supply in a nightclub in South London. First, I briefly discuss and explore the history of ‘rave’ culture in England, and how there has been an overall shift in the rave ‘scene’ from secret outdoor parties, to legalised and regulated nights at clubs. I also discuss how the use of some drugs, specifically ecstasy and cocaine, go hand-in-glove with rave culture, and that the use of such drugs in this environment is ‘normal.’ From here, I look at how some of the bouncers at a nightclub in South London were selling ecstasy and cocaine to punters. Data for research this was based on roughly 18 months of complete-participant observation as a bouncer at this nightclub and interviews with some of the other bouncers. Overall, I argue that this nighclub is home to a drugs economy complete with a drugs culture, and that both drug users and drug sellers benefit from the evening. In this regard, it is very much distinct from street-level drug selling cultures and economies. Other aspects discussed include bouncer’s attitudes towards various drugs, violence and masculinity and some methodological considerations.
Bridging the Gap Between Crime and Culture: Study of Protective Cultural Factors on Transnational Level
This study represents an attempt to fill in the gap in cross-cultural criminology about relationship between cultural characteristics and criminal behavior. It is proposed that combination of cultural characteristics may act as macro level protective factors against crime, through ways they define and regulate relationships between members of the society. In order to examine this question, INTERPOL’s international crime data and the UN’s Crime Survey data are compared with data on cultural dimensions of societies from a study by Hofstede (1984). While this gives very limited set of data, it still represents a unique attempt to find underlining factors that make individuals from certain cultures less likely to be involved with crime. Recoding techniques were used as a way of reducing the measurement error and increasing validity of the results.
Building a Drawing: The Berlin Wall as History, Art, and Commodity
This paper is a collection of personal experiences, interviews, photography, and conversations while traveling through West and East Germany to the city of Berlin. It covers a period of time from the Berlin Wall construction to its deconstruction. The city of Berlin itself was divided by the wall, isolating East from West Berlin. First research began in 1988, when the two parts of Berlin represented the sleek modern West in contrast to the old, traditional, industrial world. The author’s exploratory travels by rail across Germany to Berlin are a record of early predictions, by local travelers, of the fall of ‘The Wall.’ Individual accounts ranging from Potsdam to Berlin describe how pre/post wall conditions effected changing values of the city. This Culture History paper includes eyewitness reports described by friends, fellow travelers, newspaper and other documented accounts. The tape recordings are accounts by customers present in the La Belle Disco when that Berlin nightclub was bombed. They also describe the deaths of the two American soldiers and the following Berlin funeral march; personal photographs of the following wall paintings accompany the tape. Interviews with Americans describe their personal contact with the wall as pieces sold in American department stores. NOTE: [If time allows, the presentation could be extended to include a short description of Poland and Russia after the dismantling of the Soviet Union.] The author’s personal research can be extended into a table discussion for those who are interested in advancing social science beyond the rational argument by including total body intuition in the artistic, exploratory stages of research. An example of the process is described in the “Graduate table” proposition. However that table should include application for other social sciences, as well. This paper includes a slide show of photographs described above.
Building Reentry Services: Organizational Development of Interagency Efforts
As part of a demonstration effort to build new partnerships focused on informal social controls, eight sites were involved in a U.S. Department of Justice sponsored Reentry Partnership Initiative. Using fidelity measuring techniques, the researchers assessed the degree to which different programmatic components were developed in the partnerships. The paper will report on network analysis results that define an organizational development required to move from a prison safety to public safety approach to reentry services. A discussion will occur of the requirements to integrate informal social controls into the operating models of reentry.
Bullets Don’t Have No Name on Them: Young People, Exposure to Violence and Informal Social Control in Three Philadelphia Neighborhoods
This paper will showcase the data from the first wave of a multi-wave comparative study of crime, danger and informal social control that focuses on youth living in three high crime neighborhoods in Philadelphia. We examine the daily experience of African American, Latino and white young men and women and we present data on exposure to violence and strategies employed by youth to avoid and reduce the levels of personal danger. We suggest that the actions of youth have implication for how scholars and policy makers conceptualize informal social control. The contribution of this work to what we know about crime control is the specific focus on the capacity of young people to contribute to the informal social control of crime and disorder. Previous work has viewed youth as the problem but the present study illuminates the protective capacity of young people, who after all, are not only the most like to offend, but are the mostly likely to be victims of crime, including violent crime. In short, we are attempting with this research project to move from widely held ideas about youth as a group that must be monitored and punished for violent and delinquent behaviors to viewing them as a resource for strategizing about reducing and preventing violence.
Bullying and Youth Violence
Bullying, a form of violence among children, is common on school playgrounds, in neighborhoods, and in homes throughout the United States. It often occurs out of the presence of adults or in front of adults who fail to intercede and has long been considered an inevitable and, in some ways, uncontrollable part of growing up. However, bullying has come under intense public and media scrutiny recently as the precipitating factor in several well-publicized cases of school shootings. This paper examines the nature and extent of bullying, the causes of bullying, the relationship between bullying and youth violence, and ways to prevent bullying.
‘But, We All Know Who is Well at it?’ The Challenge of Implementing Intelligence-Led Policing
This paper explores the implementation of intelligence-led policing in one area of London. The Metropolitan Policing Model highlights six key policing processes; intelligence, targeting, forensics, investigation, problem solving and diversion. This paper outlines a qualitative evaluation of intelligence and targeting that has highlighted some inhibitors associated with developing an intelligence-led approach. The research revealed a lack of supervision of officers’ time and activities; a misunderstanding within policing of the role and potential of intelligence and its ability to target activity; a low level of formal communication between different areas of policing; and a lack of integration of quality crime analysis into policing. All these factors undermine an intelligence led approach and support previous research that highlights the difficulty of shifting the police (and the police culture) away from policing leading intelligence to intelligence-led policing. The paper concludes that training and education, IT developments and cultural issues, concerning assumptions about what constitutes common sense policing and core police skills, need to be acknowledged and addressed in order to facilitate an intelligence-led approach.
But Would She Do It Again? Battered Women’s Intentions to Re-Use the Criminal Legal System
An increasing amount of research examines recidivism among perpetrators of domestic violence as well as what can be done to prevent recidivism. however, little research has examined how battered women make decisions around re-using the criminal legal system. The current research examined battered women’s intentions to re-use the criminal legal system in the eveny of future violence against them. Indepth interviews were condeucted with women with abusive partners and ex-partners from three different jurisdictions in the United States. They were asked about the violence against them, their relationships with their assailants, their experiences with the police and courts, and their intentions to re-use the police and courts in response to any future violence against them. Findings suggest that the severity of the violence agains tthem, their economic dependence on their assailants, and the supportiveness of the police and courts all contributed to women’s intentions to re-use the criminal legal system should their assailants commit another crime against them. In addition, implications for improving the legal system response to these cases will be discussed.
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California Public School Crime: Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell
After fifteen years of evaluating school crime prevention in California, I have concluded that many school districts are reluctant to report student crime that occurs on public school campuses. This impression is based on anecdotal data of an outsider’s observation. This limits the school’s ability to identify and prevent student crime. Collaboration between law enforcement, educators, parents, students and other community members is influenced by the school’s generalized crime data. Therefore, the inaccurate data makes this collaborative effort ineffective. Educators have adopted a “don’t ask, don’t tell” approach to prevent school crime prevention.
California’s Incarcerated Drug Offender Population: Yesterday, Today, and Tomorrow
Since 1980, the populations of state and federal prisons have more than quadrupled. A significant portion of this increase in prison populations has been attributed to increased drug-law enforcement, particularly mandatory sentencing, int he wake of the War on Drugs. Who are4 these drug offenders? Have the demographic and criminal profile characteristics of the prison drug offender population changed over time? This article examines the compositional dynamics of the California state prison drug offender population over the period 1980-1998 using data-validated dynamic systems simulation modeling. Additionally, simulation modeling is used to prospectively evaluate the impact on California’s prison population of the Substance Abuse and Crime Prevention Act, a recently passed California initiative that prohibits incarceration and mandates treatment for first-time nonviolent offenders convicted of simple drug possession.
Can Feminist Pedagogy Survive in a Web-Based Learning Environment?
This presentation arises from our experience of co-teaching an online Women’s Studies course. We (the authors/presenters) come from different academic backgrounds, but both of us consider our educational methodology to be grounded in feminist pedagogy. We explore three issues: models of teaching in an online environment; the special issues that arise from working with a largely female student population; and co-teaching online. Teaching in an online environment challenges our understanding of teaching. It might be easy to teach a class that is based upon prewritten lectures and multiple choice tests, but how do you transfer the interactive dynamics of a participatory classroom to the internet. Can you? Adding to that, the literature reveals that women students at the university level are generally less computer literate than male students. As the third issue we address, co-teaching online requires a virtual collaboration between instructors that is relatively unknown territory for many educators. We will discuss the affordances that teaching online collaboratively provide,and how the synchronous and asynchronous nature of tools like email, instant messaging and a website expand the spatial and temporal boundaries that limit traditional co-teaching. We will conclude with some observations from our vantage points of experienced online instructor and novice online instructor.
Can Media Talk About Prison?
In January 2000 in France was published a book who became instantly famous : its title speaks for itself “m‚decin-chef Â… la prison de la Sant‚” written by Mme V‚ronique Vasseur who was in charge in the only Parisian prison of this job for about 7 years. All politicians and journalists made comments on it, and e few months later was given to the Prime Minister a report from the both parliamentary Assemblies. How did the media dealt with those events, how prison was handled as a main society issue ? That is the core element of a research I made, reading along several months all that was written in newspapers and magazines, trying to analyse how the press media reported on prison. By studying articles I noticed the difficulties and the clich‚ with which journalists had to deal. I pointed out that prison is mainly seen as “black or white”, too punitive or not enough. I want to underline that prison is definitely not a easy public theme, and to give keys how to make it “well known”.
Can Restorative Conferencing Build Social Capital: The Search for Community Building
Restorative decision-making models– including family group conferencing, reparative boards, victim-offender dialogue and peacemaking circles–have emerged in the past five years as popular alternatives to adversarial procedures in juvenile courts. Using a variety of data from qualitative case studies of programs, this paper examines the how conferencing practitioners operationalize the core restorative principle that victim, offender and community should have maximum opportunities for participation in decisionmakinginclusion, communication, and role-taking–. We consider three specific dimensions of restorativeness appropriate to this priciple of restorative justice conferencing and consider its community-building potential. Restorativeness is assessed using a principle-based model for qualitative evaluation of conferencing based on the normative theory of restorative justice centered on repair, stakeholder involvement, and transformation of the community/government role and relationship. The more difficult question of community-building is examined at the micro level based on program vision and practice directed at strengthening capacity for sustained responses to youth crime and conflict in informal community settings. Implications for various models of conferencing and prospects for future implementation are presented.
Can Social Learning Theory Inform Risk and Protective Factors for Adolescent Substance Abuse? Assessing The Impact of Parental Participation in Alcohol/Drug Treatment on Adolescent Alcohol/Drug Use
Parental substance abuse has long been considered a risk factor for adolescent substance abuse, a finding consistent with a Social Learning Theory perspective on deviance. However, parents’ prosocial activities regarding substance abuse have received scant attention in the adolescent substance abuse risk/protective factors literature. This omission seems illogical, for, if parental substance abuse promotes adolescent drug use by providing opportunities for modeling deviant behavior, then couldn’t parental participation in alcohol/drug treatment inhibit substance abuse among adolescents by modeling prosocial, proactive ways of dealing with substance abuse? On a broader level, does parental participation in alcohol/drug treatment serve as a protective factor for youth substance abuse? This study seeks to answer these questions using data from a survey of approximately 800 households in Washington state. Findings will be interpreted from a Social Learning Theory perspective and policy recommendations will be articulated (if appropriate).
Capturing Girls’ Experiences of “Community Violence” in the United States
That girls are expressing themselves violently is difficult for some to see and to analyze critically. This paper argues that we need to explore the extent to which girls absorb or internalise the devaluing messages of domestic violence, routine misogyny, homophobia and sexual harassment. It draws our attention to the blurred boundary between girls as perpetrators of violence and girls as victims, survivors or witnesses of violence. Not only do we need to expand the definition of “violence” to include girls’ experiences, but also we must conduct further research into the factors that contribute to punishing girls for gender transgressions.
Celebrity, Late Modernity and the Celebration of Crime
The economic and social chnges concomitant with globalisation give rise to the identity crises of late modernity.The shift occurs from the politics of class to the identity politics and the stratfications of status and celebrity, witness the work of Nancy Fraser and Lawrence Friedman. The uncertainties of identity leads to the seeking out of both positive and negative points of orientation: bright and dark stars of fixed position. Thus at the same time as we have a demonisation(othering) of the underclass we have the idealisation of the celebrity.Both crime and celebrity become the basic commodities of the spectaclre. Contradictions and crossover in the discourses of suceess and failure give rise to the nemesis and cronus effects. The detachment of vocabularies of motive from fixed structural position in late modernity results in freefloating ,mediated discourses which both shape crime and evoke celebrity; the Mafia and images of Serial Killers are used as examples.
Challenges and Prospects for Applying Restorative Justice to Teen Courts
Juvenile justice is under critical scrutiny. Many are calling for innovative change. Teen Courts, an alternative approach to traditional juvenile proceedings, is experiencing rapid growth and increasing popularity. Several different models have emerged under the teen court rubric. Restorative justice, a second trend that has emerged in recent years, is also becoming more widespread in various parts of both criminal and juvenile systems. The paper explores the meaning and implications of applying the principles of restorative justice to this formalized juvenile process. The examination includes the advantages, challenges and limitations of linking this set of philosophical ideas to teen courts. The chances for its acceptance in particular juvenile justice settings are assessed.
Challenges in Administering Self-Report Measures to the Female Offender Population
When administering self-report measures to the female offender population there are multiple challenges to consider. This paper will focus on two areas. There are the obvious obstacles such as the language barriers, educational levels, but a major challenge is the population’s lack of trust of authority figures. This paper will outline how project coordinators can carefully and strategically build rapport with the women they survey. The other main challenge to the implementation of a conventional research project design is the transience of this population. Challenges to including a control group and follow-up questionnaires to track subjects’ progress will be discussed. This paper will conclude by offering suggestions on how to design a research project that will work with the female offender population.
Challenges in Spatial Data Analysis of Neighborhoods
Spatial data analysis is important to the development criminological theory and its applications. One theory that easily lends itself to the spatial analysis of data is the broken windows theory (Wilson and Kelling, 1982). The environment is crucial in this theory whose thesis is that exposure to conditions of untended disorder and quality-of-life offenses will lead to more serious crime. However, analyzing data based on a geographic unit poses additional problems than using familiar regression techniques. This paper will compare existing tools to conduct this type of analysis that are available from the field of crime mapping. Drawing upon these methods a combination of spatial and temporal statistical techniques will be used to study the relationship between disorder and serious crime over the course of five years in a western city in the U.S. This paper has both theoretical and methodological implications.
Changes in Friendship Relations Over the Life Course: Implications for Desistance From Crime
We analyze life history narratives and structured data derived from a longitudinal study of serious female and male offenders (n=210) originally interviewed when they were incarcerated as adolescents (1982) and followed up thirteen years later. We highlight shifts in the meaning and impact of friendship relations as respondents have matured into adulthood and suggest how such changes can facilitate the process of movement away from a criminal lifestyle. Attention to some of these more subtle and gradual developmental changes extends our recent focus (author citation, 2002) on the cognitive basis of many desistance processes, provides a critique of some aspects of differential association theory, particularly as applied to the adult context, and supplements the event-based portrait of desistance developed by Sampson and Laub (1993).
Characteristics of Completes vs. Non-Completes of a Mandatory Domestic Violence Program
In this paper we compare characteristics of completes vs. non-completes of convicted domestic violence offenders in a legislatively mandated 52-week domestic violence program located in Santa Clara County, CA. Fifty-four participants, half completers and half non-completers are compared, using Cox regression and other hazard models, on a variety of demographic characteristics (age, ethnicity, employment, education), domestic characteristics (married vs. cohabitation, presence of children), and individual characteristics (self-reported alcohol, marijuana, and “hard” drug use, responses to a attitudinal inventory administered upon entry into the program). Self reported “hard” drug use was the single strongest predictor of program failure, with seven of eight participants failing to complete the program. Having less than a high school education and being unemployed at the time of the domestic violence incident independently increased the risk of program failure. Only small and non-significant differences in risk of dropping out were found between white, Hispanics and white, non-Hispanics whether or not controls for education and employment were included in the models. None of the other variables investigated had a significant effect on program participation. The authors suggest that program retention could be improved if an alternative to the “offender-pays” model is implemented.
Characteristics of Forcible Rape and Sexual Offenses
Few issues are of greater concern, both to the public and to law enforcement, than that of rape and sexual assault. It is covered closely by the media. It is a crime of violence of which anyone regardless of age, race, religion, sex, or size, can be a victim. The Uniform Crime Reporting Program has reported summary data on forcible rape for more that 70 years. The summary definition of forcible rape is “the carnal knowledge of a female forcibly and against her will.” One major criticism of the FBI’s rape statistics is this definitional exclusion of male rape. With the National Incident-Based Reporting System the definition of rape is “the carnal knowledge of a person, forcibly and/or against that person’s will; or not incapable of giving consent because of his/her temporary or permanent mental or physical incapacity.” The objective of this study is to examine the crime of forcible rape in the U.S. How have the numbers changed over time? Who are the victims-ages, sex, race, life circumstances? Are rapes associated with other crimes? Who are the offenders? What weapons are used? Where do these assaults occur? What are the differences between rapes reported to police and victimization studies? Data will come from the UCR data collections, both summary and the National Incident-Based Reporting System and from the National Crime Victimization Survey.
Characteristics of Girls With Early Onset Disruptive and Delinquent Behavior
The current study investigates disruptive and delinquent behavior in girls enrolled in the first phase of the Pittsburgh Girls Study (PGS). Three questions will be addressed. Firstly, what is the nature and prevalence of early onset disruptive and delinquent behaviors in a representative community population of girls? Secondly, is there a subgroup of girls who can be identified as ‘deviant’ across theoretical disciplines? Thirdly, how does neighbourhood quality impact on deviancy rates?
Characteristics of Korean-American Community
This year, 2002 is the hundredth year since the first Korean immigrants arrived in U.S.A. As a Korean policeman who specializes in criminal justice here in the United States, it will be meaningful to figure out typical characteristics which can hinder community policing here in America. This research wants to build a small bridge that can connect the American police with the Korean-American community.
Charting Women’s Journeys: From Addiction to Recovery
The extant literature shows that relatively little is written about women’s recovery processes from their use of controlled substances (including legal, illegal, prescription and non-prescription drugs, and/or alcohol). Drawing on role-exit theory, this paper centers on the processes by which women formerly addicted to controlled substances negotiate their movement out of and away from their addiction and into recovery. Through an exploration of the experiences of recovery for 25 formerly addicted women, an overview is provided of how these women experience a role-exit process of change through a consideration of the following: how they disengage from their roles as women formerly addicted; how they disidentify from these roles and, subsequently, how they become resocialized through adjustment and adaptation to their new roles as women no longer addicted to controlled substances. Such processes of recovery help to determine the frameworks within which particular women experience their epistemological reorientations that opens the way for new possibilities (through recovery) to emerge, along with a new collaborative relationship with the world as they move out of their addiction and into recovery. This determination includes an evaluation of how these experiences fit within the role-exit model.
Child Homicide in Cross-National Perspective
This presentation will concern child homicide victimization as it varies across gender, age, geographic area, and time. The causes of child homicide victimization may differ from that of adult homicide victimization. Also, homicide victimization may vary by gender as well as age. Finally, the etiology of homicide may be different given distinct age categories: infancy, early childhood, teen years. Using a framework from developmental victimology, the key objective of this study is to address theoretically and empirically how homicide victimization rates vary by age. The idea here is that the risk of victimization changes along with different phases in childhood. These age-specific homicide victimization patterns are also delineated by gender and are considered across nations. Building on the works of others, a theoretical model is offered that is an amalgamation of previous empirical and theoretical works. This theory building is premised on the notion there must be a theoretical acknowledgement of the ways in which victimization varies in certain patterned ways as children pass through stages of the life cycle. Results from several multivariate, time-series models are reported.
Child’s Play: Exploring Disciplinary Offenses Among Juveniles in Adult Prisons
Schoolyard shootings and other tragic events involving juveniles have been followed by increased numbers of juveniles being transferred to the adult criminal justice system and sentenced to time in state prisons. While criminologists and others discuss the changes in offenders over time, the literature is notably silent concerning the disciplinary infractions committed by such juvenile offenders while serving time in adult prisons. This research explores the number and type of disciplinary offenses committed by juveniles and compares them to disciplinary offenses committed by persons sentenced as youthful adult offenders in Arkansas. It is expected that this research will reveal that juvenile offenders are charged more often than youthful adult offenders. Theoretical explanations for the phenomena will be explored, as well as the developmental make up of an adolescent.
Child Saving in the 21st Century: An Examination of Court Structures on Juvenile Justice Processing
While legislatures continue to add punitive components to juvenile codes, a seemingly contradictory process is happening on the juvenile court level. Courts are experimenting with different court structures, in particular, a family court system, which can be considered as a return to the rehabilitative ideal. This study examines juvenile case processing differences in an experimental family court system and a traditional district court system in one state. Analyses show that while the experimental family court system is more bureaucratic, it tends to process cases in a manner consistent with rehabilitative predictions. Results further suggest that family court outcomes should be examined more closely before full-scale implementation
Child Victims of Crime: Assessing the Theoretical Importance of Gender, Age and Social Context in the Study of Homicide
Drawing upon data for all child homicides reported in the state of Victoria, Australia (N=90), a widely divergent patterns of child victimisation for homicide, depending upon the social context of the violence, the age of the victim, the gender of the offender, and for older victims, the gender of the victim As such, this form of violence requires a careful description of the especially significant factor of gender. While it has been well established that a distinctive feature of child homicide is that women make up a large proportion of the offenders (over half in some investigations), what the present paper makes clear is that the gender distribution is highly sensitive to social context, in some forms of child homicide virtually all of the offenders are female, whereas in others the offenders are nearly all male. . This paper goes on to argue that such findings demonstrate the critical theoretical importance of understanding the interactions of social context and gender in the investigation of homicide, calling for forms of analysis not commonly seen in much of American studies of homicide in general, and child homicide in particular.
Childhood Abuse and Incarceration Outcomes Among Young Women and Men
This paper examines the association between violent victimization histories during childhood and incarceration outcomes among 18-25 year-old women and men incarcerated in the Rhode Island Adult Correctional Institution, the sole facility for awaiting trial and sentenced inmates in the state. In this cross-sectional study, interviews were conducted from July 1999-October 2000 with a random sample of 18-25 year-old men (n=135) and women (n=69). While the 90-120 minute interview focused on HIV risk and sexual and drug use behavior, detailed questions also assessed physical and sexual abuse history during childhood and adolescence, socioeconomic and family characteristics, history of incarceration as an adolescent and young adult, and interpersonal violence victimization and perpetration. Over three-quarters -76%-of women and 60% of men had been sexually and/or severely physically assaulted during childhood. Interestingly, the proportions of women and men who experienced severe physical attacks by a parent or caretaker during childhood were similar: 54% and 55%, respectively. In contrast, significantly more women than men experienced child sexual abuse (58% vs. 11%). Fewer women than men had been incarcerated as juveniles (22% vs. 52%) or had been incarcerated more than once (68% vs. 90%). Among both women and men, neither sexual nor physical abuse was associated with being incarcerated as a teenager. Among women, being sexually abused during childhood was positively associated with being incarcerated more than once (OR=5.3, 95% CI=1.2, 22.7), whereas being severely physically assaulted by a parent or caretaker was not. Conversely, for men, being severely physically abused during childhood was associated with being incarcerated more than once (OR=4.2, 95% CI=1.1, 15.4) but being sexually abused was not. For both women and men, associations between physical and sexual abuse and prior incarceration history held after adjusting for age, race/ethnicity, education and family characteristics. Among women, multivariate analyses additionally adjusted for hard drug use, which was also associated with multiple incarcerations for women only (OR= 7.5, 95% CI=1.1, 50.3). The positive association between sexual abuse history and multiple incarcerations among women remained after further adjusting for hard drug use.
Childhood Conduct Problems and Social Developmental Mechanisms for Adult Depression
Previous research has shown that early conduct problems put children at significantly higher risk for later depression. Thus, it is important to understand depression as a possible consequence of risk factors often associated with crime, and to examine the developmental mechanisms linking these early factors with depressive disorders. This paper assesses the degree to which social developmental processes mediate or moderate the effects of early internalizing and externalizing symptoms, family history of depression, gender, ethnicity, and childhood poverty on depression in early adulthood. Data are from the Seattle Social Development Project (SSDP), a multiethnic and gender-balanced urban panel of 808 participants constituted in 1985. The dataset consists of ten waves from ages 10 to 24, and includes measures from the Achenbach Child Behavior Checklist (CBCL) during childhood and adolescence, and assessments of depression based on the Diagnostic Interview Schedule in adulthood. Social developmental constructs and related risk and protective factors are assessed throughout. Analyses integrate social developmental constructs in hierarchical regression models in order to assess their effects on the relationships between early problem behaviors and adult depression. Models examine mediating and moderating hypotheses.
Childhood Exposure to Domestic Violence and Adolescent Outcomes
The literature indicates that exposure to domestic violence in early childhood is associated with elevated rates of internalizing and externalizing child behavior problems, school problems and delinquency in adolescence, and increased interpersonal violence in adulthood. Although the correlation between exposure to domestic violence and child behavior problems is well documented, much of this research has serious methodological limitations, including small, largely clinical samples, cross-sectional studies, retrospective measures, lack of comparison groups, and single data sources. Typically, such studies have been conducted among residents of battered women’s shelters, children themselves have rarely been interviewed, and few longitudinal studies exist on this subject. The Lehigh Longitudinal Study offers the unique opportunity to explore the impact of exposure to domestic violence on adolescent outcomes using longitudinal data from a sizeable community sample with multiple data sources. We also examine gender differences in outcomes. This study builds upon the growing literature on the impact of domestic violence on children and has important implications for prevention and intervention with at-risk youth.
Childhood Predictors of Self-Reported and Official Criminal Career Parameters
The main aim of this paper is to study childhood risk factors for criminal career features (prevalence, frequency, and age of onset). Previously, Gottfredson and Hirschi argued that risk factors were the same for all career features. Criminal career features are measured using (a) court referrals and (b) self-reports. Since most knowledge about criminal career features is based on official records, it is important to investigate how far results are similar using self-reports. Data are analyzed from the Seattle Social Development Project, which is a prospective longitudinal survey of 808 youths. Annual court and self-report data are available from age 11 to age 17 for 8 offenses. Risk factors were measured at age 10: gender, ethnicity, poverty, family structure, family management (supervision, reinforcement and discipline), parental antisocial behavior, peer antisocial involvement, school bonding, academic achievement, antisocial beliefs, and neighborhood disorganization. Logistic and multiple regression analyses are used to investigate the most important childhood risk factors for prevalence, frequency, and age of onset of delinquency between ages 11 and 17.
Childhood Sexual Abuse and Girls’ Delinquency: A Longitudinal Perspective
Child sexual abuse has been linked to girls’ increased risk for delinquency and adult crime. The reasons for this association remain unclear. In this nine-year longitudinal study of 150 girls in which child sexual abuse and family violence were assessed when they were on average nine years old, we seek to better understand how childhood victimization translates into increased risk for delinquency in later years. Adolescent depression, the quality of the parent-child relationships, and dating behavior in early adolescence are examined as potential mediators linking child sexual abuse and the onset of criminal activity in young adulthood. Findings indicate that adolescent depression results from child sexual abuse and is associated with girl’s increased later delinquency as measured by court arrest records and self-reports; the early onset of dating behavior is also an indicator, but especially dating with partners who are more than five years older. This pattern of dating suggests that the girls are forming liaisons with antisocial men that further socialize them into criminal patterns.
Childhood Sexual Victimization, Running Away and Crime: Results From a Prospective Study
Many scholars have noted the theoretical importance of childhood victimization in understanding female delinquency and crime. Life histories of female offenders demonstrate a pattern in which victimization precipitates running away, which in turn places a girl at risk of involvement in delinquent activity on the street, largely for survival. In this paper, we examine whether victims of child sexual abuse are more likely than non-victims to report having run away and whether their reasons for running away were related to their abuse experiences. The sample for this study consists of 174 women; half were known to have been victims of child sexual abuse (CSA) in the early 1970s. Analyses are based on interviews with the women conducted in 1997-98 when the women ranged in age from 23 to 37. The interviews not only asked about the women’s histories of victimization and running away but also posed questions about any delinquent behaviors they engaged in after running away and whether they had engaged in such acts prior to running away. The relationship between CSA, running away and crime is examined based on both official reports of CSA from the 1970s as well as retrospective self-reports of CSA from the follow-up interviews.
Children of Female Offenders: What Happens When Mom Goes to Prison
Children of prisoners have been characterized as the “most at-risk children” in America today and there is widespread assumption that most such children will themselves be incarcerated later in life. While research does show that offending is concentrated in some families, little is known about the role that incarceration of criminal parents plays as distinct from the parent’s criminal behavior. Furthermore, what is known about the children is based almost entirley on adult reports. This paper presents preliminary results of a study of children between the ages of 8 and 17 whose mothers are either on probation or in prison. Semi-structured interviews conducted in the children’s homes with the mothers and the children both before and after the mother’s sentencing permit an examination of the differences in the impact of these two forms of sanction on the children.
Chinese Gangs and Collective Action: The Triads Tradition as a Source of Meaning Attachment and Definition of Situation
By focusing on the cultural, organizational, psychological, sociobiological, demographic, socioeconomic, and learning aspects of adult/juvenile gangs, few, if any, modern criminologists and sociologists consider gang behaviors as collection actions. This paper argues that we should examine gang behaviors in the context of collective actions. This is due to the fac tthat the course of gang behaviors (no matter which behavior is/are concerned: assault, robbery, vandalism, rape, burglary…), in numerous circumstances, are determined by two things: the way utilized by gang members to perceive the outside world and the manner employed by gang members to interpret the meaning of a certain situation. That means gang behaviors are far from being random, disorderly, and unpredictable, as some law enforcement officials claim. instead, this research believes that it is possible for criminologists to identify (or even predict) the regularity of gang behaviors. in other words, the content and direction of gang behaviors, to a considerable extent, are influended by two group processes: dyadic and triadic dominance. These two processes, by allowing gang leader’s/leaders’ specific perspective and action orientation to become dominant and controlling, serve as the behavioral guideline for gang followers/associates. By using the Chinese Triads tradition as an example, this article will first discuss four different (but interrelated) types of the Chinese juvenile and criminal gang. Then the defining characteristics of the Chinese Triads tradition will be addressed. The third part will examine the relation between the Chinese Triads tradition and the two group processes of dyadic and triadic dominance. The final portion will explore the possible connection between certain types of the Chinese gangs and the action/crime in which such gangs may get involved.
Chronological Invariance and Self-Control Theory: A Five-Year Study of 500 Low-Self Control and 500 High-Self Control Adolescents
Few statements about delinquency’s inevitability rivet the attention of criminologists as much as that proposed in Gottfredson and Hirschi’s general theory of crime, also known as self control theory. Specifically, they claim that by the age of 10 years a child’s self control is fairly fixed, and that low self-control children exhibit far great proclivities for delinquent acts and analogous misbehavior, especially compared to children with higher levels of self control. Their respective levels of self control are relatively immutable over the life course. This claim has been subjected to few tests where time has been a key variable. The present study explores the chronological invariance of the levels of self control exhibited by a group of 12 to 14 year-old middle-school students surveyed as part of a multi-site national assessment of the Gang Resistance and Education Training program. First, we create a panel of 500 youths with the lowest levels of self control and a like number of children with the highest levels of self control at the base year. Next, we explore subsequent measures of self control and self-reported delinquency for the next four years. We address the implications of the findings for self-control theory.
Circumstances of Lethal Violence for Infants and Children in Chicago, 1965-1995
This paper will discuss the patterns and circumstances of homicide victimization and offending in Chicago for infants and children for the years 1965-1995. Risk patterns for homicide victims in infancy (0-11 months), pre-school (1-4 years), and young children (aged 5-9 and 10-14) will be examined by sex of the victim, race/ethnicity of the victim, victim/offender relationship, offender characteristics, and circumstances surrounding the death. The study finds that there are no gender differences in infant victims but an increasing risk of victimization for males in older age groups. Victim/offender relationship also differs, with virtually all infant, and pre-school homicide victims being killed by a parent or caretaker. Circumstances surrounding the deaths of infants and pre-school age children are predominantly child abuse or adult intimate partner conflict related. In older age groups, the circumstances become more varied with an increase in acquaintance and stranger homicide. Risk patterns for homicide offenders are examined for very young children (under age 9), pre-teens (10-12 yrs.), and young teenagers (13-14 yrs.). For all age groups, offenders are predominantly male. Very young children and pre-teens often kill their siblings. Access to firearms is a concern for offenders in all age groups.
Classic Correlates of Inequality and Racial Profiling: A Study of NYC
Researchers have explored a variety of theoretical traditions such as social disorganization and urban disadvantage as a way to extend the study of racial profiling. Little research has been conducted to-date, however–particularly at the city level– on the classic correlates of inequality and their relationship to perceptions of discrimination by the police. To examine the issue, this paper employs a split-sample design on data pertaining to New York City residents’ attitudes on racial profiling to gauge the relationship between employment status, income, political orientation, age, and education on perceptions of profiling. Findings are ground within the literature on urban inequality. Implications for theory and future research are explored.
Classification of Incarcerated Women Offenders: Current Practices and New Approaches
Over the past decade, women’s prison populations have grown considerably faster than men’s (Austin, Bruce, Carroll, McCall, & Richards, 2000; Beck & Harrison, 2001; Chesney-Lind, 1997; Gillard & Beck, 1998). Since 1990, the number of incarcerated women offenders increased 108 percent while men accounted for a 77 percent increase (Beck & Harrison, 2001). Growth rates of this magnitude underscore the need for sound strategies of classification and assessment (Beck & Mumola, 1999). In this context, however, a recent nationwide survey of correctional administrators and practitioners observes that existing classification models for women – many of them originally designed for male incarcerates – are not relevant to the characteristics of women offenders (Morash, Bynum, & Koons, 1998). Classification systems for women have also been faulted for their incompatibility with emerging research on gender-specific programming or with managerial considerations unique to women offenders (Burke & Adams, 1991; LIS, Inc, 1998; Morash et. al, 1998; Ryan, 1994). The call for improving classification and programming for women predates the recent surge in the size of these prison populations. Women and girls, especially those who are incarcerated, have long been overlooked in practice and research due to reduced economies of scale (there were fewer of them) and gendered assumptions about the causes of their criminal behavior (Belknap, 1996; Dobash, Dobash & Gutteridge, 1986; Owen, 1998.; Pollock-Byrne, 1990; Rafter, 1990; Weisheit & Mahan, 1988). In 1999, the Prisons Division of the National Institute of Corrections sought to address these issues through two initiatives (a) Classification of Women Offenders, two cooperative agreements designed to develop improved strategies for classifying women offenders, and (b) Gender Responsive Strategies (Bloom & Owen, forthcoming), a project endeavoring to assemble and put forward extant research on women offenders. Both of these projects were completed in 2002. This paper highlights the findings of the cooperative agreements dealing with classification of women offenders. The tasks of these projects included:
Classification of Women Offenders: The Role of Gender-Responsive Needs
This paper tests three models of inmate classification on an intake cohort of 156 women offenders admitted to Colorado DOC. The models tested consist of (a) a revised version of the NIC Model Prisons Classification System; (b) the revised NIC model with the addition of gender responsive needs; and (c) a needs assessment model embedded within traditional custody categories. Results find that needs are more predictive of prison misconducts for women offenders than traditional static custody variables. Moreover, gender-responsive needs pertaining to child abuse, relationships, and mental health further enhance the predictive validity of the custody classification instruments. More important another set of gender responsive needs are significantly related to offender risk of re-offending. These needs include relationships, self-efficacy, child abuse, mental health, and parenting skills.
Clearnce Factors for Homicides in Washington, D.C. – 1990-2001
This paper presents an analysis of factors affecting clearances of homicides occurring in Washington, DC from 1990 through 2001. It is based on over 4,400 homicides that occurred during over these 12 years. To develop the database, information from homicide master case jackets was coded using the FBI’s ViCAP booklets. The coding was part of a larger project directed by the author at the Metropolitan Police, District of Columbia (MPDC). The ViCAP booklet includes sections on victim information, offender/suspect information, motives, offender’s modus operandi, causes of death, weapon information, and vehicle information. The project captured other information of a local nature about the homicides, such as district of occurrence and police service area.
Client Identification Problems
This paper discusses the dynamics of estimating client demand for services, and uses Adolescent Portable Therapy (APT), a new demonstration program providing drug treatment to adolescents involved in the juvenile justice system, as a case study. During its initial months of operation, APT struggled to identify and enroll the right clients during its first months of operation. The paper describes the challenges involved in launching innovations in the juvenile justice system, strategies for engaging front line workers, and the mechanics of service delivery in a secure environment. It is both a cautionary tale of how even a well-planned program can encounter substantial difficulties during implementation and an example of how researchers and program managers can work together to quickly identify problems and test possible solutions. APT’s initial enrollment problems also suggest a need for researchers to be more involved in the design of new programs.
Client Motivational Effects on Drug Court Outcomes
The influence of client’s initial motivation on drug court treatment retention and post-treatment success, as well as the impact of the drug court itself on motivation, are examined. Outcomes are preliminary follow-up results for respondents 12 months after treatment discharge, with results from self-reports and urinalyses. Respondents include those who participated in a drug court diversion program for first-time offenders, a post-adjudicatory drug court program for sentenced offenders, and a control group of clients who attended the same treatment programs, but not under the supervision of the drug court. Focus is upon the impact of each mode of treatment entry on client motivation, and the possible interactions of motivational status with success within each modality.
Climate Change and Crime: An Application of Social Escape/Avoidance Theory
Two archival analyses were performed to examine the association between annual temperatures and U.S. crime rates. The first was based on area averaged temperatures for the U.S. as a whole for years between 1950 and 1999. Box-Jenkins time-series analyses indicated that annual temperatures were associated with assault but not murder/non-negligent homicide rates in analyses that controlled for yearly population, inflation, income inequality, unemployment, and ethnicity. The second analysis was based on state-centered crime rates from 1960 through 1998 and included the same controls. Contrary to the General Affective Aggression Model, cross-sectional time-series analyses indicated that annual temperatures were associated with rates for rape, robbery, burglary, and larceny as well as assault, but not murder or motor vehicle theft. The results are interpreted in terms of the proposed Social Escape/Avoidance theory of crime victimization, which integrates predictions from psychological models of aggression and activity/lifestyle theories of predatory crime.
Cluster Analysis of Murder/Nonnegligent Manslaughter Characteristics
Within the realm of criminal justice, there is probably no offense type that is as studied as that of murder or nonnegligent homicide. No other offense is treated more seriously in terms of the allocation of law enforcement resources and adjudication as well. A great deal has been written concerning the decrease in the murder rate experienced by the nation since 1993. However, within those treatments of homicide information by researchers, the media, and criminal justice professionals, very little attention has been focused on possible differences in regional levels and trends in the nature of those same homicides. The objective of this poster is to present a viable typology of murder and nonnegligent manslaughter based upon incident-level characteristics collected by the Supplementary Homicide Report (SHR). The SHR for 2000 contains incident, victim, and offender level information on 12,991 murder and nonnegligent manslaughters about which the FBI received information. Any similarities among these incidents can be discerned by using a statistical technique called cluster analysis. These “clusters” would lend themselves to the development of a classification of murder incidents. By using a reliable typology, further analysis could be done to explore differences in regions that go beneath the surface of the simple murder rate.
Collecting Data From the Criminal Courts: Perspectives of Court Staff Members
Although there is abundant literature focusing on issues surrounding the proper use of research methods and data collection, there is less emphasis placed on problems that researchers encounter while acquiring data. The present study is a follow up to a study that examined researchers’ efforts to collect data from the criminal courts. In that study, a sample of researchers were asked about any problems that they had encountered while collecting criminal court data, and any successful strategies that they had used to overcome such problems. The present study analyzes the collection of criminal court data from the opposite viewpoint: the court staff members who oversee such collection efforts. Specifically, interviews were performed of staff members from 20 Administrative Offices of the Courts (AOCs) from around the country and 25 large county criminal courts in the Northeast. Court staff members were asked their experiences with displeased researchers, and their viewpoints concerning how researchers could make the data collection experience smoother for themselves and the agencies. Results of the views of both researchers and court staff members will be reviewed.
Collective Efficacy and Property Crime Victimization Among a Sample of Canadian Public Housing Residents
A growing body of research shows that neighborhood / collective efficacy is negatively related to crime. Much of this research focuses on violent crime in urban areas consisting of many different neighbourhoods, such as “upscale” and gentrified neighbourhoods (e.g., Census Tracts and Census Metropolitan Areas), ethnically diverse and socially stratified neighborouhoods, as well as deteriorating inner cities and other urban areas of concentrated disadvantage. However, few studies have exclusively focused on urban areas of concentrated disadvantage and on property crime victimization. Following the work of Robert Sampson and colleagues on “collective efficacy” (informal social control, social cohesion and trust) and crime, this study uses data from the West Town Study (WTS), conducted in six public housing neighbourhoods in an economically disadvantaged western section of an urban area in eastern Ontario, Canada, and attempts to answer the following questions: (1) What factors are associated with collective efficacy? (2) What are the associations between collective efficacy and property crime victimization? (3) Are residents of severely distressed households more likely to be victimized by property crime than those not living in such households? Empirical and theoretical considerations are raised and policy implications are discussed.
Colonial Gunboat Diplomacy: Genesis of Warped Criminal Justice in Nigeria
This paper seeks to examine the failed criminal justice system in Nigeria. It argues that the forceful conquest and colonial imposition of one sided system of justice designed only to fulfill the economic needs of colonialism laid the foundation to a distorted system the country inherited at independence. It further finds that post independence efforts towards changing the statusquo are marred by politics of ethnicity.
Colonial Weapons Laws as Described by Michael Bellesiles
Bellesiles cites an impressive array of primary and secondary sources to demonstrate that gun ownership by free men was tightly regulated in Colonial America. His claim to this effect has begun showing up in decisions of the courts on the meaning of the right to keep and bear arms provisions of both federal and state constitutions. Examination of Bellesiles’ sources for this claim show that they are sometimes irrelevant to his claim or fail to support his claim. In most cases, however, the statutes Bellesiles cites directly and unambiguously contradict his claim. Other primary sources not cited by Bellesiles also contradict his claim of distrusted and disarmed free men.
Coming Home Can Be a Good Thing: An Evaluation of a Juvenile Reentry Program
This paper provides an evaluation of a juvenile reentry program that operates in a Midwestern state. This program is designed to prepare juvenile offenders for their eventual release back to the community. Youths are provided with life-skills instruction and develop a reentry plan to guide their progress during the period of transition after their release. After release, the youths are assigned a mentor to assist in carrying out their reentry plan. The focus of this analysis is a release cohort from 1997 that was randomly assigned to one of three conditions and has been followed up for over three years at this point. Results indicate that participation in the reentry program is associated with a significant reduction in the likelihood of reincarceration. Implications of these results for juvenile reentry programming are considered.
Coming Out to Play? Young Women and Violence on the Street
From interviews with young women this paper documents the resourcefulness of girls (in London) in dealing with routine violence, and their strategic use of public space to reduce the restrictions on their movement imposed at home. Breaking free from overcrowded and sometimes abusive home environments, the research found that girls use streets, estate stairways and landings to gain knowledge of, and participate in, routine violence and disorder. At times they are actively involved but, more often, they learn to avoid or negotiate non-involvement in violence.
Common Genetic Influences on the Association Between Adolescent Sexual Attitudes and Aggressive Behaviors
This study examines the etiology of the association between attitudes that encourage sexual behavior (“prosex” attitudes) and aggression among adolescents using data drawn from the sibling sample of the National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent Health (Add Health). First, among those in the analysis data set (N = 1,302), prosex attitudes and aggression were significantly correlated (r = .21). Second, cross-sibling correlations for aggression, comparing monozygotic twins, dizygotic twins, full siblings, and half siblings, provided clear evidence of moderate genetic influence, and little shared environmental influence. Third, similar analyses of prosex attitudes provided similar results. Fourth, model fitting using the Mx program indicated that there were no significant shared environmental influences on the relationship between prosex attitudes and aggression among adolescents. Rather, this ssociation was completely genetic, although there were significant unique genetic influences as well on prosex attitudes, and significant unshared environmental influences on both aggression and prosex attitudes. Discussion will focus on the theoretical implications of genetic mediation of the association between attitudes that encourage sexual behavior (prosex attitudes) and aggression among adolescents for problem behavior theory (Jessor and Jessor, 1977) and evolutionary socialization theory (Belsky, Steinberg, and Draper, 1991).
Community, Crime and Young Offenders
Community is a term overlaid with alluring connotations and resonances. It is thought to offer an attractive means of (re)creating cohesion across a fragmented society and thus is often linked to a positive relationship with crime control and crime prevention, such that more community is believed to result in less crime (Crawford,1997). This paper addresses the concept of ‘community’ from the perspective of children and young people to offend exploring the meanings and interpretations they attach to community and whether their experiences of ‘community’ impact on their offending behaviour. The paper will also address the youth justice policy context in the UK wherein right realist priorities of retributive justice and exclusion have been conjoined with left realist priorities of social justice and inclusion (Muncie, 2000). Thus the views and experiences of children and young people’s in respect of the youth justice system will be analysed to explore notions of exclusion, rehabilitation and inclusion in order to examine the relative import of ‘community’ to policies which seek to address youth crime.
Community-Based Alternatives to Juvenile Detention: Problems and Prospects in Changing Local Juvenile Justice Culture
Recent trends toward a more punitive approach in managing youthful offenders over the past 20 years, particularly young black males, and perceptions about minority youth maintained by juvenile justice practitioners, has led to a disparate effect on minority youth in the juvenile justice system. The decision to detain youth prior to adjudication is particularly important when looking at the outcomes of minority youth offenders, as research has shown that detained youth have a greater likelihood of receiving harsher sentences than those youth that remain in the community prior to case disposition. This study examines the effectiveness of a community-based program designed to reduce overcrowding of youth in detention generally, and to reduce minority overrepresentation in detention facilities specifically, in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. The study shows that community-based programs can be effective alternatives but face numerous obstacles in changing the local juvenile justice culture. We discuss potential solutions.
Community Collaboration and the Supervision of Offenders: The Perspectives of Community Corrections Officers.
The Washington State Department of Corrections has implemented an innovative approach to community corrections, referred to as Neighborhood Based Supervision (NBS), in Spokane. This program geographically locates community corrections officers in community oriented police substations (COP-Shops) across the city. The goal of the program is to reduce recidivism and improve neighborhood safety through the collaboration of multiple agencies and community members in the monitoring and support of offenders living in the community. This qualitative study analyzes the perspectives of NBS officers about the effectiveness of monitoring offenders through collaboration with other agencies and community members.
Community College Athletes and Non-Athletes: An Examination of Social Status Characteristics, Rape Supportive Attitudes, and Beliefs
In recent years there have been several high-profile media cases that focus on acts of sexual assault on college campuses by athletes. These cases do not include other reported cases or unreported crimes. Since 1990, steps have been taken to try to remedy negative sexual, prejudicial, exploitive, and criminal behavior against women by athletes, but the problem still exists. This research project looks at correlations between athletic membership, status, and attitudes on rape and sexual aggression. The decision to evaluate and study the athletic population at the community college level was based on the lack of information on athletes at this level; and the application of status theory and whether status traits of athletes differ significantly from those students with no athletic affiliation. The results of this project will hopefully further research in the areas of athletes and sexual violence. Results could lead to: different types of programming for sexual assault programs on college campuses, help guide administrators in handling complaints and cases; and create better educational formats which focus on addressing pre-existing attitudinal and belief systems that encourage violence against women.
Community Context and Recidivism: The Consequences of Residence in Disadvantaged Locales
A large body of research addresses the determinants of recidivism. Generally, these empirical studies have been directed towards micro-level factors, such as offender charcteristics. An important shortcoming in this literature is that most studies do not examine the influence of the local context into which parolees are released. Recent work in criminology has focused on the effects of disadvantaged neighborhoods and poor labor marketing opportunity on criminal activity. Community characteristics may be extremely relevant in terms of recidivism because parolees released into areas of high disadvantage or few low-skill employment opportunities may be less likely to secure a job, and consequently return to prison. This paper uses a random sample of 1687 parolees and post-release control inmates released from Ohio state penal institutions in 1999. The analytic strategy utilizes a multi-level model, incorporating community data from census materials and individual-level data from offender records from the Ohio Department of Rehabilitation and Correction. An event history analysis is employed to assess the relationship between community context and recidivism, while taking into acount the specific amount of time ex-offenders have spent between incarcerations. Results suggest that careful attention must be given to insure the placement of offenders into neighborhoods that offer sufficient resources and employment opportunities.
Community Factors and Lethal Violence: Understanding the Dynamic Nexus
This paper investigates the nexus between lethal violence and community context using a `structural disadvantage’ framework to elucidate the links between the nature of the community, the contexts in which particularly urban communities exist, and the role that these play in the genesis of homicide. In addition, we investigate the feedback effects of lethal violence on community opportunities and contexts, showing how lethal violence further weakens and undermines the ability of communities and individuals therein to prevent and control lethal violence. The paper first extends recent theory and research on disadvantage, then integrates the availability and consumption of alcohol into the disadvantage theoretical framework, identifies multiple dimensions of disadvantage, develops new measurement strategies for disadvantage, and specifies how the nexus between disadvantage and lethal violence varies by types of lethality, including the degree of intimacy in the relationship between victims and perpetrators, developmentally relevant age groups, gender, and race. We analyze data for the 100 largest cities in the U.S. and their suburban rings, covering three time points, 1970, 1980 and 1990. Rates of homicide at various developmental relevant age categories and victim/offender relationship categories will be examined. Results indicate the complexity of urban homicide, and the power of the disadvantaged framework.
Community Gang Problems and Crime Problems: An Assessment.
Most studies of youth gang problems treat community-based theories of crime and community-based accounts of gang development as theoretical equivalents, presuming that gangs and crime universally go hand-in-hand However, some gang researchers have argued that the etiology of community crime patterns and of youth gang problems are not the same. Gang problems and crime problems may overlap, but they are conceptually distinct. Although this is an important issue (since the gang-crime link is central to the rationale for many gang intervention programs), little empirical research has addressed the question. This study provides an empirical assessment of the overlap between reported community crime rates and reported community gang problems by using a unique data set created by merging reports of gang activity from the National Youth Gang Surveys, crime data from the Uniform Crime Reports, and community-related data from the City-County Data Book. The analysis estimates the empirical association between reported gang problems and reported crime rates across communities in the U.S. and examines how community characteristics may moderate the gang-crime correlation in different settings.
Community Influences on School Disorder, School Climate, and Staffing Difficulty
This research builds on an ongoing program of research to collect and analyze additional data about the community context within which schools operate and its influence on school safe and orderliness. A national sample of schools was surveyed to learn of their prevention programs, practices, and arrangements. Principals served as initial informants about programs in their schools, nominating program providers who supplied more information about prevention programs operating in each school. Program providers and principals then completed surveys to describe implementation in detail. Taken together, these surveys covered (a) school climate and discipline practices; (b) level of implementation of program components; (c) leadership style of the principal; (d) training and experience of program staff; (e) difficulties with teacher and staff recruitment or turnover; and (h) various aspects of school climate. In the present extension of this research, we have collected information about school attendance areas to merge data from the 1990 and 2000 censuses for the geographical areas served by these schools with the data collected from school personnel. Analyses will describe (a) the extent to which community characteristics are associated with school participation in the national survey, (b) the degree of convergence or divergence between community measures based on the painstakingly collected new measures of school attendance area and the more expedient community measures we have used earlier, and (c) the degree to which school disorder, school climate, and difficulty staffing schools is related to the characteristics of the community a school serves and to the extent to which the community characteristics changed between 1990 and 2000. Community social disorganization-indicated by many students from families on welfare, high community unemployment and crime rates, and a high proportion of female-headed households-is strongly linked with high rates of teacher victimization and robberies and attacks on students (G. D. Gottfredson & Gottfredson, 1985, p. 168). We found that measures of teacher-administration cooperation, fairness and clarity of school rules, and student bonding to school are associated with greater orderliness and safety when characteristics of the community and the composition of the school are statistically controlled.
Community-Oriented Policing and Youth Programs: Toward a Comprehensive Strategy
The advent and development of community policing has seen its application to many aspects of youth crime-including victims, suspects, and witnesses. No systematic survey of the extent of this phenomenon, however, has been conducted. Further, no documentation of how the most promising and innovative of these programs operate has been provided. Finally, no comprehensive plan for how to implement such programs has been created. The Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention has provided funding to COSMOS Corporation and the Police Executive Research Forum (PERF) to address these research needs, as well as to assess the needs of law enforcement agencies in implementing such programs. This paper will provide a summary of the status of that research.
Community Participation in Crime Control Activities
Police and community co-production of crime control activities is a crucial component of community policing. In a survey of Los Angeles residents, we explored the dynamics of co-production through three of its dimensions – 1) attending meetings, volunteering and talking with the police, 2) efforts to secure one’s home and family, and 3) non-emergency calls to the local police station. We examine individual and neighborhood influences on these measures of community crime control. We conclude that police departments hoping to develop a strong community policing partnership have to (1) survey their own communities to ensure they understand its dynamics; (2) encourage sociable residents to join in the co-production process through developing sources of informal contact between neighbors and police; and (3) recognize the role of physical and social disorder in shaping the co-production process.
Community Police and Community Courts
The paper looks at interaction patterns between community police officers and representatives from a community court program. It describes how interaction differs across police ranks (senior officers supporting interaction with the court, while front line officers are reluctant to interact) and the reasons for the differences. The paper relies on data from a larger study that looked at the interaction among community police officers, neighborhood prosecutors and the community court. After a preliminary description of the nature and goal of the interactions that occurred, this paper theorizes about what factors affect interaction among these justice practitioners and how this interaction might affect residents’ participation in public safety.
Community Policing and Crime Prevention: A Model for a Mid-Sized Suburban Police Department
Community Policing and Crime Prevention are inter-related concepts that when properly coordinated can help to form a partnership between the police and the community. This partnership will help to reduce criminal opportunities, fear of victimization, and help to increase the quality of life in a community. In order to implement such a program, police departments must adopt a new philosophy, which must include greater flexibility among the officers in decision-making. The various elements within the police department must be brought into a coordinated program along with residents, business owners, community leaders, municipal leaders, and the media. There has been a great deal of literature and media attention for big-city police departments and their community policing efforts, however, not nearly as much has been done to address the problems faced by mid-sized suburban police departments. In the wake of a burgeoning new-construction industry, the suburbs are growing at an alarming rate. Although similar principles of policing may be applied, big-city policing solutions do not necessarily work in the suburbs. This model explores how suburban police departments can use the creativity of their personnel along with the resources of their residents, municipality, and other agencies to deal with their unique problems
Community Policing and Delinquency Prevention
The paper seeks to extend prevention theory to community policing. It will develop prevention models and propose appropriate activities which are consistent with delinquency prevention and community policing
Comparative Criminal Justice Policy-Making in the U.S. and U.K.: The Case of Privatized Corrections
A number of authors have remarked upon the apparent convergence in crime control policy between the USA and UK in recent years. This has been associated with developments such as ‘zero tolerance’ policing, harsher sentencing policies, higher rates of incarceration, and privatization of criminal justice agencies. ‘Structuralist’ explanations of convergence link similarities in penal policy in different nation states to deeper cultural and structural changes being experienced across all ‘late modern’ capitalist societies. By contrast, ‘agency-led’ approaches focus upon political decision-making, and the growth of deliberate policy transfer and imitation by policy actors. In this paper we argue that both approaches would benefit from a more detailed consideration of what ‘policy’ is and how it is formed. Drawing upon a major comparative study of criminal justice policy-making, we focus upon the case of growing private sector involvement in corrections in the US and UK. The paper provides a detailed analysis of the process of policy change in both countries and outlines the factors shaping key policy decisions. We then explore the ways in which social and cultural forces highlighted by ‘structuralist’ accounts actually play themselves out within the agendas, alternatives and decisions of key policy actors and institutions. The paper concludes with some observations about the nature of convergence between criminal justice systems and the determinants of penal policy.
Comparative Study of Crime Problems After Two Great Earthquakes: Hanshin-Awaji Great Earthquake and Kanto Great Earthquake
My paper will compare the criminality after two great earthquakes in Japan, namely the Hanshin-Awaji Great Earthquake in Kobe area in 1995 and the Kanto Great Earthquake in Tokyo area in 1923. But there are significant differences between them. There were many riots that lead to crimes and even attacks and massacre against minority people, especially Korean residents, after the Kanto Great Earthquake in 1923. However, as reported by media, there were less crimes after the Hanshin-Awaji Great Earthquake than many people expected. And it can be said that people acted very calmly after the earthquake in 1995. This presenter will analyze in what changes in our society reduce crime after the earthquake in 1995. In particular, my paper will focus on victim support systems which have rapidly progressed in Japan after the Kobe Great Earthquake in 1995. Since then, we have become aware of the importance of mental support for victims.
Comparison Between Japanese Crime Data and the UCR Concerning Validity and Reliability Problems
This paper attempts to compare Japanese police statistics with the Uniform Crime Reports (UCR) concerning validity and reliability problems. Five major issues are examined as follows: (1)dark figure or underreporting of crime problem, (2) official counting process of crime, (3) the composition of the crime index, (4) law enforcement decision making and crime recording practices, and (5) the proper population base for computing crime rates. While comparative criminologists generally agree that Japanese crime statistics are high in quality or they are more accurate than the UCR, this author concludes that this general agreement is of dubious value. Consequently, in using official data for estimating the true extent of crime patterns, the comparative researcher should be cautious about the data interpretation.
Comparison of Self-Reported Drug Use and Urinalysis of Adult Male Arrestees
The National Institute of Justice’s Arrestee Drug Abuse Monitoring (ADAM) program tracks trends in the prevalence and types of drug use among booked arrestees in urban areas. At each of the thirty-five ADAM sites, trained interviewers collect voluntary and anonymous interviews (approximately 30 minutes in length) and urine specimens from adult male, adult female, juvenile male, and juvenile female arrestees. Arrestees are approached within 48 hours of their arrest and asked to participate in the study. At most sites, more than 80% of the individuals approached agree to the interview and, of those, more than 80% agree to give urine specimens. Data collection takes place four times a year (once each calendar quarter) at each site. Data collection periods generally last two consecutive weeks each quarter (ADAM web site). The focus of this paper deals with the self-report question: “During the past 48 hours, on how many days did you use [insert drug]” (ADAM interview form). The five drugs that can be included in this question are marijuana, powder cocaine, crack cocaine, heroin, and methamphetamine. The interview also inquires about 7-day use and 30-day use. However for the purpose of relying on accurate urinalyses, this paper focuses on 48-hour use. The question examines how many days the individual had used the drug. Since the comparison focuses on whether or not the interviewee tested positive for drugs, the self-report responses were recoded to either used or had not used each drug. When the 2000 data collection period took place, powder cocaine and crack cocaine were not distinguished from each other in the urinalyses reports. Therefore for the purpose of this paper, powder cocaine and crack cocaine were merged together to form the variable cocaine. Data from seven out of thirty-five ADAM sites were selected for inclusion in this analysis. These sites include, Atlanta, Honolulu, Indianapolis, Omaha, Sacramento, Spokane, and Tucson. These cities were chosen to represent primary regions of the United States, and together they collected data all four quarters in 2000, and each only worked with one facility. Examining the cities separately and as a whole, there was a noticeable difference between self-report drug use and the urinalysis report. Using weighted data, it is apparent that most of the drugs are greatly under reported. For example looking at Atlanta in the first table, 140 (19.3%) adult male arrestees reported they had used cocaine in the last 48 hours. However the urinalysis shows that 353 (48.4%) of these individuals tested positive for cocaine. The second table shows that methamphetamine use in Sacramento was reported by 81 (15.9%) of the adult male arrestees interviewed. The urinalysis shows 148 (29.2%) tested positive for methamphetamine. Looking at the cities combined, it is also evident that there is a vast discrepancy between the self-report data and the urinalyses reports. This is most prominent when analyzing cocaine use. The combined total for the seven cities’ self-report data on cocaine use is 500 (13.2%), however, 1103 (29.1%) of the arrestees tested positive for cocaine.
Competing Dystopia Kafka and Orwell on Contemporary Criminal Justice
Years ago Stan Cohen invoked the works of Orwell, Kafka and Huxley to suggest that literary figures had much to teach criminologists about the dystopian potentials inherent in criminal justice policies and practices. My paper focuses on the different lessons that Orwell and Kafka can teach us about contemporary dimensions of criminal justice. More specifically, each author provides an insightful understanding of contemporary tendencies, although from somewhat different perspectives. Orwell’s vision of “Big Brother” provides the dominant metaphor for our contemporary surveillance society. His model is most applicable to the logic that drives many contemporary aspects of public policing. In contrast, Kafka’s work should be understood as providing a dystopian representation for how average citizens might come to view the criminal justice system, which to outsiders seems to be increasingly opaque, inequitable and capricious.
Computerized Measurement of Treatment Progress for Violent Psychotic Patients: An Application of Generalizability Theory
The emergence of computerized tools is an important advance in clinical assessment. Several methodological problems generally associated with measurement of treatment progress recently led to the development of a Computerized Checklist of Treatment Progress (CCTP). Used with violent psychotic patients at the Institut Philippe Pinel de Montr‚al for more than 2 years, the CCTP is a method of observation in which members of the clinical staff are asked to monthly rate dynamic factors generally associated with treatment progress of psychotic patients (i.e. anger control, empathy, ask for help, attitudes toward medication use, etc.). Eleven scales were developed in order to evaluate treatment progress, and results are used to propose specific individualized goals. The current paper will present the scales used in the CCTP as well as results of inter-rater reliability analyses. CCTP scores will then be analyzed with the use of Generalizability theory (Cronbach, Gleser, Nanda, & Rajaratnam, 1972). Generalizability theory (G) can be used to assess multiple sources of variance (related to subjects, to raters, to treatment setups, to multiple interactions etc.) in a single multivariate analysis and allow decision makers (in this case practitioners) to investigate the dependability of their ratings. Implications for intervention and issues regarding in vivo evaluation’s reliability will be discussed along with the advantages and disadvantages of such computerized systems. References: Cronbach, L.J., Gleser, G.C., Nanda, H. & Rajaratnam, N. (1972) The dependability of behavioral measurements: Theory of generalizability of scores and profiles. New York, John Wiley.
Computing Officer “Downtime,” a Comparison of Observation Data and CAD Data
Many police departments that claim to have implemented community policing and problem solving expect their officers to engage in these activities between responses to calls, at the same time, officers complain that they do not have sufficient time between calls to engage in these activities. Over the last 30 years many studies of patrol officer workload have been conducted, these are primarily of two types, studies using dispatch data, and studies using observational data. Dispatch records do not include information concerning tasks performed by patrol officers about which the dispatcher is not informed, or information concerning what police officers do during their free patrol time. Observational studies of police use of time have not specifically focused on activities engaged in during “downtime” (as opposed to “uptime” or responding to calls for service). This study proposes to examine observational data to determine how much downtime officers have, but also to examine and compare CAD data for the same period. This may be a significant methodological contribution, as it will provide future research efforts with a useful proxy technique for using CAD data as a cheap substitute for expensive observational data.
COMSTAT: The Middle Manager’s Perspective
Originally established by Commissioner William Bratton and his colleagues in the New York City Police Department, COMSTAT has emerged as a new organizational paradigm in policing. It has now been implemented in various forms by a number of different law enforcement agencies. This article presents data drawn from the written views of police middle managers from across the country. The respondents were attending the Administrative Officer’s Course at the Southern Police Institute at the University of Louisville. During the course of their studies, they read several works on COMPSTAT, including Eli Silverman’s work, NYPD Battles Crime. Content analysis of their written comments reveal the strengths and weaknesses that they associate with the COMPSTAT model.
Concentrated Events and Mobile Populations: The Spaial Distribution of Homicide Events, Offenders, and Victims in Bernalillo County, New Mexico
Recent work has examined the patterning of violent events in space and the degree to which such patterns are associated with the structural and social features of geographic. Focusing on homicide, this research has established that homicide tends to be spatially congregated and that its diffusion across space is dependent on the social and structural features of adjacent areas. This study examines the spatial distribution of homicide events, offenders, and victims in a Bernalillo County. Consistent with previous work, our findings suggest that, homicides in Bernalillo County are largely congregated in specific geographical areas. However, our data also reveal a highly mobile population of offenders and victims who travel an average of 4 miles to these events and live, on average, 6 miles apart from one another. We examine these patterns in more detail, exploring whether the spatial distribution of events, offenders, and victims is dependent on the dynamics of the event, such that some types of homicide are more spatially concentrated (i.e., intimate partner homicides), while others are more spatially diffuse (i.e., drug related homicides). We also examine how events within hot spots differ from those outside hot spots in terms of the spatial distribution of events, offenders, and victims?
Conceptual and Measurement Issues in Assessing Serious Youth Violence Over the Early-Adolescent Life-Course: A Social Capital Approach
Early adolescence traditionally marks the onset of delinquency and violent behavior. If the early-adolescent life-course typically falls between the ages of 12-15, there is a relatively brief period of time to assess and measure behavioral changes based on how an individual either: persists, desists or refrains from engaging in serious youth violence. How these changes in behavior are identified, measured and assessed over a relatively short period of time requires a conceptual approach that is both coherent in its objective and effective in its task. Social capital theory is a relatively new and innovative conceptual approach used to assess and measure changes in behavior over time. The measurement strategy discussed here incorporates both an ethnographic narrative analysis and a time series social network chart analysis (i.e., Time 1 and Time 2). This method of measurement and analysis can visually highlight the relationships of individuals within the egocentric social networks of at-risk youth, and, through detailed ethnographic narratives, explain how the capitalization and utilization of the social capital embedded within these networks facilitates either pro-social or anti-social behavior over the early adolescence life-course.
Conceptual Frameworks for Evaluating Juvenile Drug Courts
Jurisdictions across the United States have begun to explore the use of drug courts for juvenile offenders. The model for these programs has been largely adaptive rather then prescriptive. Many juvenile drug courts are simply patterned after programs designed for adult offenders. While this has facilitated the diffusion of juvenile drug courts, it has not encouraged the development of programs and policies based on proven models. Juvenile programs have developed far more rapidly than the ability of researchers and practitioners to generate empirical support for their effectiveness. Policymakers are still without good answers to such basic questions as whether juvenile court drug courts are effective, and whether they are different enough from criminal courts and juvenile courts to warrant their own program models and evaluation strategies. Under a grant from the National Institute of Justice (NIJ), the Urban Institute recently reviewed the available conceptual frameworks for evaluating juvenile drug courts, and developed a model framework to facilitate future evaluations.
Conceptualizing Bullying Behavior in Juveniles: A Comparative Analysis of Previous Research
This article addresses the issue of bullying behavior is juveniles using a comparative analysis of the Japanese and American research on bullying behaviors. Focusing on the cultural context of bullying in Japan and the United States, the authors compare what is known about bulling behavior including the types of bullying, the frequency of the behavior, characteristics of the bully and the victims of the bully, the reasons for bully behavior, and the consequences of such behaviors both for the individual and the community. The goal of the article is to increase the conceptual knowledge to be used for future research on bullying behavior and school violence research. Implications for future research are discussed.
Confessions and Criminal Case Disposition in China
This research examines the relationship between confessions and criminal case disposition in China. We describe the theoretical and structural bases of confessions, their legal development, and legal definitions in China. Bivariate and multivariate analyses for a sample of 237 court cases involving theft in China reveal that the majority of offenders confessed to their crime and showed repentance, confessors and non-confessors differ in several key legal and extra-legal factors, and confession has a conditional and an independent net effect on criminal case disposition. The effects of confession were found to be similar for various groups of offenders (e.g., recent migrants vs. long-term residents). The paper concludes with a discussion of the theoretical and practical implications and problems of the system of confession.
Confronting the Internet Con: Assessing Law Enforcement Preparedness to Address Internet Fraud
Despite claims that computer crime will soon be more costly than conventional crime, limited empirical research examines law enforcement’s preparedness to address hi-tech crimes. Many suggest that law enforcement agencies are ill-prepared to confront computer crimes, yet very few research efforts have empirically assessed the extent to which law enforcement is capable of confronting such harms. The present research addresses this void in the literature through assessing law enforcement’s preparedness to identify, investigate, and enforce crimes involving Internet fraud. Issues surrounding interagency and interstate cooperation are also addressed. Results from surveys distributed to all levels of law enforcement are presented and directions for future law enforcement efforts to address Internet fraud are discussed. Suggestions for further research are offered.
Considering Community Context in the Explanation of Black-White Differences in Delinquency
Overview and Hypotheses A key social fact in the study of U.S. juvenile delinquency is that recent studies find significantly higher rates of delinquency among black juveniles, relative to juveniles in other racial and ethnic groups. It generally is assumed that this is explained by the disadvantaged socioeconomic status (SES) of blacks in U.S. society. Several studies, however, appear to contradict this assumption. These studies find significantly higher delinquency rates among blacks, even when controllingfor various aspects of family SES, including parents1 levels of income, occupational prestige, or education (e.g., Brownfield, Sorenson, and Thompson 2001; Cernkovich, Giordano, and Rudolph 2000; Elliott and Ageton 1980). Although revealing, these studies do not dismiss the possibility that racial differences in SES can explain racial differences in delinquency. As others have pointed out (e.g., Jencks and Mayer 1990; Wilson 1987), a chief limitation of much prior work in sociology is the tendency to examine SES primarily as an individual- or family-level attribute. Although individual or family SES may be consequential for many outcomes, so too may community SES. This possibility reflects a growing recognition that people1s behavior may be a function not simply of who they are, but also, where they live.1 In support of that view is the growing literature on neighborhood effects’research that has revealed significant effects of community or neighborhood context on a number of individual outcomes, even after controlling for individual sociodemographic characteristics (see Boardman and Robert1s 2001 review of the literature). Using geocoded data collected from a national sample of adolescents, we apply this logic to the study of juvenile delinquency, and to the issue of racial differences in particular. We examine two hypotheses relevant to the effects of community context on delinquency and its ability to explain racial differences in delinquency found in our data. Our first hypothesis is that community-level SES may have effects on delinquency above and beyond the effects of family-level SES. In testing this hypothesis, we also draw upon the social disorganization perspective (Shaw and McKay 1942) to extend our analysis of community context beyond the consideration of community SES. Specifically, we consider that a number of additional sociodemographic aspects of community context’including community levels of residential mobility, racial and ethnic segregation, the degree of urbanization, the rate of family disruption’may also be relevant to the explanation of delinquency, even after controlling for family SES. Our second hypothesis considers the issue of racial differences’the community effects revealed in the test of our first hypothesis should partially explain the racial differences in delinquency found in our data. Of particular importance is the possibility that these community effects will explain racial differences more than is possible when only family-level SES is considered. These hypotheses are motivated in part by the emerging literature on the importance of community context for explaining the social dislocations of blacks in particular (Massey and Denton 1993; South and Baumer 2000; Wilson 1987). U.S. residential patterns are characterized by a high degree of economically-structured racial segregation. As a result, economically disadvantaged blacks are much more likely than similarly disadvantaged whites to live in high-poverty neighborhoods. As South and Baumer (2000:1382) argue, this fact needs to be accounted for in new research.
Constitutionality of Probation and Parole Conditions Restricting Procreation
As our national prison populations reach capacity, numerous jurisdictions have been resorting to probation and parole as an intermediate sanction in lieu of incarceration. Although in the past there have been numerous conditions regulating such things as travel, offender association, and therapy as terms of probation and parole; more recent cases have imposed the regulation of procreation on certain types of offenders. This paper seeks to identify the constraints of supervisory personnel by looking at recent legal decisions of various courts. This paper will also examine the constitutionality of the courts decisions to regulate a persons right to procreate.
Contested Cities: Violence in Jerusalem, Belfast, and Chicago
“Contested cities” are conceptualized as cities where existing divisions have an extra dimension of ethno-racial conflict. Thus, Jerusalem is the Holy City split by three religions and the cutting edge of the Palestinian/Israeli dispute. Belfast is the industrial center of Northern Ireland still divided by “peace walls” and the center of Catholic/Protestant contests for power. Chicago is the “city of broad shoulders’ where the African American ghetto refuses to go away despite widespread gentrification and dislocation of housing project residents. In all three cities, rates of violence are well above the median for cities in each country and has persisted over decades. The paper will look at similarities and differences in violence in each city and the changing role of organizations of armed young men.
Contesting Community Justice: Paramilitary Punishment in Ireland (North)
Paramilitary organisations in the North of Ireland, such as the IRA, have long policed their own communities alongside broader military strategies. Such policing, often involving severe punishment of offenders, represents, in part, a contest over the legitimacy of criminal justice within a society deeply divided along ethno-national lines, large parts of which experience alienation from the formal state system, particularly in the recent thirty-three years of political violence. It also represents, in part, locally-based responses to crime within predominantly urban working class areas drawing upon significant community support. This paper argues that paramilitary punishment is largely a form of community justice, but not strictly in the sense in which that term is used in recent criminology literature. It contends that, in general, previous attempts at understanding such practices have foundered on simplistic and/or moralistic perspectives about the relationship between paramilitaries and their communities can only be understood and delivered through such a nuanced appreciation. Attempts to re-invent justice within communities must address the particular political circumstances and social settings in which local crime management has evolved. This paper raises a range of issues that will be of relevance in wider debates about community justice and crime, including: the contested nature of community; the continuing interest in informal justice; relations between the state and diverse areas or communities within the jurisdictional borders of the state; the construction of a ‘rule of law’ or criminal justice ‘system’; and, the challenges to local justice within increasing governmentality.
Contextual Disparities in Sentencing: A Hierarchical Analysis of Variations in Sentencing Severity Across Pennsylvania Courts
Using recent data from the Pennsylvania Commission on Sentencing (PCS), this study investigates the impact of various contextual factors on sentencing outcomes across county-level courts in Pennsylvania. It examines the separate and joint effects of three subsets of theoretically relevant factors — courtroom contexts, county crime characteristics, and county population demographics — on both the likelihood and length of incarceration. We draw from various theoretical perspectives to introduce hypotheses about the relative influence of individual and contextual factors (as well as specific cross-level interactions) on sentencing outcomes. To examine these predictions, we employ Hierarchical Linear Modeling (HLM) techniques (Bryk & Raudenbush, 1992), designed to account for the nested nature of contextual sentencing data. Preliminary results indicate 1) significant variation in sentencing severity across counties 2) significant variation in the effects of different sentencing factors across counties, and 3) significant influences from contextual factors on mean sentencing severity across counties. These findings suggest that sentencing severity varies considerably across county-level courts, although only a small portion of this between-county variation is accounted for by our contextual variables.
Continued Anti-Democracy in America: The War on Drugs as a Current Example
This paper traces the history of anti-democracy against people of color in America. It looks at how laws have justified the violence, brutality, devaluation, and continued human rights violations against minorities. More recently, the use of drug laws to justify the 4th Amendment violations and increased incarceration rates of blacks and Latinos. It puts the acceptance of these practices in the context of Stephan Pfhol’s model of power and knowledge, and how most members of American society don’t question the way the criminal justice system deals with the War on Drugs, no do they question the fact that we have been fighting this war for over three decades and we are still loosing it. The researcher will look specifically at the differences between police and communities members acceptance of these practices, with hopes of finding significant differences between blacks, whites, police, and non-police in acceptance of these new policies.
Controlled Study of the Effects of CCTV on Violence
Most assault injury is sustained in town and city centres. Closed circuit television (CCTV) surveillance has been successful in preventing acquisitive crime but its effectiveness in violence prevention is not clear and has not been investigated in a controlled study. Objectives: The principal objective of this study was to investigate the effect of urban CCTV on violent crime using police and emergency department (ED) records. Methods: A controlled study design was adopted. Towns/cities were selected on the basis of geographical location, population and co-terminosity of surveillance (CCTV system, police division and ED). Five intervention (CCTV) and five control centres were studied over a four year period: two years before and two years after camera installation in mid-1997. Results: According to police data, violent offences increased significantly overall in both CCTV (11%) and control (4% t-test: NS) centres. According to ED data in intervention centres there was an overall reduction (-3%) in numbers of patients reporting injury in assault but an increase (11% p
Controlling the Illicit Trade in Antiquities: A Criminological Analysis of Demand Reduction Policies
This paper explores the contribution of criminological analysis to the control of the illicit traffic in plundered antiquities. Recent years have seen a sharpening of concern of archaeologists and others concerned with cultural heritage regarding the destruction of cultural sites in order to provide material for the vast international market in antiquities. The present analysis compares this traffic with other illicit markets, such as those involved illegal drugs, in order to assess the various proposed policy recommendations. Like many other illicit markets, many of the early steps have focused on policies aimed at restriction of supply. The paper examines the general lack of success of supply reduction strategies, and argues for an exploration of those focused on demand. A number of separate possibilities of demand reduction are reviewed, including steps which have been taken, or have been proposed, by leading market states.
Coping With Christ: The Effects of Religious Conversion on Inmates’ Coping Abilities
How inmates cope with incarceration has long been an intriguing area of research for criminologists. This area of inquiry has received increased attention in recent years. Investigators have delineated several key individual and structural variables that appear to predict the likelihood of adjusting to prison and co- existing with other inmates and staff. In this study, I contribute to the literature by focusing on how religious conversion while in prison affects the coping mechanisms of inmates. Specifically, in- depth interviews were conducted with 30 inmates in Mississippi’s largest public prison who reported a conversion experience as a result of participation in Operation Starting Line, a national evangelical prison ministry program. The interviews uncovered both positive and negative effects on the ability of newly converted inmates to successfully cope with the structure and rituals of prison, as well as interaction with other inmates and staff.
Corporate Kidnapping: Issues of Definitions, Monitoring and Reporting
Corporate kidnapping is the abduction of corporate executives or employees for political and financial purposes. The nature and extent of corporate kidnapping, to date, is an unexplored criminological phenomenon that is growing in use and frequency throughout the world, particularly in third world countries and emerging nations. This presentation will explore the nature and extent of corporate kidnapping. It will also provide explanations for the increase in this criminal activity. This presentation will also explore some of the inherent problems associated with the effective reporting and monitoring of these criminal events throughout the world. Recommendations for effective reporting, data gathering and monitoring will also be presented.
Corporate Violence Against Women: An Examination of Garment Workers in U.S. Sweatshops
This research examines domestic and global case studies of garment industry sweatshops utilizing the framework of corporate violence against women and children. Informed by feminist criminology, white-collar crime, and human rights literature, this research explores how corporate decision-makers knowingly and recklessly create dangerous working conditions, increase long-term health hazards and illnesses, and depress wages by suppressing women and children’s rights to organize for safer working conditions and livable wages. This research also focuses upon the corporate public relations campaign used to conceal law violations and human rights abuses, and the crimes of omission by the State in ignoring these harms. Lastly, this research looks at the activism by women sweatshop workers and the grassroots anti-sweatshop movements shaping globally that seek to eliminate this insidious form of violence against women and children.
Correctional Cognitive Behaviouralism: An Historical and Critical Overview
This paper provides an overview of the origins of the cognitive behavioural model currently underpinning correctional policy and practice in both Canada and the UK. While rehabilitation was to some extent undermined in the UK by the challenge of `Nothing Works’, this was not the case in Canada where work carried out by psychologists associated with the Correctional Service of Canada resulted in the adoption of a cognitive behavioural approach to corrections. This model assumes that offenders have failed to develop particular cognitive skills and that this deficit is the root cause of their offending. The success of correctional cognitive behaviouralism, it is argued, is due largely to the ability of its proponents to reconfigure the rehabilitative ideal into a `governmental technology’ in keeping with the political rationalities of advanced neo-liberal democracies. This process will be examined, using examples of `offending behaviour’ programmes as illustrations.
Correctional Philosophy and Theory: A Comparative Analysis
For the better part of the last century, criminology and criminal justice researchers have given lip service to the broader intention and meaning of corrections. Most research, to-date, has tended to narrow their focus to specific areas such as penology, community-based corrections, parole, etc. However, we need to also view corrections in its broader context so as to better understand it within a national and international context. One approach has been to use incarceration rates as a means of classifying countries and then describing their penal philosophy in light of their incarceration practices. Adopting a similar approach, this paper will: 1) offer a short overview of some of the themes and trends of correctional practices of several countries, 2) compare and contrast their correctional philosophies in relation to the UN standards and guidelines, and 3) propose some strategies for future comparative research within corrections.
Corrections and Punishment in Canada: Ideology, Practice and the Federal Female Prisoner
Minor research attention has been allotted to the punishment of incarcerated females int he Canadian federal correctional system, Correctional Service of Canada (CSC). literture that does exist generally proposes that punishment is the cornerstone of the regulation of female prisoners and that it takes a specific, gendered form that relies on the deployment of traditional ideals of passive, feminine behaviour. This paper evaluates this understanding by exploring CSC’s current interpretation of punishment and its application toward federally sentenced women. Drawing on interviews with correctional personnel and incarcerated women and recent events, this paper offers a theoretical undetstanding of CSC’s harsh response to women’s “unfeminine” institutional behavour, in particular self-harm. It is propsosed that the ideological foundationa nd consequent practices of CSC are dee0ply embedded in its historic oppressive structure which has not yet fully questioned its traditional conception o female. it is suggested that CSC justifies its harsh forms of women’s punishment under the guise of new terminology, such as referruing to solitary confinement as an “enhanced security unit” or “social needs unit”. Without challenge, the ideological base of CSC offers no alternative but continued application of punitive practices based on the acceptance of a traditional conception of female.
Correlates and Consequences of Parenting Styles: Effects on Adolescent Delinquency, Substance Abuse, and Educational Outcomes
Child social and emotional development occurs in the context of the family system. Within that system, parenting practices play an important role in healthy child development. The literature on parenting and child development describes several parenting styles. Most commonly discussed are four approaches identified as: Authoritative, Authoritarian, Permissive, and Unengaged (or neglecting) parenting. Using data from the Lehigh Longitudinal Study, we examine factors related to these four parenting styles, including discipline practices associated with each. Additional analyses investigate the impact of parenting style on adolescent outcomes such as violence, substance abuse, and delinquency, depression, and education, controlling for child maltreatment. This study enhances understanding of different parenting practices and their effects on children and seeks to inform parent education to enhance positive parenting. Findings will be discussed in relation to current literature.
Correlates of Recidivism for Women Parolees From Prison-Based Treatment in California
The extent to which traditional therapeutic community (TC) methods meet the specialized treatment needs of drug-dependent women in prison is largely unknown. Drug-dependent women offenders entering prison-based TC treatment programs often report severe levels of poly-drug abuse, psychological impairment, and histories of sexual/physical abuse. Very little research has been conducted specifically with this population and the degree to which these factors are related to recidivism is uncertain. The purpose of this study is to identify critical factors that are related to the reincarceration rates of women offenders who paroled from prison-based TC treatment programs. Extensive treatment intake interview data for 2,512 women from eight prison-based TCs in California was compared using Chi-square analysis and t-tests to identify preexisting differences for those who were (19%) and those who were not (81%) returned to custody within 12-months of their parole date. Intake data come from a five-year process and outcome evaluation of the California Department of Corrections’ (CDC) treatment expansion initiative. The return-to-custody data come from the CDCs Offender Based Information System (OBIS). Logistic regression analyses was used to indicate which women are at greater risk of reincarceration. Preliminary findings show that women with psychological impairments were most likely to be reincarcerated within 12-months of their parole, compared with women with no psychological impairments. Sexual/physical abuse and polydrug use were unrelated to reincarceration. These findings indicate a need for developing more comprehensive and effective treatment plans for dually-diagnosed women offenders. Future exploration from this study could provide valuable information on the types of services and approaches that should be emphasized when treating dually-diagnosed women in prison-based TCs.
Cost Effectiveness of Restorative Justice
This paper sketches the outline for the research agenda that will be needed to develop comparable cost/benefit estimations of various restorative justice practices. Methodological problems in the estimation of program costs for both restorative and traditional justice processes are reviewed. The author presents a framework for conceptualizing the presumed benefits of restorative justice and considers the methodological difficulties involved in their measurement.
Cost-Effectiveness of Violence Prevention: Lessons From Uncertainty
There is great enthusiasm for crime prevention as a supplement or alternative to ex post incarceration. Cost-effectiveness evaluations have indicated that prevention programs might compare favorably with incarceration in terms of crimes averted per program dollar invested and that they might pay for themselves with savings or “cost-offsets”. Until recently, however, the evaluations have not addressed in any comprehensive way the implications of the uncertainties inherent in their conclusions because of data and methodological limitations. This paper examines that uncertainty, addressing specifically the following issues: * Data supporting the analyses are limited. What happens if they are wrong? The specific benefit and cost estimates would, of course, hange, but would they change enough to alter the overall conclusions? * What can be said about whether programs can be expanded to populations ess at risk without sacrificing the net savings they achieve? * Because estimates are uncertain, there is some possibility that a pogram expected to have a favorable benefit-cost ratio will instead ail. If policymakers wish to hedge against such failures, what program nvestment strategy should they pursue?
Counting Guns in Early America
As ARMING AMERICA recognizes, one of the best sources for property ownership patterns in early America is probate inventories, listings of assets owned at death. It is important to place gun ownership in context by comparing ownership rates to those of other commonly owned items, such as books and chairs. Consistent with prior scholarship (Alice Hanson Jones, Anna Hawley, Gloria Main), We find gun ownership rates much higher than that reported in ARMING AMERICA. Contrary to ARMING AMERICA’s claims, few guns are listed in poor condition, women owned guns in substantial numbers, and guns were kept in the home.
Courtroom Narratives: The Influence of Talk in Juvenile Dispositional Outcomes
Despite an impressive body of research and a great deal of agreement on the factors associated with punishment recommendations and influential in legal outcomes, relatively few studies have focused on the underlying discursive process of interpretation and construction that inspires legal decision-making. While these previous findings are important, our focus is on the narrative accounts of judges, juveniles, etc., as they occur within the context of juvenile disposition hearings. Using data derived from a team ethnographic study our research pays particular attention to how organizational accounts (i.e. the narratives of courtroom actors) make meaningful the factor identified by the previous researchers. We also consider how judges and other court officers use these narratives to justify the appropriateness of the dispositional outcomes. Our research demonstrates that legal narratives are not used haphazardly, nor are they merely the enactment of individual preferences and personalities. We find evidence that legal discourse is socially constructed and collectively shared among juvenile court officers. More importantly, we find that these narratives are used in systematic manner to justify legal decision-making to a non-judicial audience.
Crack Mothers: Crime, Health, and Welfare
This paper argues that the rise and fall of reports on crack mothers illustrates the politics of moral panic and drug scares. The instant addiction of crack cocaine and its threat to the health of women and infants were exaggerated by the media and used to justify harsher social agendas regarding women and minorities. The paper reviews several well-publicized prosecutions of crack mothers that sanctioned legal intrusion on women’s rights and had the opposite of their intended effects, discouraging drug-addicted women from seeking prenatal care. The paper also includes an analysis of the severe media treatment of low income minority women versus the more understanding treatment of middle-class white women who were also addicts. Notwithstanding the real damage suffered by infants born of crack mothers, the paper notes that oversimplified coverage diverts attention from the underlying social problems–poverty and inadequate social services.
Creating Restorative Systems
In recent yeas, restorative justice proponents have begun to discuss what a restorative justice system might look like. This chapter will review the conversation to date and explain why the concrete elaboration of restorative systems is needed. It will identify the issues that must be adressed in a restorative system and areas of general agreement and of dispute. Criteria against which to evaluate such system models will be proposed. A research project underway to develop a hypothetical restorative justice system will be described.
Creating the Thin Blue Line: Social Network Evolution Within a Police Academy
Research on police recruits finds significant changes within cohort groups over the course of their training. These changes constitute the transformation of a group from civilians into “real” police officers. This entails an alteration of self that goes far beyond the set of skills and proficiencies covered in the training. This transition is examined by questioning how “police figures” are created within newly formed recruit networks. Necessarily, these networks are abandoned upon graduation but they do endure to some extent in the professional lives of police officers. We examine social processes that generate social knowledge, network formation and network evolution within the training environment. Which other individuals a recruit knows, how pairs of recruits came to know each other, and the type of interaction in which they engage are shown to be key factors in manufacturing police “types”. Results demonstrate that there are a series of mechanisms that serve in shaping relationships within the group. Pre-academy relations, knowledge at prior time points during the training, seating arrangement, work group membership, car pooling, shared lunches, and humor all serve in determining social knowledge and friendship at subsequent time points. It is then argued that these relationships and the role of paramilitary, or experienced recruits, are fundamental instruments within the re-socialization processes of a police academy.
Crime Analysis or Problem Analysis: Issues and Debate
In this presentation, the authors will discuss specific issues and the current debate surrounding the future of crime analysis and problem analysis. The issues and debate will come from both the authors’ experience and observations over the last several years as well as from the Problem Analysis Forum 2002. The forum was a the two-day meeting in which a ogroup edof academics, police managers, officers, and civilian analysts were brought together to discuss various topics on how problem analysis/action research can best be implemented and institutionalized into everyday police problem solving. As part of this discussion, many parallels were drawn and debated between crime analysis and problem analysis. These points will provide the basis for the presentation and include such questions as: How should problem analysis/action research be defined as they apply to policing? How do they relate to conventional crime analysis? Are crime analysis and problem analysis separate disciplines? In theory? In practice? Should there be a separate job description for problem analysts from that of crime analysts and/or police planners? If so, what should it look like?
Crime and Achievement, Part I: A Related Explanation
A network explanation is elaborated in this first segment of a larger research program addressing variations in achievement levels in crime. Data for the study were obtained in a recent federal inmate survey in southern Quebec. Structural hole theory (Burt 1992) is used in accounting for entrepreneurial behavioural patterns as indicated by nonredundant networking. Results show that nonredundant or efficient networking is positively related to criminal incomes (our indicator for achievement in crime). Theoretically, the criminal network-achievement relationship allows us to broaden the limits of differential association theory within the scope of a purposive action and opportunity-structure framework.
Crime and Coercion: A Test of Core Theoretical Propositions
In his recent Crime and Coercion, Colvin (2000) contends that individuals exposed to coercive environments develop social-psychological deficits that enhance their probability of engaging in criminal behavior. Using a sample of 2,472 students from six middle schools, we test core propositions of Colvin’s differential coercion theory. Thus, we assess whether delinquent involvement is related to four coercive environments: parental coercion, peer coercion, a coercive school environment, and a coercive neighborhood environment. We also assess whether the influence of these coercive environments on delinquency is mediated by four social-psychological deficints: coercive ideation, anger, school social bonds, and parental social bonds. The analysis revealed fairly consistent support for the core propositions of differential coercion theory. Thus, we found that students exposed to coercive environments develop social-psychological deficits and therefore engage in relatively serious delinquent behavior.
Crime and Education
This paper investigates long run shifts in crime and how they are associated with trends in educational attainment in Great Britain and the United States. In both countries we have assembled area-level data (at police force area level in Britain and state level in the US) on crime and education measured at ten year intervals from 1930 to 2000. The crime data comes from official police force data and is matched to decennial Census data on educational attainment (and measures of the demographic structure). We use these data to consider the extent to which improved educational attainment correlates with changing crime patterns over time. The paper implements a number of empirical tests of the hypothesis that crime and education are related by considering the evolution of spatial crime patterns over time and how they link to cross-area differences in educational attainment. The hypothesis that increased investment in education matters for crime is in line with observed shifts in crime and education in both countries.
Crime and Improvements in the Socio-Economic Position of Women
Since the 1970s women have made considerable gains int he labour market. They are now more active in the labour market, are more represented in higher grade occupations and the male/female wag gap has narrowed. Criminological theory predicts that, if economic incentives are important for crime, these patterns of change could affect womens’ participation in crime in either direction. First, the amount of crime committed by women should decrease if the number of economically marginalized women who need to turn to crime as a source of income is reduced. Second, as the gender equality hypothesis suggests, female crime participation should increase as the rise in female employment provides opportunities to commit work related crimes and for women to form networks beneficial for criminal activities. However, despite the large shifts in the economic position of women relative to men, trends in female criminal participation have not greatly altered since the 1970s. In this paper I use area-level data from England and Wales between 1975 and 2000 to examine why labour market gains made by women have had such a limited impact on patterns of female offending. The focus is on two alternative explanations. The first is related to changes in the structure of the male labour market, in particular the widening of the male wage distribution, which has dampened down the effect of gains made by women (the ‘swimming upstream’ hypothesis). The second uitilises self report data to examine changes in self reported offending and the non-economic aspects of women’s lives, including social and parental control, peer groups and leisure activities.
Crime and Justice in Emerging Democracies
The idea that social and economic development may be related to crime has been a central theme in modernization theory of crime and justice. Various scholars have examined the nature of the relationship between development and crime; however, there has been limited effort to examine the relationship between democratization and crime. Many previous studies have focused on development as an economic process rather than socio-political transformation. This study examines the impact of democratization efforts in some African and East European countries and the impact of those efforts on crime and justice. The authors argue that emphasis on civil and economic liberties may create major problems in defining crime and developing effective criminal justice policies and practices. Specifically, the authors examine the ideal of democracy, which includes individual liberties and the legitimate powers of governments in regulating those liberties. The legitimate role and ability of legislatures, police and courts in fighting corruption and crime are examined.
Crime Drop in Ireland 1995-2000: Reviewing the Role of Imprisonment
Between 1995 and 2000, the crime rate in Ireland dropped by over 20 percent and the prison population rose by 50 percent (see O’Donnell and O’Sullivan, 2001, Crime Control in Ireland: The Politics of Intolerance, Cork University Press).. The Minister for Justice has claimed that the decrease in crime rates is due to the increase in the prison population. The purpose of this paper is to map recent trends in the use of prison and to explore the relationship between rates of crime and rates of imprisonment. To our knowledge this is the first time that such an analysis has been attempted using Irish data.
Crime in Research: An Exploration of Past Unethical Research Practices
A historical account of how unethical research has negatively impacted human beings is the subject of this study. Past extreme cases are examined. The extreme cases include: 1) the Syphilis Experiment in Tuskegee where 128 black men died and their wives and children were infected with syphilis; 2) Nazi Germany where more than 10,000 people were intentionally killed in involuntary euthanasia programs in psychiatric institutions; and 3) the John Hopkins study where a woman asthma volunteer died after participating in an asthma study. Children, prisoners, race and class are further studied as subcomponents of unethical research practices. Finally, the reluctance of individuals to participate in scientific research is discussed.
Crime in the Newspaper: Does an Overemphasis Create False Perceptions of Violence?
This study examines the relationship between the amount of crime news reported by a metropolitan daily newspaper and the actual number of crimes reported to the police within its core circulation area. Previous research has shown that public perception of crime is influenced by news reporting. According to the agenda-setting function theory, news coverage sets the tone for public discourse, shaping citizens’ beliefs regarding the frequency of crime. Specifically, this study analyzes the extent to which the Charlotte (N.C.) Observer published stories on murder, rape, aggravated assault, robbery, and burglary during calendar year 2001. Data on the number of column inches, the number of stories devoted to these offenses, and their placement in the newspaper were gathered to obtain an accurate picture of the crimes reported by the newspaper. These data are then compared to official statistics on the number of crimes reported to police departments within Mecklenburg County to determine whether there is an overemphasis in coverage that may create false public perceptions of violence.
Crime Mapping: The Importance of Theory
The focus of this presentation/paper is the importance of criminological theory when using crime mapping. Crime mapping is becoming a more important analytic tool in criminology and crime analysis. As with all analytic tools, it is important to keep strong links between analytic tools and theory. As should be expected, my primary theoretical focus will be using environmental criminology in understanding crime maps. The presentation/paper will include sample maps produced under different GIS programs. These maps will be presented to give the attendees at the panel an opportunity to view a fe images from a non-theoretic standpoint. They will then be presented with a brief overview of environmental criminology with specific reference to its use in understanding crime mapping. The attendees will then be shown in the same crime mapping images wth a description of the uinterpretation of maps with a link to theory.
Crime or Act of War? — The Media Defines 9-11
The attacks on the World Trade Center and Pentagon can be defined as criminal acts. These events can also be defined as an act of war. Arguably, either definition can be fit to these events. The media and the White House chose their preferred, and shared, definition of events very early in the process of understanding and responding to 9-11. As we know, the state response to these events will differ depending on how the events have been defined. In fact, the process of definition is used to prepare the public for a particular response. This paper examines the media’s role in defining the events of September 11. Rhetoric, symbolism, limiting of dissent, and narrowing of issues are discussed. In addition, continuing efforts to legitimate the chosen definition are examined.
Crime Prevention Techniques Used by Taxi Drivers in Cardiff
Research on crime victimisation in the UK shows that taxi drivers are at a high risk of violent victimisation compared to workers in other retail service occupations (Budd 1999). While there are a large number of crime prevention measures that can be used to help protect drivers, some of these involve costly equipment that makes their use prohibitive without some type of subsidy (Mayhew 2000). The present study uses a script-analytic approach (Cornish 1994) to look at the equipment and techniques that taxi drivers in Cardiff use to protect themselves against crime while driving both ply-for-hire and private-hire cabs.
Crime Rates, Police Activities and Organizational Events
The impact police agencies have on crime is a well-known matter of debate that dates as far back as 1829, when the first modern police agency was established. A hundred years later at a foreword In “The Annals”, published by the American Academy of Political and Social Science, dedicated to “The Police And The Crime Problem,” Sellin (1929) wrote: “It has become almost fashionable to call the police to task for the existence of crime in our country” (p.: v). Seventy years later, Eck and Maguire (2000) used research findings to illustrate the common perceptions among social scientists regarding the effect police have on crime: Police levels have no effect on crime rates, but specific police activities have some effect on crime rates depending on location and time. Another aspect of that debate relates to police crime data and reports. Describing the “Annual Police Report”, Timmerman (1929) stated that many police officials, of the 1920’s did not pay much attention to the annual report, its accuracy and its uses. As many as half of the police departments, according to Timmerman, avoided publishing an annual report. In many cases, they showed the report to a limited number of people. Other departments published their crime reports so late that they were no longer relevant and had only historical value. Timmerman also mentioned the fact that at that time – the 1920’s, the reports were not unified and each department had its own version (Timmerman 1929). The Uniform Crime Report (UCR) issued by the FBI was initiated at that time, i.e., the early 1930’s. Nevertheless, over the years, it has not dramatically changed the problems related with police reports and data. Maple (1999) called his second chapter “A game of Bluff” and wrote that before 1994, the Transit police in New York City checked their crime data periodically – every six months. He also claimed that 10 percent of the cops do 90 percent of the job. Usually, the Uniform Crime Report lists part one offences: Murder; Aggravated Assault; Robbery; Rape; Motor Vehicle Theft; and, Larceny-Theft. These six offenses are divided into “Violent crime” and “Property crime”. Also presented are “Persons Arrested” and “Juveniles and Violence” that includes their offenses and arrests. The last part of the report is “Law Enforcement Personnel.” This section shows aggregated data of the number of police personnel – sworn and civilian, for thirteen geographical areas nationwide, by states, by cities and for universities and colleges (UCR, 1991). The UCR does not report any other data regarding police departments, such as rank distribution per department; number of supervisors; position distribution (for example, patrol vs. investigations). Some of that data is being collected by the Bureau of Justice Statistics and published every three to four years under the title “Law Enforcement and Administrative Statistics” – LEMAS (Reaves, 1999). Again, the data is aggregated and though much more detailed, does not go to the district, neighborhood or street level within a city. The LEMAS is a snapshot report of a department. It does not mention crime rates as a unit of analysis (denominator) when referring to personnel; expenditures and pay; operations; equipment; computers and information systems, policies and programs; and community policing (Reaves, 1999).
Criminal Acquisition of Firearms: The Impact of Brady on How Felons Obtain Their Guns
The Brady Handgun Violence Prevention Act, passed into law in 1994, intended to reduce handgun availability to criminals and other potentially dangerous persons. Most evaluations of the Brady Act attempt to measure its impact on crime or suicide rates. These studies are limited in that they do not consider whether or not the legislation successfully reduced the availability of handguns to criminals – an important measure when considering the Brady Act’s success. Using state-level inmate survey data, the research presented here attempts to measure any impact that the Brady Act may have had on how felons acquire firearms that are later used to commit crimes. Specifically, it considers whether or not the law’s implementation affected offenders’ use of a secondary firearms market to acquire handguns.
Criminal Behaviors as Health Behaviors: The Intersections Between Nursing and Criminology
Health has been commonly represented as the absence of disease. However more recent definitions of health reflect the idea that health is more about process and less about product. People are not “healthy” nor are they “unhealthy,” rather people are in continual processes that either support the goal of being and becoming healthy, or they are involved in processes that do not support and/or sustain aspects of health for themselves, their families and their communities. The purpose of this paper is to demonstrate how criminal behaviors can be conceptualized as behaviors that negatively affect the processes of being and becoming healthy. It will be argued, then, that criminal behaviors are functionally unhealthy behaviors. Criminal behaviors (conceptualized as unhealthy) thus increase individuals’, families’ and communities’ vulnerability to poor health outcomes. It has been argued that nursing is the alleviation of vulnerability in the human health experience. Therefore, nursing interventions and strategies aimed towards improving the processes of health for individuals, families and communities will also contribute to the processes involved in desistance from criminal behaviors. This intersection between nursing knowledge and practice with criminology and the criminal justice system will be discussed.
Criminal Consistency and Investigative Inference
The possibility of drawing inferences about an offender’s likely characteristis from his/her behaviour in a crime depends upon some degree of consistency in criminal behaviour. The question of whether criminals are consistent or not is confused by a lack of clarity on how any such consistencies may exist. The present study of the self-reported offending behaviour patterns of 185 convicted young offenders indicates little support for the conceptualisation of criminal consistency in terms of the stereotypical ideas about specialists. Rather, broad relative consistencies relating to Bandura’s (1986) fundamental human incentives are identified. Partial Order Scalogram Analysis of the offenders’ activity across these Material, sensory and Power gain styles of crime reveals offending patterns that vary in both the type and degree of consistency. With regard to type of consistency, the key distinction is between involvement in either Sensory or Power style, while Material offending plays a more central role, featuring in the majority of offending patterns. The implications oof this odel of criminal consistency for the investigative inference process are discussed.
Criminal Embeddedness and Adult Income: Do the Effects Vary for White-Collar Versus Street-Level Offenders?
With his concept of criminal embeddedness, Hagan provides an important linkage between the stratification and criminological literatures. Hagan’s work demonstrates how contact with the criminal justice system impacts both criminal and non-criminal life domains. Most studies demonstrate a continuous deleterious effect of criminal embeddedness on the economic adult outcomes of street-level offenders. However, these studies have not considered how criminal embeddedness may affect the adult outcomes of white-collar offenders. Using a unique dataset of 4,446 federal offenders incarcerated for both street-level and white-collar offenses, we investigate whether the effects of criminal embeddedness, as measured by age of onset, number of arrests, and total time incarcerated, are different for white-collar as compared to street-level offenders. We conclude with the implications of our findings for criminal justice policy.
Criminal Groups and Transnational Illegal Markets: A More Detailed Specification With the Aid of Social Network Theory
Criminological research in the last ten years makes clear that organized crime groups can be considered as flexible criminal networks. However, this concept in criminology is far from clear. In this paper three kinds of organized crime groups are examined with the aid of concepts of social network theory. The criminal groups are studied in three illegal transnational markets: (1) heroine market; (2) the market of stolen cars, and (3) the trade in women. These three illegal markets are described briefly to present the context in which the criminal groups are executing their criminal activities. Based on existing empirical data of Dutch studies on transnational criminal groups, the structure and kind of relationships in their networks are analyzed. The analyses show great differences in shape, content and, structure of the criminal networks. The paper will be concluded by some propositions on criminal groups and by some recommendations for criminological research in the area of organized crime
Criminal Justice, Social Justice and Higher Learning: The Evolution of a Virtual Community
: The Dear Habermas community (www.csudh.edu/dearhabermas) provides criminological, sociological, and philosophical discussions of peace and justice, and our role in the creation of texts, and narrative. We need the forums. We need to write for an audience, for in writing and publishing we clarify the intertextual struggles to make our voices heard above the orderly mask of the “administered” academy. Perspectives include race,class, gender, and both postmodern and critical theory analyses of institutional and interpersonal relationships. All are welcome to our site, for inclusion is one of the paths to participation and legitimacy for all. The purpose of this paper is to discuss this emerging culture so that together we can recognize its interdependence with our own efforts and with the dominant culture of higher learning.
Criminal Justice in South Africa After Apartheid: A Pictorial, Video, and Auio Exposition
After the fall of apartheid, the new government of South Africa struggled to democratize their criminal justice system while coping with an eroding economy, rising unemployment, and increasing street crime. Using photos, videos and taped interviews, the presenter-who has spent several months studying crime and justice in South Africa-describes how the criminal justice system has changed and the consequences of those changes.
Criminal Justice Interventions in Intimate Violence: Impacts on Victims’ Family Lives
Research on domestic violence policies and programs has focused on victims’ safety as well as victims’ cooperation and satisfaction with the criminal justice process in domestic violence cases. One area that has been neglected by the research community is the impact of criminal justice interventions on family relationships. This paper takes an initial step to explore whether current criminal justice interventions can address the needs of abused women for both personal safety and family life. Data obtained from in-depth interviews with 34 abused Vietnamese-American women suggest that criminal justice interventions have some positive effects of on women’s safety that are often short lived. Moreover, women’s improved safety does not often go hand-in-hand with an improved quality of family lives because emotional abuse, strained family relationships, and family break-ups often follow criminal justice interventions
Criminal Justice Technologies: Hopes, Promises and Risks in the Rush for a Secure and Orderly World
This paper will trace changes in one type of crime, money-laundering, that are related to changes in the technology used by offenders and federal agencies. Using a series of case studies and a content analysis of these cases the paper seeks to understand the interplay between the technologies used by each side in the effort to control money laundering. These changes are place in the larger context of technology shifts during the last one hundred years to develop a theory of the relationship between technological shifts and changes in public sector functions. The paper concludes with a series of recommendations for criminal justice agencies.
Criminal Justice Treatment Networks: Client-Level Descriptive Findings
In FY 1996, the Center for Substance Abuse Treatment (CSAT) funded the Criminal Justice Treatment Networks (CJTN) demonstration program. Four networks across the nation provided services to adult female substance-abusing offenders while they were still part of the criminal justice system. This presentation will discuss findings based on data received from the Networks’ Management Information Systems (MIS). Specifically, this presentation will provide client profiles of the women served by the networks, including criminal history, drug use history, and client background (demographics, socioeconomic status, and education).
Criminalization of Pregnancy: A Case Study of Race, Class, and Gender
For the first time in U.S. history, in 2001, a woman was convicted of homicide by child abuse for using crack cocaine that authoritie believed caused her late term fetus to die. Regina McKnight could have receied life in prison, but was sentenced to 12 years in prison. Unfortunately many aspects of McKnight’s story are not unique. Like other women whose pregnancy behaviors have been criminalized, she is a poor, African-American woman. mcKnight is also from South Carolina, a state that leads the nation in pregnancy behavior prosecutions. Although the liuterature on the criminalization of pregnancy is growing, there have been few projects exploring actual empirical examples. This paper will detail some of the major findings that emerged from analysis of the recent case against McKnight. To understand this landmark criminal court case, I conducted a historical case study. I utilized feminist perspectives to analyze the impact of race, class, and gender in the McKnight case, as well as to explore the broader institutional and social climate in South Carolina that contributed to punitive responses to pregnant drug users. I then outline the ways that the McKnight case both reinforces and challenges the existing literature on the criminalization of pregnancy.
Criminological Knowledge and the Paradox of Observational Theories
The theory-laden nature of observation is a multidimensional problem that has significant implications for the construction and evaluation of criminological knowledge. A sound understanding of its dimensions can help curb the production of careless knowledge claims. In this paper, I examine one general dimension of this multidimensional problem: The paradox of “observational theories.” The process of theory evaluation can be viewed as entailing at least two theories, the theory one wishes to test and a more-or-less distinct theory that is used to identify or construct “facts.” However, the existence of two theories creates a dilemma. If the knowledge claims of the theory being tested conflict with the “facts” of the observational theory, which theory is wrong? Moreover, can the theory being tested be reinterpreted as a set of “facts” that can be used to evaluate the observational theory? In criminology, observational theories frequently lack plausibility, and thus this paradox warrants attention.
Criminological Theory and Its Relationship to Criminal Justice: Practical Applications or Simply Academic Discourse?
This roundtable will discuss what relationship academic criminology theories has with criminal justice focusing on the question as to whether they have practical applications or are they simply academic materials for discussion. M.L. Dantzker will begin the session with an introduction to this possible quandary. He will then be followed by the other participants who each address different aspects: Rosalva Resendiz will discuss integrating critical criminology into criminal justice programs; Eric Hickey looks at how psychological theories are used and misused to understand and treat serial murderers and sex offenders; Mindy Wilson looks at symbolic interaction theories that can be used to explain hate crimes; and John Randolph Fuller examines how critical criminology theories are used to address sex roles, capitalism, and the war on crime. M.L. Dantzker will then summarize and facilitate audience discussion.
Critical Criminology in the Twenty First Century: Critique, Irony and the Always Unfinished
Critical Criminology is the criminology of the late modernity in that it arose at the cusp of change in the last thiid of the twentieth centuryand that its sensitivity to the social consruction of reality and the blurring, pluralism and contested nature of norms best fits the grain of every day lifetoday.The development within critical criminology of ten key ironies as a sustained challenge to the taken for granted assumptions about crime and the criminal justice system has even more relevance at the begining of the twenty first century as it did in the 1970’s. A critique of the revisionist history of critical criminology as presented in the work of David Garland with its emphasis on the past and momentary nature of the critical trdition. Instead an examination of the flourishing of critical criminology and its position as the major opponent of neo-liberalism. The need to develop a criminology which despite scepicism about metanarratives of progress does not lapse into a postmodernist nihilism but takles full on the problems of social transformation amid an open-ended narrative ever aware of the changing and contested nature of social justice A discussion of the of the work of Nancy Fraser ans Zygmunt Bauman in this respect.
Critical Perspectives on Transportability
Is it possible for evidence-based treatments to address the variability of real-world practice? This portion of our panel presentation will address this question by examining the recent discourse on transportability. Transportability research examines “the movement of efficacious interventions to usual-care settings” (Schoenwald & Hoagwood, 2001, p. 1192). If evidence-based treatment research attempts to encompass all of the system, agency, and therapeutic variables present in real-world practice (e.g., clinician turnover, location and service hours of the facility, comorbidity of the child’s disorder, parental substance abuse or pathology, etc.), will this research be rendered incomprehensible? Further, do practitioners’ perceptions and views “fit in” to the discourse on transportability? This portion of our panel presentation will address these questions and will discuss alternatives to transportability research.
Critical Theorists Discuss the War on Drugs
This panel discussion will be a way for those who are critical theorists in the Stephan Pfohl and Michael Foucault tradition to discuss the war on drugs as it is related to power and knowledge. The panelists and participants will discuss the realtionship of European Colonization, the Conquest of Native Americans, the enslavement of African people, the conquest of Mexico and the recruitment of and exclusion of Asian workers. The discussion will continue by looking at how this relationship of power, control and dominance has led to the denial of human rights and property rights and how the denial of those rights has led to the inability to accumulate material wealth which is directly related to political power. The panel will also discuss how denial of political powers has left many people of color vulnerable to the abusive power of the state, specifically the legislative process, law enforcement procedures, and incarceration. It will conclude with a discussion of how the war on drugs is a symbolic ritual of social control that has been used to legitimate the overrepresentation of arrest, incarceration, and death of the poor and minority. At this point, it appears to be common sense that this is how we control those who violate the laws, but as Foucault pointed out, we can’t be doing it any more wrong. That was in the late 1970s, imagine what he would think today, when over 2 million people are under some form of criminal justice supervision, most of them for drug offenses, and over 80% of those incarcerated for drug offenses are black or latino.
Cross-National Differences in Rates of Physical and Sexual Assault From the International Dating Violence Study
It is now widely recognized that relationships between partners in marital, cohabiting, and dating relationships are often violent (Barnett, Miller-Perrin, and Perrin 1997; Gelles and Straus 1988). Recognition of the high-risk nature of dating relationships is important in order to take steps to make intimate partner relationships free of violence. However, it is not widely recognized that dating couples are even more likely to be violent than married couples, despite the fact that the higher rate has been demonstrated by over 50 studies, starting in the 1980’s (Fisher, Cullen and Turner; 2000; Stets and Straus 1989; Sugarman and Hotaling 1989). For purposes of primary-prevention (Cowen 1978; O’Leary and Sweet Jemmott 1995), it is vital to increase understanding of the etiology of dating-couple violence because the behavior at that point in the life-cycle can establish patterns that persist over a lifetime. The International Dating Violence study will contribute to that needed increased understanding by using a cross-national comparative design to investigate the social causes of dating partner violence (DPV). This preliminary paper, however is restricted to comparing the rates from the first set of nations and to discussing possible explanations for the differences. Empirical tests of those explanation will be in subsequent papers.
Crossing the Wrong Boundaries: A Review of Jamaican Women’s Involvement as Drug Couriers
The literature on women and crime has proliferated within the last decade; however, analyses have ignored women in non-European or North American contexts. Are factors associated with increased number of women offenders in the United States also descriptive of women in locales such as the Caribbean? Are Caribbean women affected by, and incarcerated for the same category of offences as those identified for North American and European women? This exploratory paper reviews statistics from Correctional Services of Jamaica, the Jamaica Constabulary Forces, and newspaper reports. While highlighting another consequence of prohibitionist drug policies, it also fills a gap in the literature respecting women drug couriers in Jamaica. Drawing on the feminization of poverty thesis, it concludes that economics is a primary factor accounting for Jamaican women’s representation in crime statistics at home and abroad. The paper further recommends that ethnographic studies be conducted with Jamaican women incarcerated at home and abroad, as well as foreign women incarcerated in Jamaica.
Crude Growth Rates for African American Males in the U.S. Prison System
The purpose of this paper will be to use demographic methodology to study the increasing rates of incarceration for African American men and women. Our intention was to provide reliable estimates of what future populations of incarcerated individuals will look like into the years 2010 and 2020. Data were acquired from the U.S. Department of Justice Bureau of Justice Statistics on the number and rate of adults incarcerated in the US by sex and by race from the years 1985 through 1997. Reliable estimates were arrived at for the number of adults that will be incarcerated into the year 2020. By calculating the Crude Growth Rate (CGR) for each subpopulation (white males, white females, black males, black females) for each year we were able to accomplish this end. Results indicate that by the year 2005 there will be approximately 1.3 million African American males incarcerated in the US. By the year 2010 there will be almost 2 million African American males incarcerated. And by the year 2020 our projections indicate that over 4 million African American males will be in America’s prison and jail system.
Cultural Variations in Childhood Victimization: A Comparative Study
The aims and objectives of this study are to investigate childhood victimisation in the domestic and school context. Childhood victimisation is an area that has recently received growing attention in view of recent violent crimes against children. Although there is growing interest in violence against children there is not comparative study to look at the cultural variations of what constitutes violence per se. Violence is usually accepted as universally similar among different cultures without questioning the extent of cultural variations in the prioritisation of acts of violence, the general attitude to violence, and the ways that violence is being portrayed. However in an age of globalisation where there is ever increasing demand of co-operation between national organisations to target crime and victimisation the overall picture must be understood. In this study the researchers investigate childhood victimisation by questioning college students about their victimisation experiences in home and in school. The main idea for choosing Britain and Greece for this study lays in the extend of variations between the two cultures with British regarded more Westernised and progressive and with Greek regarded more traditional. The researches hope to find clear cultural differences on the way violence is portrayed and understood.
Culture, Religion, and Homicide Rates: A Cross-National Assessment
Previous cross-national studies on the links among regional culture, religion, and homicide rates have been based upon superficial speculation. The present paper tested the relationship by introducing regional culture and religion simultaneously in a same regression model. Two international homicide data sets were collected from both the Interpol for 92 nations and the World Health Organization (WHO) for 90 countries. The current empirical examination failed to find such a relationship.
Cumulative Knowledge and Generalizability in an Age of Context: Five Questions to Consider Seriously While Evaluating Comprehensive Community Initiatives
In recent years, Comprehensive Community Initiatives have been implemented in a number of criminal justice settings. Examples include the Comprehensive Strategy for Serious, Violent and Chronic Juvenile Offenders, Safe Futures, Safe Start and the Greenbook. In this presentation we will discuss five questions that evaluations of community initiatives need to consider seriously. Our discussion will raise both the broader philosophical and pragmatic methodological issues relating to evaluations of comprehensive community initiatives . This presentation will be a collaborative project between two evaluators: one who has worked extensively with local communities on a number of school and community-based prevention projects, and a second who has worked on methodological development for National cross-site evaluations of community initiatives.
Cyber Crime in Criminal Justice and Computer Security Systems Journals: What Criminologists Can Learn From Computer Science Professionals and Vice Versa
We conducted a content analysis of leading criminal justice and computer security journals published in the last ten years. Criminal justice journals virtually ignored the existence of cyber crime, while computer security journals published numerous articles on this topic. Criminal justice academicians and criminologists appear to miss some research opportunities, while computer security experts do not have the benefit of criminological insights. We conclude with a call for more collaboration and joint research.
D
Danger, Disorder and Disaster: Lessons Learned in Command, Control, Coordination and Communication
Justiceworks at the University of New Hampshire has been perfecting a lessons learned “case study” technique allowing analysis of “event” data from disparate sources. By reorganizing qualitative information from verified accounts into a standardized format, quantifying them using predetermined scales, and subjecting the resulting data to statistical analysis, the researchers have been able to discern patterns in these events, to derive generalizable lessons learned and to identify “best practices.” A recently completed study of the consequences of the “noninteroperability” of wireless communications contrasting such events as the Drega Incident in Northern New Hampshire and Vermont, the Columbine High School shootings, the 9/11 attacks on the Pentagon and World Trade Center, the Worcester Warehouse Fire, the Seattle WTO Protests, the Oklahoma City bombings and the Florida Wildfires of 1998, has generated useful findings regarding wireless technology and in such areas as communications discipline, adherence to “incident command system” operating procedures, and logistic support as well. These results, augmented by the findings of a multistate interoperability survey of law enforcement agencies and illustrated by highlights from case study materials provide valuable insights for those interested in law enforcement command, control, coordination and communication.
Date Rape Drugs and Rape Prevention: (Still) Holding Women Responsible for Preventing Victimization
Current constructionist perspectives suggest that rape is not an objective property of human behavior, but rather is defined and constructed through social interactions. For this presentation, a content analysis was conducted on the available publicly disseminated literature regarding rape – particularly date rape drug information. Messages such as “Women should not leave their drinks unattended,” “Women should not drink from an unsupervised punch bowl,” and “Women should go to parties in groups, and watch out for one another” inundate the prevention information, implying that women are responsible for preventing their possible victimization. However, men and the ways in which masculinity is constructed remain invisible within these prevention efforts. Examining the definitions and social constructions of rape allows researchers to learn how society perceives women, men, and the proper/improper behavior of each.
Dating Violence and Sexual Coercion as Part of a General Antisocial Orientation
This paper (to be delivered as a poster presentation) investigates two research questions. First, are dating violence and sexual coercion independent, specialized types of deviant behavior or part of a more general antisocial orientation? Criminological theory (i.e. Gottfredson and Hirsch, 1989) would suggest the latter. If so, dating violence and sexual coercion will be correlated and both constructs will be correlated with other delinquent behaviors. Preliminary analysis supports this relationship. Second, I investigate the extent to which one’s experience in the family of origin gives rise to a propensity to engage in dating violence and sexual coercion. There are two theoretical perspectives that are relevant. Straus and Donnelly (1995) argue that when children are subject to corporal punishment, they are learning to use violence, aggression and force to get what they want in intimate relationships. This could lead to dating violence and sexual coercion as modes of behavior when attempting to obtain desired results in the face of frustration. On the other hand, Gottfredson and Hirschi’s (1989) theory would argue that these behaviors would be a component of a more geneal antisocial orientation rooted in ineffective parenting. According to that perspective, individuals neer learn to have self-control in the face of adversity.
Dating Violence Study: A Test of DeKeseredy’s and Schwatz’s (1998) Male Peer Support Theory
Components of social learning theory, and specifically male peer support theory, have been operationalized and tested to examine predictors of dating violence in this study. Males from a student population at a mid-sized public university was the sample used to assess the usage of violence and/or sexual abuse in a dating relationship. Male peer support theory, as postulated by DeKeseredy and Schwartz (1998 and in earlier works), is discussed in-depth. Logistic regression analyses were performed to determine the validity of the hypotheses. Significant support was found for the prediction value of ideas derived from male peer support theory. Additional research to investigate this promising theory is suggested.
Debunking the Myth of Officer Friendly
The author will discuss her empirical work with African American and Euro-American adolescent males and their different views of, and experiences with, the police. She will then segue into a discussion of the consequences of racial profiling, that is, the urgent need to protect innocent Black males from the perception of them as criminal and dangerous. The author uses 11 incidents of police use of force, occurring between mid-year 1998 and late 2000 to demonstrate that despite the promise of protection from the United States Constitution and the 1985 Supreme Court decision, Tenn. v. Garner, innocent Black males, even Black police officers, absorb a disproportionate risk of being killed or seriously injured by the police. The author concludes by suggesting a number of measures that should be pursued in order to reduce the likelihood of incidents that are frequently referred to as “tragic mistakes.”
Deciphering the Treatment-Punishment Dichotomy: A New Approach to the Study of Placement Outcomes for Juvenile Delinquents
The number of youth ordered into residential placement has risen dramatically over the last two decades. This study attempts to understand why this increase is happening and what the consequences of placement are for young offenders. The foundation for this analysis is my experience as the evaluator of a Challenge Grant II program for “difficult-to-place” youth. Theoretically, the use of placements has been understood in light of the treatment-punishment contradiction thought to characterize the juvenile justice system. This analysis suggests other key factors shaping the use and evolution of residential placements. Empirically, this study examines the placement experiences and outcomes for 152 young offenders within one county. This examination also suggests a rethinking of the treatment-punishment dichotomy by highlighting how placement is both treatment and punishment at once. The conclusion is reached that the contradictory aspects of the placement experience for young offenders create a cycle of placement that leads to harsher sanctions. The use of placements is being driven by many factors beyond the needs of youth or the cycles of juvenile justice reform. These factors include the needs and constraints of juvenile justice agencies, growth in the placement industry, privatization, and generalized fear of young offenders.
Declining Crime in Postwar Japan
The most popular explanations for both the low and falling Japanese crime rates have emphasized the unique ability of traditional Japanese culture to maintain low crime rates through strong informal social control mechanisms. But while this is a plausible explanation for Japan’s generally low crime rates compared to other nations, it is much less persuasive as an account for Japan’s steady crime decreases. Although Japan has shown a remarkable ability to preserve its traditional culture, a “traditional culture” explanation for the crime decrease would require that traditional Japanese culture be stronger than it was half a century ago. The social transitions and Western influence that Japan has undergone since World War II make this unlikely. I argue that a more plausible explanation for steadily declining Japanese crime rates is declining economic stress due to the strong economy enjoyed by Japan for much of the past fifty years. This explanation seems to also apply to the recent sudden increase in Japanese crime rates, as this increase has followed Japan’s recession. Based on postwar Japanese data, I found that economic stress variables such as poverty, income inequality, and unemployment have consistent effects on Japanese crime trends.
Defining ‘Terrorism’ in the Context of Contemporary Media
The word “terrorism” has variable meanings. Terrorism is defined by the FBI as, “the unlawful use of force or violence against persons or property to intimidate or coerce a government, the civilian population, or any segment thereof, in furtherance of political or social goals.” However, the word within popular culture has symbolic meaning, especially in the aftermath of the September 2001 terrorist attacks on the US. This study will examine contemporary use of the word “terrorism” and “terrorist” in the news media. Using data from a twelve-month content analysis of national news sources, this study will chronicle the use of the word within the media. Preliminary analysis suggests that the news media and political figures have shifted the use of “terrorism” from the “unlawful use of violence” to “any act of resistance by a non-governmental group or individual”, thus using the symbolic power of the word for political mobilization.
Defining and Identifying the Non-Offender: The Forgotten Adolescent in Basic Delinquency Research
Criminologists historically have focused on the average offender, typically ignoring those at either end of frequency/seriousness continuum. This has especially been the case among those studying juvenile delinquency, where the archetypical offender is still a 16-year old boy involved primarily in status, property, and perhaps a few relatively minor violent offenses. While the existence of both non-offenders and serious chronic offenders has always been known to those studying crime and delinquency, the size of both groups is thought to be relatively small, and at least partly for this reason, there has been little interest in them historically. Criminologists also have eschewed those at the extremes because to focus on them would be to paint a distorted picture, suggesting, as the media is routinely accused of doing, that such extreme behavior is somehow the norm. Since the groundbreaking work of Wolfgang, Figlio and Sellin (1972), however, serious chronic offenders have garnered considerable attention, and criminologists have come to accept the public, political and justice system view that this is a group of offenders to be reckoned with. While this recognition of the chronic offender has resulted in a substantial body of new theorizing and research (see, for example, Cernkovich and Giordano, 2001;Moffitt, 1993, 1997; Nagin and Land, 1993; Nagin and Paternoster, 1991; Sampson and Laub, 1993; 1997), those at the other extreme of the behavioral continuum-non-offenders-continue to generate little interest among those studying crime and delinquency. This lack of interest in youthful non-offenders is a serious omission in the criminological literature. Self-report studies consistently suggest that non-offenders are an empirically stable group whose size is comparable to that of the chronic offenders. To the extent that delinquency is normative behavior among youths, the fact that a significant segment of the adolescent population apparently refrains from any delinquency involvement raises a variety of interesting questions about who these youths are and how they might differ from other adolescents. However, we know relatively little about this group, the characteristics of its members, why they are able to avoid involvement in the very behaviors that are so common among their peers, and what the long-term consequences of their non-offending are. More fundamentally, criminologists have failed to even conceptualize, define and identify non-offenders in their work-beyond some vague sense that they actually do exist-and they have been ignored in virtually all analyses of crime and delinquency. For example, to the extent that most indices of delinquency are continuous scale-based measures, the presence of non-offenders is typically obscured. That is, non-offenders are not defined as a qualitatively distinct group in such measures, representing instead an end-point on a continuum of behavior. Further, this end-point is typically of little interest to criminologists in and of itself; rather, it is usually a departure point to other locations on the behavioral continuum that are of the greatest interest to theorists and researchers. Chronic offenders, on the other hand, are increasingly conceptualized as a distinct group, are seen as categorically and qualitatively distinct from less serious offenders, and, as a group, are defined as worthy of specialized study. We believe that non-offenders also merit such study. We know virtually nothing about these youths, yet such knowledge may tell us much about the behavior and characteristics of others at various points along the continuum, as well as being valuable in its own right. We are interested in this research with how non-offenders can most reasonably be defined and identified, what their social and personal characteristics are, how and why the refrain from involvement in the behaviors that are so common among their peers, and what behavioral outcomes await them as they exit adolescence and enter young adulthood.
Defining Areas of Influence for Facility-Related Crime: Combining Spatial Techniques
To study the potential effects of facilities upon local crime patterns, it is necessary to delineate an area that the individual facility is expected to influence. Buffers defined at a set distance – such as 1,000 feet around a school or for sex offender notification – may be inadequate for such studies, as they do not necessarily represent the realities of local-level activity patterns. Defining a facility’s ‘absolute’ area of influence with Voronoi polygons or using a least-cost distance method may partially address this issue, but use of either method alone still incurs limitations. By combining these methods, researchers may address some of these limitations and construct ‘realistic’ areas of influence that are more reflective of probable human activity patterns than are buffers based upon either Euclidian distance or boundaries developed for other purposes. Using examples from an ongoing study of transit-related crime, this paper illustrates the benefits and limitations of the combined technique.
Defining the Diffusion of Crime Mapping Innovation
Our paper documents the process of the diffusion of crime mapping. We also examine the link between crime mapping and research.
Defining the Rights of Drug Court Participant: A Constitutional Test
The 1990’s witnessed an extensive overhaul of how many communities, via their trial courts, have dealt with drug offenders. The question has been “what works?” and in hundreds, even thousands, of communities the answer has been treatment. Be that as it may, in many instances successful treatment has translated into nothing more than increased judicial surveillance and net-widening. What does treatment theory have to contribute to the creation of a model drug court? Do we have a reason to believe it will work? As trial courts have embraced the notion of therapeutic justice, the courts are assuming roles traditionally shouldered by correctional professionals who have historically been constitutionally scrutinized under the 4th and 8th amendments. Now that the supervision of low-level drug offenders is within the ambit of the judiciary, what constitutional protection should be afforded to this population? In an effort to conceptually, and practically, create a model drug treatment court this paper attempts to fashion a constitutional test that may provide guidance to those interested in evaluating the appropriateness of judicially-supervised drug-testing, innovative, yet far-reaching, sanctions and surveillance measures, as well as the non-adversarial approach utilized in the drug treatment court setting.
Delinquency and Education: What Works Revisited
The role of education upon subsequent life course trajectories toward and away from delinquency is the focus of our inquiry as we revisit the issue of what works in juvenile justice programming. Educational failure during childhood is a risk factor associated with the likelihood to engage in delinquent activities. Conversely, as the Coalition for Juvenile Justice (CJJ) (2001) points out, juvenile recidivism rates which usually range from 60% to 84%, can be reduced by 20% or more through quality reading instruction programs. University of Maryland researchers similarly report evidence that reading skills instruction is more effective in reducing subsequent delinquency than traditional juvenile boot camp programs (CJJ, 2001). We therefore seek to identify specific juvenile justice education strategies associated with successful community reintegration as measured through recidivism, return to public school, and length of stay. We employ a longitudinal research design to trace youths’ pathways into and away from community reintegration upon release from juvenile justice programs. Recognizing the need to control for additional factors related to successful outcomes, the analyses include variables such as age, gender, race, program security level, and program length of stay. In so doing, we are able to estimate the net effect of educational performance indicators on successful community reintegration.
Delinquency and Income Attainment Over the Life Course
Prior research on adolescent delinquency and adult status attainment largely suggests adolescents engaging in deviant behavior suffer deficient status attainment later in the life course. However, this relationship may be contingent on class background (Hagan 1991), sex (Hagan 1991; Tanner et al. 1999), formal sanctions (De Li 1999), and may operate through embeddedness in contexts disconnected from legitimate means to status attainment (Hagan 1993). Further, the relationship between deviance and status attainment may be dependent on the researcher’s conceptualization of deviance. Hagan (1991) finds different subcultural preferences in conjunction with class background have different implications for status attainment. Likewise, Tanner et al.’s (1999) analysis finds significant effects for some types of criminal involvement, but not for others. Still, other research proposes no relationship between deviance and attainment (Jessor et al. 1991). This paper builds on literature linking delinquency and status attainment in two ways. First, I examine the effects of different operationalizations of deviance on income attainment to test if certain types of delinquent or deviant involvement have different effects on economic attainment. Second, I examine when adolescent delinquent behavior begins to exert an effect economic attainment. I do so by looking at income at two points during the early life course: approximately the early and late twenties. Existing research indicates minor deviance, frequently associated with risk-taking, is associated with workplace authority and status. This notion has been elaborated in tests of power control theory (Hagan et al. 1985; Uggen 2000), and may suggest minor involvement in delinquency will correlate with later economic success. Yet serious delinquency (i.e. behavior with felony implications) is likely to have adverse effects on status or income attainment by weakening legitimate adult employment networks or through labeling processes. Further, problematic school behavior, although not by definition entailing illegal behavior, may affect delinquency via educational commitment and educational attainment. Finally, contact with the criminal justice system may label adolescents as deviant (Lemert 1967; Becker 1963; Schur 1969) and thus affect status and income attainment by closing potential employment networks or through increasing deviance later in the life course (De Li 1999). In short, the relationship between deviance and status attainment may be contingent on how deviance is measured, and when attainment is measured. I examine income attainment at two points in the early life course as a function of four conceptualizations of deviant involvement: school problems, minor delinquency, serious delinquency (i.e., gross misdemeanor or felony implications), and arrest.
Delinquent Behavior by Children Under 10: Normal Development or “Tip of the Icberg”?
Child delinquency is a strong predictor of risk for future chronic, serious and violent offending. Concerns have been raised, however, about when delinquent behavior is a reliable indicator of future risk and when some aspects, such as fighting, are so normative that it is not a good predictor. This study provides a descriptive review of screening data for 163 children between the ages of 4 and 9 who were referred to an intervention program for committing a chargeable offense. The study will describe the range of characteristics associated with each type and severity of referring offense (misdemeanor, gross misdemeanor, and felony offenses that are nonviolent versus violent). Descriptive data for each category of offense will include (1) demographic characteristics; (2) history of delinquent behavior; and (3) risk scores that capture the accumulation and severity of risk factors in multiple domains. These data suggest that only the combination of a chargeable offense during childhood (any type or severity) and a comprehensive risk assessment can reliably distinguish between child delinquents who are likely to escalate and those who probably will not. Given both criteria, even age 5 is not too young. Case studies will be used to illustrate these conclusions.
Departure Reasons Among Male and Female Embezzlers Sentenced Under the U.S. Sentencing Guidelines
This study builds upon previous work done with an extract of 1999 federal offenders sentencing under the U.S. Sentencing Guidelines. The analysis was performed on 867 offenders whose only unique offense of conviction was for embezzlement. The purpose of the study was to ascertain whether gender played any role in the sentencing process using this non-violent crime with a substantial proportion of female offenders. I used three hypotheses to test for gender disparity, but I found that gender played no significant role in the sentencing decision once the sum of embezzled funds was taken into consideration using the guidelines loss table used in the final offense level computation. The current study builds on previous findings by replicating the data analysis for one year prior and one year after to see trends over time. It also involves an in-depth analysis of reasons given by federal judges as to why they departed outside the guideline range during sentencing, with a particular focus on differences between reasons why male and female embezzlers received departures.
Dependency/Neglect and Delinquency: Dually Involved Minors in the Juvenile Court
Since the earliest days of the Juvenile Court, it has been believed that Dependency and Neglect led to Delinquency and that Delinquency led to Criminality. Using data from the Cook County Juvenile Court, the oldest and one of the largest Juvenile Courts in the country, the relationship between involvement as a Dependent/Neglected minor and later Delinquent activity is investigated. Differential outcomes between those minors who have had a court history of abuse or neglect and those who have not are also examined.
Descriptive Analysis of Denial to Purchase a Firearm
Since the passage of the Brady Violence Prevention Act in 1994 that requires a criminal background check on all persons purchasing a firearm, roughly 2.3% of the approximately 30 million gun purchase applications have been rejected. Although these figures and the reason for the rejection are maintained by the US Department of Justice there is no information on the firearm or demographics of the attempted purchaser. In California, these data are recorded. Approximately 1% of yearly gun sales in California are denied representing an estimated 3,300 to 4,700 firearms annually. Firearm ownership is prohibited by individuals with a prior felony conviction, adjudicated mentally ill, convicted of a domestic violence misdemeanor (in California this includes other violent misdemeanants as well), and certain others. We will present a descriptive study of firearm applications that have been denied in California from 1996 thru 2000. Demographic characteristics of the attempted purchaser and the reason for the denial will be presented for both long gun (shotguns and rifles) and handguns. For handguns we will present descriptive information on the gun – type, caliber, barrel length, maker. Comparisons will be made between years and between handguns and long guns.
Design Against Crime: The British Governments Programme to Promote the Design of Secure Products
Crime and crime reduction are issues which currently receive little attention from the design profession. However, informed design can be used effectively as tool for reducing crime associated with environments, products and systems, through designing in crime reduction during the initial stages of the design development process. This paper describes a range of initiatives funded by the British Government to promote the design of secure products and systems. These initiatives operate under the broad heading of Design Against Crime. Initial stages of the work focused on building up an evidence base of the current state of design against crime awareness and activity in design in industry and in education. Subsequent projects have aimed to alert, motivate and empower designers to think about crime when designing products, services and environments and promote innovative approach to tackling crime problems with design solutions.
Designing Research to Uncover Patterns of Short-Term Change in High-Rate Offenders: Lessons From Research on Drug-Using Prostitutes on an Urban Prostitution Stroll
The lives of drug-addicted prostitutes are measured in hours and days rather than months and years, driven by the rhythms of craving, obtaining, and using drugs. Change can occur in the lives of such high-rate offenders, but is often short-term and transient, and thus can be overlooked in long-term studies of offending with few measurements (Horney et al, 1995). Horney et al. (1995) addressed this issue by measuring frequent changes in high-rate offenders in response to changes in “local life circumstances”. This presentation focuses on change in the short-term for 92 drug-addicted prostitutes. Identifying moments of change can be difficult in such a group; this presentation will focus on conceptual and measurement issues of defining and assessing short-term change, and the utility of qualitative methodology. I will discuss identifying change in narratives using the concept of “epiphanies” – those turning point experiences that clarify problematic behavior for individuals and can transform lives (Denzin, 1989). I also will discuss interview techniques that capture events in the short term – both current and in the past – that lead to behavioral change. I also will discuss identifying common themes of behavioral turning points, and suitable coding for analysis of change in the short term.
Desistance Among Young Parolees
In recent years, much attention has been focused on the juvenile offender, perceived changes in the types and seriousness of crimes being committed by the juvenile and a controversial variety of treatment interventions such as boot camps, corporal punishments and culturally-specific programs. Reports on school shootings, violent gangs and murders being perpetrated by seven-year-old “superprediators” have dominated the newspapers and sent practitioners and policy makers scrambling to develop ways to prevent crime, predict and intercept high risk offenders and implement supervision programs that will both rehabilitate the offender and protect the community. On the average, crimes committed by juveniles are not as serious as the media reflect and the average juvenile is older than the very young offenders we see in the news. Of the 2.7 million arrests of persons under the age of 18, two-thirds were youths 15 and older. In addition, some youths are arrested multiple times, meaning that the total number of those involved is uch fewer than the number of arrests seems to indicate. Less than 6 percent of these arrests were for a violent offense (Snyder et al., 1996). In 1992, murder and rape together, represented less than half of one percent of all juvenile arrests in this country (Jones & Krisberg, 1994). In turn, crime experts have lined up to debunk DiIlulio’s superpredator predictions. As Schiaraldi (2001:1) explains, “the number of homicides committed by youth in American actually dropped by 68 percent between 1993 and 1999, and youth crime is currently at its lowest in 25 years.”
Determinants in Case Outcome of Sexual Assaults Reported to Police: What’s Best for Arrest?
Few would disagree that sexual assaults have lasting psychological effects. It has been suggested (Sales, Baum, & Shore, 1984) that having charges brought against an assailant may aid in fewer post-traumatic symptoms. Using 108 sexual assault cases reported to police in a Western Canadian city from Jan. 1, 1996 through May 30, 1996, various demographic and situational characteristics are tested against case outcome. Implications of the study are discussed. It is argued that understanding the factors that affect case outcome may aid victims and members of the criminal justice system, especially police, in their dealings with sexual assault cases.
Determinants of Alcohol Dependence Among Adolescents in Washington State: Neighborhood, Family, and Peer Effects
After twenty-five years of trend analyses on adolescent substance use and abuse, the widespread prevalence of adolescent alcohol consumption has been firmly established. Adolescent alcohol dependence has received comparatively little attention from social scientists, however. This gap in the literature is unfortunate, as the intensity of adolescent alcohol dependence has greater potential to disrupt age-appropriate transitions into adulthood than “routine” alcohol consumption (e.g., college attendance and labor force participation). The following study identifies determinants of DSM-IV alcohol dependence among a household sample of adolescents in Washington State. Preliminary findings indicate that the presence of drug-using peers increases the odds of meeting the criteria for alcohol dependence, while parental attachments and strong neighborhood social controls decrease it. Participation in delinquency increases the odds of meeting alcohol dependence criteria and also is associated with greater intensity of alcohol dependence among diagnosed adolescents. Policy implications of the research and the appropriateness of adult criteria for identifying adolescent alcohol dependence are discussed.
Determinants of Crime Analysis, Crime Mapping, Grant Writing and Other Innovations in Police Departments
Over the last couple of decades, there has been substantial research exploring the growth of police forces and their budgets. These studies, however, have rarely been extended to include specific facets of police departments, and there is very little information on factors that affect the differences in police technology and strategies across departments. The present study attempts to address this need by examining determinates of crime analysis and crime mapping strategies across the 119 largest police departments in New Jersey. Important factors of departments, including crime, revenue, poverty, spending, and grants are examined to determine if they influence innovative strategies across the departments. Moreover, perceptual data taken from interviews with crime analysis personnel are used to determine the departments’ perspectives of crime analysis and grant writing, and any impacts they may have on the use of such innovative strategies. Policy implications of the findings will be discussed.
Determinants of Early Desistence From Criminal Careers: First Results of a German Study
The findings of the Tuebingen Criminal Behavior Development Study, which followed 200 young prisoners and 200 control persons from age 20 to 55, revealed that the group of offenders terminated their criminal careers at each stage of their life/career, meaning sometimes after their ninth conviction or maturing already in the beginning of their career out of criminal behavior. Based on these for criminal policy very relevant findings we started in the mid 1990’s a qualitative study of 60 young chronic offenders in order to examine their determinants of early desistance from a criminal career. The central aim of the study was to unveil the most decisive determinants for an early desistance from crime. First results support quite well the age-graded interactive theories of criminal behavior and its trajectories. Young adult offenders do desist from criminal behavior by changing their basic life style, by getting used to new patterns of bonding with other people, by entering stable partnerships, by developing positive and structured leisure time activities, and by starting meaningful jobs. The “decision” to desist early from a criminal career emerges from complex processes of reshaping the personal identity and basic life orientations.
Developing A Comprehensive Analysis of Police Organizations in the U.S.
Research on patterns of policing in the U.S. has been hampered by limited data on police organizations that are both theoretically comprehensive and geographically representative. Organizationally detailed research has been based on geographically limited, nonrepresentive convenience samples that yield mixed results; however, recent national data sets on policing collected by NIJ have provided wide geographic coverage but included sparse, incomplete measurement of important organizational variables, especially regarding their community settings and environments. This paper describes the development of a nationally representive, theoretically diverse data set on police agencies created by merging police organizational variables from 1999 LEMAS survey with crime-related data from the Uniform Crime Report, community-related data from the City-County Data Book, and governmental data from the ICMA Yearbook. The resulting combined data file is used to provide a more comprehensive empirical description of police organizational structures and practices across all parts of the U.S., as well as to assess how these structures and practices vary across different types of police agencies and geographic regions.
Developing a Theoretical Model to Examine the Influence of a Religious Sect [Odinism] on Norwegian and American Inmates
The occurrence of extraparliamentary1 right-wing extremism is becoming more prominent in the social landscape of Norway, and other western European countries, and in the United States. Amongst these extraparliamentary movements one will find groups that base and justify their racist behavior in religious beliefs. Odinists or Asatruers are examples of such groups. Odinism or Asatru is an attempt to reconstruct pre-Christian, neopagan traditions with origin in northern Europe. The objective of this qualitative study is to do an intercultural comparison of Odinistic conversion in the prison system in Norway and United States. The fundamental assumption of this study is that there are a higher number of converts in the U.S. prisons than there are in the Norwegian prisons, due to differences in the prison systems. There is no need for Norwegian prisoners to feel a group connection to the same extent that there is for American prisoners due to prison population and the safety connected to smaller prisons. Since the research focus is the construction of a theoretical model, two prisons will be chosen for the study. Institutions having inmates identified, as being Odinists or Asatru, will be listed. After securing permission, inmates will be contacted for qualitative interviews using an unstructured schedule. Importation prisonization model variables will be included in the data collection. Analysis will use qualitative software programs. It is important to notice that the debate about race is ongoing in the Asatru community and that not all of these groups are right-winged extremists. American prisons have become very diverse and this project will suggest the influence of religious sects on inmate organizations and interpersonal relationships with other inmates and staff.
Developing Common Ground for International Research on Restorative Conferencing
Members of the in the European Forum are currently engaged in developing a template to compare, contrast and identify common elements of restorative conferencing practices in different countries each, based on updating the research conducted by Miers, et. al. (2001) form the United Kingdom. Moreover, Eurpoean Forum has also conducted a seminar on European empirical research on RJ (inventory oriented research would be part of it). However, what has been notably missing from each of these studies has been a common schedule or template to also make comparisons possible between North-America, Europa, Australasia, .and elsewhere. The purpose of this presentation is to examine the commonalities and differences among these various works and to develop a common template for designing and conducting reliable restorative justice research.
Development of a State-Wide Risk and Protective Factor Assessment for Crime Prevention and Case Planning
In response to the need for a uniform way of identifying youth at risk to offend, Oregon’s county juvenile justice agencies participated in creating and testing an assessment tool for use with its juvenile crime prevention initiative. Youth with greater numbers of risk indicators are at greater risk of committing future offenses, and Oregon’s strategy is to target resources to those youth in greatest need of services. The tool is used by juvenile departments and community agencies to assist in decision-making regarding the appropriate level of supervision and/or intervention for different youth. The assessment tool includes 20 risk indicators and 12 protective indicators in the following five domains: school issues, peer relationships, behavior issues, family functioning, and substance use. A 12-month follow-up sample of 1607 juvenile offenders demonstrated that reliability alpha for the 20 risk items was high (a = .83). Further, a logistic regression conducted in SPSS 10.0 suggested that the instrument had an 81% accuracy rate of appropriately classifying those youth who would re-offend. This paper will discuss the process of tool development and implementation, as well as the results from the validation and reliability testing.
Developmental Antecedents of Parenting Behaviors in a Multi-Generational Study of Antisocial Behavior
Parenting behaviors are often portrayed as a major mediator of intergenerational continuities in antisocial behavior. That is, one of the major reasons that antisocial parents are somewhat more apt to have antisocial children is that these parents often do not display very effective styles of parenting. Despite the very central role that parenting styles play in the origins of antisocial behavior, we have surprisingly little information about the long-term developmental precursors of these behaviors and how the parents’ earlier adolescent development, including delinquency and drug use, influences their later parenting styles. The central research question of this paper focuses on this issue: What are the earlier, as opposed to contemporaneous, influences that lead to different styles of parenting? To address this question, we use long-term data from the Rochester Youth Development Study, an ongoing examination of the intergenerational transmission of antisocial behavior. In particular, we examine how the structural position of the family of origin, the formation of human and social capital during adolescence, psychological adjustment, and involvement in antisocial behavior and deviant social networks influence the emergence of parenting styles.
Developmental Trajectories of Substance Use and Illegal Activity: Examining Dual Trajectory Models
The purpose of this study is to examine the comorbidity between substance use and illegal activity from childhood into young adulthood. The first aim of this paper is to empirically identify and characterize different developmental trajetories of alcohol, marijuana and hard drug use as well as property and violent offenses from the ages 7 to 25 years. Then we examine the joint associations between trajectories for each pair of these problem behaviors. A major advantage of this approach is that it links the entire developmental course of the two behaviors rather than relating a single measurement of each behavior at a single time period (Nagin & Tremblay, 2001, p. 31).
Developmental Variables in a Sample of Serious Adolescent Offenders
This study is the first to measure a broad range of indicators of developmental maturity in serious adolescent offenders. These measures focus primarily on aspects of psychosocial maturity that may be related to decision making regarding future offending (e.g., impulsivity, orientation to the future, emotional regulation) and on relationships toward significant others (e.g., romantic partners, parents. The internal consistency and validity of these types of measures for this sample will be reported. In addition, the relationships among several of these measures will be examined.
Deviance Among Females: Developmental Pathways From Adolescence to Young Adulthood
The study of the development of deviant behavior from an individual standpoint is neglected, particularly applicable for females. The few recent studies indicated that most adolescent females were characterized by a transitory delinquency; a form of offending that is limited to a specific period. Hence, few adolescent females engaged in a persistent deviant career. The main objective of this study is to identify developmental pathways of deviance among females, from adolescence to young adulthood. To do so a sample of a 150 adjudicated females is used. Four trajectories were identified: benign persistent drug users and delinquents, delinquent explorers, drug users and delinquent deescalators, and persistent drug users and moderate delinquents.
Devils in Disguise: The Contribution of Positive Labeling to ‘Sneaky Thrills’ Delinquency
Delinquency theorists have traditionally focused on the criminogenic effects of negative labels and, in general, have argued that the negative labeling of delinquent youth may invoke a self-fulfilling prophecy and thereby encourage further (secondary) delinquency. In this paper, I argue that labeling theorists have largely overlooked the criminogenic effects of positive labeling. Drawing on the relevant delinquency literature, it is argued that positive labels may also promote delinquent behavior (indirectly) under certain conditions. In particular, youths who are viewed in a positive light by authority figures (e.g., “good kid,” “responsible,” “trustworthy”) are often granted more opportunities to escape adult supervision than those who are labeled in more neutral or negative terms. Consequently, such youths also enjoy more freedom to pursue delinquent activities. Moreover, recognizing the benefits of positive labeling, some youths actively campaign for positive reputations in order to gain the trust of adults and to secure increased autonomy and delinquent opportunity. Indirect evidence_demonstrating both the contribution of positive labeling to delinquency and the devious campaigning of youths_is drawn from the existing literature and from selected quotes from offenders. Finally, a number of novel hypotheses are offered to guide future research in this area.
Dialogue as Restoration
According to restorative justice theory, justice consists in repairing harms caused by crime as well as harms that promote crime. Beyond material harms that require repair, there are moral and psychological issues facing individuals, communities, and societies in the aftermath of crime. In this paper I argue that the fundamental restorative justice practice of earnest dialogue is itself an early stage of repair. I apply a phenomenological approach to justice in critically evaluating restorative justice practices at the micro level
Did Abolition of Parole Impact the Reported Crime Rates? A Comparison of Intervention Time Series Methods Using Arma and Structural Time Series Approaches
Virginia abolished parole and reformed sentencing for all felony offenses committed after January 1, 1995 in a special legislative session in Fall 1994. Parole abolition was accompanied with substantially enhanced sentences for both violent offenses and violent offenders. For non-violent offenders the new “truth-in-sentencing” attempted to preserve the time-served practices from the prior system. In this presentation, we will examine the impact of the abolishing parole on reported violent and property crimes. We specifically examine the differences between ARIMA (McCleary and Hay, 1980) and structural time series methods (Koopmans and Durbin, 2001) in estimating the impacts of abolishing parole on reported crimes. Exhibits 1 and 2 describe the reported crimes for both property and violent crimes. The curious aspect is that reported crimes were already declining when parole was abolished in January 1995. Intervention Time series methods will model the trajectories of the reported crimes both before and after the abolition of parole. This presentation will be a contribution to time series methods. This involves a collaboration between leading practitioners of ARIMA and Structural Time Series methods. METHODS Intervention time series methods have been primarily implemented in applied criminology using ARIMA methods. The strength of ARIMA intervention time series methodology are its ability to discern the form of the impact. Structural time series models are formulated directly in terms of components of interest (e.g., the trend, seasonal, cycle, and the residual-irregular-components). Modeling explanatory variables are often more straightforward in a Structural Time Series framework as compared to ARIMA. The explanatory variables enter the models along with the unobserved components. These models gain their flexibility because the stochastic formulation allows the mean, trend and seasonality to evolve over time. We will compare the results of the ARIMA and structural time series analysis. Both methodological and substantive implications of the results will be discussed. SOFTWARE The intervention ARIMA models will be implemented using the SCA software. The structural time series models will be implemented in STAMP and SSFPACK. Exhibit 1 Time Series of Reported Property Crimes: Pre and Post Parole Abolition Exhibit 2 Time Series of Reported Violent Crimes: Pre and Post Parole Abolition
Differences in Drug, Property, Violent, and Other Offenses Among Arrestees
There are numerous studies on the nexus between drugs and crime, but few on the relationship between retail drug market behavior and other criminal offenses, particularly in a comparative framework across diverse geographic regions. Using the newly redesigned Arrestee Drug Abuse Monitoring (ADAM) program database, this study examines concatenated probability samples of 38,546 offenders who were arrested and interviewed during 2000 and 2001 in 34 metropolitan areas in 26 states in the continental and off-shore United States. In particular, we investigate models that use self-reported and biologically assayed drug use at the time of arrest, official arrest record information, and other interview data to account for differences among arrestees in terms of their violent offenses, property offenses, drug-related offenses, and various combinations of offenses. Multinomial logit models, with attended areal nesting effects, will be used to examine the differentiated associations between criminal offenses and behavioral attributable characteristics such as arrest history, hard-core drug use, other drug and alcohol use patterns, frequencies and circumstances of buying drugs, race and ethnicity, age and other control variables. These results will be presented in the context of the diversity of drug market characteristics geographically. We will review implications for strategies for controlling criminal activities.
Differences in Implementing California’s Proposition 36: An Eight-County Study
This paper will examine key local differences that are emerging in immediate implementation of California’s Proposition 36 (Substance Abuse and Crime Prevention Act) initiative of 2000 across 8 diverse large, medium and small counties. The data were collected by the authors in an in-person key informant survey of county policymakers conducted in 2001. Unlike most major California criminal justice ballot initiatives of recent years, Proposition 36 represents a potential lessening of adjudicatory and penal controls rather than an increase in their severity, in this case in response to drug arrests. However, like most other initiatives, Proposition 36 is written broadly enough to allow considerable discretion across the state’s 58 counties in operationalizing and funding the mandated provisions. Hence the actual content and scope of the procedural changes in the criminal justice system, and the impact of the Proposition on the system and on the arrestees, are likely to vary. This paper will identify some of the key local approaches and decisions that were made in the eight sampled counties that are predicted to affect the Proposition’s impact.
Differences in Journey-to–Crime Pattern Between Different Types of Offending (Solo, Co-offending and Switching) in Police Recorded Crime Data
One of the issues within journey-to-crime research is to gain understanding of the process of connecting offenders to victims or targets, and how they come together in space and time. Most journey-to-crime studies focus on the individual offender or, on an aggregated level, on the offender population as a whole. Although a lot of crime is committed by co-offenders, yet this group has hardly been studied in journey-to-crime research. At NSCR, we currently research possible differences in journey-to-crime patterns between predominantly single offenders respectively co-offenders. We expect that co-offenders redefine their opportunities by combining mental maps of the involved partners-in-crime. Using interview methodology, the main study tries to uncover the use and function of the mental maps of co-offenders. The present paper describes part of the research project on co-offenders’ journey-to-crime pattern, using police-records – provided by Haaglanden police – as data source. Based on Rational Choice and Routine Activities theory, we argue that solo and co-offenders will display differences in journey-to-crime patterns. In this paper we put this proposition to test. As police-records are not designed for easy analysis of journey-to-crime patterns, various methods and remedies, like GIS, to attack this (distance) problem, will be tried and evaluated.
Differences in the Acceptance of Rape Myths by College Students in Criminal Justice Versus Other Majors
This study attempted to identify whether college students in different majors (e.g. criminal justice compared to computer science or business) have different attitudes or believe in different myths concerning the issue of rape. The researchers hypothesized that stuents majoring in criminal justice and other social sciences were more likely to have routinely received factual information concerning sexual assault than those majoring in other disciplines such as business and computer science and therefore would be less likely to believe in traditional rape myths. None of the hypotheses were supported by the data. Criminal justice majors were no more likely than other majors to view rape as a crime of violene and were just as likely as other majors to place blame on the rape victim for her victimization because of her appearance or behavior. Most criminal justice majors in this sample did not classify their attitudes towards social issues as liberal, perhaps because most said they were no more likely to have been exposed to movies, books, lectures, or classroom discussions about sexual assault than other majors. The implications for rape victims who will be served by the criminal justice practitioners of the future represented by these studens is discouraging.
Differentiating Juvenile Offenders by Gender: Risk of Recidivism
Girls are typically classified as being at low risk of recidivism when compared to boys. Previous work testing gender-neutral and gender-specific delinquency risk classifications indicates that the factors associated with re-offfending differ by gender. Using data from a population of adjudicated delinquent juveniles, this paper will describe the development of two recidivism risk classifications–one each for male and female juveniles. The presentation will focus on the value of developing such tools, the methods used to create the classifications, and descriptions of juveniles at various levels of risk.
Dilapidation and Drug Arrests
The level of neighborhood disorganization has been identified in research as being positively associated with the illicit activities that occur therein (Kornhauser, 1978; Shaw & McKay, 1942). As such, a community disorder resulting from social and structural characteristics may foster or contribute to an environment where crime and disorder are common. One measure of neighborhood disorganization is physical dilapidation, which in this piece is conceptualized as the amount of abandoned, unsafe, and substandard buildings in a particular area. This micro-level study seeks to elucidate the relationship between dilapidation and drug use. Specifically, it is hypothesized that areas with a higher percentage of abandoned, unsafe, and substandard buildings will attract a greater number of incidents of – and arrests for – drug use and abuse. “Hot Spot” spatial analyses and logistic regression techniques were employed to lend empirical support to this proposed relationship. Policy solutions derived from the findings are suggested in conclusion to provide a practical approach for police in addressing criminogenic elements of dilapidation in their jurisdiction.
Direct Supervision: Two Evaluations of a Podular Direct Supervision Jail
This paper discusses two evaluations of a direct supervision jail conducted a decade apart, using different evaluation criteria. The evaluations when considered together provide not only a comparison of effectiveness of this program over time, but also identify ideas that might be used when evaluating direct supervision in other jurisdictions.
Disaster and Crime: Conditions and Characteristics of Crime After the Great Hanshin-Awaji Greath Earthquake
It is general recognition that the social order right after Hanshin-Awaji Great Earthquake was well maintained beyond anticipation. This report agrees to such recognition. Furthermore, I will examine the reason why social order was kept good in the stricken area. The data to be used is questionnaire surveys and interviews with community leaders of the areas. The perspective to be applied is ‘routine activity theory’ that explains criminal behavior as rational choice according to the situation on the extension of everyday activities. However, I will apply this framework to subjective matters of recognition of a person concerned, and utilize it in this report, although this theory mainly treats objective phenomena. How do people act at the time of a disaster? What causes the increase or decrease in the number of crimes?
Discerning the Legacy of Comprehensive Community-Based Initiatives: SafeFutures Re-Examined
The SafeFutures Partnership to Reduce Delinquency and Youth Violence was a five-year initiative supported by the Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention (OJJDP). It was designed to further the existing efforts of select communities in reducing delinquency and youth violence, using a continuum of care that included prevention, intervention, treatment, and graduated sanctions. Six communities (Boston, MA; Contra Costa County, CA; Fort Belknap Indian Community, MT; Imperial County, CA; Seattle, WA; and St. Louis, MO) began SafeFutures demonstrations in the spring of 1996. A national cross-site evaluation, conducted by the Urban Institute, was implemented at the same time to determine the success of site-specific efforts. Demonstration funding concluded in most sites in the summer of 2001. This paper describes the efforts of these communities to sustain SafeFutures, and the progress that has been made in the months following the demonstration’s end. The SafeFutures Partnership to Reduce Delinquency and Youth Violence was a five-year initiative supported by the Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention (OJJDP). It was designed to further the existing efforts of select communities in reducing delinquency and youth violence, using a continuum of care that included prevention, intervention, treatment, and graduated sanctions. Six communities (Boston, MA; Contra Costa County, CA; Fort Belknap Indian Community, MT; Imperial County, CA; Seattle, WA; and St. Louis, MO) began SafeFutures demonstrations in the spring of 1996. A national cross-site evaluation, conducted by the Urban Institute, was implemented at the same time to determine the success of site-specific efforts. Demonstration funding concluded in most sites in the summer of 2001. This paper describes the efforts of these communities to sustain SafeFutures, and the progress that has been made in the months following the demonstration’s end. The SafeFutures Partnership to Reduce Delinquency and Youth Violence was a five-year initiative supported by the Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention (OJJDP). It was designed to further the existing efforts of select communities in reducing delinquency and youth violence, using a continuum of care that included prevention, intervention, treatment, and graduated sanctions. Six communities (Boston, MA; Contra Costa County, CA; Fort Belknap Indian Community, MT; Imperial County, CA; Seattle, WA; and St. Louis, MO) began SafeFutures demonstrations in the spring of 1996. A national cross-site evaluation, conducted by the Urban Institute, was implemented at the same time to determine the success of site-specific efforts. Demonstration funding concluded in most sites in the summer of 2001. This paper describes the efforts of these communities to sustain SafeFutures, and the progress that has been made in the months following the demonstration’s end.
Distance Education in Criminal Justice
Educational institutions are increasingly venturing into new modes of distance education. Criminal Justice programs are no exception. Students can take “hybrid” courses, which include traditional and distance content. In some cases entire courses are available online. Several programs have developed entire degree programs. Based on data collected in a survey of criminal justice educators, this research describes the range of offerings, the motivations for developing distance courses, and many issues related to institutional support of distance education. Implications for the future of criminal justice education are also discussed.
Do Birds of a Feather Cluster Together? The Versatility and Specialization of Adolescent Deviance
Employing a cluster analysis, this paper explores the general question of the relationship between substance use, delinquency, and criminality, in order to develop a classification of individual patterns of behaviour. A growing body of research speaks to the robustness of the relationship between drugs and crime. Although issues of causality are not fully developed, research attention has centered on the correlation between multiple indicators of deviance in the hopes of identifying and profiling groups of individuals. Once classified, we can speak to the social development of specific patterns of deviance, both theoretically and in terms of public policy. Unfortunately, much of the existing research is drawn from samples pre-selected on their problematic or deviant behaviour, ignoring the drug-crime association in the general population. Additionally, studies have failed to properly operationalize substance use, delinquency, and criminality, including only a limited set of deviant measures based largely on prevalence. To address these gaps in the literature, I examine a general population sample of adolescents between the ages of 13 and 18 to explore individual patterns of substance use, delinquency, and criminality. Moreover, I employ a broad swath of deviant behaviours that include indicators of prevalence and incidence. Data for this project come from the “Toronto Area Youth Survey”, administered to over 3,500 high school students in the city of Toronto.
Do Differences in Juvenile Justice Systems’ Processing Affect Subsequent Delinquency? A Comparison of the U.S. and Germany
The Juvenile Justice Systems in the U.S. and Germany are quite differently constructed. In Germany offenders aged 14 up to the age of 20 are, predominately, rather leniently sanctioned based on juvenile law, while in the U.S. the “get tough” approach of the eighties has led to a more punitive orientation toward persons aged 10 through 18 (e.g. waiver to criminal court). Based on data of two longitudinal studies (Denver Youth Survey and Bremen School-to-Work-Study) the arrest patterns at both sites, as well as the sanctioning structure during the ages 14 through 24, will be described to determine whether the law in use is indeed different (as the law in the books would suggest). Thereafter, using multivariate analyses, the effect of different styles of reaction by the two juvenile justice systems on subsequent offending prevalence and frequency will be examined.
Do Guns Make Robberies More Deadly? An Analysis of the Impact of Weapons on the Lethality of Robbery Related Homicide
The goal of this study is to determine if the presence of a weapon increases the “lethality” of the crime of robbery. Factors such as the number of offenders involved as well as the ages and genders of the victim(s) and the offender(s) are held constant. The primary hypothesis is that the presence of a firearm will increase the number of victims killed during robberies that result in homicide. Multivariate regression analysis is used to analyze data from the Supplementary Homicide Reports (SHR) 1976-1999. Only homicides that occurred as the result of robbery are considered. The primary hypothesis is supported. The presence of a firearm significantly increases both the probability that robbery will result in multiple murder and the number of victims killed. Conversely, personal weapons (such as knives and blunt objects) do not increase the lethality of robbery related homicide. One can therefore conclude that the presence of firearms makes robbery a more “deadly” crime.
Do Prison Sentence Enhancements Reduce Gun Crime? The Case of Project Exile
This paper presents an analysis of the effects of enhancing prison penalties for gun crime by diverting gun offenders from state to federal courts. We begin by presenting the first systematic evaluation of the widely-cited Project Exile in Richmond, Virginia. We argue that the decline in Richmond gun homicide rates surrounding the implementation of Project Exile was not unusual and that the observed decrease would have been likely to occur in the absence of the program. This conclusion stems from two empirical findings. First, those cities with the highest homicide rates during the mid 1990’s experience the largest decreases later in the decade. This pattern seems to be explained by the second finding that cities with the largest increases in homicide rates during the 1980s and early 1990s also experienced the largest decreases during the late 90s. Given these empirical relationships, we show that nearly all of the reduction in murder rates in Richmond following Project Exile may be attributed to the unusually high level and increase in gun homicide prior to Exile’s implementation. We then test for a more general relationship between local Felon-in-Possession convictions and city-level homicide rates. Again, we find little statistically significant evidence of an impact.
Do Prolonged States of Warfare Affect the Level of Violence in Israeli Society?
Since the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001, fear of terrorism and concern for personal security have become widespread phenomena in the major industrialized countries of the western world. It is still too early to know the effects of this new situation on crime patterns in general and violent crimes in particular. On the other hand, Israeli society has been living under a constant threat to its security, both on the national and the personal level for more than five decades already. This threat has increased drastically since the outbreak of renewed violence between Israel and the Palestinian Authority at the end of September 2000 (the so-called ‘El-Aqsa Intifada’). The aim of this paper is to analyze the relationship between prolonged states of warfare and various aspects of violence, focusing on the Israeli experience as a case study and thereby, testing the applicability of various criminological (and other) theoretical models. I begin my analysis by outlining general trends in violent crime in Israel over time. I then present a brief discussion of security-related stress in Israeli society and introduce a number of conceptual models relating stress and violence. Empirical evidence in support of these models is then provided, together with a brief account of some unique measures of stress developed by me in the course of my research on violence in Israel (objective/subjective indicators of stress and social support). This is followed by the examination of the possible brutalizing effects of the El-Aqsa Intifada on Israeli society. My basic thesis is that the patterns of violent crime are closely related to a number of stress factors in Israeli society, the most prominent being security-related stress.
Do Shame and Guilt Predict Antisocial Behavior in Late Adolescence? Findings From a Prospective Study
In criminology shame and guilt are often cited as two emotions that inhibit socially maladaptive behaviors. In psychology, however, important differences have been found between these two emotions and subsequent outcomes (Tangney, et. al., 1996). Self-reports of a variety of measures, including the Adolescent Shame Measure (ASM, Reimer, 1995), were collected in 1996-1997 as part of an ongoing longitudinal research study initiated in 1990 following 363 mother-child pairs. In addition, participants were again interviewed in 1998-1999 when the adolescents were on average 17 years old. Participants self-reported on several different measures of problem behavior including aggression, delinquency, and depression. Preliminary results show that when controlling for guilt, shame was prospectively related to higher levels of depression but had no relationship to aggression or delinquency. Conversely, when shame was controlled guilt was negatively related to aggression and delinquency. Analyses will be conducted to further explore these findings. Results will be discussed from both a psychological and criminological perspective.
Do Women Want the Job? An Examination of the Recruitment and Retention of Female Law Enforcement Officers
A 1998 IACP study of police chiefs suggested that many barriers still exist for women interested in pursuing careers in law enforcement and for those who currently serve as police officers. Several strategies were suggested for the future success of selecting and retaining female officers. The current research will now provide the point of view of the female police officer. Female police officers in Rhode Island will be questioned on both the difficulties they incurred during the hiring process and issues that are faced once on the job. These findings will also be compared to the hiring/retention beliefs of Rhode Island police chiefs.
Doctoral Dissertations Examining Rehabilitation: A Review and Critique
Systematic reviews of the treatment literature generally tend to reach two conclusions. First, these reviews tend to conclude that some interventions produce lower levels of recidivism among offenders. Second, authors have a tendency to stress the point that methodological inqdequacies in outcomes research interfere with the ability to draw more meaningful conclusions. By examining a random sample of dissertation abstracts published in 1999, this paper reviews the work being done by doctoral students studying offender outcomes in an attempt to assess the methodological rigor of their work. As a result of critiques past and present, it was hypothesized that doctoral dissertations would employ methodological techniques that are improvements over past and current practice. Although descriptive in nature, the paper provides a mechanism by which to evaluate the quality of research being done by the newest members of the field, those who successfully complete and defend a doctoral dissertation. Unfortunately for adherents to the rehabilitative ideal, results indicte that the work being done by the next generation of researchers largely mirrors previous work in the field and that substantial refinements to methodology must be made before more sizeable conclusions can be made about the effectiveness of correctional treatment.
Doctoral Education in Criminology/Criminal Justice
Criminology/Criminal Justice doctoral programs from twenty-five institutions are currently members of the American Association of Doctoral Programs in Criminology and Criminal Justice (AADPCCJ). The AADPCCJ, which meets annually at the ASC meetings, has surveyed its member institutions every year for the past five years. Data from the past five years of surveys will be presented with an emphasis on the expansion of doctoral education in Criminology/Criminal Justice, doctoral program growth, and acceptance, enrollment and graduation rates. In addition, gender/race/ethnicity statistics and faculty compensation and assignment data will be presented.
Does Age Have a Direct Effect on Delinquency? General Theory vs. Developmental Theory
Hirschi and Gottfredson (1983) rekindled an interest of most criminologists on the relationship between age and crime. Out of six propositions raised by them, following two are notable. First, the shape of age-crime curve is invariant over time and place so that the age effect cannot be used to explain the crime phenomenon by criminologists. Second, age has a direct effect on crime rates, as the age effect on crime cannot be explained with other available concepts than age itself. In sum, age has a direct effect on crime rate so that there is no intervening variables between age and crime that might vary the relationship between age and crime. However, I argue that there surely is an intervening mechanism between age and crime such that control process and associational process that vary over age exert a crucial role in explaining the relationship between age and crime. More specifically, I am interested in whether control process and associational process are differentiated between middle schools and high schools (Hellman and Beaton 1986 from Welsh et al: 82). I tentatively hypothesize that while the control process is more likely to be manifested in the middle school, the associational process is more likely to be manifested in the high school.
Does Crowding Breed Crime?: Crowding and Its Possibility for Bringing About Crime in the United States
Although numerous explanations have been provided for the occurrence of crime, the present study will examine density as a primary variable possibly influencing crime. Crowding or high-density is a social phenomenon that has the potential to affect numerous individuals. The present study will examine the possibility for a greater incidence of crime in locations that experience greater density. Aggregate level data will be used in this case including the Unites States of America and the District of Columbia in order to determine if on the wider scale, crime in the US is influenced by density. The magnitude of crime as well as the type of crime will be examined based on the arrest rates provided by the Uniform Crime Reports, 2000 for most states. Density will be examined based on population figures as well as the number of persons per square mile, the number of persons per household, the total number of households, and the housing unit density which will be taken from Census 2000 Reports. Multiple regression will be used to analyze the data.
Does Gender Matter? A Study of Gender and Adolescent Offending
Gender is generally regarded as a strong predictor of offending and some scholars have even argued that we may need different theories to explain male and female offending. This study challenge whether this is really the case for adolescent offending. This paper presents findings from recent Swedish studies into adolescent offending. The sample used (pooled data from four different studies) include 2283 14 year old subjects living in a medium-sized city and in two small towns. The study focuses on three main research questions. First, is gender a major predictor of adolescent offending? When controlling for individual structural position, social situation and morality, is gender still a significant predictor? And finally, do the same factors explain male and female adolescent offending? The results show that gender explains only a small proportion of variation in adolescent offending prevalence and frequency . In addition, it is shown that the same factors, by and large, explain offending variation for males and females. The findings are discussed in relation to the concept of gender and criminological theory aiming to explain variation in adolescent offending.
Does Gun Control Reduce Criminal Violence? An Econometric Evaluation of Canadian Firearm Laws
A pooled cross-section, time series model is used to evaluate the effect of the 1977 and the 1991 amendments to the Canadian firearms legislation on robbery rates between 1962 and 1997. Three classes of independent variables are included in the model: [a] punishment variables [e.g., clearance rates], [b] sociological variables [e.g., percentage male youth], and [c] socio-economic variables [e.g., unemployment claims per capita]. This is the largest database yet assembled to analyze firearm legislation in Canada. This is the first econometric study of the 1991 Canadian firearm legislation conducted, although there have been several studies of earlier Canadian firearms legislation. The results of previous studies of the Canadian firearm legislation are mixed. Most studies found insignificant results, but two government studies found the legislation reduced homicide. One other paper found the 1977 legislation significantly increased robbery rates. This study did not find a significant effect for either the 1977 or the 1991 firearm legislation on robbery rates.
Does It Still Work? An Eight Year Follow-Up Evaluation of a Pretrial Intoxicated Driver Intervention Program
This paper presents the results of an eight year follow-up evaluation of the Milwaukee County (Wisconsin) Pretrial Intoxicated Driver Intervention Program (IDP). It is the third evaluation of this program since its inception in December 1992. There was a 1 year and a 4 year evaluation. The results show that the IDP program continues to be a successful intervention for repeat drunk driving offenders. The program effectively reduces the probability of a new drunk driving offense compared to drunk drivers who did not participate in an IDP. The studies have shown that longer sentences do not deter future drunk driving offenses. When used as a stand alone consequence, longer sentences do not appear effective in reducing the possibility of recidivism. The study also shows that early intervention and treatment are the best way to reduce the probability of reoffending.
Does Possession of a Handgun Deter Violence? An Analysis of General Social Survey Data
In this paper, we analyze answers given by roughly 3,000 respondents of the 1994 General Social Survey to questions about household handgun possession and firearm victimization. The tested hypothesis is whether having a gun lowers one’s risk of being threatened or attacked. Analysis includes relevant controls and models a possible reciprocal relationship between handgun possession and victimization. Findings, policy implications, and avenues for future research are discussed.
Does Program Integrity Matter: Examining the Relationship Between the Quality of Correctional Programing and Outcome
This paper will examine the relationship between program integrity and recidivism by examining the results from the largest study of halfway houses and residential correctional programs ever conducted. In order to address this important issue two basic types of information will be examined. First, nearly 60 residential correctional agencies (halfway houses and community based correctional facilities will assessed on dimension of program quality. Second, recidivism rates for each program will be determined by tracking all offenders served by these facilities in 1999. This study sets out to address two related questions: Is there a relationship between program integrity and outcome? And if so, can the characteristics of program integrity be identified? In this research, program effectiveness is defined by the actual reduction in recidivism noted between the experimental groups of these sixty programs and matched control groups. Over 13,000 offenders are included in this sample.
Does Program Make a Difference? A Comparative Study of Delinquent and At-Risk Young Women in Community-Based and Residential Programs
This paper analyzes the experiences, attitudes and behavior of delinquent and at-risk young women in three types of programs: community programs where they reside at home, community-based residential programs and closed residential facilities. The programs also vary in the degree to which they address gender-sensitive issues. The study provides information about several risk, need and protective factors, participants’ use of social services, as well as a number of standardized assessment measures including: Adolescent Interpersonal Competency Instrument, the CES-D Depression Scale, Youth Coping Index, Elliott Self-reported Delinquency, Life Events Stress Scale, Peer Involvement and Relationships Index, school performance and Substance Abuse Scales. Findings from Waves 1 and 2 are presented in this paper. Preliminary results indicate that the majority of these young women are abused, experience a large number of crises, are depressed, have unstable housing and problematic family relationships, experience frequent poverty, have traditional female delinquency patterns, experience numerous problems in school, and display a lack of sufficient knowledge about sexual l behavior. Because of family rejection and lack of mental health programming many end up in residential programs that aggravate their situation. Despite this some have developed positive coping mechanisms. We are attempting to identify conditions under which this occurs. The results gained from this study are being used by a local advisory committee to plan for more effective gender-sensitive programs that meet the needs of this at-risk female population.
Does Punishment Do More Good Than Harm? A Utilitarian Analysis
For the utilitarian, a social practice is justified insofar as it tends to produce a surplus of good over harm. Although the efficacy of punishment in preventing crime continues to be in dispute among criminologists, there is a small but respectable literature supporting the general idea that the crime-preventive benefits of incarceration outweigh its social costs. But these studies often assume that effects on offenders need not be considered, and thus that punitive policies are justified if the value of their crime-preventive effects is greater than their cost in tax dollars. If punishment is to be justified in utilitarian terms, however — as providing more benefits than harms — we cannot pick and choose among the harms done, counting some and not others. Thus, these analyses fail provide a utilitarian justification for the practice. In this paper I analyze the justification for punishment in light of the current state of epirical knowledge about its effects. I suggest that it is doubtful that punishment produces more good than harm, and show what additional findings would be needed to support such an outcome. In closing, I argue that, even in the instances in which meeting these requirements does not itself require obviously unacceptable practices, well-known weaknesses in utilitarian reasoning preclude the justification of punishment on utilitarian grounds.
Does Racism Predict Police Brutality? A Comparative Analysis: The United States and Brazil
In recent years police in both Brazil and the United States have been accused of acts of brutality related to the racism that is endemic in both societies. This paper compares the impact of 21 years of authoritarian rule upon the Brazilian notion of the proper degree of autonomy to afford the police with the American people’s conception of what the nature of policing should be in their society. It explores the nature of police sub-cultural norms in each society and how each of these themes impacts upon the degree of scrutiny that acts of police violence are likely to receive. In an era that has seen drastically reduced crime rates in the United States, a rising sensitivity to abusive police practices in the USA has led to prosecutions and some attempt at systemic reform. In Brazil, following the restoration of democratic rule in 1984, crime rates increased alarmingly. Though it might be expected that the reformist politicians that now are in control of the government would have instituted police reforms that would have reduced complaints of abuse, the opposite has occurred. The Brazilian police have continued to engage in torture and extra judicial killings, there have been few effective prosecutions, and there continues to be a sense of entitlement among the police. An entrenched “culture of impunity” that pervades the Brazilian police establishment determines both the brutality itself and public acceptance of the abuse.
Does Size Matter? Phyusicality and Delinquent Involvement
A host of biological and hormonal changes occur within adolescents as they reach the onset of puberty. At approximately this same time, the prevalence of delinquency begins to dramatically increase. Despite this association, relatively little attention has been given to the effects of physical maturation on adolescent waywardness. In an attempt to advance the existing line of literature in the etiology of delinquency, we examine the impact of physical development and temperament on delinquency by drawing upon the influential theoretical framework set forth by Sheldon (1949). The data for this study comes from the public-use version of The National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent Health (Add Health)–a nationally representative sample of 6,504 adolescents. The multivariate analyses provide evidence that early maturation is significantly associated with delinquent involvement for both males and females.
Does the Calendar Method Enhance Illegal Drug Use Reporting Among Arrestees?
While a plethora of research has determined that respondents underreport their recent use of illicit drugs, few studies have attempted to improve the validity of self-reported drug use. The Arrestee Drug Abuse Monitoring (ADAM) Program is a federally funded drug use surveillance system that has been collecting data from arrestees since 1987. In 2000, the ADAM Program fielded a new data collection instrument that uses a calendar method to enhance the reporting of personal drug use. To date, however, no research has assessed the degree to which this calendar method has improved drug use reporting among ADAM arrestees. To address this limitation, 30-day self-report measures for marijuana, crack cocaine, powder cocaine, heroin, and methamphetamine collected in Houston in 1999 are compared to identical drug use measures collected in 2000. In addition, kappa statistics for the three-day marijuana, crack cocaine, powder cocaine, heroin, and methamphetamine use measures and the respective urinalysis results are compared between the two time frames. Implications for drug use research and survey methodology are discussed.
Does the Order of Victimization Questions Affect Survey Responses?: A Randomized Experimental Study
Research has noted that negative feelings toward a specific occurrence have resulted in negative feelings toward general attitudes, pointing to a relationship between these two types of attitudes. However, there has been little research in the field of criminal justice on whether survey findings will differ if general or specific questions are posited first. Using a randomized experimental design, this research examines the effect of survey question order in the context of students’ feelings of safety on the University of Maryland Campus. The survey asked questions specifically about respondents’ personal experiences or their knowledge of victimization on campus and generally about whether they feel safe on campus. Sex was found to be significantly associated with attitudes toward campus safety. However, question order did not have a significant effect on the responses to the general questions.
Doing Qualitative Research in the Philippines
The presentation discusses various issues and concerns related to conducting qualitative research in the Philippines. Specific attention will be given to obtaining research assistance, interview scheduling, conducting interviews in local dialects, and cultural customs which may affect data gathering and interpretation.
Doing Their Own Time: Children of Incarcerated Mothers
The number of children affected by maternal incarceration has more than doubled in less than ten years. In 1991, BJS estimated that there were 26,800 mothers in state and federal prisons, with more than 63,700 dependent children. By 1999, that estimation increased to 53,600 in state and federal prisons, with over 126,000 dependent children. Most information regarding service needs and effects of maternal incarceration is known anecdotally or is yielded from surveys and interviews with their parents or caregivers. Only a handful of researchers have directly studies the children themselves. In addition, the studies that have done so have obtained most of their data on younger children, rather than adolescents. The present study directly interviews adolescents who are voluntarily participating in a support group for children of incarcerated mothers and has three specific objectives. First, to assess coping skills and social supports by the adolescents whose mothers are incarcerated and who are participating in a support group, compared with coping skills and social supports used by a population who are not participating in a support group. Second, to determine if and how participation in a support group increases the amount of in-person, mail and telephone contact between children and their mothers; and third, to examine if feelings of stigma surrounding maternal incarceration exist for these children.
Doing Time/Waiting on the Outside: Academic Reflections of a Personal Nature
The purpose of this paper is to examine the intersection of ethnicity, class, gender, and geography from a postmodern critical race feminist approach. In line with C. Wright Millsƒ€™ sociological imagination, Dorothy Smithƒ€™s situated subject position, and Patricia Hill Collinsƒ€™ theoretical/methodological approach, I position myself as a subject and as a researcher in reflecting and exploring issues surrounding ƒ€odoing timeƒ€ with lovers, friends, and family. For some Mexican American women from the barrio, prison becomes a natural part of their daily lives . And through the use of auto/biography, I attempt to integrate ƒ€obarrio politicsƒ€ and identity politics in understanding the experience of prison from the ƒ€ooutsideƒ€Â.
Domestic Violence Among Female Arrestees: Results of Information Collected Through an ADAM Addendum
The gathering of information on the scope and nature of domestic violence, as well as the service needs of domestic violence victims is crucial for practitioners and policy makers in their efforts to combat this social problem. The current project developed as a follow-up to a National Institute of Justice (NIJ)-funded study that involved the development and administration of a standardized intake form at six battered women’s shelters in San Diego County. Specifically, this intake form was modified to explore the nature of domestic violence among another sample of the population: female arrestees interviewed as part of the Arrestee Drug Abuse Monitoring (ADAM) program. SANDAG manages the ADAM program in San Diego and was responsible for conducting this research with funding from NIJ. Approximately three-quarters of the 185 arrestees interviewed during 2000 and 2001 reported being physically abused in their lifetime and almost half had been physically abused in the previous 12 months. Other data collected as part of these interviews pertain to the nature, severity, frequency, and consequences of domestic violence. This presentation will provide information about these victims and will compare this group with domestic violence shelter clients.
Domestic Violence and Homicide
One of America’s most pervasive hidden truths is the prevalence of domestic violence. Each year in the United States approximately 4.8 million incidents of intimate partner rape and physical assaults are committed against an estimated 2.9 million women. Domestic abuse is the leading cause of injury to women, and each year hundreds of American women die at the hands of an abusive partner. The Federal Bureau of Investigation reports that close to a third of all female homicide victims are murdered by an intimate partner or a former partner. This study examines the spatial patterns of domestic violence calls for service and the distribution of domestic homicides for the years 1989 and 1990 in the District of Columbia.
Domestic Violence and Narratives of the State: The Construction of the “Battered Woman” Through Criminal Justice Policy
Kathleen Ferraro (1996) argues that domestic violence “is a political and discursivew space in which emancipatory ideals collide with repressive mechanisms of social control; the legal, familial and social scientific establishments” (77). At the heart of domesti violence discourse rests the image of the “battered woman.” Ferraro argues that domestic violence discourse has been centered on a unified construction of “battered woman.” In this paper, I will further explore Ferraro’s assertion and examine ways in which narratives of the state construct battered women. This will involve an examination of criminal justice policy surrounding domestic violence in the state of Colorado. I will also compare the constructions of battered women in Colorado criminal justice policy with national policy. Borrwing from Bacchi (1999), I will address the following questions in my examination of domestic violence policy: –How is the problem represented in current policy? –What presuppositions or assumptions underlie this representation? –What effects are produced by this representation? How are subjects consituted within it? What is likely to change? What is likely to stay the same? Who is likely to benefit from this respresentation? –What is left unproblematic in this represenatation? –How would ‘responses’ differ if the ‘problem’ were thought about or represented differently? By examining one expression of domestic violence discourse, I hope this analysis will illuminate ways in which the “battered woman” is socially and legally constructed.
Domestic Violence and Stalking Among Older Adults: An Assessment of Risk markers
There is limited empirical evidence regarding the extent to which older adults are physically abused by their spouse or partner, and the risk factors associated with such abuse. Much of what does exist focuses on either care-giver abuse or abuse occurring in institutional settingsl Moreover, there is virtually no information on stalking victimization among older adults. The current study used the National Viollence Against Women Survey to examine physical abuse and stalking victimization among a sample of adults ages 55 and older (N=3,622). Similar to research conducted with younger samples, women aged 55 and older were significantly more likely than men to be both stalked and physically assaulted. Significant racial differences also emerged with respect to intimate partner physical violence, but not stalking. Specifically African American and Hispanic respondents were more likely to be victims of intimate partner violence compared to White respondents. Income, however, was not significantly associated with either stalking or physical assault victimization.
Domestic Violence Court in Minneapolis: Three Levels of Analysis
Hennepin County District Court in Minneapolis, Minnesota, began accepting cases into a newly formed domestic violence court calendar in November 2000. The calendar handles arraignment and pre-trial hearings for all in-custody and out-of-custody cases of domestic violence in the city of Minneapolis. This paper will present the results of three levels of analysis from the first full year of operation: (1) a quasi-experiment comparing case processing and disposition results with domestic violence cases heard prior to the existence of the domestic violence court calendar, (2) the results of a telephone survey of victims whose cases were heard on the calendar at the end of the calendar’s first year, and (3) the preliminary results of a recidivism analysis of defendants whose cases were heard on the calendar during the first year.
Domestic Violence in Selected Southeast Asian Refugee/Migrant Communities: Issues of Historical Context and Culture
This paper reviews preliminary qualitative data on domestic violence among Southeast Asian groups in the Washington, DC metropolitan area (from Vietnam, Cambodia and Laos). The data come from a research study on substance abuse, HIV risk and domestic violence among these populations sponsored by the National Institute on Drug Abuse. Of particular interest are the connections between refugee trauma, family dysfunction, substance abuse, and domestic violence. Some subgroups within the Washington, DC area Southeast Asian communities came to the U.S. from particularly difficult home country and migration situations – particularly those from Cambodia and some segments of the Vietnamese population (e.g., Amerasians), and as a result experience higher levels of post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), depression, family conflict, and economic stress. In addition, there are issues of social status loss, particularly for men who may have held higher status positions in their home country, and yet have had a more difficult time than women in finding adequate employment here in the U.S. Occurrences of domestic violence are compounded by a lack of services, gender roles, and by a traditional reluctance to come forward with problems that may disrupt the family or bring shame.
Domestic Violence in the Hmong Community: Police Attitudes and Intervention When Culture Conflicts With Law
Police officers were surveyed regarding beliefs about domestic violence in general and specifically in Hmong families. Hmong culture conflicts with State law regarding domestic violence. This research explores the effect of this conflict through an examination of attitudes and intervention by police in white and Hmong families.
Don’t Darken Our Doors: Federal Housing Policy, Homelessness, and Ex-Offenders
The 1990s have seen the growth of homelessness throughout the country, with the largest increases seen in our largest cities (Burt, 2000). The Chicago metropolitan area has witnessed increases in homelessness in the central city and the collar counties; evidence from recent surveys suggests that homeless service providers are frequently being asked to provide services to the ex-offender population. With federal housing programs permitted or required to deny housing to those with criminal backgrounds, and with many prisoners lacking financial means or family ties, recently released prisoners are turning to homeless service providers as their source of housing (California Department of Corrections, 1997). Taking Chicago as a case study, this exploratory research examines recent survey data on homelessness, census data, and interviews with advocates for the homeless to define the intersection of homelessness and incarceration. Federal housing policy exacerbates homelessness among ex-offenders, by carving out a special class of individuals who can never avail themselves of certain public housing options. Alongside this barrier to public housing is the limited availability of private affordable housing. Thus many ex-offenders are effectively foreclosed from finding housing, other than at short-term emergency shelters. The effect of this near-sighted federal strategy may lead to reincarceration.
Doula Labor Support for Incarcerated Pregnant Women
Women of childbearing age are the fastest growing segment of the U.S. incarcerated population, with more than 100,000 women incarcerated in local jails on any given day; 10% are pregnant at the time of arrest. For those women who deliver while in custody, labor and birth are often compromised by the constraints of the detention system. Incarcerated women in labor may be shackled to the bed, are not permitted to have visitors or phone calls, nor leave the hospital room during labor or birth. These constraints may contribute to negative birth experiences, poor maternal infant bonding, and resultant increased costs. Results of 14 randomized, controlled studies suggest that doula support (trained labor support) has a positive effect on birth outcomes, patient satisfaction, and maternal-infant bonding, particularly for women who are economically deprived. The purpose of this project was to implement and evaluate a program that supports incarcerated pregnant women with doulas during labor and birth. Eighteen incarcerated women delivered during the project with doula support. Results of the qualitative and quantitative analysis demonstrate high feasibility and low project costs, and high levels of patient, officer, doula, and provider satisfaction.
Dropping Out or Sticking With It: The Sustainability of Crime Prevention Officers
One difficulty in sustaining community-based policing efforts is the turnover of officers assigned to these duties. There may be several reasons why officers rotate out of these duties. Some officers come to regret their assignment because they feel that they are no longer part of the “mainstream” of the department. They may receive little encouragement from upper command and may frequently hear comments from patrol officers that they are no longer involved in “real” police work. Other officers develop the belief that their chances of promotion are reduced by assignment to special community-based programs, and that only with time served “on patrol” will they be able to advance to the next level of their agency. This paper presents the results of a study of crime prevention officers in the state of Ohio. It measures their self-reported likelihood of remaining in crime prevention, and examines factors associated with sustainability, including perception of support within the department and the community and various characteristics of the officers (such as educational level, years of experience, years until retirement, training/certification in crime prevention programs, attendance at periodic meetings of crime prevention officer groups etc.)
Drug Courts and Race: Evaluating the Disparity of Referrals to a Drug Court Treatment Program
Upon evaluating the CHANCE Program of Stark County in 2001, it was found that African Americans were more likely to be charged with felony 4 possessions in contrast to the felony 5 charges received by their Caucasian counterparts (Kratcoski and Dahlgren, 2001). A subsequent analysis of over 6000 felony charges of the Stark County Court of Common Pleas in the years 1999-2001 was performed, with a specific focus on drug charges. The findings are discussed in relation to the community correction opportunity of the drug court, and the stipulation that felony 3 drug offenders are denied eligibility.
Drug Courts and the Reconstitution of the Courtroom Workgroup
Introduction and Statement of the Research Question Therapeutic Jurisprudence emerged in the 1980’s as a new paradigm in crime prevention. Drawing on the tradition of legal realism (Frank 1930; Holmes 1897; Pound 1942), therapeutic jurisprudence attempts to use the court apparatus to induce social change. Drawing on the authority of the a Judge and the therapeutic expertise of social workers, counselors, and mental health treatment professionals, the approach harnesses the coercive power of the State to deliver treatment services to populations traditionally unreached by therapeutic services (Hora, Schma and Rosenthal 1999). Its advocates claim that therapeutic jurisprudence humanizes justice and combats social problems at their roots while the critics suggest that Judges should not be in the business of social work. The concept, a fundamental element of the popular drug court movement, has also contributed to the emergence of treatment-oriented family and juvenile courts. A dimension often overlooked in the discussion on therapeutic jurisprudence concerns the changes it brings to the ecological dimensions in the courtroom itself. By introducing “the therapeutic” as an authoritative professional knowledge base, new professional actors and stakeholders are brought into the court. More than 20 years ago, James Eisenstein and Herbert Jacob (Eisenstein and Jacob 1977) developed a theory of courtroom workgroups. Using qualitative case studies, they showed that the particulars in disposition of criminal cases are largely dependent on a series of local factors, including the constellation of actors in the courtroom and the orientations of their sponsoring agencies. Research studies building on that model show how backstage maneuvering of these participant actors can lead to vastly different outcomes across jurisdictions. This paper, drawing on a rich body of field data collected at a drug court over the course of three years, seeks to apply the courtroom work group model to therapeutic jurisprudence. It sketches the constitution of a particular “drug court work group” which I compare to the traditional model. I present Narrative data to illustrate how the workgroup divides labor and contributes to the overall objective of the court. The paper adds to the literature on both drug courts and therapeutic jurisprudence by drawing analytic attention to dimensions of the process that are not often subjected to scholarly consideration.
Drug Free Zones in Portland, OR: Situational Crime Prevention or Something Else?
The effects of the drug free zones in Portland, Oregon, as an example of a situational crime prevention measure, upon rates and locations of concentrations of drug sales are examined from 1990 through 1998. A combination of techniques are used to describe the spatial and temporal variation in drug sales patterns in the City of Portland, while controlling for block level characteristics and police officer allocation over time, including a growth curve multi-level model and location quotients. This research focuses on policy questions concerning the nature of the drug free zone legislation in light of the finding of the non-significant effect of the drug free zones on numbers of drug sales arrests in Portland’s block groups.
Drug Market Variation: An Examination of Large and Small Markets
Understanding drug markets is an important task when we observe the strong relationship between violent crimes (such as homicide) and the variation in drug markets. The “systemic” theory of the drugs-crime relationship (Goldstein, 1985) is a reasonable explanation for this phenomenon. The systemic model of the drugs/crime relationship suggests that one way that drug use leads to violence is as part of the drug trade (i.e., turf protection). In fact, the recent decline in homicides has, in part, been described as resulting from a decrease in the crack cocaine epidemic (Steffensmeier and Harer, 1999). Empirical evidence about this relationship is scant. Some researchers (Zimring and Hawkins, 1997) suggest that the relationship appears to be stronger in some populations but not in others. In essence, they suggest that there may be some variable that conditions or modifies the relationship between drug market variation and variation in violence. If this is the case, then the next steps in the process is to search for theoretically important variables that might explain the conditions under which drug market variation and violence variation are related. Clearly, there is a need to know more about variation in drug markets. A recent study has attempted to examine this relationship. Ousey and Lee (2002) examined 122 cities that were larger than 100,000 in 1980. They showed that within-city variation in illicit drug market activity is positively associated with within-city variation of homicide rates. The effect of drug market change, however, is moderated by the conditions that exist in the community when the change takes place. Specifically, in cities with relatively less resource deprivation, the relationship between drug market change and homicide change is negative. Where there is more resource deprivation, the relationship is positive. While the Ousey and Lee paper sheds lights on the relationship between market change and change in violence, it does little to inform us about variation in drug markets from city to city. Drug market change was measured by merely recording arrest rates for cocaine and opiate sales. As the authors admit, this measure fails to distinguish between police activities and actual drug market activities. Such an examination would require data to be collected in a number of cities across the country. These data would have to come from reliable sources who would provide detailed information about the drug market in each city. Until recently, such data did not exist. With the advent of the new Arrestee Drug Abuse Monitoring (ADAM) program survey instrument, however, we have for the first time detailed information about drug markets in many small and large cities across the US. With the new instrument, market and use data have been collected from random samples of recent arrestees in jails located in 30 US cities since 2000. These data are now becoming available for study. The data will not be able to assess change in drug markets over time (except in the very short term), but do allow for an examination of variation of the drug market from place to place. Important questions can now be asked about the relationship of drug market composition and violence. For example, do drug markets for the same drug vary regionally? That is, does the crack cocaine market in New York look the same as the crack cocaine market in San Diego and Miami? If there are differences, how do those differences affect the violent crime rates in each city? Another important question has to do with the extent to which drug markets vary by city size, relative prosperity, geography, and composition. Do drug markets for Methamphetamine in Oklahoma City and Omaha, for example, vary significantly from Methamphetamine markets in San Diego and Denver? Where there are differences in drug market composition, there may eventually be differences in the relationship between drug market changes and changes in violence. Answers to these questions will assist our efforts to more fully understand this relationship. In this paper, we closely examine drug markets in the 30 US cities that have collected data since 2000. After a close examination of the variation of the drug markets from city to city, we then compare incorporate important city level data (including violent crime, city composition, relative deprivation, city size, etc.), that allow for an additional examination of the interactive relationship between drug markets and violent crime.
Drug Trafficking, Money Laundering, and Political-Criminal Nexus in Africa
This study investigates the origins and sources of narcotics drug in Africa, the types of narcotics drugs found in Africa, the users, the dealers, the transit nature of the African ports, and where else the drugs go from Africa. This research also looks at the economic conditions that led to the youths resort to drug smuggling, the legal aspects of narcotics drug control in Africa, the role of African political leaders in drug trafficking enterprise, and money laundering aspect of narcotics drug smuggling in Africa. The paper finds out that in the wake of high rate of High School and University graduates unemployment in Africa, narcotics drug trafficking became the only living option for many. Also in the eclipse of oil boom, the long drought that decimated livestock and the entire agricultural economy, and the subsequent recession that followed coupled with the greediness of the powerful, political-criminal nexus proliferated. The paper suggests solutions for the control of narcotics drug trafficking enterprise, and concludes that only through radical international cooperation will narcotics drug trafficking be ameliorated.
‘Drug Treatment Courts’ — Visionary Innovation or ‘New Penology” for Drug Offenders?
‘Drug Treatment Courts’ (DTCs) are receiving enthusiastic support as a criminal justice innovation for drug offenders. Following the US model, Canada is now also home to two DTC pilot projects. By utilizing the mechanics of ‘therapeutic jurisprudence’, they set out to replace punishment with treatment, and thus reduce drug use, drug crime and public expenditures related to drug offenders. Upon closer look, DTCs present challenges from scientific, socio-political and legal perspectives. The DTC rationale projects an image of the ‘offender/patient’ that oddly fluctuates between assumptions of ‘diseased’ and ‘criminal’. Research into the outcomes of DTCs is often burdened with design flaws and unable to demonstrate evidence for superior effectiveness of these institutions. While possibly reducing the use of carceral punishment per se, DTC are employing a variety of other tools of social and behavioral sanctions, control and surveillance with the offender. DTCs practices also pose substantial challenges to principles of ‘due process’ and the adversarial structure of justice. The paper will close with questions about the ‘real’ forces behind the push for DTCs, specifically in the Canadian context. It will be proposed that the main function of DTCs is not a therapeutic or programmatic but a political one.
Drug Treatment With Young Offenders: Screening and Assessment Issues
Practitioners and policymakers are increasingly interested in effective drug treatment for young offenders, as well as strategies for providing treatment at earlier stages of the juvenile justice system. Early intervention, it is hoped, can help to avoid reliance on more costly sanctions. Researchers have responded to this increased interest by trying to identify drug treatment interventions that “work.” Yet, effective drug treatment, as well as research on what “works,” are premised on accurate assessment of the need for drug treatment. This paper addresses two critical questions: (1) What are the most effective screening and assessment instruments or approaches for determining that a youth needs drug treatment?, and (2) What instruments or approaches are employed by the juvenile justice system to determine need for treatment? Both issues are explored by reviewing existing research on drug treatment screening and assessment and drawing on work from the Urban Institute’s National Evaluation of Juvenile Drug Courts, a recent project funded by the National Institute of Justice.
Drug Use Trends Among Houston At-Risk Students: Findings From Houston’s Safer Choices 2 Program
Self-report drug use data were collected from 494 alternative school students, grades 7-12, surveyed through the Safer Choices 2 study in Houston, Texas. Data were collected between October 2000 and March 2001 via audio-enabled laptop computers equipped with headphones. Twenty-eight percent of the sample reported past-month marijuana use, and 10% reported past-month opiate/codeine use. Males were almost twice as likely as females to have used cocaine during the past month, and over four times as likely to have used opiates/codeine during the past month. Students 16 years and older and were twice as likely to have ever used cocaine and opiates/codeine than students under 16 years. Latinos were 10 times more likely than blacks to have ever used cocaine; blacks were twice as likely as Latinos to have used opiates/codeine during the past month. Males were twice as likely as females to have tried “fry,” a new street drug composed of tobacco or marijuana mixed with embalming fluid and PCP. These new drug trends are startling because of the potential long-term treatment services needs for abusers.
Drunk Drivers in Two Community-Based Programs: A Comparative Study on Exit Status
In Vigo County, Indiana, convicted drunk drivers are court-ordered to participate in Day Reporting Center program (DRC) as well as Community Work Service program (CWS). During the calender years of 1998 and 1999, 64 convicted drunk drivers were placed in the DRC, and 77 of their cohorts were placed in CWS. For this study, the data have been collected on all othose 141 individuals. The purpose of this study is to conduct a comparative analysis of these two groups of offenders in terms of their exit status from DRC and CWS.
Duping Drug Tests as Resistance
As drug testing pervades employment and pre-employment application processes, a detox industry which manufactures products and devices that aid individuals in passing drug screening, has emerged. These products are designed to produce false negatives urinalysis results. This case study, based on documents and interviews with manufacturers, retailers, consumers and employers, focuses on this indsutry and those who use its products. Consumers apparently are casual marijuana users who do not use drugs during working hours yet resist, through quiet subterfuge, what they define as employers’ intrusions into their private drug use. This paper describes the multiple meanings of drug use and containment from these various players and the acts of resistance among worker/consumers of detox products.
Dynamics of Socio-Demography in Illicit Drug Use: A Multi-Level Analysis
This study is an empirical exploration of socio-demographic factors in illicit drug use. Applying hierarchical linear models to the Arrestee Drug Abuse Monitoring (ADAM) data, we attempt to examine the influence of socio-demographic factors on illicit drug use at an individual and aggregated levels. Since the present study employs data on individuals nested within zip code areas and zip code areas nested within the 38 ADAM sites, it is possible to postulate a three-level hierarchical model (HLM3). The level-1 model addresses the relationships among the respondent-level variables, the level-2 model explains the influence of zip code area-level factors, and the level-3 model integrates city-level effects. Based on a theoretical framework in which physical, family, and population characteristics would reflect different lifestyles, living conditions, and social structures, we attempt to analyze how significant socio-demographic factors are as a determinant of illicit drug use.
E
Early Access to Weapons: Juveniles’ Risks for Offending and Victimization
Although the rate of gun violence among juveniles has been on the decline since 1993 (Wintemute, 2000), gun related juvenile violence continues to be unacceptably high. Analyses of data from the National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent Health (Add Health Study) indicate that there are significant relationships between easy access to weapons in the home and juveniles’ risk for both victimization and offending, even when other risk factors are held constant. Using data from the first two waves of the Add Health Study, the authors examine (a) what factors about households, juveniles, and neighborhoods are related to easy access to weapons, (b) what factors moderate these relationships, and (c) whether these relationships change across time and whether these relationships are the same across contexts
Early Child Maltreatment, Runaways, and Violence and Victimization in Adolescence: An Analysis of Mediation Pathways
Childhood experiences of abuse are documented risk factors for a range of adverse outcomes, including future violence and victimization. This study explores running away from home as a possible mediator of the relationship between early child maltreatment and adolescent outcomes. Of special interest is the mechanism linking childhood maltreatment and subsequent victimization in adolescence among females. Controlling for age, SES and race/ethnicity, we explore the extent to which running away mediates this relationship. The data from the Lehigh Longitudinal Study are gender balanced (46% female), offering a valuable opportunity to investigate this relationship among females. Findings from the final model will be presented and implications for practitioners working with maltreated children and teen runaways will be discussed.
Early Death in Juvenile Detainees: Prevalence and Patterns
Several excellent studies show that youth involved with the juvenile justice system have significantly higher death rates than general population youth. Prior studies, however, have examined only whites, have not studied Latinos, or have not investigated females. Females and minorities are both important groups to study for two reasons. First, the population of female offenders has grown steadily. Second, racial/ethnic minorities comprise 29% of juvenile arrests and 62% of detained youth. This study presents death rates among youth in the Northwestern Juvenile Project, a longitudinal study of 1829 randomly selected juvenile detainees, 1172 males, 658 females, ages 10-18 years old. The sample is stratified by race/ethnicity, gender, age and legal status (processed as adults versus processed as a juvenile). Because our sample differs in age, race/ethnicity and gender from the general population of youth, we use direct standardization to make the general population data comparable to ours. We standardize the age, race and gender distributions to present unbiased mortality rates for the two samples. Fifty-three of our 1829 subjects have died. All died violently, and 40 died of gunshot wounds. The annual death rate for our population of juveniles age 15-24 was 10.2 per 1,000 persons. This is 7.75 times greater than the adjusted mortality rate for the United States population of this age group, and 3.89 times greater than the adjusted mortality rate of Cook County, Illinois.
Early Intervention Programs: The Solution to Police Misconduct?
More and more contemporary police agencies are turning to the use of early intervention programs (EIP) in order to curb incidents of police misconduct. The purpose of an EIP is to identify problematic officers at the earliest possible stage in order to provide informal intervention in the form of retraining, counseling, or possible reassignment. A number of risk indicators (such as citizen complaints, use of force reports, or shootings) may identify officers as exhibiting potentially problematic behaviors. This paper will discuss the growth of EIPs as a pro-active management tool and present preliminary data from an analysis of one agency’s experience with an EIP. Various risk indicators will be discussed and critiqued.
East Los Angeles and Chicago Gangs
Mexican gangs have long been a fixture in East Los Angeles and Chicago. While there has been considerable attention to Los Angeles gangs, Chicago’s Mexican gangs have received less recent scrutiny. This paper reviews the literature on Los Angeles and Chicago Mexican gangs, and compares the political economy of Mexican neighborhoods in the two cities. It reports on beginning field work in both cities and discusses the impact of gentrification, de-industrialization, female participation, and institutionalization of gangs in each city.
Ecological Context Effects on Juvenile Offending: Conditional Impacts of Neighborhoods and Schools
This paper discusses conceptual issues of research into ecological context effects on juvenile offending and, by presenting results of a recent empirical study in Germany, intends to advance the thinking about competing and overlapping contexts (neighborhoods and schools) and their interaction with the juveniles’ behavior.
Economic Fluctuations and Social Disruption: An Analysis of Economic Change and Public Disorder Offenses
This is an exploratory study of the relationship between public disorder offenses and economic change. Most research on crime has focused on serious offenses. Given that the resources of the criminal justice system are primarily devoted to the disposition of minor offenses, this research analyzes public disorder offenses over a 25 year period, 1974-1998. Activity in the oil industry in coastal regions of Louisiana is used as a measure of economic change.
Economic Fluctuations and Violent Crime: The Effect of Change in the Oil and Gas Industry in the Coastal Regions of Louisiana
This research examines the relationship between changes in the economic environment and patterns of violent crime. More specifically, this paper examines the effect of fluctuations in the oil and gas extraction industry on homicide, assault, rape, and robbery during a twenty-five year period (1974-1998) in South Louisiana. The research is informed by previous literature on the impact of dramatic economic growth and decline (boom and bust) cycles on social disruption in communities due to the sudden change in their economic base. Indeed, it has been speculated that the expansion and contraction of petroleum extraction has had such an influence in the region. Using longitudinal data and controlling for disturbance variables, this paper addresses the direct and indirect effects of variation in oil and gas production on violent crime.
Economics of Gang Life Revisited: Rethinking the Influence of Gang Activity on Individual and Group Economic Gain
The image of modern street gangs as a source of economic opportunity for youth in impoverished neighborhoods is a pervasive theme in the social disorganization and underclass literature. While extensive ethnographic studies have supported such claims, little systematic quantitative resarch has been conucted to test the ability to generalize from such fundings. By analyzing a unique dataset of N = 1,015 self-reported gang members, this paper examines some of the “economics” involved in gang life including but not limited to: (1) the influence of gang characteristics on group economic activities and earnings; (b) the impact of individual and group features on individual gang member potential economic earnings; and (c) the effects of various social contexts on the ability to participate in the underground economies. Data is that from the National Gang Crime Research Center’s GANGECON project and is analyzed here at both individual and group levels.
Education and Correction’s Personnel
The School of Criminal Justice at Michigan State University conducted a survey to determine correctional personnel’s views on the academic programs they wish to pursue for professional development and their relationship to career enhancement. More specifically in this survey the respondents were asked: (a) their interest in a specific major they would pursue at the undergraduate and graduate levels; (b) the relationship between educational achievement and career enhancement; (c) important internal issues facing the Department of Corrections; (d) the most important courses in subject areas or subjects that prospective correctional employees should focus on while in the criminal justice field; and, (e) the most important issues that criminal justice researchers should focus on to help the department of corrections. While the responses were diverse and interesting, this paper focuses upon methodological issues that complicate a critical examination of correctional organization needs and personnel dynamics.
Education and Delinquent and Non-Delinquent Life Course Consequences
The life course paradigm has emerged in recent years as a promising contribution to criminological theory. The life course perspective draws from multiple disciplines that include sociology, history, psychology and biology and conceptualizes life as a sequence of different but related phases. These different phases are separated by ordered transitions in which certain events and experiences are expected to precede subsequent events and experiences. A major focus of prior delinquency and life course research has been upon determining the relationship between various delinquent indicators and subsequent educational and occupational trajectories. The consistent finding is that such delinquent indicators as truancy, property damage, drugs, violence and contact with the justice system have significantly negative effects on subsequent educational attainment and occupational achievement even after controlling for race, ethnicity, socioeconomic status and cognitive abilities. In sum, the conclusion drawn from this research is that teen delinquents do indeed suffer in their later life experiences. Notably absent from the delinquency and life course research have been studies focused upon a comparison of the role of positive and negative adolescent experiences with, for example, education upon subsequent life course trajectories for delinquent and non-delinquent youth. If the life course paradigm is correct then both negative and positive adolescent experiences with education should be related to subsequent life course trajectories and consequences.
Education and Females in Juvenile Justice
The sheer volume of male criminal activity has demanded substantial attention and efforts from the academic and research community. However, as social, political, and economic conditions have shifted throughout the last half of the twentieth century, greater interest has focused on females and girl delinquency in particular. This paper addresses the particular issues relevant to education and females in the juvenile justice system, specifically gender-based programming and sex-segregated facilities. PACE, a juvenile justice program based on a female-centered program model, is reviewed and evaluated. Data from the Juvenile Justice Educational Enhancement Program are presented that assess the quality assurance scores of female only, male only, and mixed juvenile justice facilities and find that single-sex facilities score higher. The ongoing research efforts are aimed at identifying and implementing validated best practices in juvenile justice education.
Educational Connections: Engaging Colleges and Universities in Juvenile Justice Reform
Educational Connections (EC) represents a new strategy for linking the current generation of young adults in Florida to social justice and justice reform. In partnership with several colleges throughout the state, EC provides an informed structure for young people to gain access to the state legislature, key policymakers and practitioners who can implement practical responses to the over-representation of people of color in the juvenile justice system. Based on college-campuses throughout the state of Florida, EC has provided a foundation for mobilizing college students to advocate for more enlightened policies and to get directly involved in improving services for at-risk children and their families. This paper and presentation will discuss this innovative project and outline NCCD’s research- and college-based strategy for informing policymakers about culturally-competent and gender-responsive alternatives to incarceration.
Educational Spending and Imprisonment Risk: The Role of Schools as Prison Gatekeepers
During the last thirty years of the twentieth century, incarceration rates in the United States increased to levels that were both historically and comparatively unprecedented (Austin and Krisberg 1998; Western and Beckett 1999). This study examines the possibility that individual incarceration risk during this period was directly linked to the amount of resources states spent on their secondary school systems. Most prior research on incarceration rates has explored the effects of macro-level economic, political, and demographic variables, including unemployment (Grant and Martinez 1997; Chiricos and Delone 1992), economic inequality (Garland 1990; Greenberg 1999), electoral cycles (Beckett 1997; Jacobs and Carmichael 2001), welfare spending (Greenberg and West 2001) and race relations (Jacobs and Carmichael 2001; Greenberg and West 2001). These studies have begun to provide an understanding of the structural parameters in which individual-level processes leading to incarceration may occur. However, individual level modeling of imprisonment rates has thus far been hampered by methodological limitations and theoretical uncertainty over the appropriate conceptual framework for such an analysis. By using previously unreleased U.S. census data that include prison inmates, we are able to examine the impact of educational spending in the states where individuals attended high school on their subsequent imprisonment risk as adults. While we could identify no prior research that uses census data to examine connections between state-level spending on education and individual imprisonment risk, there are sound theoretical reasons to expect such a link. Prior research (Gottfredson and Hirschi 1990; Sampson and Laub 1993) has demonstrated strong connections between educational variables, criminal behavior and criminal justice processing. Educational variables have also been shown (Card and Krueger 1996; Arum 1996) to affect outcomes such as occupational status and earnings, which are in turn likely to affect criminal propensity and contacts with the criminal justice system. Based on prior research, we develop three competing models to explain the expected impact of state-level spending on the individual risk of imprisonment. An educational resource model sees high school as a critical defining moment and predicts that educational spending will directly reduce individual incarceration risk. By contrast, a null hypothesis takes the position that the propensity to commit crime is relatively fixed at an early age and therefore educational spending will have little impact on criminal propensity or adult incarceration risk. In addition, we develop a gatekeeper model of educational attainment that focuses on the role of secondary education in sorting juveniles into high and low status occupational roles, as well as highly stigmatized roles such as those connected with imprisonment. Our analysis is based on an innovative new methodology developed by labor economists Card and Krueger (1992, 1996), who used U.S. Census data to test the effects of state-level educational resource investment on labor market outcomes by assigning state-level, cohort-specific educational characteristics to individuals based on the state in which they were born. To control for differences in the return to education in different states, they estimated rates of return to schooling only on men who were educated in one state and then moved to another. For example, their analysis identifies whether high school graduates currently living in New Mexico have similar incomes if they were educated in New York (where educational resource investment was high) or California (where investment was low). They added state-level “fixed effects” to control for any unmeasured heterogeneity within states. Using this estimation technique, Card and Krueger demonstrated that educational resources invested in a state where an individual was born were systematically related to later adult earnings. We use logistic regression with state-level fixed effects for both state of origin and state of residence to calculate the likelihood of incarceration for adults who no longer reside in their birth state. Our research makes use of three waves of previously unreleased micro-level data on state prisoners and local jail inmates from the 1970, 1980, and 1990 U.S. censuses. Because they were not necessarily located in the same state where conviction and prior residence occurred, we exclude all federal prisoners from our analysis. We merge 16% micro-level census data on state and local prisoners with 5% samples of publicly released micro-level data on non-institutionalized individuals from the 1980 and 1990 U.S. censuses and two 1% samples from the 1970 census. We re-weighted data from the various samples to adjust varying sample densities to represent the population accurately. Following Card and Krueger, we analyzed 4,521,252 interstate migrants between ages 18-60 (i.e., individuals who report differing states of birth and residence). In addition, we also analyzed a more restrictive sample of 440,165 recent interstate migrants that includes only individuals who lived in their state of birth five years prior but resided during the census in a different state. Our analysis focuses on three indicators of the role of educational experience on adult incarceration. First, we examine reduced form models in which effects of state-level educational resources (measured as student-teacher ratio and imputed on the basis of reports of state and year of birth) are assumed to occur solely by affecting average incarceration rates of individuals exposed to education in a given state (i.e., by affecting variation in intercepts associated with state of origin). Second, we examine an interaction between high school graduation and public school resource investment. We look at high school graduation separately since non-linearities in the relationship between education and incarceration occur most clearly with respect to this dichotomy. Finally, we examine a more conventionally modeled interaction between years of education and our imputed assignment of educational resource investment. Our analysis is thus designed to explore the theoretical models described above.
Effect of Life Circumstances on Female Offending Behavior
Historically, studies exploring the relationship between informal social controls and criminal behavior have focused on male offenders, primarily male juvenile offenders. Far fewer studies focus on adult social bonds and women offenders’ desistance from crime. This study examines the way in which local life circumstances, or those immediate conditions that comprise an individual’s social reality (e.g., employment, marriage, living conditions, drug and alcohol use), influence short-term criminal behavior for a group of female drug abusing probationers. Results suggest a gendered response to change in local life circumstances and the likelihood of continued criminal activity.
Effect of Supermax Prisons on Aggregate Levels of Prison Violence: An Analysis of Short Time Series
The primary thesis underlying the use of the supermaximum security prison (i.e., supermax) is that it will act as a “prison within a prison.” Thus, it is argued that supermaxes will effectively incapacitate the most incorrigible inmates and provide a specific and general deterrent to future prison violence through the use of extreme levels of deprivation and control. The supermax prison has been advanced as a means to reduce aggregate levels of institutional violence and create safer prison environments for those who live and work in prison systems. This paper will examine the effect of supermax prisons on aggregate levels of prison violence in a sample of states from the Midwestern and Western regions of the United States. A multiple comparison group, time series design will be used and analyses appropriate for the examination of short time series will be employed.
Effective Crime Prevention: Assessing Costs and Benefits in an Australian Community
This paper examines the contribution that cost benefit analysis (CBA) can make to evidence based policy development. In particular, the paper deals with the issue of how the evidence from CBA studies can be contextualised to assess the costs and benefits for a specific community. The effect sizes from meta-analyses of the effectiveness of various crime prevention programs implemented in North America are used to model the cost and benefits of crime prevention in a community using cost data from Australia. The cost per participant to implement crime prevention programs is generally higher in Australia, whereas the cost of running the criminal justice system is generally lower. So even if a crime prevention program reduces crime at the same rate as program run in the US, the savings to the criminal justice system are less because it is cheaper to run, while implementing programs is more expensive. The result is that the crime-related benefit-to-cost ratio is often lower in Australia than those demonstrated by US-based organisations, such as RAND and the Washington State Institute for Public Policy for the US. The conclusions are outlined with reference to the socio-political context in Australia which is reflected in political and administrative structures that constrain policy development.
Effectiveness of Anti-Drug Media Campaigns to Prevent/Reduce Youth Drug Abuse
In 1997 Congress adopted a law calling for an integrated paid national Media Campaign against drugs and its evaluation. The Office of National Drug Control Policy (ONDCP) asked NIDA to design and manage the evaluation of this Campaign. The agreement with NIDA also included funds to support a number of research grants examining various aspects of persuasive communications. This paper reviews the theoretical models, research designs, and key findings to date from both the national Media Campaign evaluation being conducted by Westat and the Annenberg School for Communications, and from several other studies exploring the effectiveness of persuasive media interventions in reducing youth drug initiation. While most of those studies are still ongoing, preliminary findings indicate that: 1) there is substantial levels of recalled exposure to Campaign anti-drug messages among parents and youth; 2) the Campaign appears to have had an effect on parents, particularly in their monitoring of and talking to their children about drugs, but little effect on youth behavior; and 3) the perceived effectiveness of anti-drug advertising varies widely across ads. These finding suggest the need for preliminary ad testing and additional research to develop more effective anti-drug messages.
Effects of Homicide Rate on Citizen Complaints Against Police Use of Force: Test of Danger Perception Theory
The criminal homicide rate in connection with the police use of force is a critical issue in the criminal justice system in the United States. The danger-perception theory implies that police officers aggressively use their force when they are in a dangerous situation such as in a location with a high homicide rate. Using official data on police use of force (official reports, citizen complaints, and legal consequences, 1991-1992), this study focuses on examining the relationship between the number of homicide arrests and the number of complaints against police use of force controlling for the department size and the existence of a civilian complaint review
Effects of Neighborhood Residence and Experience With the Justice System on Attitudes Toward the Criminal Justice System
This paper examines differences in attitudes toward the justice system by looking at how experience with the justice system, as well as the effects of neighborhood residence, influence individuals in Tallahassee, Florida. By taking into consideration where individuals live, we will be able to look at neighborhood characteristics in relation to individual attitudes towards the justice system. Looking at experience with the justice systems begins to focus on why individuals may have the attitudes that they do. This analysis uses a multilevel design allowing us to study the attitudes toward the justice system at both the individual and neighborhood levels. Combining both of these levels will allow us a deeper look into variation in attitudes toward the justice system.
Effects of Police Gun Suppression Patrols on Shots Fired and Gunshot Injuries: Estimating Impacts of Naturally Occurring Interventions
The surge of youth violence in the late 1980s was in part the result of an increase in illicit carrying of guns by youths on public streets. Often with funding from external sources, police in U.S. cities partnered with research teams and local communities to design, implement and evaluate proactive enforcement strategies aimed at reducing gun violence. In several cities, these strategies involved enhanced police resources to vigorously patrol targeted high-risk neighborhoods seeking to locate and seize illegal firearms. Increased police contacts through vehicle stops, investigations of disorderly behavior, and other field contacts were intended to provide opportunities for identifying persons illegally carrying firearms. This paper reports the results of one such effort in Pittsburgh. Like other similar studies, the special gun suppression patrols in Pittsburgh were accompanied by significant reductions in illegal gun activities. Emergency 911 calls reporting shots fired declined by more than 50% in one target area, and gunshot injuries were down by nearly 70% in another. The unique contributions of the present study include novel application of a repeated-differencing method that provides improved statistical controls for non-experimental differences between naturally occurring target and comparison areas. The analysis also uses novel outcome measures that are more directly related to illegal gun activities and not subject to organizational filtering by police. Finally, the results indicate that substantial reductions in gun violence can be achieved even at relatively low expenditures of police resources.
Effects of Social and Environmental Factors on Homicide in the Former Soviet Union
Recent theoretical work (e.g. Homer-Dixon 1999) posits a number of linkages between environmental degradation and violence, yet there is a dearth of quantitative, empirical research to bolster these ideas. Using newly available data for the regions of the former Soviet Union, we test hypotheses that environmental degradation, along with a number of social factors (which include population density, poverty, inequality, and regional development level), affect the likelihood of violence–in this case of homicide. Over the past decade in the former Soviet Union, radical political reforms have been accompanied by fast-paced social, economic and environmental changes. These in turn have had drastic implications for social policy, the former welfare system and income distribution. Largely as a function of these social and political changes, there has been upheaval in environmental and quality of life outcomes. Thus, these data provide a unique opportunity to juxtapose rapid social transition with environmental degradation as they affect violent outcomes. Consistent with our hypotheses, we find that environmental degradation affects homicide, and that the effect remains robust, even when controlling for a number of other social factors. We conclude with a theoretical discussion, particularly with the intersecting human ecological and criminological implications of our findings.
Effects of Street Lighting on Crime
The main aim of this paper is to report on a systematic review — incorporating meta-analytic techniques — of the effects of improved street lighting on crime. Studies were included in this review if they had before and after measures of crime in experimental and control areas. Eight American evaluation studies met the criteria for inclusion, and their results were mixed. Four studies found that improved street lighting was effective in reducing crime, while the other four found that it was not effective. However, five more recent British evaluation studies showed that improved lighting led to decreases in crime. In two studies the financial savings from reduced crimes greatly exceeded the financial costs of the improved street lighting. A meta-analysis found that the 13 studies, taken together, showed that improved lighting led to reductions in crime. The overall reduction in crime after improved lighting was 20% in experimental areas compared with control areas. Since night-time crimes did not decrease more than day-time crimes, a theory focusing on the role of street lighting in increasing community pride seems more plausible than a theory focusing on increased surveillance. Future research should be designed to test the main theories of the effects of improved lighting more explicitly, and should measure crime using police records, victim surveys, and self-reports of offending.
Emotionality, Rationality, and Restorative Justice: Some Feminist Issues
Restorative justice is an increasingly popular approach to juvenile crime, adult crime, corporate crime, and inter-ethnic conflicts. Bold claims are made as to its applicability for incorporating the emotional realities of crime for victims, offenders, and other participants. Using field notes compiled while traveling around Australia (and some in New Zealand) during 2001, I examine issues related to rationalized justice in an emotional context. Advocates of restorative justice suggest that, rather than processing cases through courts, offenders and victims needs are better served in a system that encourages their emotional presence, personal `accountability’ and collective views on how to repair the acknowledged damage. Rather than emphasizing punitive responses to the harms done, a restorative approach intends to emphasize the apparently damaged relationships between people and aims to develop strategies for repairing those damaged relationships. Recognizing that punitive responses often compound the harms, advocates for restorative justice argue that offenders are less likely to re-offend when given the opportunity to make amends for their actions. Advocates claim, therefore, if crime is about harm then justice should be about healing (Braithwaite 2002). Restorative justice is not about establishing guilt or innocence, blame or fault, but rather it attempts to provide a forum for healing the injuries that were created as a result of the offense. During the diversionary conferences observed it is quite common for people to weep, to laugh, to express anger, to forgive, and to show renewed affection for each other. These gestures of healing and/or cleansing are one important source of magic for the restorative justice approach that courts have neglected. The most commonly documented and discussed emotion associated with the diversionary conference approach is `shame’ (see Braithwaite 2001 for a current review of these findings, and Ahmed, et al. 2001, for the latest revisions of shaming theory). These are complex theories and findings, which cannot be fully summarized. Several concepts are important for restorative justice theory and practice. First, and perhaps most important is the issue of `accountability’. For advocates and participants, accountability consists of the offender recognizing the damage caused by his or her actions, without necessarily imposing punitive sanctions. If offending is dehumanizing, then accountability is recognizing such dehumanization and reversing it. By discussing the harms, injuries and other consequences, the victim and offender can regain perspective on each other as people who are connected through a series of events. These events, however damaging, can be repaired when accountability involves a holistic view of injuries inflicted by the offender’s actions.
Empathy and Offending: A Systematic Review and Meta-Analysis
There are many definitions of the term empathy. One current and inclusive definition is provided by Cohen & Strayer (1996, p.988); they view empathy as “the ability to understand and share in another’s emotional state or context”. What makes this definition particularly encompassing is the acknowledgment that empathy is both a cognitive process (cf. the ability to understand another’s emotional state) and an affective capacity (cf. the sharing of the emotional state of another). This definition addresses one of the most contentious issue in empathy research: Is empathy best conceptualised as an affective construct, a cognitive construct, or both? While contemporary research appears to have adopted the ‘both’ option, this is not ubiquitously endorsed, and fervent debate continues over the definition and measurement of empathy (e.g. Mehrabian, 1997; Wispe, 1987). Despite the lack of consensus regarding its conceptualization, researchers appear to be in agreement about certain aspects of empathy. First, empathy is thought to exist within and vary between individuals and is therefore viewed as an individual difference factor (Eisenberg & Strayer, 1987; Farrington & Jolliffe, 2001). Second, many researchers believe that empathy can be measured, and that with certain tools this measurement is reliable and valid. Third, it is implicit within all research on empathy that this construct has an influence on behaviour (Eisenberg, Fabes, Murphy, Karbon, Smith & Maszk, 1996; Kaukiainen, Bjorkqvist, Lagerspetz, Osterman, Salmivialli, Rotheberg & Ahlbom, 1999). That is, those with higher levels of empathy are expected to act in a more responsive way to the perceived feelings of another. Empathy can be viewed as a continuous variable (e.g. low empathy) or as a dichotomous risk factor (e.g. lack of empathy). There are advantages and disadvantages of both approaches. The continuous concept is probably more realistic, but the dichotomous concept identifies deviant individuals and can be easily used by practitioners in a symptom score or risk factor score. It is widely believed that empathy encourages prosocial or altruistic behaviour and numerous studies appear to support this view (e.g. Batson, Fultz & Schoenrade, 1987). It has also been proposed that a lack of empathy encourages antisocial or aggressive behaviour, as such actions might be facilitated in those who fail to appreciate the feelings of others (Miller & Eisenberg, 1988). In trying to explain offending, criminologists have postulated that those who offend, and those who act antisocially, have less empathy than those who do not offend (e.g. Burke, 2001; Bush, Mullis & Mullis 2000; Hogan, 1969; Marcus & Gray, 1998). This is because individuals who share and/or comprehend another’s negative emotional reaction, which occurs as a result of their own antisocial or aggressive behaviour, may be inhibited and less inclined to continue with this behavior or act in an antisocial or aggressive manner in the future (Feshbach, 1975). Empathy is therefore viewed as an individual protective factor, decreasing the probability of certain types of criminal behaviour, while a lack of empathy is assumed to have a facilitating influence on offending. For example, Farrington (1998, p.257) suggests that offenders are “_callous with low empathy. They are relatively poor at role-taking and perspective-taking, and may misinterpret other people’s intentions. This lack of awareness or sensitivity to other people’s thoughts and feelings impairs their ability_to appreciate the effects of their behaviour on other people”. Other criminologists have also highlighted the potential significance of empathy in relation to delinquency: the “ability to imagine the distress of another may inhibit harmful behaviour” (Blackburn, 1993, p.34).
Empirical and Legal Background on Jury Representativeness
Abstract This paper summarizes just some of the empirical work investigating whether juries are representative of the population in the communities from which they were selected. The paper reviews why balanced juries are thought to be an innate “good,” and how biases may operate at different stages of the entire jury selection process, from list generation through voir dire. In the proposed session we will highlight just a few key empirical findings from this paper that relate to each of the stages of potential juror processing.
Empirical Evaluation of Prison Classification: The Manitoba Case
As classification systems have evolved, some investigators have recommended the use of one instrument for both community based and incarcerated offenders. This Manitoba, Canada based project compared a community/institutional instrument, the Primary Risk Assessment (PRA), with the Institutional Security Assessment (ISA), an instrument intended for use specifically in custodial settings . A validation study was conducted to assess the effectiveness of both instruments using three outcome criteria: proportion of inmates assigned minimum security, institutional misconduct and recidivism rates as outcomes for a sample of 1000+ inmates. A secondary research goal was a comparison of static and dynamic risk factors. The ISA is a research-based tool which is weighted heavily towards static risk factors such as demographics and prior behavior that are not subject to change, while, the PRA is a “Wisconsin model” instrument that makes heavier use of dynamic risk factors such as attitude and education that are amenable to modification. Results indicated that both instruments were effective in classification but, overall, the ISA performed better than the PRA, while static factors proved more helpful than dynamic factors in accurately classifying provincial inmates. Rather than pick one tool over the other, study findings supported integration of the two instruments to more accurately classify inmates. It is recommended that policy makers follow-up “progressive innovations” with substantive evaluation research to improve management of inmate populations.
Employment and Crime: The Effects of Labor Market Structure on Metropolitan Crime Rates
Since the early 1970s, service sector employment has grown while manufacturing employment has declined, resulting in unemployment and poverty for large segments of urban populations. Since service sector jobs are disproportionately located in the secondary labor market, the structure of US labor markets has fundamentally changed as well. This study investigates the relationship between the concentration of secondary labor market jobs and crime rates in a representative sample of 150 US MSAs in 2000. The selected MSAs differ across a variety of factors including, but not limited to, unemployment rates, inequality, industrial composition, and the relative share of primary versus secondary labor market jobs. We develop models that explore the importance of these factors in explaining crime rates, with emphasis on the effect of the size of secondary labor markets.
Encounters of Hispanic Juveniles With Law Enforcement
For the most part, police-juvenile relations are neglected areas of research. Nevertheless, these encounters are very common and significant because they produce life-long impressions for juveniles (Synder & Sickmund (1996). Hispanics have largely been ignored in the latest studies on police-minority relations. The present study is an effort to fill this “black box” of information. The study is a qualitative project wherein 120 Hispanics, primarily youths ages 18-25 are interviewed about their encounters and perceptions of law enforcement. The study, done in Houston, Texas documents the nature of those encounters in detail and assesses how perceptions of law enforcement are cultivated. A major findings of the study is that many of the Hispanics interviewed had positive perceptions of United States law enforcement, despite what others might describe as police abuse of Hispanics.
Enhancing Police Integrity: Organizational Obligations
Police administrations acquire two types of obligations with respect to officer misconduct. One set of obligations, based on a conception of police misconduct as a problem of defective individual officers is to prevent such persons from entering police service and expel those who escape screening or become corrupted after they have entered. A second set of obligations, based on a conception of police misconduct as an organizational as opposed to an individual problem, requires police agencies to create an organizational culture that is intolerant of misconduct. To do so police administrations must .create and communicate organizational rules that define and prohibit misconduct; detect, investigate, and discipline rule violations; and circumscribe of the code of silence. To fulfill these organizational obligations a two year study of three police agencies of high integrity identifies five questions police administrations can ask about integrity and offers a tool with which they can measure the contours of integrity in their own agencies. The study identifies a series of strategies and tactics organizations can employ to ensure that officers know and support agency rules, understand and endorse the agency’s disciplinary threat against rule violation, and prove willing to come forward to report misconduct.
Enlisting the Potential Victim as Risk Manager: An Integrated Learning Theory of the Victimization Process
This paper proposes a theory of victim behavior and risk management that integrates research within victimology, cognitive psychology, public health education and behavioral change. The theory is victim-centered in that it views the potential victim as a dynamic player in the risk process. After a review of some basic assumptions found in the cognitive psychology literature, the paper is organized around the major components of the proposed model, which include; (1) knowledge formation about victimization, (2) assessment of risk and identification of risk factors, (3) the role of fear and vulnerability, (4) motivation and access to change, (5) changing alterable risk factors, and finally, (6) introduction of newly experienced direct and indirect victimization. Several competitive hypotheses are presented regarding the relationships among these components. The proposed model is complementary to the adaptation and rational choice theories within criminology, but distinctive in its application to victimization and its predictions about the biases and impediments to learning, decision making and change. Finally, methods for testing and preliminary evidence are presented, along with implications for victimization prevention and intervention.
Enron: The New Face State-Corporate Crime on the Global Arena
The collapse of Enron and the indictment of its auditor, Arthur Anderson, constitute a state-corporate crime of global proportions. news reports, however, have typically overlooked the global dimensions of the Enron scandal, choosing instead to focus on the apparent malfeasance of a small number of Enron executive in Texas. In contrast, this paper explores three elements of globalization that are linked to Enron’s behavior as a state-corporate criminal. Specifically, it analyzes: (1) how the ease and growth of using offshore financial instruments facilitated Enron’s ability to hide its ever-widening flow of red ink, (2) how Enron was able to use its econimc strength to obtain political favors in overseas operations, particularly its highly disputed Dahbol power plant near Bombay, India, and (3) how the intersection of Enron and U.S. government interests to increase the penetration of U.S. companies into foreign markets facilitated Enron’s ability to extend its corporate criminality beyond U.S. border.
Environmental Threat and Punitive Attitudes Toward Environmental Crime
The social threat approach to social control has traditionally emphasized the putative threat of minorities as a factor that can mobilizes punitive responses. We argue that the relevance of threat for punitiveness can be more broadly understood and that social threats can have a variety of origins. In this paper we focus on threats to public and personal health and to quality of life that may be posed by various environmentally sensitive factors such as hazardous waste disposal, industrial pollution, chemical spills, etc. We use data collected from a national telephone survey (N=850) to assess whether the perception of environmental threat is related to respondent’s willingness to impose harsh penalties on those who commit environmental crimes. The perception of environmental threat is measured at the proximate level in terms of personal health and safety and at a more global level in terms of threats to the environment in general. Punitive attitudes are measured by the endorsement of a series of progressively harsher measures in response to several environmental crime scenarios. OLS regression is used to estimate the independent effects of perceived environmental threat on punitiveness, controlling for other factors that predict punitive attitudes toward environmental crime.
Equality Comes at a High Ris: An Analysis of the Gender Specific Versus Convergence Models of Binge Drinking
There is a long-standing history of high risk drinking among college students in the United States. As such, there have been a number of studies focusing on the problems of excessive, irresponsible, and illegal drinking. In recent years, however, it has been noted that the gender-gap in binge drinking has begun to shrink, and female “binge drinkers” are becoming more prevalent. Using data from the Harvard School of Public Health Student Survey administered at the University of Delaware from 1997 to 2001, this study compares the gender specific and convergence models of binge drinking to determine if there are significant gender differences in binge drinking behaviors among college students over a five-year period. This analysis will seek to determine if the factors that influence male, high risk drinking behavior are the same factors that influence female, high risk drinking behavior. Findings and possible policy recommendations will be discussed.
Error in Survey Reporting of Household Gun Ownership
The use of surveys is one of the few ways to determine the extent of firearms ownership in the United States. The findings from such surveys have implications for both firearms research and policy. Using data from the 2000 General Social Survey, the author examines the possibility of error in the reporting of household firearms ownership. Strong and significant differences in ownership reporting based upon a number of demographic variables are found through the use of contingency tables. These reporting discrepancies are further analyzed by logistic regression.
Estimate of the Number of Nonfatal Injuries From Physical Assaults Treated in Hospital Emergency Departments, United States, 2000-01
The NEISS All Injury Program (NEISS-AIP) provides the data necessary to calculate national estimates for recent patterns in nonfatal assault-related injuries treated in ED’s. This presentation will provide national, annualized, weighted estimates of physical assault-related injuries by sex, age, race/ethnicity, mechanism of injury, diagnosis, primary body part injured, and outcome. These nonfatal injuries were disproportionately seen among males, adolescents and young adults, and particularly black males. Most of the injuries were contusions, lacerations, or fractures and relatively few resulted in admission to the hospital. By comparing rates of ED visits for nonfatal physical assault-related injuries to 1999 homicide rates from the National Vital Statistics System data, we estimate that for every homicide there were 94 people treated in ED’s in the U.S. Gender and race differences in rate ratios for fatal and nonfatal assaults will be described. The utility of the NEISS-AIP data for estimating the magnitude and characteristics of assault-related injuries and for monitoring trends, and facilitating additional research will be discussed.
Estimating Alcohol and Other Drug (AOD) Dependence Among a National Sample of Arrestees
While a plethora of literature has explored the relationship between drug use and violence, few studies have utilized an objective measure of recent drug use. Moreover, no studies have examined this relationship over time. In the current study, data collected from the Arrestee Drug Abuse Monitoring (ADAM) Program between 1990 and 1999 are utilized to explore the temporal relationship between drug use and violence among national arrestees. Chi-square statistics are utilized to compare drug-positive rates between arrestees charged with violence offenses and those offenders charged with non-violence offenders for each year during the time frame. In addition, multivariate logistic regression is utilized to predict arrest for a violent offense. Implications for the criminal justice system is discussed in light of the current findings.
Estimating Alcohol and Other Drug (AOD) Dependence Among DUI/DWI Offenders
To date, few studies have explored the prevalence of alcohol and other drug (AOD) dependence within the Driving Under the Influence (DUI) and Driving While Intoxicated (DWI) offender population. To address this limitation, we collected self-report data from 131 adult DUI/DWI offenders between September 25, 2000 and February 21, 2001. In addition, a urine specimen was collected as an objective measure of recent drug use and to validate the self-report data. The study used the Diagnostic Interview Schedule, fourth version (DIS-IV) to diagnose current abuse or dependency for nine classes of drugs. Not surprisingly, alcohol was the drug for which most offenders currently needed treatment. Fourteen percent of males and 7% of females were assessed as currently dependent on alcohol, followed by marijuana (4% each). Overall, 22% of males and 19% of females were diagnosed as currently needing treatment for at least one drug, including alcohol. Thirty-one percent of the males and 30% of the females perceived a need for AOD treatment and/or were diagnosed in need of AOD treatment by the clinical interview. Thus, approximately 1/3 of the male and female offenders in the sample self-reported a need for treatment and/or were diagnosed in need of treatment by the DIS-IV. Policy implications are assessed in light of the current findings.
Estimating Drug Treatment Needs Among Prison and Jail Inmates
Substance abuse and the enforcement of anti-drug laws have fundamentally affected the growth of America’s prisons over the past 20 years and the types of inmates they house (Belenko & Peugh, 1998; Blumstein & Beck). Using data from the most recent national surveys of prison and jail inmates sponsored by the Bureau of Justice Statistics (Harlow, 1998; Mumola, 1999), this paper analyzes patterns of illegal drug use among inmates, summarizes access to treatment and other services, and makes quantitative estimates of the need for different types of treatment services in correctional systems. Between 1980 and 2000, the total number of inmates in the United nearly quadrupled from 501,886 to 2,071,686 (Beck & Harrison, 2001). The state prison population increased by 318 percent (from 295,819 to 1,236,476 inmates), the federal prison population increased by 512 percent (from 23,779 to 145,416 inmates), and the number of local jail inmates increased by 241 percent (from 182,288 to 621,149). Although the rate of increase in incarceration has begun to slow (Beck & Harrison, 2001), the United States still has one of the highest incarceration rates in the world. Substance use and abuse and involvement with drug crime are endemic among those behind bars in the United States. Our analysis reveals that nearly 1.7 million of the 2 million adult Americans in prison or jail (83 percent) are seriously involved with drugs or alcohol. Eighty-two percent of state inmates, 86 percent of federal inmates, and 85 percent of jail inmates fall into one or more of the following categories: they were convicted of substance-related crimes such as drug selling or driving while intoxicated; were under the influence of drugs or alcohol at the time of their crime; committed a crime to get money to buy drugs; or had histories of regular illegal drug use or alcohol abuse. These percentages represent increases over 1991 BJS prison and 1989 jail inmate survey data, which showed that 81 percent of state inmates, 80 percent of federal inmates, and 77 percent of jail inmates were classified as substance-involved (National Center on Addiction and Substance Abuse, 1998).
Estimating Prosecutorial and Judicial Discretion in Sentencing Under Guidelines
A frequent criticism of sentencing guidelines is that discretion and control over sentencing outcomes shift from the judge to the prosecutor, and, as a result, the goals of fairness and uniformity in sentencing may be easily circumvented. However, little is known about the effects of prosecutorial discretion on sentencing outcomes under guidelines, and it is unclear what the effects of prosecutorial discretion are on sentences relative to the effects of judicial discretion. This paper outlines an approach for estimating the contribution of prosecutorial discretion in charging and plea-bargaining, relative to judicial discretion in sentencing, on sentencing outcomes and on unwarranted disparities in sentencing. We illustrate this approach using data on a random sample of approximately 300 felony drug convictions collected from prosecutor’s case files in three counties in Washington State. Preliminary findings indicate that the decision to sentence a drug offender to prison is explained primarily by the seriousness of the offense alleged at the time of arrest, and by the seriousness of charges filed and routinely reduced by prosecutors. The exercise of discretion by judges explains very little by comparison.
Estimating the Prevalence and Perceived Harm of Ecstasy Use Among a Sample of Juvenile Offenders
Few studies have examined ecstasy use among criminal justice populations. Focusing on individuals under criminal justice supervision is useful because “new” illegal drugs will typically take root in a criminal population before diffusing to the general population. In the current study, self-report drug use data and urine specimens were collected from juvenile offenders surveyed through Maryland’s Offender Population Urinalysis Screening (OPUS) Program. Prevalence estimates are generated and associations between ecstasy use, demographic characteristics, alcohol and other drug (AOD) use, and the perceived harm of ecstasy are explored. Implications for ecstasy treatment and control policy among deviant populations are discussed.
Estimating the Prevalence and Perceived Harm of Ecstasy Use Among Rave Attendees
The use of 3,4-methylenedioxymethamphetamine (MDMA or “ecstasy”) appears to be increasing worldwide, with “rave” attendees being one high-risk population. To date, however, only one study has collected ecstasy use information from rave attendees in the United States. To address this limitation, we collected self-report drug use information and oral fluid specimens from “club rave” attendees within the Baltimore-Washington corridor during March 2002. Data collection was scheduled between 1 a.m. and 5 a.m. In addition to the prevalence of recent ecstasy and other drug use, we present findings on the perceived harm of ecstasy and other drugs and the relationship between ecstasy use, demographic characteristics, and other drug use. Policy implications for these findings are discussed.
Ethical Decision Making and Software Piracy: An Examination of Gender Differences
Individuals are faced with the many opportunities to steal what does not belong to them. Software is no exception. The decision to pirate software may be related to an individual”s attitudes toward other ethical issues. A person”s ethical and moral predispositions and the judgments that they use to make decisions may be consistent across various ethical dilemmas and may indicate their likelihood to pirate software. This paper investigates the relationship between gender and a theoretical ethical decision making process that an individual uses when evaluating ethical or unethical situations. An ethical decision making model was studied for general unethical scenarios and for the unethical behavior of software piracy. The research model was tested via path analysis using structural equation modeling and was found to be appropriate for the sample data. Results indicate that an individual”s ethical decision making process is consistent for general ethical issues and for the specific ethical issue of software piracy. It is expected that further investigation into the decision making process may reveal gender differences regarding ethical issues and the opportunity to pirate software.
Ethics as the Key to Overcoming Biased Policing
Biased policing remains a problem in law enforcement. Many discussions of biased policing suggest the best way to overcome the problem is through increased guidelines mean to control police discretion. However, research shows that guidelines and sanctions do not appear to be effective means of controlling police discretion or changing agency cultures. Loyalties and/or fears among officers prevent whistleblowing and sanctioning of the behavior when discovered. These complicated issues lead this research to conclude that the problem of biased policing will only be overcome by an assertion of a new police ethic. Police ethics would provide the most effective means of redressing most of the bias in law enforcement. This paper articulates a theory of racial profiling as an example of biased policing and also hyupothesizes an ethical argument designed to overcome the problem in police agencies.
Ethnic Antagonism and Judicial Punishment: A Comprehensive State-by-State Analysis of the Evidence, 1982-1996
Based on concepts of ethnic antagonism and ethnic threat, the present study seeks to document arrest, sentencing, and incarceration trends by state to determine patterns of racial disparities, if any. Given the current data on corrections and punishment, the study’s aim is to determine whether theories of ethnic antagonism and power/threat hypotheses can inform the prediction of racial disparities in law enforcement and corrections. The study is based on arrest, incarceration, and sentencing data collected between the years 1982 and 1996 for all 50 states and the District of Columbia. Key questions include whether ethnic threat and the fear of minority offenders affects the arrest rates and possible incarceration and sentencing decisions of these offenders. If so, which variables have the strongest influence on such outcomes? Among the variables considered by race are; crime and arrest rates, income/unemployment level, minority growth rate, percent minority urban population, as well as the state’s rate of incarceration and sentence length. Other independent variables that will be analyzed include any sentencing guidelines as well as the political and social history of the states. Results show a correlation between various measures of ethnic threat and the punishment and correction of minority offenders.
Ethnic Concentration and Incarceration: An Analysis of Texas and California Counties
Blalock (1966) theorized that increased ethnic concentration increases discrimination against the minority group. Saenz (1997) found support for this proposition in his analysis of poverty in minority communities. The purpose of this work is to analyze incarceration as an expression of discrimination against minority populations. The paper correlates ethnic concentration with incarceration. The concentration of Anglo, African American, and Chicano populations in various counties within Texas and California are correlated with the entrance of each group into state prison. Incarceration is analyzed using the most common imprisonment offenses in each county in order to control for seriousness of offense. It is hoped that this analysis will allow for an increased understanding of the overrepresentation of minority populations, specifically African Americans and Chicanos housed in state correctional institutions.
Ethnicity, Assimilation, and Adolescent Offending
In this paper, we examine whether the so-called Hispanic paradox_the idea that some Hispanics, particularly first-generation Mexican immigrants, have positive health outcomes despite having high rates of poverty and related socioeconomic risk factors_applies to adolescent “problem behavior,” particularly the propensity towards violent offending. using data from a longitudinal cohort study of youth in Chicago. We also explore some of the explanations for the Paradox as it applies to delinquency, particularly those related to acculturation.
Evaluating an Experimental Juvenile Probation Program: Comparing Official Outcomes and Self-Reports
From 1997-2001, Ventura County, California implemented an innovative collaborative approach to juvenile justice in South Oxnard using Corrections of Place Theory as a framework for their services. The South Oxnard Challenge Project (SOCP) included not only the traditional probation functions of surveillance and crime prevention but also focused on building offenders’ life skills. Youth were randomly assigned to SOCP or to a control group on routine probation. As part of the program evaluation, RAND analyzed official records and interviewed youth in both groups about their experiences under supervision. In this presentation, we compare findings from these sources with regard to delinquency and drug use as well services received during the intervention period. We generally find youth report more alcohol and drug use and more delinquent behavior during the intervention period than their records indicate.
Evaluating the Effect of a Police Sting Operation on Domestic Burglary
The paper will examine the crime reduction effects of a 12-month undercover police operation. Under the government’s Reducing Burglary Initiative (RBI), one British police force was awarded Âœ850,000 in early 2001 to run a sting operation. The RBI was one of a number of components under the CRP with the primary aim of ascertaining what works most cost effectively in reducing domestic burglary. This particular project employed undercover techniques to attempt to reduce domestic burglary in an area with a burglary rate over 2.5 times the national average. The project adopted a method typical of other property crime stings that have been conducted in Britain and, more often, in the United States. Two shops were set up by the police in the east and the west of a northern city, which, whilst only a mile or so apart, are separated by a river and thought therefore to bear quite distinctive (and parochial) patterns of offending. Undercover officers in both shops bought goods from offenders that were purported to have been stolen in crimes committed in the city, most commonly from burglary, shoplifting, or vehicle crime offences. The paper will examine the effect of the sting operation on, essentially, rates of domestic burglary and to compare and contrast, using Geographical Information Systems (GIS), the spatial distribution of offences committed in the six month period both before and after the (six month) covert stage. It will examine in detail some of the main findings from the research; e.g. that when the analysis was conducted on a ward level (looking at ‘neighbourhoods’) there was evidence of a marked reduction in burglary. However, evidence of possible displacement to vehicle crime was also evident. Some other areas of interest will also be explored, for example: ú the large number of arrestees ú the infiltration by undercover police of major drugs networks ú the vast police overtime budget that was accumulated during the operation ú the discovery of numerous fraudulent victim insurance claims ú the public’s (very positive) reaction to the operation
Evaluating the Use of Two-Way Interactive Video Conferencing on Offender Programming
Recidivistic activity by offenders released from prison remains high resulting in physical, psychological, and monetary losses to victims. Continued increases in prison populations and reductions in funding set aside for treatment programs necessitates the development of innovative approaches for offender program delivery. Funded by a grant from Technology Opportunities Program, U.S Department of Congress, the Utah Department of Corrections used two-way interactive video conferencing to broadcast the Canadian Cognitive Skills Program to offenders housed in remote correctional sites throughout the state of Utah over a one-year period of time. Program effectiveness was determined by comparing pretest and posttest results for the “Cognitive Skills Assessment Battery,” and comparing multiple forms of recidivism between treatment and control groups. Suggestions are noted for the overall utility and use of this technology in delivering programming to offenders.
Evaluating Treatment Drug Courts in Kansas City, Missouri and Pensacola, Florida
Background The National Institute of Justice (NIJ) awarded Abt Associates Inc. a grant to evaluate adult treatment drug court programs in two phases and at two sitesCEscambia County (Pensacola), Florida and Jackson County (Kansas City), Missouri. In addition to a review of the literature, Phase I involved a retrospective study of the 1993-1997 cohorts including: ú case studies – documenting program development, policies and procedures, caseflow, and lessons learned; and, ú impact evaluations – using survival analysis to assess the effects of the drug court programs on criminal recidivism among felony drug offenders. Phase II was a prospective study for the 1999-2000 cohorts that involved: ú program retention models – using logistic regression to predict program status, and survival analysis to predict length of stay, based on intake interview data; and, ú descriptive analyses – exploring Escambia County court data for recorded events, and followup interview data from both programs’ participants for self-reported events and perceptions, concerning the period of program participation. A separate technical report was produced for each phase, but they are complementary and should be read in conjunction. The following provides an overview of the research design and findings pertaining to the case studies, the impact evaluations, and program status modeling. In preview, the impact evaluation demonstrated that both programs were successful in reducing recidivism rates, and that the time until rearrest increased with participation in Jackson County. In Escambia County, 49% of the Phase II cohort graduated and 14% remained active in the program; in Jackson County, 28% graduated and 23% remained active. Demographics were the best predictors of program status (graduate or active), while treatment motivation, alcohol and other drug (AOD) use and dependency, and mental health varied in influence; these factors also varied in influence by site.
Evaluation of Maryland After-School Community Grant Programs
Previous research has shown that unstructured socialization with peers and a lack of adult supervision during after school hours are strong predictors of subsequent delinquency and drug use. Accordingly, after school programs have increased in popularity in recent years. Utilizing funds from the Federal Safe and Drug Free Schools and Communities Act of 1994, the state of Maryland provided funding to increase the availability of high-quality, structured after-school programs for at-risk youth. During the 2001-2002 school year, both process and outcome evaluations were planned for 22 after-school sites in Maryland. Each site was required to enroll a core group of students for both a treatment and comparison/control group for the outcome evaluation. A total of 1118 students were pre-tested in the beginning of the school year and plans were made to post-test these same students at the end of the school year. This paper will summarize the results of this evaluation.
Evaluation of Prison-Based Drug Treatment in Pennsylvania
Despite the proliferation of prison-based drug treatment programs, most remain unevaluated and relationships between inmate characteristics, treatment process and outcomes remain only poorly understood. In this paper, we report preliminary results of an evaluation of drug treatment programs at five state prisons, using a quasi-experimental design with matched comparison groups. The experimental group consisted of about 325 inmates entering intensive, residential Therapeutic Community (TC) programs at five institutions. A comparison group was formed from about 875 inmates participating in much less intensive Drug Education or Outpatient programs at the same institutions, using a matching design to control for differences in drug involvement (i.e., assessed need), overall risk (e.g., current offense and criminal history), level of exposure to treatment (e.g., 1 month v. 1 year) and whether or not the inmate successfully completed treatment or not. While the most intensive form of prison-based drug treatment (TC) significantly lowered the risk of recidivism, TC was not unanimously effective for all inmates. Various factors that moderate treatment effects are discussed, as are implications for program development, implementation and evaluation.
Evaluation of Quasi-Legal Needle Exchange Programs: Why on Earth Do Programs Put Up With It
This paper will critically examine evaluation, theory, practice, and politics using a community based needle exchange program as a case study. Past studies of illegal services changing to “legal agencies” (e.g., abortion services, aid to illegal aliens) have found as services emerge to meet real needs, a number of structural changes arise around the provider participation. Underground activities begin to demonstrate their effectiveness and to win public support, followed by public funding, the stabilization of space, the hiring of staff, the engagement in program evaluation, and, eventually, the emergence of legitimate social agencies managed by professionals. In this paper, we will discuss how San Francisco’s HIV Prevention Project’s (HPP) history has run a similar course but has maintained some of its street-based roots and deviant ideologies.
Evaluation of Support Services for Young Rape Survivors
This paper is concerned with an evaluation of a new project in the UK that co-ordinates and commissions support and counselling for 14-16 year old survivors of rape and sexual assault. Local volunteers trained by the project (termed Initial Support Workers) offer the support, and qualified counsellors provide the counselling. In 2000 the project won a Home Office Crime Reducation Programme grant to provide this service. Part of the conditions for this grant was that an independent team appoined by the Home Office would evaluate the project. it is the methodological complexities of undertaking this evaluation that will be the main focus of the conference paper.
Evaluation of the ADAM Post-Sampling Stratification Weighting Procedure
The Arrestee Drug Abuse Monitoring (ADAM) program uses post-sampling stratification weighting as a means of eliminating or reducing bias. Unlike most probability-based sample designs, ADAM does not start with a sampling frame and known selection probabilities. To develop compensatory weights in the form of , ADAM estimates the product of selection probabilities and response rates from the achieved sample. The current procedure defines post-sampling strata and compute as the ratio of the number of completed interviews to the population size of each stratum. This procedure might have been effective in reducing bias; but it has certainly produced survey weights with substantial variance, leading to large design effects. The effectiveness of the ADAM post-sampling stratification weighting procedure depends on the validity of two key assumptions: (1) are different in different strata; and (2) the means of major survey variables are different in different strata. This paper empirically evaluates these assumptions using ADAM data collected in the last seven quarters. It estimates the bias for major survey variables and discusses the tradeoffs between bias and variance. This evaluation will have significant implications for the improvement of the ADAM weighting procedure and the precision of ADAM estimates.
Evaluation of the Impact of a Policy Change in a Diversion Program on Youth Recidivism: A Natural Experiment
In July 2000, the Florida legislature eliminated funds for a diversion program (the Juvenile Alternative Services Program [JASP]) for arrested youths in Hillsborough County as well as most other counties in the state. Other programs were expanded or created to serve youths formerly eligible for JASP services. Two of the four JASP replacement programs involved penetration into the juvenile justice system. As part of an OJJDP funded evaluation, we plan to report on the impact of this policy change on youths’ JASP and alternative to JASP completion rates and their recidivism. We plan to report on analyses examining: (1) the relationship between the youths’ demographic characteristics, educational and offense history and their rates of involvement in the JASP and alternative to JASP programs (i.e., no shows, dropouts/withdrawals and completers) and (2) whether: (a) the diversion programs differ in their recidivism, (b) categories of program involvement differ in their recidivism, and (c) the JASP and JASP replacement programs differ in their recidivism for various categories of involvement. Conclusions are drawn with reference to the possible “net widening” effect of this policy change.
Evaluation of the School Family Violence Project
This research evaluates the School Family Violence Project (SFVP) created through a partnership between the Illinois Violence Prevention Authority’s (IVPA) Safe to Learn Grant Program and the Illinois Family Violence Coordinating Council (IFVCC). The SFVP is a school-based model for addressing family violence using the IFVCC’s manual, Schools Respond to Family Violence: A Guidebook for Educators. Teachers and school staff in three Illinois pilot sites are being trained on the content and use of the manual. The evaluation of this project is based on the School Family Violence Surveys, a series of pre- and post-tests designed to capture the changes in the knowledge, attitudes, and experience of trained participants. In addition, process evaluation focuses on the implementation of the project in each of three sites, including identified project strengths and weaknesses. The results of this study are complemented by the school and community violence data. This project is an important step in addressing family violence issues. Educational institutions provide a unique setting outside of the home for responding to the instances of family violence.
Evaluation of Two Intensive Regimes for Young Offenders
Intensive regimes including military elements were established at Thorn Cross Young Offender Institution in 1996 and at Colchester Military Corrective Training Centre in 1997. The Thorn Cross regime included Enhanced Thinking Skills training and employment assistance. This evaluation compared 175 young offenders who went to Thorn Cross with 127 controls who went to other institutions, and 61 young offenders who went to Colchester with 97 controls who went to other institutions. Predicted and actual reconviction rates were compared in a two-year follow-up period. The regimes had no effect on the percentage reconvicted. However, the Thorn Cross experimentals took longer to reoffend and committed significantly fewer crimes. The cost savings from the smaller number of crimes more than outweighed the extra costs of the Thorn Cross regime. However, this was not true for Colchester, because the Colchester experimentals committed more costly (violent) crimes.
Evaluation of Two State-wide Training Programs on Violence Against Women for Prosecutors
The evaluation looked at two state-wide training programs on violence against women topics in California and Michigan. Both trainings were funded under grants to their state prosecutor associations under the federally-funded STOP program. Based upon a national survey, these programs were selected as providing the most comprehensive training then available. The evaluation reviewed the training contents and first surveyed training attendees for their perceptions to how well the training offerings matched their needs at the time of the training. A six month follow-up survey asked trainees to identify those training topics of most or least value to them and whether the training received had been used by them in specific aspects of their work (e.g., filing cases, working with victims, trial advocacy, increased convictions). The evaluation findings indicate that for most trainees the training offered in both states was highly relevant and used by them. Specific examples of training use was provided by many trainees. Furthermore, most training attendees indicated that the state association training was the only training on violence against women that they had ever received.
Evaluation Research, Politics and Juvenile Justice Policy
Since the inception of the juvenile justice system at the turn of the twentieth century, juvenile justice policy has rarely been guided or significantly influenced by research. Rather, policy has been determined largely by functional necessities related to workloads, scarce organizational resources, and/or political/philosophical shifts, such as the current call for increasingly tough penalties for troubled youths. The state of public policy in juvenile justice education is not very different. Often driven by little more than common sense and political motivations, very few initiatives are designed to address the unique circumstances of schools in secure settings. Facing issues of overcrowding, understaffing, tough love, and economy of scale, policies are frequently at odds with and cross purposes to addressing delinquent youths’ academic and vocational needs. This paper examines the politics of informing juvenile justice education policies through a discussion of our longitudinal research findings and corresponding efforts to effect change. Working from a theoretical foundation based upon social control and the life course paradigm, we discuss the Juvenile Justice Educational Enhancement Program’s (JJEEP) research and experiences with the variable role of politics related to privatization and the tough love and economy of scale rationales for larger and more custodial juvenile institutions. The discussion demonstrates that by maintaining an overriding commitment to its evaluation research purpose, JJEEP has been able to continue its data-driven policy efforts despite operating in a politically charged environment.
Examination of Hospital Emergency Department Visits for Assaults Identified as Either Intimate Partner Violence or Sexual Assault, United States, 2000-01
The National Electronic Injury Surveillance System All Injury Program (NEISS-AIP) provides information on hospital emergency department (ED) visits for assaults. We calculate national annualized and weighted estimates for those assaults involving intimate partners and for sexual assaults (SA) using data for 2000-2001. Preliminary analyses indicate that more than 175,000 emergency department visits are identified annually as involving intimate partner violence (IPV), and more than 30,000 as involving SA of someone age 15 or older. ED visits for these types of assaults are predominantly by females, most of whom are not hospitalized for their injuries. We discuss strengths and limitations of NEISS-AIP data for calculating national IPV or SA rates. In particular, we comment on the large proportion of ED visits (61% of assaults; 44% of sexual assaults) where the perpetrator/victim relationship is unknown or unspecified in the hospital chart. We compare our findings to other studies using ED data for studying violence against women. The completeness of the relationship data, and thus the utility of NEISS-AIP data for describing and estimating the magnitude of intimate partner violence and sexual assault, may be enhanced by strategies to improve documentation in ED records.
Examination of Teaching Styles and Opinions of Texas High School Criminal Justice Eductors
In recent years high schools have begun offering criminal justice and criminology courses. This analysis is based on a survey of high school criminal justice educators in Texas. This study (1) examines the educational background, teaching conditions, and job satisfaction of high school criminal justice educators in Texas; (2) identifies teaching styles and philosophies of high school criminal justice educators; and (3) discusses the relationship between high school criminal justice instruction, criminal justice career development, and higher education.
Examination of the Implementation of Anti-Title: Stalking Legislation in the 50 States
This NIJ-funded three year study included a review of state anti-stalking legislation, including related issues such as harassment and terroristic threats; court rulings on these laws; survey of law enforcement and prosecutor offices to identify jurisdictions with innovative anti-stalking activities, including special units, training, and pollicies for handling stalking cases; survey of state STOP offices to identify federally funded anti-stalking projects; site visits to agencies with anti-stalking units; and review of practices and training materials to develop a “best practices” guide for practitioners and evaluators. The study found that (1) staliing is much more common than previously supposed (2 to 6 million cases annually) and often has serious consequences for its victims; (2) state anti-stalking laws need amendment; (3) implementation of anti-stalking laws has not been a priority for most agencies, and (4) where special efforts have been made, they have been highly successful. The implications of the study findings for lawmakers, practitioners, and researchers are discussed.
Examination of the Structure and Organization of Criminal Groups Engaged in Human Trafficking
A secondary analysis will be conducted of existing scholarly and governmental documents and publications related to the trafficking of humans. The anticipated results will describe the structure and organization of criminal groups engaged in Human Trafficking as an enterprise. The results will be compared and contrasted with models of organized crime appearing in scholarly literature.
Examining Issues of Drug Prevalence and Need for Treatment in a Midwestern State’s Recent Arrestee Population
The Midwest US has witnessed an increase in drug use and its impact on the criminal justice system in recent years. While large-scale research initiatives have provided some general data, they have also demonstrated that drug activities are specific to geographic regions. Consequently, this variation by region and lack of local data has left policy makers in central states with a ‘knowledge gap’ regarding drug prevalence data. Data collected (official, self-report and screened data) as part of the current research initiative has offered a unique opportunity to assess drug prevalence and need for treatment, generally and for specific drugs in a recent arrestee population for a Midwestern region.
Examining Paradigmatic Development in Criminology and Criminal Justice: A Content Analysis of Research Methods Syllabi in Doctoral Programs
Kuhn (1996) describes a paradigm as a model for a field of scientific inquiry. He notes the importance of shared scientific research methods in the paradigm. This study examines research methods teaching in doctoral programs to identify elements of a paradigm. Research methods syllabi were obtained from schools that have a doctoral program in criminology and criminal justice. Content analysis was conducted to identify themes in courses and readings. There was little evidence of consensus in doctoral-level research methods teaching at these institutions. This is indicative of a discipline that does not have an established paradigm.
Examining Short-Term Changes in Mariujuana Use
Much of what is known about drug use and changes in drug use over time, comes from quantitative research studies of normal, high school and/or jail populations. Despite the significant contributions of these types of studies to the understanding of larger patterns of change in drug use involvement, less is known about the specific types of factors that lead to changes in drug use and the role decision-making plays in such changes. This paper is based on a study that employed the rational choice theoretical perspective to examine the role of decision-making associated with changes in marijuana use/involvement over time. Qualitative semi-structured interviews were conducted between 2000-2002 with a snowball sample of 50 subjects. Three categories of subjects were sampled: ex-users of marijuana (N = 21), social marijuana users (N=10) and regular marijuana users (N=19). It is proposed that a reconsideration of the way drug status is measured and conceptualized is necessary to gain a better understanding of changes in drug use that occur over time. The types of patterns that can best be discovered through the examination of within-individual data will be discussed.
Examining the Characteristics of Criminal Justice Undergraduate Majors, Their Career Choices, and Their Perceptions of Program Curriculum: A Partial Replication of Krimmel and Tartaro
Through a partial replication of an earlier work by John Krimmel and Christine Tartaro (1999), the authors examine the characteristics of undergraduate criminal justice majors at different campuses of the Pennsylvania State University system, looking for key differences by males/females, whites/minorities, and other socio-demographic measures as to their reasons for choosing the major, perceptions of the curriculum, and self-identified career choices. The methodology for the study consists of a web-based, self-administered questionnaire, with a target population of all current undergraduate criminal justice majors at three different campuses. Similarities and differences between the earlier findings by Krimmel and Tartaro and the findings from the present study will be explored, with a discussion about the importance of this type of knowledge to both criminal justice program faculty and criminal justice practitioners.
Examining the Effectiveness of a Domestic Violence Court
The Grants to Encourage Arrest Policies Program encourages jurisdictions to implement mandatory or pro-arrest policies as an effective domestic violence intervention that is part of a coordinated community response. With grant funding, one urban county implemented a domestic violence court to better respond to domestic violence offenses. The evaluation of the domestic violence court required a variety of methods including pre and post statistics, case tracking, focus groups and victim interviews. This paper discusses the impact of creating a specialized domestic violence court as it relates to changes in police response, prosecution, victim service provision and victim satisfaction.
Examining the Inter-Generational Transmission of Patriarchy: Results From a National Sample
Efforts to understand continuity and change in behavior within individuals and families has once again come to the forefront of criminological thought. One particular theoretical articulation that argues for continuity within the family is Hagan et al.’s (1985) power-control theory. Specifically, Hagan suggests that levels of patriarchy within families are reproduced in their offspring such that offspring will exhibit attitudes toward patriarchy that are similar to those possessed by their parents. Using data from the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth, we investigate Hagan’s hypothesis as it relates to the intergenerational transmission of patriarchy. Specifically, our research has two useful features. First, we examine whether attitudinal levels of patriarchy among mothers are reproduced in her offspring. Second, we examine the covariates that might be responsible for the differences between maternal and offspring levels of patriarchy. The theoretical implications of our research are discussed.
Examining the Race and Gender Intersection on Experiences of Strain
Drawing upon Agnew’s (1992) General Strain Theory, this study expands upon past research by examining the distinct strains experienced by specific demographic groups. Past research is limited in that it focuses on few strains (Agnew 1985, Agnew and White 1992, Agnew and Brezina 1997, Brezina 1996,1998,1999, Broidy 2001, Capowich, et al. 2001, Hoffman and Su 1997, Mazerolle 1998, and Mazerolle and Piquero 1998) and overlooks the intersection between race and gender by focusing solely on gender or race (Agnew and Brezina 1997, Broidy and Agnew 1997, Broidy 2001, Hoffman and Su 1997, Joseph 1995, Mazerolle 1998, Mazerolle and Piquero 1998). Recognizing the structural effects of race and gender, this study explores the intersection between gender and race in experiences of strain. Using The National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent Health, I look at various types of strains including: blocked or limited opportunities, fairness, negative life events, interpersonal strains resulting from romantic, friendship, parental, and sibling relationships, school strains, neighborhood strains, and health strains. Preliminary findings suggest evidence of gender and race specific strains, findings compatible with the tenets of Agnew’s General Strain Theory. Future research will focus on longitudinal, multivariate analyses that explore the mechanisms that link strains to delinquency for various race and gender groups.
Execution of Sentences and Civilian Society: Creation of the “Philippe Zoummeroff” Grant
The privately funded Philippe Zoumeroff scholarship which was created in 2001 helps to sustain private initiatives from whichever country in favor of the rehabilitation of inmates and concerning modes of custody. Starting with this sponsoring experience done by the French Association of Criminology the author of this paper will analyze the means civilian society can use in a democratic state to participate alongside the state to the policy to reinsert former convicts and in a demanding peaceful perspective from society: the demand is on the level of civil liberties, equality of treatment and solidarity.
Expectations and Evaluations of Police Performance Among a Sample of Domestic Violence and Known-Perpetrator Rape Victims in the U.K.
The police response to domestic violence victims has been the subject of much research over recent decades. While the satisfaction of domestic violence victims with the police can have weighty consequences (e.g., whether victims will choose to call upon the police again if needed), the research examining this issue is dated and/or has been conducted on very small samples. In-depth interviews with women who were victims of domestic violence and/or known-perpetrator rape were conducted by staff from an integrated community-based service delivery agency in Cardiff, Wales. Using a theoretical model borrowed from the literature in consumer psychology we predict that victims’ satisfaction with the police will be a function of their expectations regarding police behavior and the actual services rendered, as past research on other crime victims has shown. Multivariate analyses were conducted to reveal: (1) the determinants of victim satisfaction generally and (2) whether victims’ expectations and evaluations of police performance vary significantly according to specific victim characteristics (e.g., race, age, victimization history, current victimization experience, etc.). The results of this study and implications for police policy are discussed.
Experienced, Vicarious, and Anticipated Strain: An Exploratory Study Focusing on Physical Victimization and Delinquency
Most research on strain theory focuses on the effect of personally experienced strain on delinquency. This study focuses on vicarious and anticipated strain; vicarious strain refers to the real-life strains experienced by others around the individual, while anticipated strain refers to the individual’s expectation that current strains will continue into the future or that new strains will be experienced. Data from a national sample of adolescent boys are used to examine that type of strain involving physical victimization, with measures of experienced, vicarious physlical victimization. This study suggests that strain theory’s focus on experienced strain may be too narrow, and it highlights the importance of victimization as a potential cause of delinquency.
Experiential Essentialism, Postmodernism and Phenomenology: Why Mainstream Pornography is Criminal
Through a feminist lens, this paper evaluates the benefits of experiential essentialist, postmodernist and phenomenological theoretical paradigms by exploring representations of female bodies in mainstream pornography, and ultimately shows that all female bodies share certain forms of oppression. The paper draws on different kinds of women’s oppressions within and as a result of the mainstream pornographic industry to show that even though various aspects of postmodernism and phenomenology with regards to “women’s” experiences should be applauded and embraced, experiential essentialist arguments cannot be ignored. Even though there is no one experience for all ‘women” personally, there are truths in a western patriarchal society that all human bodies afforded the category of “woman” or “women” experience directly and/or indirectly and whether they are conscious of them or not. It is vital to recognize that there are parallels in the consciousness of various groups of “women” and “men” about female bodies and that they are necessarily connected to the social norms which are historically rooted and socially situated. Both phenomenologists and postmodernists must commit to recognizing these many parallels and therefore, accept some aspects of an essentialist gender difference that is experiential.
Expert Testimony by Police Officers: How is it Evaluated After Daubert and Kumho?
The admissibility of expert testimony has been a hot topic in the legal world over the last decade. Supreme Court cases, such as Daubert v. Merrell Dow Pharmaceuticals, Inc. (1993) and Kumho Tire Co. v. Carmichael (1999) modified the standard for the admissibility of expert testimony, which raised the question of how experts would be evaluated after these decisions. One type of expert evidence that is frequently presented to the courts is testimony by police officers. Appellate court cases discussing the admissibility of expert testimony provided by police officers were coded for content as part of a larger study on the overall effects of Daubert and Kumho on the admissibility of expert testimony, totaling over 300 experts. The most common topic of testimony given by police officers concerns the behavior of several types of criminals, particularly that of drug dealers. Preliminary analysis indicates that police officers were allowed to testify as experts in over 90% of the cases at the trial court level, and this admission rate was reduced to approximately 80% at the appellate court level. There were no changes in the admission of this type of testimony over time, at either the trial or the appellate court levels of these cases. However, these rates of admission are very high. Therefore, the judgment criteria used by appellate court judges in evaluating police officer testimony will be discussed and compared to other types of testimony frequently appealed in criminal trials. Implications for police officers serving as experts in the criminal justice system will be discussed.
Explaining Assessments of future Risk: Race and Attributions of Juvenile Offenders in Pre-Sentencing Reports
Although context is generally conceptualized in terms of community or other structural characteristics, another important aspect of the macrosocial context is time. This paper analyzes how time may condition racial disparities in imprisonment. Using 10 years of juvenile justice decisions for 39 counties in Washington State, this study explores the ways in which changes in communities and courts over time have influenced racial differences in the decision to imprison.
Explaining Inhalant Use Among Hispanic and Native American Juveniles
While many studies have focused on the etiology and consequences of illicit drug use by juveniles, relatively few have focused on the use of inhalants. Those few studies that have examined inhalant use suggest that race/ethnicity might play a leading role in determining such use. Therefore, this paper examines the etiology of juvenile inhalant use with a special focus on the impact of race and ethnicity. Specifically, we address the association between Hispanic and Native American juveniles and inhalant use. Our data consist of a sample of 274 juveniles incarcerated by the state of Oklahoma. Because our data set contains a diverse population (especially a large percentage of Native Americans), the study allows for a unique opportunity to understand the relationships between race, ethnicity, and inhalant use. The paper examines these relationships in light of variables reflecting family composition, peer groups associations, and self-attitudes. Our findings exhibit significant differences in the use of inhalants between Whites, Blacks, Hispanics, and Native Americans.
Explaining Inter-Jurisdicitional Differences in Sentence Severity
This paper examines inter-jurisdictional differences in the severity of sentences meted out to felons in a national sample of counties. Using hierarchical modeling of multilevel data, this research controls for many case-based legal and extralegal factors underlying punishment severity, while at the same considering the impact of contextual factors (e.g., political conservatism). Results of this study demonstrate the importance of considering smaller geographic units (i.e., counties instead of states) in the study of inter-jurisdictional differences in punishment severity.
Explaining Justice O’Connor’s Fourth Amendment Swing to the Center: Of Voting Records, Case-by-Case-Analysis, and a Sophisticated Instinct for the Political Center
Justice O’Connor’s notable liberal majority opinion in City of Indianapolis of v. Edmond (2000), liberal vote in Ferguson v. City of Charleston (2001), and dissenting opinion in Atwater v. City of Lago Vista (2001) raise the possibility that her Fourth Amendment jurisprudence may be shifting toward the center-left. This surmise is supported by an examination of her voting record in 92 decisions since she joined the Supreme Court. An examination of Justice O’Connor’s reasoning displays her characteristic focus on the specific facts of the cases. Her liberal decisions, as well as her conservative votes in cases such as the “heat sensing” case of Kyllo v. United States (2001) can best be explained by her “sophisticated instinct” for the political center. Edmond, especially, may be seen as an indication of disenchantment with the war on drugs.
Explaining Objective Level and Subjective Levels of Strain in the School Context
The purpose of this paper is to explore strain within the in the context of the school setting, using Agnews’ General Strain Theory (GST) to identify both the objective and subjective levels of strain within the school context. Objective levels of strain will be examined through vignettes, hypothetical situations describing acts of school violence and victimization. Students will be asked to read a scenario and then answer questions to evaluate how students identify and respond to events in school that expose them to different levels of strain. These vignettes will highlight the consequences of strain in school violence and victimization, such as frustration, anger, perceived injustice, etc.. These vignettes are based on examples taken from media reports regarding incidents of school violence, ranging from the extreme (Columbine) to peer bullying and harassment. The subjective levels of strain will be evaluated through the use of a self-report survey to identify the characteristics of those students who are most affected by negative events within school. It is hypothesized that there will be a relationship between the identification of vignettes as being strainful and self-reported higher levels of strain.
Explaining the Cultural and Symbolic Resonance of Zero Tolerance in Contemporary Criminal Justice
Zero tolerance has been described as a “popular slogan for politicians talking tough” (Dixon, 2000). It is also a slogan with international advocates. In addition to the United States, politicians from Australia, New Zealand, the United Kingdom and South Africa have praised the aggressive policing strategy. While this is a testament to the ease with which ideas diffuse between nations in the contemporary world (see Best, 2001), it does not explain why this particular idea is so popular. Nor does it explain why zero tolerance animated so many in the mid to late 1990’s. In order to adequately answer these questions, it is ijmportant to place zero tolerance in a wider social, political and economic context. As this paper will argue, zero tolerance resonates in contemporary culture because it symbolizes a variety of tensions and anxieties found in late modern society. These anxieties are revealed through the often “volatile and contradictory” (Garland, 1996; O’Malley, 1999) politics of law and order; through the routine scrutiny of “marginal” populations in society; and through the high degree of public tolerance for both of these developments. Recent research suggests that the rise of free-market ‘neo-liberalism’ and social conservatism in Western industrialized democracies provides an important backdrop against which these anxieties emerge (Garland, 2001; McArdle and Erzen, 2001; O’Malley, 1999). Imbued with meaning and populist appeal, it is the idea of zero tolerance, along with its cultural and symbolic resonance in contemporary criminal justice, that requires explanation.
Explaining the Decrease in Armed Robbery
he number of reported armed robberies increased steadily throughout the 1970s and 1980s in England and Wales with a number of widely reported high profile cases involving notorious villains. In 1993, however, the number of commercial robberies involving a firearms began to rapidly decrease and by the end of the decade the number of reported incidents had decreased by fifty per cent. A number of explanations have been presented to account for this dramatic decrease including: 1) improved crime prevention measures, 2) more effective policing, 3) more stringent forms of gun control, 4) changing patterns of victimisation. Each of these explanations is examined and none are found to provide a convincing account of recent developments. Comparisons are also made with America where the level of armed robbery and other forms of violent crime has also gone down significantly. An alternative explanation is presented to account for these changes which it is believed more accurately accords with the available evidence.
Explanations for Intimate Partner Violence and Promising Interventions: A Review of the Literature
In 1998, the Bureau of Police of Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, in conjunction with the Dauphin County District Attorney’s Office and the local YWCA, implemented Rapid Response Teams (RRT) as an approach to domestic violence. One of the major goals of the RRT approach was to increase the number of arrests in the City for both simple and aggravated domestic violence-related offenses. The purpose of this paper is twofold: to first examine the extent to which domestic violence-related arrests increased across a three-year period; and, (2) to map, using GIS software, the “hot spots” associated with domestic violence incidences across the City. Conclusions are reached about the effect of RRT programming (police training in this area) on the tracking upward or downward of DV-related arrests, and suggestions are made to the City related to areas where these arrests appear to be clustered.
Explanations for Traffic Citations: The Relative Influences of Demand for Services, Racial/Ethnic Composition, and Social and Economic Conditions
What causes the police to stop an automobile to issue a citation? This question has become the focus of a number of legislative initiatives, major court cases, and public policy debate, especially where the issue of racial and ethnic profiling is alleged to be part of why officers stop the drivers they stop. In order to address these questions in a more comprehensive framework, we analyze data from the City of Riverside, CA, a community of about 250,000 people. The data consist of a random sample of 4,000 citations of the more than 20,000 issued in 1998; a full copy of the citation issued was the source from which a number of variables describing the stop were gathered. In addition, we merged these data with Census data measuring racial and ethnic composition, socioeconomic characteristics, transportation characteristics, and family structure. We also secured a measure of crime so that demand for police services was also included. Results are displayed graphically and geospatially, showing that clear patterns of racial disparity, especially when type of officer (traffic vs. general patrol) and type of citation (moving violation vs. minor infraction, e.g., tail lights, underage driving, etc.) Results also show that socioeconomic characteristics and racial/ethnic composition predict stops, not demand for police services.
Exploring Barriers to At-Risk Family Participation in the Washington D.C. Strengthening Families Prevention Program
Family-based prevention programs targeting at-risk populations have been plagued with concerns of attrition and non-participation. In order to assess the efficacy of such programs, it is imperative to focus on retention and participation strategies. The Strengthening Families Program (SFP) is a family-based prevention program in the Washington D.C. Area that will be concluding its final year of evaluation this year. This evaluation effort has experienced many difficulties with high attrition: An estimated 30% of families recruited for the program do not attend training sessions. In this exploratory study, a brief telephone survey will be administered to SFP non-attendees to research the barriers to program participation. Implications from these findings will assist in the development of strategies to increase and retain at-risk family involvement in preventive interventions.
Exploring Criminal Traits of Online Offenders
This paper is a report on a content analysis of randomly selected online chat text data associated with computer hackers/crackers. The results of the content analysis serve to identify in indicators and patterns of criminal, deviant, and non-deviant behaviors and attitudes of computer hackers/crackers. Study results confirm, re-characterize, or reject prior assertions about hacker/cracker subculture traits based primarily on prior non-empirical research.
Exploring Entitlement and Sexually Coercive Behavior Among College Students
Numerous studies conclude that sexual aggression is a widespread problem on college campuses. What is less well-understood is the context in which sexual aggression occurs and factors leading to aggression or victimization. Scholars often point to fraternity members and athletes as particularly aggressive with the argument that male peer support groups encourage and support aggression against women. However, the empirical support for these arguments is limited. Entitlement is one factor that may explain a perceived link between participation in athletics and/or fraternities and sexual aggression. members of these organizations are often viewed as socially elite, especially on college campuses, fostering a feeling that they are entitled to have their wishes and needs, both general and sexual, fulfilled. This study examines the relationship between measures of general and sexual entitlement, social group membership, and sexual coercion and courtship violence.
Exploring Risk Factors of Delinquency Among Japanese Junior High School Students
This study explores risk and protective factors of delinquent behavior among junior high school students of today’s Japan. Approximately 2000 2nd-year public junior high school students and junior high school students who had police contacts were surveyed using the same questionnaire, and the results for the two groups were compared with each other. The school survey was carried out in February 2002 in 13 public junior high schools located in an urban perfecture of western Japan, and the survey of delinquents were carried out in the same prefecture as the school survey. Findings will be reported with regard to the relative weights of each risk/protective factor, and policy implications will be discussed.
Exploring the Effectiveness of Drug Courts: Is There a Need for Gender-Specific Treatment?
Although an estimated 700 drug courts are in operation throughout the nation, serving over 220,000 men and women offenders, little is known about the effectiveness of drug courts for women. While previous research has suggested that women are less likely to participate in drug treatment than their male counterparts due to (1) harsher social stigma and (2) being the primary caretaker of children (DOJ, 1998), it remains equivocal if drug courts are successful with women and whether gender-specific treatment is necessary. The current project presents data (n= 373) from one Midwestern drug court to explore demographics, drug use patterns and preferences, and treatment needs among women and men. In addition, multiple outcome measures will be examined to assess whether the drug court is having a differential effect by gender. The results of this study will be used to determine whether women present different needs and whether the courts should be implementing gender specific treatment strategies.
Exploring the Effects of Incarceration of Communities
The unprecedented levels of imprisonment in our country for over a decade have led researchers to question our assumptions about the consequences of incarceration on children, families, and communities. While we have presumed that incarceration impacts communities and neighborhoods positively through the removal of harmful individuals, there is a new line of research exploring the possibility that the levels of incarceration may have reached a tipping point resulting in detrimental consequences. Using data collected through observation and open-ended interviews with community representatives, this paper will explore issues surrounding incarceration’s impact on two neighborhoods in New York City disproportionately impacted by incarceration.
Exploring the Illusion of “Get Tough” Super Punitive Social Control Strategies and Their Covert Erosion of Individual Rights and Social Control Standards in a Free, Open, Democratic Society: A Critical Assessment
COMMENCING LAT E IN THE 1970’S AND CONTINUING TODAY AMERICA HAS ENGAGED IN A CRESCIVE DRACONIAN SOCIAL CONTROL BING UNDER THE “GET TOUGH” RUBIC. TO PURGE “SIN,” “EVIL,” DELINQUENCY, CRIME AND VIOLENCE THREATS TO MORALS, PEOPLE, AND SOCIAL STRUCTURE THROUGH PUNISHMENT WE HAVE CREATED LEGIONS OF HARSHLY PUNITIVE STRATEGIES, E.G., “THREE STRIKES AND YOU’RE OUT,” “WAR ON DRUG,” REGISTRATION OF EX-OFFENDERS, BOOT CAMPS, FORFEITURE LAWS, PREVENTATIVE DETENTION ( EVEN FOR JUVENILES), UNPRECEDENTED USE OF INCARCERATION, AND EXPANSION OF THE DEATH PENALTY. CRITICAL ANALYSIS SUGGESTS WIDESPREAD PRAISE BY PUNITIVE CONTROL ADVOCATES OBSCURES MINIMAL TO NO-EFFECT ON SERIOUS DELINQUENCY, CRIME, AND VIOLENCE. ALSO MASKED IS RESULTING ALARMING EROSION OF U.S. STRUCTURE OF RIGHTS AND LIBERTIES ALONG WITH FUNDAMENTALS OF OUR SOCIAL CONTROL FRAME ( SUCH AS DUE PROCESS) WHICH IS THE NARROW “HEDGE ” SEPARATING AMERICA’S LEGAL SYSTEM FROM BARBARIANS. EQUALLY IMPORTANT, SHROUDED INDICATORS SUGGEST APART FROM OSTENSIBLE PUBLIC SAFETY PURPOSES DRACONIAN STRATEGIES SERVE PERCEIVED BEST INTERESTS OF PREVAILING POWER STRUCTURE ACROSS SOCIETY ANENT CONTROLLING LOWR CLASSES.
Exploring the Nature of Violent Offending by Females
Compared to men, the number of women incarcerated in U.S. prisons and jails is increasing at a relatively faster rate. From 1985 to 1995, the incarceration rate for men almost doubled (691,800 to 1,437,600); during this same time period, the incareration rate for women nearly tripled (40,500 to 113,100) (Office of Justice Programs, 19888). In 1997, over 127,000 women were incarerated in jails and prisons across the country: almost 75,000 ins tate and federal prisons and approximately 52,000 in local jails (Owen, 2001, pp. 243-244).
Exploring the Relationship Between Acceptance of Violence, Attitudes About the Death Penalty, and Perception of Mental Health Testimony in Capital Cases
Despite the fact that mental health testimony in capital cases has come under attack in recent years, a deeper consideration of the attitudinal factors involved in the perception of and response to mental health testimony has not been addressed fully. In this paper, it is hypothesized that acceptance of violence and attitudes about the death penalty affect one’s reception to mental health testimony in capital cases. This paper examines this interrelationship and considers the value-expressive nature of the underlying attitudes. Questions assessing these constructs were included as part of the annual Texas Crime Poll, which was administered to a state-wide representative sample of 750 citizens. A descriptive analysis of general attitudes about violence, as well as a more complex analysis of the use of mental health testimony, will be presented. Finally, policy implications of the value-expressive nature of individuals’ attitudes toward criminal justice issues will be discussed.
Exploring the Relationship Between Race and Ecstasy Involvement Among a Sample of Arrestees
Previous research has indicated that whites are disproportionately involved in the use of 3,4-methylenedioxymethamphetamine (MDMA or “ecstasy”). To date, however, no studies have explored the relationship between race and ecstasy possession and sale among adult criminal populations. To address this limitation, official arrest data were utilized from a sample of 1,216 arrestees charged with drug offenses between 1995 and 1999 in Orange County, Florida. Arrestees were divided into those whose primary charge was related to ecstasy possession (n=331), those whose primary offense was related to ecstasy sale (n=180), and those whose primary charge was unrelated to ecstasy (n=705). Chi-square statistics and logistic regression were utilized to examine the relationships between race and the possession and sale of ecstasy. Arrestees charged with ecstasy possession and sale were significantly more likely to be white than their non-ecstasy-charged counterparts (95% and 93% v. 46%, p
Exploring the Spatial Relationship Between Drugs and Violence: Moving Beyond Traditional Crime and Place Research
The link between illegal drugs and violence is a recurruing theme in both criminological research and criminal justice policy. Despite much research about the effects of drugs and the drug trade on criminal activity, little is known about the macro, geographic patterns of drugs and violence and their relationship to each other. Popular “hot spot” research in violence or drug markets tends to focus on finding hot spots for use in specific crime prevention programs, rathjer than expkloring the spatial relationship between the hot spots themselves. This paper takes a place-based approach, analyzing the spatial relationship between drug markets and violence not only to further add to criminological literature about the drug-crime nexus but also to contribute to the current building of theoretical foundations of crime and place. This research also will attempt to make a methodological contribution by goiung beyond descriptive crime mapping and using spatial statistics and spatial modeling techniques.
Exploring the Tacit Nature of Police Work
The training of police officers occurs primarily through two main methods: formalized classroom instruction (e.g., academy, in-service training) and on-the-job experience. It has been suggested that a gap exists between what is learned in the classroom and what officers need to know to perform the job. This gap can be explained, in part, by the fact that much of the knowledge that is relevant to performance is tacit – it is knowledge that is acquired through one’s everyday experience and is not readily articulated or widely known (Hedlund & Sternberg, 2000). This paper presents a qualitative analysis of the “tacit knowledge” of police detectives in a northeast police department. The goals of the study are to elicit knowledge that tends to remain tacit among experienced police detectives and to compare that knowledge to what is taught in formalized police training. Specifically, we will examine where tacit knowledge serves to supplement or supplant formalized knowledge in order to understand potential gaps and inconsistencies between formal training and on-the- job experience.
F
Factors Associated With the Seriousness of Criminal Behavior in Among Adolescents in Substance Abuse Treatment
While much is known about the criminal behavior patterns of general population youth, seriously delinquent “street” adolescent substance abusers, poor urban youth, and incarcerated adolescents, little is known about the criminality of adolescent substance abuse treatment clients. This information is important because of substantial increases in the number of youth attending substance abuse treatment programs and because adolescents who use substances regularly (weekly or more) are substantially more likely than non-users to be involved in non-drug illegal activity. This paper reports on an exploratory descriptive study of the lifetime patterns of criminal activity among adolescents admitted to five outpatient substance abuse treatment programs in Baltimore County, Maryland between July 2000 through December 2001(N=194). It presents preliminary findings on the factors related to the seriousness of criminal behavior. These factors include precocity for deviant behavior, risky sexual activity, grades in school, and substance abuse among members of the respondents’ household.
Factors That Influence the Employment of Ex-Offenders
The present research in the field has limited knowledge of the challenges and motivating factors that ex-offenders face upon their return to the community. The current research focuses on the ability of ex-offenders to locate employment opportunities. The goal of this research was to examine the factors involved in gaining and maintaining employment after incarceration. Sixty individuals were interviewed at a Midwestern community based provider of employment services for ex-offenders. This research will determine the characteristics and backgrounds of the agency’s clientele and how the clients learned about the agency. It will also examine the problem that ex-offenders have in gaining employment and the factors that motivate them to seek employment. Participants were recruited for a personal interview in which they were asked questions regarding the challenges to finding and maintaining employment, their support systems, what is motivating them to seek employment and what influences their ability to find and maintain employment.
Failed Justice: Voices of the Wrongfully Convicted
Recent research has pointed to the many systemic factors present in the criminal justice system which appear to contribute to wrongful conviction. This paper adds to this body of literature by providing a unique perspective on this problem. Through in-depth interviews with a Canadian sample of wrongfully convicted individuals, the paper illuminates the unique perspectives and experiences of those wrongfully convicted. Moreover, it highlights how the voices of the wrongfully convicted have been largely silenced by the criminal justice system and the need to include them in policy and future research.
Failure After Success: Why Do Some Mandated Clients of Residential Drug Treatment Recidivate After Treatment Completion?
Past research has shown that diverted drug-abusing offenders who successfully completed treatment are less likely to recidivate than treatment dropouts and non-treated offenders. Yet a significant portion of treated offenders returned to crime after treatment completion. Identifying correlates of recidivism among treatment completers will improve our understanding of the mechanisms underlying treatment, recidivism, and crime desistance. Background, treatment, and post-treatment data from 156 mandated clients of long-term residential treatment who successfully completed the Drug Treatment Alternative to Prison program (Brooklyn, New York) were examined. Findings revealed that recidivists among DTAP graduates were younger, had more juvenile arrests, disliked treatment rules, found treatment rules oppressive, viewed treatment as unnecessarily long, and were unemployed and living alone after treatment. In contrast, older age, fewer juvenile arrests, cognitive and behavioral treatment compliance, and post-treatment employment and living with spouses or children facilitated the maintenance of crime-free lifestyles. Theory and policy implications are discussed.
Fame and Strain: The Contributions of Mertonian Deviance Theory to an Understanding of the Relationship Between Celebrity and Crime
Most attempts to investigate the relationship between socially-induced strain and various forms of crime and deviance have tended to stress the thwarted search for materialist goals. Importantly, however, there is nothing in Merton’s original argument that necessitates such limitations. The current paper argues that while material success remains a dominant cultural goal at the dawn of the twenty-first century, there is a need to consider other ways in which blocked opportunity relates to conformity. Specifically, we argue that within the context of mass-mediated, image-driven postmodern societies, it may be the search for fame and celebrity status, rather than the race for more tangible stratification outcomes, that animates the dynamic relationship between deviance and social control. Through an exploration of the modern meaning of fame, Merton’s classic statement on goals, opportunity and strain is re-interpreted in order to account for various forms of social deviance, including spree killing, eating disorders, lottery gaming and engagement in deviant subcultures.
Familial-Based Justice: Examining Race Differences in Sentencing Among Female Offenders
The present study addresses Daly’s (1989) theory of familial-based justice as an explanation for gender differences in sentencing. Using the 1997 Survey of Inmates in state and Fedeal Correctional Facilities, I examine racial differences in women’s length of imprisonment based on the nature of their social ties (i.e., parent, children, other relatives, etc.) and their prior involvement with the criminal justice system. Specifically, I address three issues: (1) whether familied defendants will be treated more leniently than non-familied defendants, (2) whether race leads to differential treatment for familied defendants based on the nature of their social ties, and (3) the extent to which victim characteristics influence the effect of defendant’s social ties on their dispositional outcomes.
Families, Communities, and Violent Victimization Among Adolescents
This research examines how individual, family, and community characteristics are related to the risk for violent victimization among American adolescents. Person- and household-level data from the area-identified National Crime Victimization Survey are merged with community indicators from the decennial census to determine how factors at each of these levels are related to violence among youth. Adolescents from two-parent families are found to be at lower risk for stranger and non-stranger violence than their counterparts in single-parent or other family types. Controls for race, gender, and ethnicity do not alter this conclusion, nor do controls for other factors such as family income, size, or residential stability. Community factors are found to account for some, but not all of these differences in risk.
Families of Homicide Victims: A Review and Recommendations for Current Research and Practice
Homicide plagues our American cities and costs to victims’ families and society are tremendous. In 1999, homicide was ranked as the fourteenth leading cause of death (Hoyert, Arias, Smith, Murphy, & Kochanek, 2001) and was the leading cause of death among black males aged 15 to 34 in the United States (Anderson, 2001). In a recent National Institute of Justice report, homicide is estimated to cost $67.6 billion annually in costs to medical and criminal justice systems and victims’ families (Miller, Cohen, & Wiersema, 1996). The criminal justice process in this country often leaves homicide victims’ families aggrieved and feeling alienated (King, 1999; Sherman, 2000; Spungen, 1998; Vandiver, 1989; 1998). The objective of this research is to review current research and practice with families of homicide victims and to provide recommendations that promote and direct future research and practice. Estimating crime victim costs and consequences has been the focal point of numerous investigations in recent years (Cohen, Miller, & Rossman, 1994; Miller et al., 1996; Miller, Pindus, Douglass, & Rossman, 1995); yet, research has dealt only peripherally with costs and consequences to third-party victims, including the crime victims’ families. This research examines the much-neglected topic of families of homicide victims. This literature review sets out (1) to estimate the incidence and prevalence of homicide co-victims, (2) to estimate the costs to homicide co-victims, (3) to examine differences in grief and trauma between homicide and other types of bereavement and sudden loss, (4) to review the research on the correlates of trauma and grief among families of homicide victims, (4) to assess current methodological problems in research on families of homicide victims, (5) to identify and describe system and community responses to homicide co-victims, and (6) to provide recommendations for future research and practice with homicide co-victims.
Family Dynamics and Deviance
Increased attention has been paid to the importance of the father’s presence in the family home. The present study examines the relationships among such variables as family dynamics, family composition, and self-reported deviance of adolescence. The study uses data derived from a survey of juniors and seniors in Middletown’s (Muncie, Indiana) high schools.
Family Function and Incidence of Female Delinquency
The bulk of literature that deals with juvenile delinquency focuses its attention on the male delinquent, with little effort made to investigate female delinquency. This paper gives attention to female delinquency as being influenced by the family. Although the family is not the only variable present that affects adolescent behavior it is, however, the one institution where individuals begin to learn social skills that will enable them to interact with others outside the domain of the family. There has been research to support both sides of the debate concerning the influence of structure or function on delinquency. This investigation uses data obtained from 869 females age nine to 19 residing in public or low income housing in Mobile, Alabama to examine the influence of family function variables (e.g., caring and trust, parent-child attachment, parental discipline, family rules, curfew, parental monitoring) on female delinquent activity. Two theories adapted to explain female delinquency are also examined. These theories include Walter Reckless’s Theory of Internal and External Containment and Nye’s Social Control Theory.
Family Group Conferences and Facilitator Type. Does it Really Matter?
Following the leads of New Zealand and Australia, family group conferences have begun to establish themselves as a restorative justice option to traditional court here in the United States. However, who should facilitate these conferences still remains under debate. Using conference observations and recidivism checks from the Indianapolis Restorative Justice Experiment, this paper will compare conferences facilitated by police officers to those facilitated by civilians. Specifically, this paper will examine if facilitator type affects the overall conference process and resulting reparation agreements, and recidivism and survival of youths who participated in family group conferences.
Family Violence and Traditional Explanations of Delinquency: Examining Their Competing Effects on Behaviors of Filipino Adolescents
Family violence research generally supports the negative effects of such violence on children’s behaviors. However, few studies have juxtaposed this explanation with other traditional explanations of delinquency such as peer influences, moral/legal beliefs, or other deviant activities by family members. Moreover, except for a few studies, data sources used in making assertions about the effects of family violence on children have relied on clinical samples, raising questions on the validity of results. This paper uses a longitudinal sample of Filipino adolescents who were not sampled using some family violence criteria. The paper examines the competing effects of family violence explanations of delinquent behaviors with those of peer influences, legal beliefs, and other deviant activities by family members. Results are expected to shed light on the salience of family violence as an explanation of delinquency when other relevant factors are controlled, and extends the relevance of the family violence theses beyond the Western samples typically used in these studies.
Fear, Victimization and Community: An Assessment of Citizen Perceptions in East and West Coast Cities
We examine a variety of traditional assumptions about the relationship between fear of crime and victimization in the context of a community setting. Two East coast cities (New York, NY and Washington, DC) will be compared to two West coast cities (Los Angeles, CA and San Diego, CA). Data from the BJS/NCVS study of Criminal Victimization and Perceptions of Community Safety in 12 Cities (1998) will be used in a multi-variate analysis techniques are used to control for a variety of respondent attitudes and perceptions toward their neighborhood community, their city and their local police agencies. The implications of these findings are discussed with regard to previous empirical research and new theoretical directions.
Fear of Crime in Poland
Because of lack of comprehensive research on fear of crime in Poland, determination of the seriousness of the phenomenon is not easy. Some research conducted in the 1990s attempted to measure the extent of fear of crime at three levels: the national level, the level of the place of residence, and the level of personal fear. This paper addresses, among others, the following issues: how Polish criminological theory deals with fear of crime, whether Polish people’s feelings of safety and security have decreased since 1989, and how these data should be interpreted in the context of rising crime rates during the period of transformations taking place in Eastern Europe since 1989. Fear of crime is also discussed in the context of other social problems which are perceived by society as constituting a threat to the country.
Federal Prisoners’ View of Peer Counselors in a Residential Drug Treatment Program
Drug treatment can be viewed as secondary and tertiary prevention of criminal behavior because of its effectiveness at decreasing both criminal behavior and drug use. Despite the breadth of information available about drug treatment, there is little information on the topic from the perspective of actual treatment participants. The purpose of this study was to address this gap in the literature by characterizing the role of treatment program peer counselors, including their advantages and disadvantages, from the perspective of participants in one of the Federal Bureau of Prisons’ standardized residential drug abuse treatment programs (DAP). The study also addressed the correctional question of whether peer counselors had real or perceived power over other DAP participants. A random selection of DAP participants who had been in the program for 6 months or more (n=15; 20% of eligible participants) were interviewed using a series of open-ended questions. The results indicated that the DAP participants valued the peer counselors for being sounding boards, problems solvers, and fountains of information. Further, participants did not view peer counselors as having power over them. These results contribute to our understanding of both treatment process and program implementation.
Federall Correctional Programming and Services: Inmate Satisfaction Rates
Ten low- level Federal Bureau of Prisons institutions provide the backdrop for this exploration of inmate satisfaction ratings on staff services and institutional programming. Topics covered in this research range from staff-inmate communications and relationships, to ratings of vocational and educational programs, as well as satisfaction levels for the medical services provided. This study also examines and addresses some of the complex issues which surround survey development and the methodologies involved in survey administration. Additionally, problems encountered with the data are reviewed, with special emphasis upon skipped response sequences.
Felonious Killings of and Assaults Upon Law Enforcement Officers, 1960-1999
Violence against US police influence researcher, practitioner, and popular notions about the physical hazards of American policing. The most common official source of such information, the Federal Bureau of Investigation’s (FBI’s) Uniform Crime Report (UCR) program, is used by police to provide officer safety information to trainees, formulate policies and field procedures, as well as devise and emphasize various skills training activities. Perceptions of the relative risk associated with various assaults-e.g., with regard to assailant use of firearms, cutting instruments, blunt instruments, or physical weapons-play a role in shaping police and thus trainers’ priorities regarding instructional priorities and scenario-based experiences. Therefore, the utility of such government information is tied to the accuracy, completeness, and representativeness of its portrayal of violent police-citizen interactions. The UCR and its companion LEOKA report are examined in this paper by way of (1) a variety of trends in assaults and felonious killings for the period 1960 – 1999, as well as (2) gauging the type and level of department participation in reporting assaults and assaults with injuries. Participation stability over this period is a potentially important factor in interpreting reported descriptive findings of the nature and extent of violence against police.
Female Athletes Male Athletes: Examining the Relationship Between High School Athletics and Delinquency
The popular notion that participation in high school athletics inhibits criminal involvement has received inconsistent support in the criminological literature. Of the relatively few studies that have evaluated the impact of athletic involvement on delinquency virtually none have included gender as a primary factor. Critics of criminological research argue that one of the greatest failings of the field is the lack of research concerning women’s experiences, especially female involvement in crime. In essence, while there is great value in past and current research concerning crime much of this research does not attend to possible gender differences because gender is typically used as a control variable instead of a primary theoretical construct. The main focus of this research is to illuminate the social effects of athletics on both male and female participants’ delinquency rates in comparison to each other and their non-athletic peers. S! pecifically, we intend to test the hypotheses that male and female athletes’ delinquency rates are similar, but compared to their non-athletic counterparts are higher. Using data from the National Youth Survey (NYS) this paper contrasts competing explanations (such as social control, social learning, etc) for the association between delinquency and athletics and incorporates the female athletic experience.
Female Ex-Offenders in East St. Louis, Illinois, Transitioning From Prison to the Community
Female ex-offenders with children face many obstacles when making the transition from prison back to the community. This study examines how female ex-offenders with children re-integrate back into the community in the metro-east region of Southwestern Illinois (East St. Louis). Using a qualitative methodological design enables the female ex-offenders in this sample to describe how they negotiate their daily lives after incarceration. More specifically, the paper discusses how the female ex-offenders with children in this sample, describe their experiences re-integrating back into the community, their experiences and future outlook concerning the labor market and their parenting experiences.
Female-on-Female Violence in an Urban Community
Over the past decade, female participation in assault has increasingly become a topic of concern. According to the National Crime Victimization Survey for the years 1993 through 1997, women represented 14 percent of violent offenders — an annual average of over 2.1 million violent female offenders. Female offenders assault female victims more frequently than male victims at a rate of approximately 4:1 (Greenfeld and Snell, 1999). There are few studies, however, that address intragender female assault and few theoretical explanations of violence among poor Black women residing in urban communities. This research is one of the first studies to examine female-on-female violence across a range of non-intimate partner relationships. The aim of this presentation is to describe female-on-female assault that results in injury from a sample of inner-city Black women who present for emergency department care for the injury. The major goals of the presentation are to characterize the circumstances surrounding non-intimate partner female-on-female urban violence, to present a theory of female-on-female assault labeled Gendered Social Structural Strain, and to present an empirical test of the proposed theory. Policy implications also will be reviewed.
Female Perpetrated Homicide: How Abuse and Deprivation Shape Women’s Likelihood to Become Murderers
This research focuses upon women who are incarcerated for having committed homicide and whether their lives prior to incarceration differ by experience of abuse and demographic characteristics. Multivariate statistical analysis of the data set “Survey of Inmates of US Federal and State Correctional Facilities, 1997” will be applied in order to explore how women incarcerated for killing an intimate partner differ from the other women incarcerated for homicide in their pre-prison experiences and demographic characteristics. More specifically I apply the theoretical framework of the gender entrapment thesis to motivate and interpret a quantitative investigation of how women’s pathways to prison are often shaped by what they experienced and suffered in the outside world. The gender entrapment model shows that women incarcerated for the homicide of an intimate differ from the other women in the homicide group in their pre-prison experiences of abuse, their socio-economic backgrounds, and demographic characteristics.
Female Police Officer’s Perceptions of Belonging in a Large Urban Police Department
This study used Maslow’s Hierarchy of Human Needs Theory as a framework to address perceptions of belongingness and discrimination. One operational hypothesis was examined. There is no significant relationship between minority and non-minority female officers regarding belongingness and love needs pertaining to human contact due to perceptions of discrimination. From this hypothesis, it was expected that minority and non-minority female officers perceptions of belongingness need on Maslow’s Hierarchy of Human Needs would be met. Analyses revealed that belongingness need was significantly different for minority verses non-minority female officers due to their perception of discrimination.
Female Snakeheads in Transnational Chinese Human Smuggling
Rarely are women discussed as the instigators in mainstream criminology literature on organized crime. At most, they serve as the backdrop of male organized criminals as their accomplices or family members to which only fleeting attention is paid in academic research. In our NIJ current study, however, we have found women to be active players in transnational Chinese alien smuggling business. Some of them even have even gained infamous attention from federal law enforcement agencies, while others quietly go about their business, making handsome money by bringing Chinese nationals into the U.S. via clandestine channels. This paper examines their unique attributes within the cultural context and explores the challenges to the understanding of gender in traditional organized crime literature
Femicide in Australia: An Analysis of Patterns of Victim/Offender Relationships
This paper draws upon an ongoing investigation of femicide in Victoria, Australia. It reviews traditional conceptions of victim/offender relationships, and suggests that most of these are inadequate to the task of capturing the richly textured patterns found in the present data. The basic problem of most schemes is that they are fundamentally atheoretical, and therefore contribute little to an understanding of the scenarios observed. While a common pattern of women killing consists of violence perpetrated by jealous and/or controlling male sexual partners, in fact there are other patterns in the present research that also deserve careful attention. The paper suggests that while gender is an important feature of lethal violence, analysis must recgonise the complexity of scenarios that will be found in investigations such as this one.
Fifteen Lessons Learned From the National Process Evauation of the Comprehensive Strategy for Serious, Violent and Chronic Juvenile Offenders
1. BACKGROUND TO COMPREHENSIVE STRATEGY The Comprehensive Strategy for Serious, Violent and Chronic Juvenile Violent Offenders, published by OJJDP in 1993, provides a research-based framework for combating juvenile crime by targeting prevention efforts on youth who are at risk of delinquent behavior, by intervening in early delinquent behavior, and by responding effectively to youth who become involved in serious, violent, and chronic offenses. The Comprehensive Strategy’s principal components-risk-focused delinquency prevention and graduated sanctions-are intended to provide a “continuum of care” that both prevents and interrupts the progression of delinquent and criminal careers. The Comprehensive Strategy achieves this goal through a systematic community-level and research-based planning approach to crime and delinquency reduction. As emphasized by both its designers and trainers, the Comprehensive Strategy provides a framework, with an implicit systematic process, for a community to diagnose and address its local juvenile problems. Comprehensive Strategy reflects the process of communities adopting, planning for, and “implementing” the framework for addressing their juvenile problems. The Comprehensive Strategy planning process involves several interrelated and ongoing steps: 1) mobilize the community, its key leaders and other stakeholders and familiarize them with the goals, principles, and elements of the Comprehensive Strategy; 2) conduct community assessments (of risk factors, existing systems and resources, etc.); 3) develop strategic plans that identify appropriate services, programs, and approaches to address the community’s identified needs; 4) specify mechanisms to coordinate and implement them; and 5) implement the plans, with ongoing monitoring of their program-specific and overall effectiveness at reducing risk factors and juvenile problem behaviors. By undertaking and institutionalizing this process-mobilize, assess, plan, and implement-communities adopt the Comprehensive Strategy framework. In May 1995, OJJDP published the Guide to Implementing the Comprehensive Strategy for Serious, Violent and Chronic Juvenile Violent Offenders, which lays out the framework and the supporting research. In early 1996, three communities, Lee and Duval Counties in Florida and San Diego County in California, were selected as pilot sites for the Comprehensive Strategy. Later in that year, OJJDP selected five States (Florida, Iowa, Rhode Island, Texas, and Maryland) to participate in a training and technical assistance (TA) initiative to assist six local communities in each State in “developing a strategic plan for preventing and reducing juvenile delinquency.” In early 1998, three additional States (Ohio, Wisconsin, and Oregon) were added to the roster of States selected to receive training and technical assistance. Ohio joined the first five States to receive an intensive package of training and TA provided through Developmental Research Programs (DRP) and the National Council on Crime and Delinquency (NCCD). Wisconsin and Oregon were to receive preliminary assistance from another TA provider, Community Research Associates (CRA), prior to receiving the more intensive series of training events from DRP and NCCD. In addition to these eight States, a number of other States, including Kansas, Colorado, Virginia, Connecticut, Massachusetts, Nevada, Oklahoma, North Carolina, and Missouri, also have initiatives that embrace some or all of the elements of the Comprehensive Strategy, undertaken without training and technical support from OJJDP.
“Filing Charges”: How the Victim-Defendant Social Relationship Affects Crime Victims’ Decisions on Criminal Justice Steps
Criminal justice officials report that domestic violence victims do not participate in the prosecution of their offenders, yet few studies have interviewed victims about the prosecution of their case. The Indiana Victim Services Assessment Project interviewed a randomly-selected group of crime victims to understand their crime experiences and service needs. Using these data, I compare domestic violence victims’ opinions of filing charges, going to trial, testifying and dropping charges with the opinions of victims who knew the defendant as a relative, friend or acquaintance and victims who did not know the defendant at all. Significant differences are found within groups and between groups.
Findings From Research on Treating the Criminal Justice-Involved Drug Abuser
Research on the effectiveness of drug abuse treatment for criminal justice-involved patients has shown that treatment is effective in reducing drug use and drug-related criminality, but there is much yet to be learned. Accumulating evidence suggests that treatment provided during incarceration must be followed by community-based treatment to sustain gains. The relationship between coercion and motivation must be better understood if legal pressure and sanctions are to be optimally effective. Care must be used in making the assertion that “”treatment works”” given the different perspectives of public health and public safety. NIDA”s next generation of research, through its focus on integrating drug abuse treatment into the criminal justice system, will inform questions about how best to organize, manage, and deliver treatment to drug-involved offenders in these disparate systems.
Findings From the 2001 Baltimore City Substance Abuse Need for Treatment Among Arrestees (Santa) Project
Data collected through the 1995 Substance Abuse Need for Treatment among Arrestees (SANTA) study illustrated a significant need for treatment among Baltimore City arrestees. To update the findings from 1995, a new collection was conducted in Baltimore City between February 26 and March 30, 2001. In addition to a diagnostic interview, a urine specimen was collected and screened for 10 drugs of abuse. Nearly three-quarters of the sample tested positive for at least one drug. Fifty-seven percent of the females and 36% of the males tested positive for cocaine, while 49% of the females and more than one-third of the males tested positive for opiates. Forty-nine percent of the males and 53% of the females met the clinical criteria for current dependence and/or abuse and were therefore in need of alcohol or other drug (AOD) treatment. While about one-half of the arrestees currently needed treatment, this is a minimal estimate given the reliance of the diagnostic interview on self-reported symptoms.
Findings From the 2001 National Young Gang Survey
The 2001 National Youth Gang Survey is the sixth annual survey of a representative sample of over 3,000 law enforcement agencies across the United States investigating current and important issues regarding youth gang activity. Recurring topics from the survey include: prevalence of gang activity, demographic characteristics of gang members, and degree of gang member involvement in offense types. Findings unique to the 2001 survey will also be presented, including: procedures for recording gang member intelligence information and the use of various programs and strategies in combating youth gang problems.
Findings From the Survey of Youth Gangs in Indian Country
The extent of the youth gang problem in Indian country communities will be discussed. Data are derived from the first-ever gang survey of all federally recognized tribes in the United States. This project is funded by OJJDP in support of the Tribal Youth Program, part of the Indian Country Law Enforcement Initiative. Topics to be addressed include: the presence of youth gangs in Indian country, demographic characteristics of gang members, types and levels of criminal activity, and factors influencing the origin, growth, and persistence of gang activity in these communities. These findings should supplement localized research examining gang activity in these communities, and provide a baseline assessment to guide future research and response to gang activity in Indian country.
Fine and Restitution Remittance: The Effect of Offender, Probation Officer and Court-Based Factors
The paper will present analysis of factors that affect probationers’ payments of fines and restitution. We examine the impact of the Comprehensive enforcement Program (CEP), as well as offender and probation officer attitudes and practices on the repayment of fines and restitution. CEP is a court-based hearing for offenders who are in arrears and is designed to increase the amount of monies paid. With regard to offender attitudes, we test the hypothesis that offenders who believe that their original and CEP cases were disposed of fairly and believe that “justice” was done will be more likely to remit payment. We also examine the effect of probation officer attitudes and enforcement strategies on remittance. Analysis will be based on data from interviews with offenders, probation officers and financial data from the Comprehensive Automated Probation System, (CAPS).
Finishing Schools for Female Offenders: Adolescent Girls and the Transition Back Into the Community
The focus of this paper is the social and cultural processes female offenders go through as they prepare to reenter the community after serving time in a juvenile institution. Community programs, partnerships, and the girls’ aspirations and hopes for the future will be discussed and evaluated in an attempt to shed light on the many challenges facing this specific population.
First Comes Dating?: An Exploratory Analysis of African American Female Dating Responses to High Control Rates for African American Men
One-in-three young Black men is under the control of the U.S. criminal justice system (Mauer 1995). The fact that one-third of the Black men between ages 20 to 29 is either in prison, or jail, on probation or parole, has, understandably made them an important empirical focal point. However, the impact of Black male involvement in the justice system extends beyond Black men themselves. Although little empirical attention has been focused on the topic, young Black women are directly affected by the changing social status of young Black men. This study focuses on how college-aged Black women have responded to the increasing ratio of available Black women to available Black men. Specifically, how the growing control rate for young Black men has informed their dating choices. This study draws from research on marriage and race (e.g., Lichter et al 1991), including Wilson’s “male marriageable pool index” (1987). Existing studies consider race-based dating patterns-including the rise in interracial dating. Few, however, explicitly consider whether and how the rising control rates for young Black men affect their dating, and ultimately marriage options. Study and findings are based on questionnaires and interviews with college-aged African American females.
First Findings of the Swiss Violence Against Women Survey
In this paper are presented the first findings of the recent Swiss Violence Against Women Survey. This survey falls within the framework of the first International Violence Against Women Survey (IVAWS), in which about 30 countries are participating. The IVAWS is an international, comparative survey specifically designed to target domestic violence and sexual assault against women. The objective of the IVAWS project is to assess the level of victimisation of women in a number of countries world-wide, on a repeatable basis, and to provide novel inputs for the development of specific criminal justice approaches. The project will largely rely on the network and infrastructure of the International Crime Victim Survey (ICVS) that has been successfully implemented in more than 65 countries around the world. Switzerland participates in this project with a representative sample of 2000 female respondents aged 18 or more and interviewed by CATI method. In this paper the first results concerning domestic violence in Switzerland are presented. A particular attention is given to violence against women among the immigrant groups. Given that in Switzerland immigrants represent over 20% of the general population, interesting comparisons are made between the Swiss and the immigrant perpetrators.
Florida: Punishment in the Moral Economy of the Sun Shine State
What distinguishes Florida from other “hot” growth states like Texas, Arizona, and California? One factor that makes Florida politics especially complicated is the degree to which its economy is focused on consumption, e.g., tourism, retirement and second home purchase and outfitting, etc. While there are a lot of both, on balance, more people go to Texas, Arizona, and California to make money than to spend the money they made somewhere else. In contrast, more people come to Florida to spend the money they made somewhere else than to make it there. This consumption driven politics tends to produce a complicated and seemingly contradictory politics. For example, Florida politicians are more pro-environment than might be predicted from its other political demographic features. In punishment policy, Florida’s consumption politics produces a penal culture that is more punitive than might be predicted from other political demographic features and which places a heavy emphasis on marketing the state to those elsewhere. Penal law’s in Florida are aimed less at restoring the moral equilibrium of society than its self consciously artificial sense of security and serenity. Because these consumption stakes are high not just in Florida, but in the other states mentioned, and many others, one expects to find the same features in other state penal cultures, but to a somewhat lesser degree.
Florida’s Juvenile Justice Facilities: A Comparative Evaluation of Educational Services Between Public- and Private-Providers
While having historical precedent, privatization of corrections in both the adult and juvenile systems has experienced a dramatic gain in popularity during the last 25 years. This trend has reportedly been fueled by concerns over fiscal scarcity, governmental inefficiency at handling an ever-increasing inmate population, and the increasing size of the public sector. These concerns are related to the increased incarceration rate of the past twenty years. This growth of privatization in corrections has stimulated lively discussion about the efficacy of private providers in delivering services that have traditionally been provided by government agencies. Despite twenty years of literature addressing the potential benefits and negatives of privatization within the field of corrections, we are still without responsible empirical conclusions. Specifically in regards to juvenile justice, the privatization movement has occurred without evidence demonstrating that private contractors are capable of providing comparable or better services at a lower cost. The goal of this paper is to provide an empirical evaluation of privatization in Florida’s juvenile justice facilities by focusing specifically on quality indicators of educational services between public and private providers.
Follow the Money: The Dutch Experience
During the last decade, throughout the world more emphasis has been put on financial instruments in order to control and prevent money laundering, organised crime (and more recently) terrorism. Most democratic countries have developed systems for the disclosure of suspicious financial transactions and have adopted legislation to find, freeze and forfeiture criminal assets. The paper will discuss the strength and weaknesses of the policy theory behind this rather new approach. It will also highlight the latest experiences in the Netherlands with regard to financial policing.
Forgiveness as Catharsis…Balance…Safety
We are three criminologists who have known each other professionally and personally for at least 15 years. Bill Breeden is a Unitarian Universalist minister, half-time in local churches, half-time in statewide prison ministry in Indiana, in the conservative political heartland of the United States. He has been in jail, in solitary confinement. He is the only person to do jail time for Iran-Contra (see the latest edition of Zinn’s A People’s History of the United States). Among other things, he was for two years in the early nineties a graduate student in criminal justice, an associate instructor and in fact co-lecturer in Hal’s “alternative social control systems” class. Both Bills are Indiana natives. hal arrived in Bloomington in 1976. Bill Selke joined the IU criminal justice faculty in 1979. Bill Breeden has been in the Bloomington areaq longest. We three have been brought back together by news of Bill Selke’s terminal cancer. He has asked his two co-authors to join a conversation of how we all have learned to let go of being driven by fear, and to celbrate and gain from the forgiveness of our political and professional foes. Forgiveness has become paramount in his thinking. In this essay we show how our criminological understanding of what safety and compassion demand has evolved in our lies together in local and global action, and in scholarly findings.
Formal Criminal Intervention, Deviant Networks, and Subsequent Delinquency: A Test of Structural Labeling Theory
The present paper examines the immediate impact of formal criminal labeling on involvement in deviant social networks and increased likelihood of subsequent delinquency. According to structural labeling theory, formal criminal intervention should affect the individual’s immediate social networks. In many cases, the stigma of the criminal status may trigger social exclusion from conventional social networks, and from conventional peer networks in particular. As a result, the probability that the individual becomes involved in deviant networks increases. The formal label may thus ultimately increase involvement in subsequent deviance. We use panel data of a sample of urban adolescents to examine this causal process. Our findings provide support to the labeling argument. Using measures from three successive timepoints, we find that juvenile justice intervention positively affects subsequent involvement in serious delinquency through the medium of involvement in deviant networks, including street gangs and delinquent peer networks.
Fostering a Culture of Lawfulness: Examining the Pathway to Resiliency Between Support for the Police, Legal Reasoning, and Behavior Amongst Mexican Youths
Somewhere near where the border of the Unites States ends and Mexico begins is a new hybrid area representing more than 24 million people that some authors refer to as “Amexica” (Gibson, 2001). Although spurred by the benfits of trade, both borders struggle with poverty, social disorganization, and crime. The question remains how to develop an overall culture of lawfulness in which the majority of people support law-abiding behavior, under such existing conditions along the US/Mexico border. Although the construct of legal and moral reasoning as resiliency has been suggested for years, no empirical work of this nature has examined the pathway between the social factors and legal reasoning that is said to lead to conforming behavior. The current study seeks to develop a casual model that links perceptions of law enforcement validity, community risk factors, the proposed resiliency factor of legal reasoning, obligation to obey the law, and non-conforming behavior. The study is unprecedented in the field of legal socialization in terms of its sample size of over 10,000 respondents and will allow for future replications to examine cross-cultural applications.
Foul Ball?: Assessing the Impact of the Ninth Circuit Ruling on the California ‘Three Strikes’ Law”
In February 2002, the Ninth U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals ruled that a 25-year-to-life sentence imposed for shoplifting under the California “three-strikes” law was cruel and unusual. Although the court did not strike down the law itself, it did indicate that life sentences for petty thefts – crimes that may be elevated to felonies under California’s penal code – were unconstitutional. Although opponents of the controversial sentencing law applauded the ruling as a significant setback to an objectionable policy, my research on the use of discretion under California’s three-strikes law indicates that few eligible petty offenders are actually sentenced to the maximum term. Most prosecutors support the use of discretion in cases involving third-strikers who commit a petty theft or other de minimis nonviolent offense. Furthermore, these findings indicate that the decision to fully prosecute a nonviolent third-striker is predominantly guided by the nature of offender’s prior record. That is, violent offenders who are caught on a minor third strike are more likely to face a third-strike prosecution than are offenders who have a nonviolent felony history. This segregation of offenders based upon their predisposition to violence is one that has been historically exercised by prosecutors and judges alike, and traditionally supported by both state and federal courts at all levels. Although the state has not yet announced whether it will seek a review of the current case in question by the U.S. Supreme Court, the present prosecutorial policy of applying the state’s harshest law to the state’s worst category of offenders is not likely to be significantly affected by this latest Ninth Circuit ruling.
Four Case Studies of Incest in Rural Illinois, 1900-1920
This study, analyzing four incest cases heard by the Illinois Supreme Court, will answer the following research questions: 1) Can today’s causal theories be applied to incest cases a century old?; 2) Or do the surviving data about historic cases argue that incest has changed over time?; 3) Can certain aspects or factors “tip” families toward incest?; 4) What are those “tipping” factors in the early twentieth century?; 5) What do the four cases indicate about the nature of incest?; 6) Was the isolation, imposed by incest offenders today, also created by offenders in the early twentieth century?; 8) How much did society’s public mores shape how its legal system handled incest? Census records for 1900, 1910, and 1920 provide demographic information. Newspaper accounts provide information on community attitudes toward incest and the families involved. Archival records of the Illinois Supreme Court, which include legal briefs, verbatim transcripts, and occasionally additional materials, allow reconstruction of certain family dynamics, such as alcoholism, separation or divorce, death, prior allegations or instances of abuse, criminal records, and behavioral dynamics.
Fractals of Black Macho Youth
This paper is a cross-cultural analysis of the impacts of justice, family, education and media institutions on young black men in South Africa, compared to the United States and Aboriginal Australians through their socialization into what many writers have identified as the myth of the black macho. I would like to find out the extent to which young black men have bought or rejected the dominant images of the ‘dangerous macho young black male’ in contrasting cultural settings and the consequences of the macho ideology or lack of it on their interaction with the law, families, schools and the mass media. The paper would adopt fractal non-linear chaos theory – a multicultural approach to masculine blackness. This will involve intensive theoretical discourse to examine why the culturally distinct categories of young black men face a common experience of discrimination in the powerful educational, legal and mass media institutions dominated by hegemonic masculinities. Modernist theories would assume a positivistic causality between color and masculinist deviance, whereas poststructuralist theory follows the assumption that there is a non-linear order in the chaos confronting the young black ‘macho’ with fractured identities.
From Deinstitutionalization to Criminalization: The Impact of Police Officer Discretion on the Incarceration of the Mentally Ill
Research shows that the rate of mentally ill individuals who are being incarcerated is expanding. Police officers are being called upon to act as crisis workers and handle this population in increasing amounts daily. This research examines the way in which police officers use their discretionary power to effectively deal with this group of people. This is accomplished through surveys and both structured and semi-structured interviews of officers across different regions of New York State. Discussion will focus on the factors involved in the decision making process, the outcomes of these determinations and the implications associated with both of these.
From Sin to Syndrome: The Medicatlization of Juvenile Sex Offense
The purpose of this paper is to critically examine the development of juvenile sexual perpetration as a treatable, medical condition. This paper employs the deviance model set forth by Conrad and Schneider, whereby a behavior comes to be defined as deviant through the process of “medicalization.” The five-stage sequential model for medicalization involves: (1) the definition of the behavior as deviant; (2) the discover of new medical findings; (3) engagement of claims-making by medical and nommedical interests; (4) legitimacy; and (5) institutionalization of the medical deviance designation (Conrad and Schneider 1980). Through an investigation of adolescent sex crime trends and a content analysis of existing juvenile sex offender literature, this research theoretically expands the medicalization model. This paper explores the social forces and historical processes involved in the evolution of juvenile sexual perpetration as 1) a nuisance behavior, 2) an identifiable criminal activity, and finally, 3) a medical condition requiring treatment. Lastly, this research assesses the individual consequences and social impact of identification and medicalization of “deviant” juvenile sexual activity.
From the Mainstream to the Margins and Back: A Historical Look at Evaluation Research
In the past decade, crime prevention and intervention efforts have relied upon researchers to evaluate, identify, and disseminate a collection of programs that are effective in preventing, reducing, and controlling crime. The effect has been the development of numerous “model” or “best practices” programs that are assumed to provide state of the art strategies. This paper will critically examine the recent trend to identify and deliver “research based programs” by tracing the popularization, stigmatization, and re-popularization of “science-based” programs from the 1930s to the early 2000s. Where many might contend that the current popularity of evaluation research is evidence of the development of superior programs, the authors argue that the favorable relationship between science and program development has more to do with paradigm shifts within social science and criminal justice fields than it does with the effectiveness of particular approaches to crime prevention. The authors offer several cautionary statements regarding evaluation research designed to avoid some of the pitfalls of the past.
Frontline Referrals: Cops Care
Child delinquency has increased in the metropolitan areas of Minnesota in recent years. In the City of St. Paul alone, police write an average of 125 reports per year on children under age 10 who commit delinquent offenses. Many more child delinquents are returned to their parents without a police report being filed. Until ACE, police were frustrated by their lack of options. This presentation will describe how ACE uses a collaboration with police and schools to identify child delinquents in the community so that they may be connected with services. The process includes direct referrals by police; indirect referrals from schools by calling the police; a review of the offense by a County Attorney to ensure that it meets the criteria for charging (except for age); and scheduling a confidential screening meeting under provisions in the child protection statutes. Of 226 children referred over a two-year period, 174 (77%) met the criteria for charging. One in five of these children reside in the suburbs. Four in ten of the referring offenses happened at school. Statistics will be presented on the pattern of referrals by schools and police, characteristics of the children referred, and the types of offenses they committed. The response to the program by police and schools will be discussed.
Funding Programs for Child Delinquents: Whose Responsibility Is It?
Radical changes in the way prevention services are delivered will necessitate significant changes in the way they are funded. Effective programs for child delinquents are based on comprehensive, long term, and based on multi-jurisdictional, multi-sector collaboration. It has been estimated that a single serious, violent, and chronic adult offender costs society between $1.7 and $2.3 million over his/her lifetime in school dropout, drug abuse, victim, and criminal justice system costs. The savings from programs like Ramsey County ACE, which focuses on preventing child delinquents from becoming career criminals, will accrue to taxpayers and institutions at all levels. This suggests these same groups should share responsibility for funding the program. The question becomes who pays what proportion of the costs, and when. This presentation will review the issues to be considered. These include the fact that early interventions require a large investment now for benefits that won’t be received for years, and that local government typically bears the intervention cost during childhood while state government reaps the savings that occur during late adolescence and adulthood. Moreover, the greatest benefits do not flow back to government coffers. These benefits include safer communities, a better business climate and a better climate for learning in schools.
G
Gambling, Crime, and Other Problem Behaviors: Results From a National Survey
The connection between problem gambling and deviant behavior has been under-explored in the sociological literature, and the studies that have been conducted have focused almost without exception on individuals in treatment and in prisons/jails. Such data describe the most severely impacted individuals, while a general population survey identifies individuals from no gambling problems to subclinical and clinical levels of severity. A study of this type would permit the investigation of whether one’s degree of symptomatology has a positive relationship with crime, drug use, and mental health problems generally. For this investigation, we use data from a landmark 1998 national survey of gambling behavior (N=2,417), comprised of a random-digit dial telephone survey and a supplemental in-person survey of gaming facility patrons (N=530). Both interviews included a diagnostic module for pathological gambling based on the DSM-IV.
Gambling on Crime: How Punishment May Encourage Offending
Under the doctrine of specific deterrence, an individual who is punished for a crime should be less likely to commit it again. That said, several recent studies find the opposite — namely punished individuals appear more likely to offend in the future and believe the certainty of punishment is lower than do their less-/un-punished counterparts. This paper develops an analytical framework to investigate two competing explanations for this finding. Under the selection account, punishment simply identifies the most committed offenders who then, not surprisingly, recidivate. The second account, resetting, invokes a judgment and decision making bias known as the “gambler’s fallacy.” Under this explanation, after an individual is punished, they reset (reduce) their sanction risk estimate, apparently believing they would have to be exceedingly unlucky to be apprehended again. herein, we report a preliminary empirical investigation of these explanations.
Gang Crime in the Work Place
In the previous literature, employment has been viewed as both a preventative and rehabilitative tool to reduce gang involvement. There has been little research, however, regarding the continuity of gang crime in the work place itself. This paper summarizes findings from a recent survey of N = 1,042 gang members comparing their employment experiences with non-gang member offenders. Significant research findings from five different measures of crime in the workplace are summarized in this paper.
Gang Typologies Based on Criminal Activities
Throughout the gang literature, researchers have been concerned with creating workable typologies of gangs. Historically, many of these typologies have been based on the activities (criminal and non-criminal) engaged in by the gang members. Law enforcement agencies often classify gangs by territoriality, ethnicity or focus of criminal activity. This analysis will examine criminal gang incidents in Orange County California from 1994 to 2000 to see if specific groups of gangs can be unambiguously classified by their criminal activity. These groups will be contrasted on other variables such as spatial location of incidents, victimization data, weapon, and drug involvement.
Gangs, Crime Investigation and Rehabilitation
This paper examines multiple factors regarding the investigation of a victim ‘s death as a result of gang violence. Some of these factors include race, class, neighborhood and gang affiliation or lack thereof of the victim. Analysis of interviews with police officers, gang members, gang members’ families and/or friends and jail chaplains show that these factors determine the depth of the investigation and the attention a particular murder receives. This paper will also show the attempts made by the chaplain of the Cook County jail to rehabilitate gang members and their families.
Gangs as Institutions and Their Impact on Public Policy
Research concerning gangs that has resulted in state criminal justice policy has been based on differential association theory, social learning theory, and social control theory. This has resulted in policies that address individual-level deviance. This research has ignored treating gangs as a group or organization with its own set of characteristics, behaviors, and pathologies. We argue that proliferation of gangs in the U.S. since the 1980s has occurred not because of the characteristics of individual members but because the gang itself has become institutionalized. Like other social institutions, the proliferation of gangs is dependant upon social factors and characteristics and not the participation of individual members. A better explanation may come from Shaw and McKay’s social disorganization theory which states that communities with high rates of delinquency, and specifically group delinquency, are occupied by those segments of the population whose position is most disadvantageous in relation to the distribution of economic, social, and cultural values. Therefore our hypothesis is that gang activity is dependant on social factors and those counties with abnormal social factors such as abnormally high unemployment and single female headed households will also show higher levels of gang activity. To test this hypothesis we will examine and compare county level data from the National Incident Based Reporting System (NIBRS), the National Crime Victimization Survey (NCVS), and the National Youth Gang Survey (NYGS) to give an understanding of gang proliferation and activity. The General Social Survey (GSS) and Census data will be the base for determining county level independent variables which will be combined to create scales of economic, social, and cultural factors.
Gathering Essentials: Using Interagency Collaboration to Improve Police Efficiency
Advancements in GIS technology have allowed police departments to look for alternatives to increase department efficiency in crime prevention, crime solving, and data analysis, to name a few. Government agencies such as public housing, transportation authorities, public works, etc. have been able to use GIS technology to tract, monitor and update their facilities. Police departments could greatly benefit from these previously collected data; little to no collection cost, quick access, and longitudinal data are a few of the potential advantages. However, confidentiality, intra-agency data sharing policies, and data collection methods may hamper the agencies from easily sharing and utilizing these data. Collaboration between these agencies and the police department could prove to be a symbiotic relationship and allow more prolific data collection. This paper dissects which data are available, the steps needed to commence this collaboration, and some of the problems researchers, agencies, and police departments face when forming partnerships.
Gender, Race, and Class Variation in the Effect of Neighborhood Violence on Violent Deliquency: An Intersectional Analysis of General Strain Theory
In the past few decades, countless youth have been exposed to chronic community violence; yet, few criminological researchers have examined the effect of this neighborhood violence on youths’ own assaultive behavior, and no known researcher has examined the possibility of variation in this effect across intersections of gender, race, and class. By utilizing an intersectional approach to general strain theory, the present study analyzes the effect of neighborhood violence (as a source of negative and noxious stimuli) on individual violence for eight intersections of gender, race, and class, while controlling for other sources of individual-level strain and differential association. The main questions addressed are (1) whether juveniles from violent neighborhoods exhibit more violence than juveniles from nonviolent neighborhoods and (2) whether the magnitude and significance of this effect vary by intersections of gender, race, and class. The self-report data analyzed was collected from 3,214 juveniles as part of the 1995 National Survey of Adolescents (Kilpatrick & Saunders). Results provide support for intersectional variation in the effect of experiencing and witnessing neighborhood violence on youths’ engagement in violent delinquency.
Gender, Religiosity, and Reactions to Strain Among African Americans
Previous research applying Agnew’s general strain theory (GST) to gender differences in distress and deviant coping is limited not only in number but in model specification. First, previous researchers failed to include negative-emotional reactions to strain, the key variable distinguishing GST from other theories. Second, few studies examined gender differences in interactions involving reactions to strain and conditioning factor, for which we focus on religiosity. Specifically, we hypothesize that: (1) sense of control and social support explain the effects of gender and religiosity on distress, (2) religiosity’s distress-buffering effects are larger for women than men, (3) the negative effects of religiosity on aggression are larger for women than men, (4) the positive effects of distress on aggression are larger for men than women, and (5) women are more likely than men to experience inner-directed emotional distress in reaction to strain. Data to test these hyupotheses are drawn from a nationally representative survey of the adult African American population. Structural equation modeling is applied to estimate a latent-variable model and to conduct multi-sample covariance structure analysis, whereas two-stage least squares technique is employed to estimate interactions between two latent variables, distress and religiosity.
Gender, Self-Control, Social Bonds, and Delinquency
This study examines the interaction between social bonds and low self-control and their effects on juvenile delinquency using data collected from a nationally representative sample of high school students. The central question asked in this study is whether the effects of social bonds have the same effects on juvenile delinquency of adolescents with different levels of self-control. To address this question, we compare criminal activities of male and female students in relation to their strength in social bonds and self-control. Contrary to the social control theory, we argue that males and females do not respond to informal control in the same way because they possess different levels of self-control. While social bonds reduce both male and female delinquency, they affect male delinquency more strongly because male adolescents possess higher level of antisocial tendency than female adolescents. Findings from a multivariate regression analysis lend support for these hypotheses. Implications are presented for future research on social bonds as means of crime prevention and control.
Gender and Calling the Police: The Interaction of Victim and Offender Gender
Using National Crime Victimization Survey (NCVS) data for 1992-1994, Felson, Messner and Hoskin (1999) discovered that the decision to call the police by victims of assault is influenced by the gender of the victim and of the offender. Victims and third parties were more likely to call the police when a woman was involved either as an offender or a victim. This effect was stronger than that of the relationship between the victim and the offender. In this study, I further examine the effects of the gender of the offender and of the victim on the notification of the police. Using data on assault incidents from the NCVS for 1992-2000, the effects of victim and offender sex, the relationship between victim and offender, and the seriousness of the offense are explored. Preliminary findings indicate that it is not simply the involvement women as victims or offenders that increases the likelihood of police notification, but whther the incident involves victims and offenders of the same or different gender. Victim and offender gender also influence who (the victim or someone else) calls the police and the reasons that respondents give for either calling the police or not calling them.
Gender and Diversity: New Entanglements in Prime Time Crime
This study examines selected images of gender, race, and class as they are projected against a background of violence in the long running and acclaimed crime series, Law and Order. Within the stylized format of a police procedural, the research question is this: how are actors “doing gender” while they are also effecting or reacting to homicidal violence? The study focuses on “entanglements,” that is staged interactions between actors of diverse backgrounds to provide the rich description required for systematic assessment. Findings suggest that although “Law and Order” involves diverse actors, the series continues to frame gender in stereotypical terms and to locate violence within a matrix of interpersonal relationships.
Gender and Juvenile Justice: What About Girls?
Increases in girls’ arrests have dramatically outstripped those of boys for most of the last decade. Girls now account for 28 percent of juvenile arrests up from 23 percent at the beginning of the last decade, and attention is being drawn to the fact that their arrests for non-traditional, even violent, offenses are among those showing the greatest increases. This paper provides a critical examination of these trends in female juvenile delinquency with a specific focus on current research examining trends in girls’ traditional and non-traditional forms of female delinquency. The treatment of girls in the juvenile justice system, and more specifically trends in the detention of girls, will also be explored. The last decade (1988-1997), saw the number of female delinquency cases involving detention increase by 65 percent increase while boy’s detentions increased by 30 perceny. Traditional delinquency prevention and intervention programs were shaped around boy’s needs and problems, but in recent years federal support has caused a flowering of programmatic innovations as gender specific programming received financial support. There is a growing need to critically assess the effectiveness of these state and federal efforts to make juvenile justice more responsive to girl’s problems.
Gender and Race Differences in Deterrence/Rational Choice Processes: A Consideration of Formal, Informal, and Affective Sanctions
In recent years, the study of deterrence and rational choice processes has included a range of “informal” or “extra-legal” sanctions that appear to influence the likelihood that persons will engage in deviant or criminal acts. In addition to traditional legal sanctions like arrest, conviction, and incarceration, recent models have included a variety of informal sanctions, including self-stigma or shame, embarrassment, loss of the respect of significant others, loss of job or spouse, and other attachment and commitment costs. In addition, recent research on emotions suggests that affective responses to the commission of crimes may also influence the likelihood of offending. However, the literature is bereft of rational choice models that integrate formal, informal, and affective costs and/or benefits. Further, there is very little research that addresses gender and race differences in rational choice processes. We present findings from a survey of 726 incarcerated offenders (363 males and 363 females, 422 blacks and 290 whites) to explore the effect of formal, informal, and affective reinforcers on offenders’ self-reported likelihood of offending once released. Results contribute to the development of a more comprehensive integrated model of rational choice and offer support for the consideration of gender and race differences in deterrence dynamics.
Gender and Rural/Urban Differences in Employment Barriers and Psychological Problems
This study examined the roles gender and rurality play in perceived barriers to employment and psychological problems using a sample of drug-involved offenders. As part of the NIDA-funded Enhancing Drug Court Retention in a Rural State project, drug court participants from either a rural county (43%) or urban county (57%) completed a baseline interview with research staff at program entry that included the Barriers to Employment Success Inventory (BESI) as well as the Brief Symptoms Inventory (BSI). Data from the first 350 drug court participants (71% male, 29% female) enrolled in the study show that females report greater perceived employment barriers and have higher rates of psychological problems than males, but rurality appeared unrelated to BESI or BSI scores. A series of statistically significant rurality X gender interactions showed particularly high BESI and BSI scores for rural females. Logistic regression models predicting current employment status were estimated using gender, rural/urban, and BESI and BSI scores as predictors. Implications of findings are discussed.
Gender Differences in Risk Factors for Physical Violence Between Dating Partners by University Students
It is widely believed that partner-assaults perpetrated by women have a different etiology than partner assaults pepretrated by men. This paper reviews previous research on this issue and reports the results of analysis of the extent to which the 21 risk factors measured by the Partner and Relationships Profile are related to assaulting a dating partner by a sample of 232 men and 334 women university students. Both the previous research and the new study show that half or more of the risk factors investigated apply to both men and women offenders. Thus, social scientists who are seeking to explain partner violence, and practitioners engaged in prevention or treatment programs need to be aware of both the ways in which the etiology of partner violence is similiar for men and women, and the ways in which it is different.
Gender Inequality in Academia
The goal of this roundtable presentation is to facilitate a discussion about the increase in the percentage of women relative to men who are being hired in academia. Despite this increase, there is still a big gap in the types of positions that men and women hold in academia. More specifically, there is still a greater proportion of men who hold equal or higher positions in academia compared to women with equal levels of education and experience who hold positions in academia. These inequalities exist in all disciplines across the board, including criminal justice and criminology. Explanations and potential solutions will be proposed and discussed.
Gender-Neutrality, Gender Stereotypes and Juvenile Justice Policy
Gender-neutral policies do not attend to the needs of female young offenders. Notions of equality, which are highly entrenched in the juvenile justice system, provide the basis for a gender-neutral language in the policies themselves. As a result, programming in residential services is developed without girls in mind, despite research that suggests that boys and girls have very different experiences and needs. Without guidelines as to what programs should require in order to meet girls’ needs, juvenile justice practitioners are left to rely on their own ideas and stereotypes about gender which are often negative. This paper represents a case study of a co-educational facility for young offenders to investigate how gender-neutrality inherent in policies that govern young offender services influence gender stereotypes employed by residential counsellors. Through an analysis of the documents that guide the programming of the residence and interviews with eight residential counsellors, it was found that gender-neutral policies inform gender-neutral programming negating the needs of girls. Workers constructed their opinions of girls based on gender stereotypes. The amelioration of this problem depends on the rethinking of the notions of equality and gender-neutrality in policies such that difference does not represent dominance. Policies that no longer view the male as referent, would not only attend to girls’ specific needs but also provide workers with greater knowledge of girls’ experiences so a reliance on gender stereotypes will no longer be as likely.
Gender-Responsive Strategies: Research, Practice, and Guiding Principles for Women Offenders
The number of women under criminal justice supervision in the United States reached over one million in 2001. In response, contemporary corrections has begun to consider the best way to effectively respond to women offenders. Female offenders are now a significant proportion of all offenders: they comprise 17 percent of the total number of offenders under correctional supervision, or one in every six offenders. These numbers have lead to a reexamination of the ways in which correctional policy and practice affect the female offender. This paper summarizes current knowledge about women in the criminal justice system and develops a set of guidelines designed to improve policy and practice regarding women. Strategies that consider the specifics of women offenders have come to be known as “gender-responsive” approaches. By documenting the importance of gender and the specific differences between female and male offenders in developing supervision and service strategies for women offenders, this paper provides the foundation for a gender-and culturally-responsive criminal justice system
Gender Sensitive Drug Treatment for Women With Children: One-Year Outcomes
This outcome-based study focuses on the short-term effects of gender sensitivity as a critical component in the treatment of women with children who are addicted to crack cocaine and other substances. We used personal interview data obtained from 250 low-income women in the Cleveland Treatment Sample at their onset of treatment between1995-1998 and again one year later to determine the effectiveness of varying treatment programs. Using latent-variable structural equation modeling, we found that entry into gender-sensitive treatment was more likely among women high in intrinsic motivation, in drug use level, and low in home resources for their children. Controlling these selection factors, as well as duration of treatment, women who entered the more gender-sensitive of 12 treatment programs had significantly more hours of aftercare activity, which in turn resulted in reduced drug use.
General Strain Theory: An Analysis of Adult Female Criminality
Robert Agnew’s General Strain Theory (GST) has been rarely applied when explaining adult female criminality as an aspect of social life (Broidy and Agnew, 1997). However, GST is well attuned and applicable, exactly because it does not contain one hypothesis to be tested but many. Now although generalizable, GST is anything but generic. GST contends that there are many specific strains and manners of coping that cultivate violent crime, non-violent crime, and the absence of crime (Agnew, 1992; Broidy and Agnew, 1997). This study examines the relationship between operationalized aspects of Robert Agnew’s GST and adult female crime. The data used were collected from 851 crime-involved, cocaine-dependent women in the Miami, FL area during the time span from 1994 to 1998 (Pottieger and Tressell, 1999). Logistic regression models were constructed to test which types of strain as outlined by Agnew (1992; Broidy and Agnew, 1997) have the most significant effects upon adult female commission of violent or non-violent crime. As an aside akin to Agnew’s theory, the unique older age and varied ethnic distribution of this particular dataset also allows for a quantitative exploration of Katherine Newman’s (1993) qualitative hypothesis, which holds that one’s birth place in the baby boomer generation (1946 to 1964) is a life perception strain in and of itself.
General Strain Theory: An Empirical Examination Using the Rochester Youth Development Study
Agnew’s general strain theory reconceptualized early iterations of the strain perspective by generalizing strain to include negative relations with others rather than just strain arising from striving for unattainable, but culturally mandated goals. The types of strain derived from general strain theory include a broad assortment of events and situations that are classified into: (a) blockage of positively valued goals, (b) presence of negative stimuli, and (c) loss of positively valued stimuli. Although the initial statements of Agnew’s theory have received some empirical support, the theory continues to develop and evolve. Agnew recently made more contemporary statements on general strain theory to clarify categories of strain and to discuss which strains are most likely to covary with delinquency. Using data from the Rochester Youth Development Study, the relationship between several different dimensions of general strain and delinquency are explored. The Rochester project is an ongoing longitudinal investigation of a representative community sample of adolescents. Measures of strain available in the Rochester project include not only more traditional disjunction scores, but also measures of aversive family, neighborhood, and school environments, as well as a series of negative life events. Preliminary bivariate analyses indicate that each of these dimensions of strain is related to subsequent self-reported delinquency in late adolescence.
General Theory of Crime and Perceptions of Women and Sex: A Comparative Analysis of Sex Offenders and Non-Sex Offenders
Sexual assault has long been regarded by Americans as one of the most serious violent crimes. While many studies have been done on sexual assault, relatively few have included sex offenders. The purpose of this study is to find out whether the behavior of sex offenders adheres to that predicted by Gottfredson and Hirschi in their General Theory of Crime (1990). In addition, we consider the respondents’ perceptions concerning women’s sexual behaviors and attitudes. An analytical comparison was drawn between non-sex offenders (n=94) and sex offenders (n=201) residing in two medium security Oklahoma prisons on measures of self-control and criminal offending. This study utilized adaptations of the Grasmick scale, the Burt rape myth scale, and Scully and Marolla’s interpersonal violence and perceptions of women and sex scales to determine offender attitudes regarding sexual assault and levels of self-control. Consideration is also given to the reliability of the Grasmick scale as a measure of self-control and the applicability of the General Theory of Crime to an offender population.
Genetic Information and Crime Investigation: Forensic DNA Profiling and Databasing in Comparative Perspective
The investigation and prosecution of crime by state agencies in modern society increasingly depend upon scientific advances to expand the collection and analysis of ‘contact trace material’ recovered by forensic examiners at scenes of crime. Developments in DNA technology constitutes the most recent such advance. This paper considers the history and consequences of two differing understandings of the use of genetic identification for the investigation of crime: genetic identification as ‘criminal intelligence’ and genetic identification as ‘prosecutorial evidence’. Differences in the US and UK use of DNA profiling are described and the developments of the respective national databases (CODIS and NDNAD) are considered. The social, ethical and public policy aspects of the use of such genetic databases – especially their specific contributions to novel forms of bodily surveillance in contemporary society – are outlined and discussed.
Geographic Information Systems (GIS) as an Administrative Tool for Police Agencies
In recent years, criminologists and police practitioners alike have turned to the use of Geographic Information Systems (GIS) in order to identify crime patterns using various methods such as hot spots analysis. However, there has been relatively little focus on the utility of GIS for police administrators. What research exists on this topic has examined citizen complaints as a method of identifying problematic officers. The current research seeks to extend this idea by using GIS to examine incident and arrest data. Their usefulness will be demonstrated through analysis using ArcView and CrimeStat software to identify neighborhoods with problems of particular concern to police administrators. By aggregating these problems to the neighborhood level, we will be able to identify areas that are particularly in need of community policing programs or other targeted police-community relations efforts. Specifically, crimes that are related to problems with police authority (i.e. fleeing and eluding police, resisting arrest, obstructing an officer) will be highlighted to underscore how police managers can identify problematic areas in the hopes that policies can be revised to address these problems.
Girls’ and Gender Issues in Adolescent Substance Abuse Treatment
A large and growing number of offenders are mandated to alcohol and drug treatment in lieu of incarceration or as a condition of probation, and this is increasingly true for juveniles. Feminist experts have long argued, and clinical experience has substantiated, that females have different treatment needs from males, and better outcomes in gender-separate programs. Furthermore, on the adult side, there is a major federal investment in women’s perinatal substance abuse programs, although these serve only pregnant women and newly parenting women. In the prevention arena, adolescent girls’ issues are being studied, and, in the juvenile justice system, addressing gender disparities in confinement is a policy priority. There is a steady climb in the numbers and proportions of juvenile drug arrestees (and adult ones) who are female. All these factors would argue that in the small but developing field of publicly funded adolescent alcohol and drug treatment, attention should be paid to gender issues and girls’ specific needs. Yet the experiences of recent policy and applied evaluation work by the presenter suggests that this is not yet the case. A feminist policy approach to addressing these issues must go beyond demanding equal treatment access for girls. It should question the gendered nature of current treatment methods, and, more globally, the fairness and rationality of current legal, social service, and public health responses to youths’ drug-related problems.
Globalization, Organized Crime and Money Laundering: An Interdisciplinary Examination
The integration of disciplinary thought has become an essential criterion in the study and attempted explanations of organized crime. With this premise in mid, this paper will integrate theories of globalization and interdependence into the criminological and historical phenomena of organized crime. This integration will transpire through an analysis of Russian organized crime via its socioeconomic history and criminal endeavors and the global response to these organized criminal syndicates. More specially, the paper will examine Russian organized crime’s involvement in money laundering activities and the illicit transactions processed through the Bank of New York and its Russian banking conspirators. Data will be collected from international news sources, government documentation and governmental or agency hearing transcripts.
Globalization in the U.S.: Feminist Explorations of the Implications for Criminal Justice Policy
Globalization generally refers to the significant economic transformations that have characterized the past several decades: much of the literature has focused on globalization in developing nations. However, globalization has also taken hold in the U.S. and effects social structures and public policy. This paper presents a feminist exploration of globalization within the United States and the implications for criminal justice policy. Economic transformations have been accompanied by a changing role for the state, particularly the way that the decline of state welfare functions has corresponded with heightened repressive functions leading to increasing inequality for some populations, increased criminalization of personal adaptation strategies, and the growth of social control and incarceration. Globalization has also created new opportunities for collective action and social movement activity via new information technologies. Increased repression and resistance are both marked by gender, race/ethnic, and class divides and bridges.
Globalization of Russian, Colombian, and Chinese Organized Crime: A Quantitative Analysis
Organized crime has been a problem of the world’s independent nations for more than 500 years. As organized crime globalizes to become transnational the problem can only continue to burgeon. The research question addressed in this study is, “To what extent has organized crime globalized in the previous 10 years?” The data source and methodology for this analysis consists of a content analysis of eight major newspapers from eight industrialized countries, including Russia, Japan, China, the United States, England, Canada, Colombia, and France. A ten-year time series analysis of media coverage is undertaken for the purposes of examining the globalization hypothesis. Russian, Colombian, and Chinese organized crime groups are analyzed in the analysis under the assumption that an increase in the amount of media coverage in the previous 10 years is indicative of the globalization of organized crime hypothesis.
Globalizing Nodes of Restorative Justice
Global civil society works through micro processes of dialogue as described in Presser’s paper. These micro processes rarely take over national criminal justice politics though they colonise them in limited ways. The dialogue normatively valued in Presser’s paper mostly occur in the kinds of nodes described in Shearing’s paper. There is in addition a global social movement for restorative justice. Its research nodes, which are among the things that glue it together, gather at places like meetings of the American Society of Criminology. Global social movement politics in the contemporary world is about networking nodal governance. The global social movement for restorative justice assists denizens with “knowing how to node”. It networks nodes through conferences, the internet and distinctively by hospitality to travellers who sit in on restorative justice conferences and circles that share micro experiences. This develops a global vocabulary of shared emotions. And a culturally differentiated vocabulary that is to varying degrees mutually understood as well – mana, ubuntu. Instead of seeking to take over national justice systems, the global social movement for restorative justice in some senses seeks to colonise it with difference infiltrated through the ideal of dialogue. Networked nodality perhaps poses lower risks of beautiful theories turning into ugly practices compared to projects that aspire to conquest over state institutions. Nevertheless, restorative justice advocates need to think more clearly about what forms of state support and partnership they must cultivate to be effective. This involves strategic collaborations with fragments of the crumbling Westphalian state. The micro-macro method advanced has some potential for understanding how transformative social movements can be influential. In addition, it is worth considering that it is not only true that some of the more promising interventions for organizing security are developed nodally; it is also true that some of the most damaging ways of organizing insecurity are managed nodally – terrorism, gangs, protection rackets, warlordism, drug markets, gun running, international tax avoidance/evasion strategies, people smuggling, corruption of banking systems. If the latter know how to node transnationally, while the US and British states believe they can solve these problems by behaving like Westphalian powers, what prospects security? The US spending more on its national defence and security than all 180 other states in the world system combined will not even make sense according to a Westphalian logic. Security from all kinds of violence for all in the world system requires not looking to the hyper-punitive Westphalian states as the solutions, but seeing them as the problem. Mary Kaldor puts us on the promising path in her New and Old Wars. This is the trajectory of nodal networking by seeking out islands of civility for global social movement (and IMF) support in the midst of a sea of violence. This was the strategy that toppled Milosovitch in Serbia; American bombs actually set back the cause of democracy in Serbia. Similarly in Palestine, a social movement for peace that seeks to expand islands of civility is the hopeful way forward; donating US tanks to the forces of incivility makes things worse. Finally, in the face of the hard national cases of the extraordinarily punitive histories of criminal justice in the high crime societies of the US (Presser) and South Africa (Shearing) networking nodes of transformative justice in schools, communities and workplaces is the slower but surer way forward than mounting assaults against the cracking but still formidable castle walls of the Westphalian state.
Good Guns, Bad Guns, Gender and DGUs
Assault rifle appearance may have psychological import in legal proceedings, keying aggressive ideations leading to harsher sentencing. These effects may vary by gender. We presented simulated jurors with defensive gun uses: home burglary, vandalism and a Halloween prank. A defendant has shot someone, the firearm used varies and self-defense is claimed. In all studies, an assault rifle (AR-15) was compared to other firearms. In the third study, subjects saw a videotape of the trial and guns being fired. In the first study (home burglary), subjects were more likely to convict a homeowner who used an AR-15. Women were punished more harshly than men if they used the assault rifle. The second and third study, vandalism and Halloween prank, found no gun type effect. Sentences were higher and ceiling effects may have washed out a gun effect. The increased salience of the firearm in the Halloween Prank scenario (due to the video) did not overcome the general ceiling effect. The results are congruent with social cognitive theories of attribution. Women may be sentenced more harshly in the more ambiguous home defense DGU because use of an assault rifle violates gender stereotype. Violators seem more culpable and blame is transferred to them.
Governmentality and Crime Control
The Foucault-inspired governmentality perspective has been influential in recent critical criminology. The work of Garland, O’Malley, Feeley and Simon and others has contributed to the creation of narratives about crime control and criminology that highlight their role in creating new modes of governance through crime, beyond the parameters of the state. However, a range of criticisms has been advanced against this perspective. Many of these criticisms relate to the overly rational and abstract nature of the theoretical narrative with its focus on general trends in crime control policy and practice in the liberal democracies and relative neglect of the role of political agency and effects of local political economic and cultural conditions. Drawing on a series of studies by the author of offending and crime control practices in a middle England region this paper argues for the need to align the methods of this approach with realist institutional analysis at local levels. This provides a set of tools to help elucidate the links between general trends and local practices of governance through crime control.
Graduated Sanctions and Rewards at Four New York State Drug Courts: An Analysis of the Relationship Between Infractions and Sanctions and Achievements and Rewards
A model of graduated sanctions and rewards is considered an essential component in a successful drug treatment court. But do courts consistently employ this model? This paper will examine the relationship of infractions to sanctions, and of achievements to rewards, in four of the largest and oldest adult drug courts in New York State – Brooklyn, Queens, Suffolk, and Syracuse. The nature and level of responses to given infractions and achievements will be analyzed, as well as introducing the dynamic of jail sanctions. Two models of responses to infractions and achievements will be considered – the graduated model and the isolated model. In the graduated model, responses to events (both positive and/or negative) are seen from the perspective of the entire compliance behavior of the participant, taking into consideration not only the instant event, but the severity of the infraction and where this event occurs in the sequence of other infractions. In the graduated model, a participant that commits the same infraction over and over will see increasingly more serious sanctions with each subsequent infraction, even if the infractions are all of the same type. In the isolated model, each infraction or achievement is viewed as an isolated event and sanctioned or rewarded appropriately. With this model, the participant that commits the same infraction over and over should receive the same sanction every time. In general, drug courts do not use this second method, the isolated model, but analysis shows that they do not exclusively follow the graduated model either. If the graduated and isolated models are on the two opposite ends of the spectrum, all four of the examined drug courts fall at different points somewhere in the middle of the continuum.
Graffiti and the Broken Windows Metaphor: Reflections of Inequality and Injustice
According to the broken windows thesis, graffiti vandalism not only signals neighborhood disorder and decay but also invites more serious criminal acts. Graffiti in Bloomingon, Indiana, was defined as ciminal vandalism except for the graffiti by Indiana University’s fraternities and sorities. Greek graffiti and more serious Greek crime received little criminal attention. If the broken windows thesis is correct, then all graffiti vandalism (including Greek spray painting) acts as a signal of neglect and future, more serious criminal behavior. As my study suggests, application of the broken windows theory of crime may reflect biases and prejudices built into the hierarchial class structure of society rather than reflect societal-wide predictors of more serious crime.
Great Expectations? Democratic Transformation and Criminal Justice
One of the great virtues of liberal democracy is its relative stability, which can be sustained only by commitment to the rule of law and the institutions that carry it out. Reliance on police and courts, however, risks distancing governance from the governed in ways that defeat the core aims of democracy, especially in societies that have only recently embraced it. This dilemma is fundamental to the question of how much can be expected of criminal justice systems in countries making the transition from authoritarian rule to democracy. This paper will present a sequential model for contributions that criminal justice institutions can make to deepening democracy in transitional countries. While several countries will be discussed, the primary focus will be on post-apartheid South Africa.
Greed, State Beneficence, and Crime
Both Messner and Rosenfeld (1994 and Currie (1997) contend that as market economices mature, values that emphasize the importance of securing ealth through conventional means, as well as values that define being successful through the accomplishment of more altruistic endeavors, lose their capacity to regulate human passions and behaviors. Ostensibly, individuals are freed from the constraints of the larger moral order to use the “most technically efficient means” (Messner and Rosenfeld, 1994:85) or “whatever means will suffice” (Currie, 1997:163) to further their material interests. Empirically, each of these approaches implicate macro-economic pressures, as evidenced by high lebels of income inequality, in the production of high rates of violence crime among nation-states. Although these two perspectives are in accord with respect to the societal level forces that promote violence, there is substantial disagreement between them concerning the ability of the state to assuage the criminogenic impact of the pursuit of financial rewards. Specifically, Messner and Rosenfeld (1994:99, 108) suggest that governmental efforts to reduce crime by the redistribution of wealth and/or employment opportunities (e.g., Lyndon Johnson’s “war on poverty”) may serve to reinforce the cultural induced preoccupation with monetary success goals. Consequently, governmental efforts to reduce economic inequality, though laudable for other reasons, would not be expected to reduce the level of violence crime within nations. In contrast, Currie (1997:168) maintains that the redistribution of economic resources and opportunities serves to integrate individuals into the greater social system, strengthen local communities, and increase the level of informal social control. Thus, according to this perspective, state-sponsored efforts to reduce relative and absolute economic deprivation are predicted to reduce the level of violence within nations. The present investigation seeks to evaluate the contradictory hypotheses derived from Messner and Rosenfeld (1994) and Currie (1997). Specifically, we will examine the impact of governmental transfers on the leve of homicide for a sample of nations (n = 50). The multivariate models will include the standard array of statistical controls (e.g., population size, population density, GDP per capita, income inequality, percent urban) and be subjected to the usual tests of model adequacy (e.g., tests for heteroskedasticity, multicollinearity, functional form, and outliers).
Guilty Until Proven Innocent: Conviction Orientation, Racial Attitudes, and Support for Capital Punishment
A long-standing objection to the Death Penalty is that it has been disproportionately applied to African Americans. Although the evidence suggests that sentencing inequities have been substantially reduced in recent years, concerns about this problem persist. A more recent objection to capital punishment centers on the argument that standards for selecting death qualified juries bias such juries in the favor of the prosecution. This research investigates the empirical connections between these two objections by simultaneously analyzing the connection between support for the death penalty and attitudes suggesting racial prejudice on the one hand and those that support a conviction prone orientation on the other. Multivariate analysis of data from the 1985, 1990, and 1996 General Social Surveys suggest that those who are more likely to be allowed to serve on death penalty cases are not only more likely to harbor racially prejudiced attitudes, but are also more likely to favor the conviction of innocent defendants over letting guilty ones go free.
“Hardening the Target” in Cyberspace: Assessing Technology, Methods, and Information for Committing and Combating Cyber rime
Computer technology has dramatically altered the criminal justice terrain such that enterprising and opportunistic criminals have consciously turned to the computer to commit their illegal acts in situations in which the computer serves as the instrument of the crime, the means by which the crime is committed, as well as in cases in which the victim’s computer, or computer system, is the target, or objective, of the act. The presence of new computer technology aids cybercriminals from hackers to cyberterrorists, offenders who, to a great degree, depend upon the lack of technological skills of law enforcement to successfully commit the offenses and escape undetected. The goal of this paper is to provide insights into how to enhance abilities to effectively control computer crimes. Drawing from lessons learned from routine activities theory, the paper stresses the importance of reducing the “skill distance” between what computer criminals have learned to successfully commit their crimes and what law enforcers need to know to successfully bring these offenders to justice. The paper explains the role of “target hardening” to close the gap between offender capabilities and those of law enforcement to counteract the criminal acts and help dissuade decisions leading to future criminal acts. The authors present information generated through the NIJ Law Enforcement Needs Assessment Study, the Air Force Forensic Information Warfare Study and through the authors’ survey of law enforcement practitioners familiar with computer forensic tools. This survey was designed to determine what computer forensic tools law enforcement practitioners use most frequently, what are the perceived strengths of the tools and what are the perceived weaknesses. The authors have relied upon empirical data from these three studies for guidance in identifying those needs considered most critical for improving computer crime investigative skills and most essential for reclaiming the technological advantage over cybercriminals.
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Has Roe v. Wade Reduced U.S. Crime Rates? Examining the Longitudinal Effects of Unwanted Childbearing on Parenting and Criminal Behavior
U.S. crime rates have dropped steadily since the early 1990s, and one explanation receiving increasing attention is the legalization of abortion that occurred with the Roe v. Wade decision in 1973. In a recent analysis of state-level variations in abortion and crime rates, Donahue and Levitt (2001) concluded that as much as 50 percent of the crime reduction in the 1990s is explained by the greater ability after Roe v. Wade to terminate unwanted pregnancies. The key underlying premise of their argument is that such pregnancies should produce children with substantially higher lifetime risks of criminality. The purpose of this paper is to empirically examine this premise. We use data from the National Survey of Children (NSC) to assess the longitudinal effects of unwantede childbearing on a wide range of outcomes, including the quality of parenting, the level of childhood antisocial behavior, and the level of criminal behavior during adolescence and early adulthood. NSC respondents were born between 1965 and 1969, at least four years prior to Roe v. Wade. Respondents and their mothers were first interviewed in 1976 (at which point, mothers were asked whether their child was the result of an unwanted pregnancy), and then reinterviewed in 1981 and 1987.
Hate Crime in the United States from 1992 – 1999: A Time Series Analysis of National Uniform Crime Reports Data
This study examines the influence of time (t) (independent variable) on the frequency of hate crime reports (dependent variable) using Time Series Analysis. The objective of this study is to isolate the specific impact of trends, seasonality, triggering events, cyclical patterns, and random variation on hate crime reports for the inclusive years of 1992 – 1999. The results of this research are applicable to the policy and practice of hate crime data collection and dissemination, and in predicting future hate crime data collection trends and needs on both the state and national levels.
Hate Crime Legislation: A Psycholegal Analysis
Few would deny that prejudice, discrimination, and bias-related violence have plagued the United States since its founding. Similarly, there is a long history of legislation, both criminal and civil, aimed at reducing these social problems. One line of legal intervention in bias-related crimes is the relatively recent trend in “hate crime” (also known as bias crime and ethnic intimidation) legislation. Since the 1980s, every state in the U.S. has enacted some variation of a hate crime statute. This type of legislation has repeatedly fallen under the fire of criticism, mainly from the perspective that these laws violate Constitutional rights. The purpose of this paper is to discuss this legislation and its psycholegal implications for policy. First, a definition of hate crimes and a succinct history of hate crime legislation will be provided. Hate crime legislation at the state-level will be discussed, followed by a brief consideration of federal-level legislation; and the constitutional issues surrounding this area will be summarized. Most importantly, hate crimes and hate crime legislation will be analyzed from a psycholegal perspective, and the implications of these psycholegal considerations for policy will be discussed.
Hate Crime Victims in Canada
Hate crimes have become a global concern over the past decade, yet the majority of research has focused on the U.S. or Europe. In addition, much of the research has focused on offenders. While this has lead to official action towards offending, such as the Hate Crime Statistics Act of 1990, our understanding of victims is still limited. What we know about the hate crime victims comes from official data. Official data is limited as it relies on reported crimes, which victimization research has shown is only a fraction of all criminal offenses. Hate crimes victims may be even more reluctant to report victimization for fear of repercussions, particularly those who are victimized based on sexual orientation. The 1999 Canadian General Social Survey (Cycle 13 – Victimization, n = 25,876) offers a unique opportunity to learn about hate crime victims. Other than the particular category for which they were victimized, little has been done to understand the characteristics of hate crimes and their victims. The Canadian GSS has 10,087 victimization incidents with 328 respondents reporting their incident was due to a hatred of some aspect of their life. In addition to learning more about victims of hate crimes, we are able to compare them to other crime victims to see if there are lifestyle differences.
Heroin Prescription as a Crime Prevention Measure
In the early 1990ies, Switzerland’s cities had received world-wide media attention through their “needle-parks”. From 1994, police measures against open drug scenes were combined with widespread prescription of heroin (to approximately 800 addicts) and methadone (involving 15,000 addicts, out of an estimated population of 20-30,000 regular heroin users). The program has been evaluated from 1995 to 2001, involving about 1,200 subjects and using police and court records as well as self-report and victimization measures. The results showed a substantial and lasting effect on crime rates, both at the individual and at the macro level.
HIV/AIDS Education in Prison: A Window of Opportunity
At year’s end 1999, the number of AIDS cases in prison was more than five times the rate of the U.S. general population (Bureau of Justice Statistics 2001). Of the total number of HIV-positive state and federal prison inmates (25,757), New York housed more than one quarter (7,000). Yet outside of prisons, offenders are not routinely exposed to HIV education and prevention programs. As part of a NIDA-funded research study, interviews (n=300) are being conducted with offenders at various stages of the New York State criminal justice system. One goal is to examine differences among parolees, prisoners and probationers with regard to involvement in HIV risk behaviors (e.g. High risk sexual activity and injection drug use), and overall knowledge of HIV/AIDS related issues. We hypothesize that, with respect to risk taking, parolees will show greater restraint and responsibility (in the six months prior to incarceration) compared to prisoners and probationers. With respect to HIV/AIDS knowledge, we hypothesize that parolees and prisoners will have a higher level of knowledge than probationers about HIV transmission and risk behaviors, due to the recent exposure to prison-based HIV education programs. Offender characteristics related to risk behaviors and HIV knowledge will also be examined and compared among the three samples.
HIV/AIDS Risk Behaviors Among Juvenile Detainees: Prevalence, Patterns, and Public Health Policy
AIDS cases continue to increase among minorities and disadvantaged populations, groups also overrepresented in the juvenile justice system. The literature suggests that detained youth engage in serious HIV/AIDS risk behaviors, yet there are few studies that examine risk behaviors by demographic subgroups. These data are critical to effective intervention. We administered the AIDS Risk Behavior Assessment (ARBA) to 800 randomly selected juvenile detainees, 340 females and 460 males, ages 10-18 years. We present the prevalence of 32 sex and drug HIV/AIDS risk behaviors by gender, race/ethnicity, and age. We found that detained youth engage in many HIV/AIDS risk behaviors and do so at early ages. Sixty percent of our subjects engaged in 10 or more risk behaviors. Nearly two-thirds of the youngest males had vaginal sex. Further, we found that rates differ significantly by gender and race/ethnicity. Our results indicate that the public health system must provide interventions for detained youth, must intervene early, and must target specific patterns of risk across gender and race/ethnicity. Many youth at particular risk for HIV/AIDS – youth who use drugs, runaways – will eventually cycle through the juvenile justice system. HIV/AIDS risk behaviors among detained youth are community health problem, not just a problem for detention centers.
HIV Interventions With Probationers: A Promising Model and Some Caveats for Effective Interventions
Earlier work by our group found that probationers in Delaware have levels of injection drug use, other serious drug use, and rates of risky sexual behaviors and combinations of both drug and sexual risk behaviors that approach those we have observed in prison populations. Since probationers have more opportunities to engage in risk behaviors than do prisoners, the importance of HIV interventions with probationers becomes readily apparent. In this paper we examine a sample of 500 probationers representative of the supervised probationer population in Delaware. The sample respondents receive a baseline interview, then they are randomly selected to receive either the NIDA standard HIV intervention or a focused intervention based on a cognitive thought-mapping model. Intervention boosters are offered at two follow-up intervals in the following 3 months, and participants are reinterviewed at 6 months. In this paper, we first examine the interventions’ effectiveness in changing attitudes and behaviors at the 6 month interview. The data support the conclusion that the focused intervention produces more risk reduction than the NIDA standard. Then, we examine putative predictors that may specify or interpret the intervention effects, using a series of stepwise OLS and logistic regression models including several additive and interactive covariates. Discussion centers on examining the correlates that seem to specify the impact of the interventions and the need to consider such factors in selecting the appropriate interventions for probationers.
HIV Risk Among Offenders: Assessing the Disconnect Between HIV Eduction and Offender Knowledge, Perceptions, and Behaviors
The incidence of new HIV/AIDS cases has disproportionately increased among urban poor and people of color, with drug-related risk behaviors the most significant transmission vector. These same groups are also at high risk for arrest and incarceration. HIV education and risk reduction strategies based in the criminal justice system have the potential to reduce the incidence of HIV infections and transmission of HIV to uninfected individuals. Yet offender access to comprehensive, effective, culturally- and gender-specific HIV education/prevention programs is limited. Moreover, there are limited data about offenders’ HIV-related service needs, the impact of HIV education, barriers to HIV service delivery, and model program structures. In this paper, data from interviews with 300 New York City prison inmates, parolees, and probationers (210 male, 90 female) are analyzed to assess the prevalence of HIV sex- and drug-risk behaviors, exposure to HIV services, views about the value of these services, and barriers to accessing care. These findings are interpreted in the context of data from interviews with 70 staff of criminal justice, HIV prevention, and drug treatment agencies, and a review of HIV service delivery in the criminal justice system, to assess the disconnect between offender experiences/needs and actual service delivery.
HIV Risk Behaviors Among Probationers in Rural Kentucky: Preliminary Findings
The prevalence of HIV/AIDs and other sexually transmitted diseases is comparatively high among offenders. Nationally, approximately 2% of jail and prison inmates are HIV positive (Hammett, Harmon, & Maruschak, 1999). HIV seroprevalence rates vary across state correctional systems, and a recent study of drug-involved Kentucky prisoners showed that nearly 4% tested positive for HIV (Leukefeld, Staton, Hiller, et al., in press). As part of the NIDA-funded HIV Risk Reduction among Rural Drug Abusers Project, felony probationers in 29 rural Appalachian counties in Kentucky are being randomly assigned to one of two HIV prevention interventions, NIDA standard or a rural-focused intervention. This study parallels another HIV prevention project being conducted in Delaware on probationers in urban settings. Data from the first 125 probationers (72% male, 28% female) entered into the Kentucky study protocol showed that these probationers had high rates of HIV-risk behaviors. Overall, 18% had previously injected drugs and 90% had had unprotected sex in the preceding 6 months. Twenty-one percent had had a sexually transmitted disease. Higher rates of risk behavior among men were associated with recent alcohol use and receiving public support. Higher rates of risk behavior among women were associated with recent crack and/or sedative use.
Homicide in China: Theoretical Implications of Cross-Cultural Analysis
The paper will provide a general introduction to an ongoing investigation of homicide in Greater China. Also, a specific description of the nature of homicide in Hong Kong [1989-1998] available from an earlier study is provided and compared with preliminary findings from several Chinese cities participating in ongoing research. The role of gender, intimacy, criminal enterprise and gang/triad activities are examined and deployed to reconsider the relevance of motive and relationship in the context of cultures that stress communitarianism rather than individuality. Problems of comparative research are highlighted and the relevance of lethal violence as a form of specific or symbolic cultural expression is discussed in relation to theories of violence.
Homicide Rates in South East Los Angeles: The Impact of 20 Years of Demographic Change
Our research evaluates changes in homicide between 1980 and 2000 in the Southeast area of Los Angeles, an impoverished area with a history of chronic violence in which Latinos have supplanted African Americans as the majority group. Using micro-level data from police case files, we assess changes in the level and characteristics of homicide in light of the changing demographics of place, paying particular attention to not only race and ethnic distributions but also age structure. We utilize data on ethnic composition kept by local public housing offices and by public schools in the area to capture annual changes in neighborhood composition. Spatial autocorrelation and regression will also be used to explain spatial characteristics of homicides over the 20-year period. We suspect that significant demographic change will overlap the major shifts in the homicide rate, and will also be reflected in the housing projects. We also anticipate that homicides will cluster in areas where the shift from the African American majority to a Latino majority is most drastic.
Homicide Victimization Among Serious Youthful Offenders: The Victim-Offender Overlap in Three Samples of California Youth Authority Wards
Although much research in criminology focuses on either offenders or victims, attention is turning toward the considerable “overlap” existing between the populations of criminal offenders and victims. Using mortality data obtained from the California Vital Statistics, this paper examines the relationship between criminal offending and the risk of homicide victimization among three samples of offenders released from the California Youth Authority in 1981-82, 1986-87, and 1991-92. As of December 31, 1999, 331 of the total 5,101 cases were found to be deceased, with 180 of these deaths classified as homicides (54.4% of the deaths). Significant differences in the risk of homicide victimization were found among the three samples, with the 1991-92 sample accumulating nearly as many homicides as the 1981-82 sample. After separating the offenders into latent classes (on the basis of their prior offending trajectories) using the mixed Poisson methods of Nagin and Land, the Cox proportional hazards survival models were applied to test whether high-rate offenders were at a higher risk of homicide victimization. Results indicate that while the high-rate offenders had marginally higher risks, variables representing the frequency of violent offending/drug sales only, gang membership, ethnicity, and region of residence were much better predictors of risk.
Hostile Women: The Psychosocial Costs of Power, Control and the Occupational Personality
This paper examines the interrelationship of social structure and personality. The research draws on power-control theory to explore the effect of relational class on antisocial behavior in a sample of adults. I hypothesize that women in the professional class will be more likely to be antisocial relative to non-professional women; that there will be a gender convergence in such “masculine-type” behaviors in the professional class; and that professional women in successive cohorts will be more antisocial than women from earlier cohorts. Results suggest a relationship between occupational subculture and the “working personality.” In the patriarchal nature of the professional environment focused on competition, men and women may tend to exhibit similar personality traits. According to this study’s findings women who occupy positions of power and authority in the workplace (professional) are at increased risk of antisocial behavior than are professional men. The fact that male managers have levels of antisocial behavior that are lower than female managers may suggest a selection process that favors the hiring of relatively aggressive women and relatively non-aggressive men for management roles.
How Criminal Justice Can Benefit From Public Health Perspectives
Since the 1970s, public health advocates have responded to violence and drug use as they might any other epidemic: by identifying risk factors and focusing on prevention. Despite their efforts, policymakers and the public continue to rely heavily on law enforcement and punishment to address both problems. This paper discusses how basic public health principles (including the concepts of primary, secondary, and tertiary prevention and health promotion/harm reduction) might inform and improve upon the CJS’s response to drug use and violence.
How Many of the Offspring Born to Teenage Fathers are Produced by Repeat Serious Delinquents?
Background: Recent studies have found an association between teenage fatherhood and delinquency. Yet, it is not clear whether there is a dose-response relationship between the severity of delinquency and teenage fatherhood. This paper quantifies the public health ipact of serious delinquency on the risk of impregnation and teenage fatherhood among urban, adolescent males. Methods: Using data up to age 19, rates of sexual activity, impregnation and fatherhood are compared among three groups: minor/non-delinquents, moderate delinquents, and repeat serious delinquents. Results: The results demonstrate a dose-response relationship between delinquency and age of onset of sexual activity, whereby more serious delinquents began having sex at younger ages. Rates of impregnation and fatherhood were twice as high among repeat serious delinquents as compared to moderate and minor/non-delinquents. Repeat serious delinquents were also more likely than others to father multiple children; of the children produced by teenage fathers in this study, 65% were fathered by repeat serious delinquents. Using epidemiologic measures of association, almost 40% of teenage fatherhood int he total population appeared attributable to repeated serious delinquency. By age 19, repeat serious delinquents continued to be at greater risk for fathering children, as they were continuing to have unsafe sex more frequently and with more partners. Conclusions: These findings suggest that efforts to prevent or intervene on serious juvenile delinquency are also likely to affect the occurrence of teenage fatherhood, as well as delinquency in future generations.
How Schools Generate, Inhibit, and Organize Youth Violence
While most youth violence occurs outside of school, a large portion does, either directly on school property, or in the immediate vicinity. Thus, while it is true, as school advocates maintain, that schools are generally safer than the streets, it is also true that there is no comparable institutional location for adults in which there is such a concentration of violence and aggression. This paper, drawing on case studies of both ordinary and extraordinary school violence, discusses the social organization of youth violence from the perspective of the different roles that schools play in the everyday lives of adolescents and the routine activities of the communities in which they live. Implications for prevention and control are identified.
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Identifying Street Level Drug Markets and Their Relationships to Facilities
This study examines street-level retail drug markets and their location in relationship to facilities in Newark, NJ. Rational choice, routine activity, and environmental theories serve as a guide for determining where drug markets are likely to occur. Using geographic information system (GIS) technology, arrest data from 2001 was analyzed. Density maps were created to identify concentrations of drug arrests, and these locations were then compared to public housing locations, schools, major street arteries, grocery stores, liquor stores, public transportation, and parks. Selected sites were observed to further understand the interaction between these drug markets and the facilities at the location.
Identifying the Prevalence and Correlates of Ecstasy and Other Club Drug (EOCD) Use Among High School Seniors
Media reports have suggested that the use of “club drugs,” such as lysergic acid diethylamide (*LS), Ketamine hydrochloride (Ketamine), Gamma hydroxybutyrate (GHB), and 3,4-methylenedioxymethaphetaine (MDMA or “ecstasy”), is increasing among youth across the United States. Unfortunately, little scientific evidence exists to support the contention that the use of ecstasy and other club drugs (EOCD) use is a prodigious problem in the United States. In the current study, we examine EOCD-using behaviors of 1,561 high school seniors surveyed in 2000 through the Monitoring the Future (MTF) study. prevalence estimates of EOCD use are generated and associations between EOCD use, demographic characteristics, and alcohol and other drug (AOD) use are explored.
Identifyiong the Structural Correlates of African-American Killings: What Can We Learn From Data Disaggregation?
The present study extends our understanding of the structural determinants of African-American killings by analyzing the impact of key socio-economic and demographic factors on disaggregated black homicide rates in neighborhoods across the city of St. Louis. The findings reveal that 1) there is significant variation within black homicides in terms of motive, victim and offender characteristics, victim/offender relationship, and type of death, 2) concentrated disadvantage is significantly associated with some, but not all, types of black killings, and 3) residential instability is not significantly related to most black killings but has a small negative effect on gang homicide. The findings reinforce the necessity of disaggregating homicide rates to understand the race-violence relationship.
Identity and Adolescent Drug Use: The Influence of Reflected Appraisals by Teachers
In this paper, we study the relationship between the academic identity of high school students and drug use. Academic identity is measured in terms of the students’ perceptions of their ability and the reflected appraisals of their teachers. Additional measures of identity, such as peer reflectted appraisals, are also analyzed. The various measures of identity, based on symbolic interactionist theory, are significant correlates of adolescent drug use.
“If I Can’t Have You, No One Can”: Further Exploration of Estrangement Increasing the Risk of Intimate Partner Femicide
Results from the NIH, NIJ and CDC funded 12 city intimate partner femicide (IPF) case control study further supported the importance of the relationship state of estrangement as a risk factor for this type of homicide. Estrangement, operationalized as the woman leaving an intimate partner (husband, boyfriend, same sex partner, or ex) after having lived with him (separation after cohabitation) sometime in the year prior to the IPF, significantly increased the risk of murder for abused femicide victims aged 18-50 (N = 220) in multivariate logistic regression (OR = 3.22) in comparison to other abused women in the same cities. This risk was elevated even further (OR = 4.21) when it was a highly controlling man. Reports from proxies indicated that her leaving was an immediate trigger for the femicide in 32.7% of the femicides and that when she had a new relationship (11.8% of the femicides), this elevated the risk even more. This paper will further explore these results with narrative proxy and attempted homicide victim interview data and in combination with other relevant variables, such as stalking, severity and frequency of prior violence, presence of protective orders, and demographics, including relationship state (legal marriage, “common law,” “dating”. We will also present the data related to estrangement for the 87 (28% of entire sample of 307 victims) femicide victims who had experienced no prior domestic (N = 80) violence or were younger than 18 or older than 50.
Ignore the Man Behind the Curtain…Unless it’s a Police Officer: Sterling v. Minersville: A Socio-legal Perspective
The purpose of this paper is to examine the sociological and legal implications of the recent opinion of the Third Circuit Court of Appeals regarding sexual orientation and one’s right to privacy. Attention will be devoted to issues of public safety, legal privacy rights and enhancing the image and legitimacy of law enforcement. This paper will also focus upon the impact of the decision upon both the gay and lesbian community and police organizations
Illicit Drug Use, Alcohol Use, and Depression in Young Adulthood as a Consequence of Delinquency Trajectories During Middle Adolescence
This longitudinal study examines young adult outcomes of differing delinquency trajectories during middle adolescence, drawing on data from 1218 male and female adolescents. Three areas of young adult adjustment are explored: Illicit drug use, alcohol use, and depression at about 23-25 years of age, controlling for early precursors of each outcome. Results will illuminate whether different offender trajectory groups show similar detrimental long-term outcomes of their engagement in juvenile delinquency. Participants reported the frequency of engagement in delinquent activity (i.e., violence, property damage, and theft delicts) at four assessment waves, beginning at Grades 10-11. Using the growth mixture modeling methods (M-PLUS), six trajectories of delinquent behavior were identified: abstainers, moderate late peakers, high late peakers, decreasers, chronic moderate level offenders, and chronic high level offenders. Preliminary results suggested significant group differences in young adult adjustment. However, the pattern of group differences, depended on the outcome in question.
Images of Corporate Crime: A Media Analysis of the Breaking Stories in the Enron Case
The Enron story provides researchers with a unique opportunity to explore media presentations of corporate crime. In a nearly stereotypical fashion, the activities of the managers of Enron appear to be updated versions of long standing criminal and unethical practices by those who engage in such offenses. On the other hand, the Enron story is an aberration from traditional corporate crime because the actions are so brazen and obvious and because the victims of these offenses are so readily identifiable. The most unique characteristic of this story, however, is the attention it has received from politicians, business personnel, and the media. This paper compares media presentations of his white collar crime to what we know about media presentations of street crime. Specifically, we use categories and themes from our previous research on portrayals of street crime and criminals in the news magazines to explore how these same magazines construct the crimes and criminals of Enron.
Impact of Anti-Money Laundering Efforts in Canada
Canada has recently passed legislation that is about to be enacted as law, which will require mandatory reporting of specific financial transactions by all financial entities located within the dominion of Canada. This will not only have a financial impact on the Canadian public but it will also cause a significant work adjustment to both the financial institutions as well as the money laundering enforcement units. Efforts put forth by law enforcement to combat money laundering will not reach its full potential unless they are performed in full coordination with various parties directly implicated in the battle against money laundering. It is important to determine if the cost attached to the implementation of this legislation is beneficial and the effort involved warrants the anticipated results. The study will examine the impact of the legislation by reviewing historical case studies to determine if the predictor variables defined in Bill C-22 would have identified instances of money laundering as well provided early detection of possible organized crime groups participating in money laundering activities. In addition, the study will provide the interview results from both law enforcement and financial institutes where requires cooperation and assistance to determine and identify money laundering activities.
Impact of Citizen Perceptions of Community Policing on Fear of Crime: Findings From Twelve Cities
Under the community policing philosophy, reducing citizen fear of crime has become a legitimate objective for police. Using the Twelve Cities Survey, a 1998 supplement to the National Crime Victimization Survey, this study examines the relationship between citizen perceptions of community policing and fear of crime including other factors such as satisfaction with police and crime prevention behaviors by citizens. It is found that citizen perceptions of community policing have a weak negative relationship with fear of crime, however, this relationship is mediated by satisfaction with police. Citizens who have high perceptions of community policing activity also have greater levels of satisfaction with police that may subsequently be related to decreased levels of fear.
Impact of Cybercrime on Consumer Internet Behavior
The development of the Internet and World Wide Web has both positive and negative impact on consumer behavior. Besides altering the way consumers gather information, evaluate and select products, it has also ushered in a new wave of criminal activity called cybercrime. While the recent focus has been on the economic impact of cybercrime, little is known about its longer-term behavioral effects. This paper discusses the results of a survey of 146 consumers spammed on the Internet and the impact these victimizations had on later consumer behavior on the Internet. The paper demonstrates that the mildest form of cybercrime does impact Internet consumer behavior, which in turn erodes the attractiveness of the Internet as a viable marketing channel.
Impact of Gender on Attribution Assignment in the Processing of Juvenile Offenders: Preliminary Findings)
The sentencing process in the juvenile court system is one of mystery and conrusion, with the philosophy of “in the best interest of the child” presiding over the proceedings. Recent research has focused on how attributional characteristics influence the use of stereotypes in the decision making process, particularly in relation to race and gender inequalities. The use of such stereotypes for some youth and not for others encourages differential perceptions, which, in turn have led to inequalities in sentencing decisions. Drawing from pre-sentencing investigative reports written by probation officers for juvenile offenders sentenced to probation, this paper focuses on the question of how male and female juvenile offenders are processed unequally by the court system as a result of differential perceptions by court personnel. I investigate how the use of gender stereotypes disproportionately impacts not only the pathways of male and female offenders to a sentence of probation, but also the terms and conditions in sentencing recommendations and decisions.
Impact of Jail Diversion on Individuals With Co-Occurring Mental Illness and substance Use
There is a growing concern that large numbers of mentally ill individuals are filling the nation’s jails and prisons following police encounters over minor violations, including public order offenses. Nine sites were funded by SAMHSA in 1997 to assess the outcomes associated with diverting from jail (to services and treatment) individuals with co-occurring serious mental illness (SMI) and substance abuse problems. This paper summarizes some of the main findings from a cross-site evaluation of 3- and 12-month outcomes in eight of the nine sites. (Data from the ninth site, which enrolled only a small number of diverted subjects and no comparison subjects, are not included in these analyses.) The underlying model of diversion is that diverted individuals are more likely than the non-diverted to (1) receive treatment services, (2) experience improved mental health, (3) reduce substance use, and (4) reduce criminal offending. Results of propensity-model based analyses test hypotheses related to each of these outcomes.
Impact of Offender and Programmatic Characteristics on the Effectiveness of a Cognitive Skills Rehabilitation Program
The movement to cognitive skills and cognitive restructuring models represents a systematic, wide scale implementation of a theoretically based intervention that is supported rather impressively by several recent meta-analyses of correctional effectiveness. These studies concur that programs most effective in reducing offender recidivism are cognitive behavioral or behavioral approaches. This paper adds to the extant research on treatment effectiveness by focusing on programmatic and offender characteristics that may impact treatment success. In an experimental evaluation of Ross and Fabiano’s Reasoning and Rehabilitation program in Georgia, 1190 offenders from 25 parole districts and three correctional institutions were randomly assigned to either the cognitive treatment group (N = 609) or control group (N = 581). Re-arrest and return to prison data for follow-up periods of up to 33 months serve as outcome measures. Offender characteristics under examination include Jesness personality types and I-Level, sex, IQ, reading level, risk of reoffending, employment history, marital status, and socioeconomic status. Programmatic characteristics address how well program groups adhere to social learning methods (e.g., coaches providing reinforcements and opportunities to practice skills), appropriateness of class size, participant completion rates, and the climate of the class.
Impact of Quality-of-Life Policing on Arrest and Arrestee Characteristics in New York City
By the early 1990s the New York City criminal justice system was embarking on a new era. New initiatives were begun that focused on different types of approaches to community crime issues. For law enforcement, a rapidly expanding police department, aided by new technologies, and a new philosophical perspective, would dramatically shift its policies, deployment strategies and tactics. Using as its ideological underpinnings the belief in an interrelationship between disorder, fear and crime, policing in NYC in the mid-1990s began to emphasize enforcement of laws regulating conduct that was seen as harming community quality of life. The result was far more than just an enormous increase in arrests for behaviors statutorily defined in the state penal laws and city ordinances as being of misdemeanor or lesser severities. This paper reports on research about the changed nature of arrest and arrestee characteristics as a result of these policing initiatives. Using two datasets, one from 1989 and 1998, the research compares case and defendant characteristics in prosecuted non-felony arrests before and after the quality-of-life policing initiative in New York City.
Impact of the Prison Industrial Complex on Women
This paper looks at the several different large-scale structures in U.S. society that have led to the Prison Industrial Complex affecting women both inside and outside prison. First I look at the rising number and rate of women in prison and the associated increase in the number of women’s prisons across the U.S. The differential impact by race at every step of the criminal justice system leads to the disproportionate impact on poor women of color. Next I discuss the underlying structural reasons for these increases of women (and men) in prison: (1) economic restructuring and its impact on both inner city poverty areas as well as rural industries and farming, (2) the war on drugs, (3) the conservative political milieu over the last 30 years and harsher sentencing laws (and thus treating women as if they were “violent male offenders,” which they are not), (4) historical and contemporary racism, (5) the prison industrial complex, and (6) globalization, runaway factories, and re-emergence of some industries in prison. In the last section of the paper I talk about the many impacts the Prison Industrial Complex has had on women lives both inside and outside of prison. For example, incarceration of large numbers of young black men leaves young women alone in the community to take care of their children, while increasing incarceration of young black women leaves their mothers and sisters most likely to be taking care of the imprisoned women’s children. I also talk about how PIC impacts on conditions that directly affect women: welfare, jobs, housing, education, safety, etc. Finally, I talk about what we must do to change these conditions.
Impact of the Prison Litigation Reform Act on Inmate Lawsuits Filed at the Appellate Court Level
Throughout most of America’s history, courts had applied the “hands-off” doctrine with respect to prison litigation until the Supreme Court’s decision in Cooper v. Pate (1964). This decision effectively allowed inmates to file civil lawsuits under Title 42 of the United States Code, Section 1983, if they felt that a prison or jail was denying their constitutional rights. The number of Section 1983 lawsuits continued to increase until Congress passed to the Prison Litigation Reform Act (PLRA) in 1996 in an attempt to reduce the number of frivolous lawsuits being filed by inmates. The present study attempted to empirically determine the impact of the PLRA by comparing the rates of civil lawsuits filed that were decided at the appellate court level by inmates both before and after its passage. The results indicated that the rate of lawsuits appealed for a four-year period of time after the passage of the PLRA (M = 461.15, SD = 76.56) was significantly lower than the rate of lawsuits appealed for a four-year period of time prior to the passage of the PLRA (M = 673.8, SD = 29.93). These results were discussed in terms of their theoretical and practical implications.
Implementation and Impact of “Get Tough” Sentencing Laws: The Effect of Prosecutorial Discretion
There has been widespread implementation of “Get Tough” sentencing reforms over the past decade. These reforms generally call for increased mandatory sanctions for offenders convicted of specific legislatively defined offenses. Prior to implementation, it was widely anticipated that these laws would result in overcrowding and decreased efficiency in both the courts and prisons. However, it appears that the implementation practices adopted by local prosecutors have minimized these potential effects. This study explores the role of the prosecutor in implementing these new laws, specifically examining the effect of prosecutorial discretion on the impact of reform. Questions addressed include: ú Has passage of these new laws affected case processing and prison admission patterns? ú Have prosecutorial charging policies changed under these new laws? ú Do charging policies differ across jurisdictions? ú What factors affect charging decisions? ú What effect have the new laws had upon courtroom interactions and the balance of courtroom power? Using arrest, case processing, prison admission, and sentencing data, the study assesses the impact of one such law, (Oregon’s Measure 11). Interviews with prosecutors, defense attorneys, judges, legislators and other system stakeholders are used to determine the role of the prosecutor in implementing these reforms.
Implementing Drug Courts in New York City: Lessons from Three Evaluations
Between 1998 and 2001, the Vera Institute of Justice conducted implementation evaluations of new drug treatment courts in Queens, the Bronx and Manhattan. New York City now has drug treatment courts in four of its five boroughs, along with a range of other court-based treatment options. This paper will present evaluation data and will discuss drug courts in the context of other sentencing alternatives. Implementation findings include descriptive information about participant characteristics and pleas, drug treatment modality, preliminary retention information and participant perceptions of the utility of drug court components. Court and treatment observation and stakeholder interviews provide additional descriptions about how these drug courts function. Critical issues in treatment court implementation include: 1. the relationship between severity of offence and treatment need; 2. interrelating treatment courts with existing alternative sentencing; and 3. net-widening and the implications of increasing the role of courts.
Implementing Reentry Programming in Correctional Facilities
In light of the large number of inmates released from correctional facilities, the functional deficits of those released, and the sizeable potential social gains from successful reintegration, many criminal justice and social service entities have developed interest in supporting inmate reentry to the community. We consider the conceptual and practical issues associated with introducing into correctional institutions substantial programming designed to reduce recidivism and promote reintegration into the community. Some of the difficult issues pertain to the management of the correctional facility, some pertain to the legal environment, and some pertain to shared authority (or lack thereof) with other agencies, such as parole boards. Managerial issues are often exacerbated in institutions were lengths of stay are short. For example, security classification can be an impediment to programming, due to both institutional policy and legal restrictions on movement. Also, unpredictable release dates can cause scheduling problems for programs designed to be provided immediately preceding release. Furthermore, The inmate population is likely to have a variety of release statuses due to the terms of their sentences, other criminal cases, and other legal status (e.g., subject to deportation). As a result, some inmates may be under the authority of other agencies following release, and these agencies may or may not have reentry efforts themselves. To illustrate the relative importance of these concerns, we analyze flow data from the Suffolk County House of Corrections, a 2000-bed medium-security facility which incarcerates convicted offenders who receive sentences of two and one-half years in length or less. Finally, we discuss challenges to conducting research on the efficacy of reentry programs within the context of a functioning correctional institution.
Implementing Treatment in a Probation Setting: What is Being Evaluated?
The presenters have evaluated four different specialized probation programs for sex offenders, each of which was established or expanded inr esponse to a state agency’s decision to provide limited funding for such programs. Each program incorporated treatment in some way; approaches included an in-house treatment program, trained probation officers serving as co-therapists in external programs, and referrals to existing specialized sex offender treatment programs. This presentation explores some of the challenges associated with such collaborations, including initial and on-going risk assessment, shared responsibility for offender management, and different measures of success in clinical and probation settings. The positive benefits of a well-defined program evaluation for treatment providers and for criminal justice agencies are explored.
Implications of Childhood Shame and Guilt for Criminal Behavior in Early Adulthood
Shame and guilt are generally regarded as moral emotions that inhibit destructive, socially unacceptable behaviors. Recent research, however, indicates that guilt may be the more adaptive emotion, fostering other-oriented empathy and reparative action. In contrast, feelings of shame appear to have a number of hidden costs, often provoking avoidance, denial, externalization of blame and anger. To date, this evidence has come exclusively from studies that measured moral emotions and relevant outcomes concurrently. This paper presents results from a longitudinal study of 380 index children. Moral emotions were assessed in the 5th grade. At age 18-19, participants’ involvement in the criminal justice system, drug and alcohol use, patterns of sexual behavior, suicide attempts, high school suspension, and community service involvement were assessed. Shame-proneness assessed in the 5th grade predicted later high school suspension, hard drug use, and suicide attempts. In contrast, guilt-prone 5th-graders were more likely to later apply to college, to practice “safe sex,” and to use birth control. They were less likely to attempt suicide attempts, to use heroin, to drive under the influence, and to be arrested, convicted, and incarcerated. These effects were independent of family income and mothers’ education, as well as children’s Time 1 anger.
Implications of Variations in County Jury Selection Processes for Potential Biases: Evidence From Pennsylvania Counties
Long before a juror ever reaches the courthouse, he/she has been subject to a lengthy qualification process that is intended to amass a sufficient number of citizens who can serve as potential jurors. This qualification process varies from county to county, and, although administrative in nature, may unintentionally contribute to minority under-representation in the jury pool. As a result, biased jury selection may be exacerbated by an administrative culling process that begins much earlier than voir dire. This research is a description and discussion of the juror qualification process in the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania. County court administrators were surveyed to determine local jury selection procedures and data sources. Models and findings suggest that administrative variations among counties and common decisionmaking stages have may implications for biased jury selection. Potentially most relevant are variations in excusal rates, expected time to serve.
Imposed Identities and Parole Agent Discretion
This study explores discretion among parole officers in their referrals of parolees to post-release employment services. Key in this process are normative images constructed by parole officers of parolees during officer-parolee interaction. These images are associated with roles adopted by officers and the types of referrals they offer parolees. These findings emerged from 25 in-depth interviews conducted with parole agents in the California Department of Corrections (CDC), direct observation of officer-parolee interaction and examination of departmental literature. The study raises questions about the role of social factors in legal decision-making and carries implications for understanding the normative stages of discretion in criminal justice contexts.
Imposition and Outcomes of Restitution Orders
Restitution is a convicted offender’s court-ordered obligation to compensate victims for their losses. This study uses data coded from probation records of offenders sentenced in 1996 in Allegheny County (Pittsburgh), Pennsylvania to examine questions about the imposition and payment of restitution. Analyses are based on both legally relevant factors (type of crime, prior record, mode of conviction) and individual/demographic factors (e.g., race, sex, age). In particular, the analyses focus on how factors about the victim (e.g., whether the victim is an individual or a business, the victim/offender relationship) affect whether restitution is imposed, how much restitution is ordered, and how much restitution is paid.
Imprisoning women: The Unintended Victims of Mass Imprisonment
When the United States embarked on a policy that might well be described as mass incarceration, few considered the impact that this correctional course change would have on women. In the early seventies, about half the states and territories did not even have separate institutions for women inmates, and there were so few women in prison that the system was for all intents and purposes male (97% male in 1970). The long standing correctional pattern of ignoring women laid the foundation for a policy and programmatic crisis, as the number of women sentenced to jail and prison increased six-fold in the last two decades of the twentieth century. While male systems also grew, in the case of women’s incarceration dramatic and gendered consequences also began to emerge. How do you handle women in a world built to house presumably violent men? Often a response emerged that “fairness” meant treating women as if they were men; this problematic accommodation emerged along side other unanticipated problems clearly related to undeniable gender difference (including sexual abuse scandals and severe problems with women’s health service delivery). Almost overnight, the US confronted an emerging and continuing gender crisis in corrections. .
Improving the Odds for Kids: Tracking the Success of an Early Delinquency Intervention Program
Research on juvenile crime and delinquency strongly suggests that youth are best served through intensive programs providing both case management and education assistance. In this paper, we examine the outcomes of the Early Delinquency Intervention Program (EDIP) program over the past several years to assess the extent to which the program has been successful in having clients complete the program and in reducing recidivism rates. Established in the early 1990’s, EDIP is designed to intervene with youth with limited (two or fewer) delinquency referrals, providing short term residential programming, coupled with long-term aftercare. As our primary focus, we examine data on over 500 EDIP clients from programs in Jacksonville and Port Richie Florida during the period from 2000 to 2002. In addition, we review recidivism rates for all clients that have participated in the EDIP program since 1995. Overall, clients who successfully complete the EDIP program show significantly lower recidivism rates than other juveniles arrested two or more times.
In Search of Restorative Jurisprudence
Restorative jurisprudence seems consequentionalist rather than deontological. Restoration, healing, repair of the harm seem to be good consequences rather than contraints to be honoured. Restorative jurisprudence decentres punishment. The ‘right’ punishment will usually be the wrong solution to the problem – have wrong consequences. Restorative jurisprudence has a radically different conception of responsibility. Responsibility is sought from the collective rather than just from the individual offender. Active, more than passive responsibility is the central ideal. Restorative jurisprudence may be rather Habermasian. It emphasises a certain view of the rule of law but also emphasises deliberative democracy. The justice of law in restorative jurisprudence bubbles up from the justice of the people. But the justice of the law must also filter down to set proper limits on the justice of the people to ensure that human rights are protected.
In Their Own Voices: Women’s Reentry Experiences
Recidivism is the consequence of becoming reinvolved in a criminal activity that is reported and acted upon by law enforcement. While remaining uninvolved with the law is an achievement for an ex-inmate, it is only one criterion of community reintegration. Success should also be based on positive accomplishments. Moreover, understanding environmental factors and personal experiences that help or hinder women’s successful reintegration is paramount to developing meaningful, targeted programs for women ex-offenders as well as to helping women formulate strategies for negotiating the reentry process. Fifty-five women exiting prison were interviewed twice in prison before release and three times in the six months following release. The focus of the post-release interviews as to uncover elements that facilitate or impede community reintegration. In this paper, we will present results of the post-release interviews, including the importance of expectations about release, supportive relationships, internalized feelings of efficacy, and community linkages to housing and jobs in helping women reconstruct their lives after prison.
Incarcerated Women, Anger and Prison
Are women in prison angrier than men in prison? An exhaustive look at quantitative and qualitative research that studied anger in prisons population in the United States and Puerto Rico for the past 20 years is proposed. Studies where anger was compared between female prison inmates and male prison inmates will have special attention. A look at how anger was conceptualized and measured will be also of much importance when compared by gender. In addition, I will look at whether the research gathered life history data of their subjects and how these are compared with their measured anger. What were the recommendations given based on their findings? Has the research of anger between female and male prison inmates’ population determined why they are angry? What are the differences between the reasons why and gender, race, ethnicity, and class? What are the corrections policy implications of these research results? Is understanding inmates’ anger a safety issue in prison?
Incidence of Serial Homicide Offenders: The Influence of Sociological Variables
The study of the causes of serial homicide has typically been approached from a psychiatric perspective. The current study attempted to determine whether sociological variables play a role. Multi-factor explanations of serial homicide suggest aspects of culture and social structure may influence the considerable inter-state variation in the level of male serial killer activity. The results indicated that two measures of local cultural content as well as a social structural variable had significant effects on the inter-state variation of male serial killer activity. Theoretical implications are discussed.
Incidents of Discrimination and Risk for Delinquency: A Longitudinal Study of African American Adolescents
Evidence from a variety of sources suggests that African American children are more likely to display conduct problems than White children. Such differences underscore the importance of research investigating the factors that place African American youth at risk for behavior problems. The present study investigates the extent to which exposure to racial discrimination increases the chances of an African American adolescent engaging in delinquent behavior. Using data from a longitudinal study of approximately 800 African American children living in Georgia and Iowa, we begin by establishing a correlation between exposure to discrimination and delinquent behavior. next, based upon hypotheses derived from starin theory, we use SEM to test various hypotheses regarding the emotional and cognitive factors that mediate this association. For boys, the association between discrimination and delinquency was mediated by feelings of anger and depression and by the belief that aggression is a necessary interpersonal tactic. The results were somewhat different for girls. Although anger and depression mediated part of the effect of discrimination on delinquency, discrimination continued to display a small but significant direct effect. The implications of these findings for criminological theory are discussed.
Inclusion in the Discipline of Criminology
Scholars have attempted to define the core of the criminology body of knowledge for some time. The topic is still debatable and there are several issues that seem to remain on the periphery of the core. This paper will present an overview of the importance of including a broader contextual framework in the study of crime. Such a framework will take into consideration the social, economic, historical, and political contexts that contribute to crime and delinquency. The paper highlights efforts to include the contributions of black scholars, proponents of a multi-factor framework of analysis, in the criminology core. It will examine whether or not, and to what extent, the criminology core has been transformed as a result of inclusion.
Incorporating Positive Youth Development Into Juvenile Justice
In this paper, the authors explore the potential theoretical and practical integration of the positive youth development and juvenile justice perspectives. These perspectives often appear to be mutually exclusive. Instead of focusing on youth problems, such as juvenile delinquency, school dropout, substance abuse and teen pregnancy, the positive youth development framework emphasizes the conditions promoting the healthy development of all young people. The tension between the youth development and juvenile justice perspectives is often manifested in disagreements over funding priorities and strategies, with the former recommending comprehensive community mobilization and the latter recommending targeted prevention and treatment programming. Theoretical models emphasizing risk and protective factors and resiliency may provide a conceptual bridge between the perspectives. The authors conclude by discussing the incorporation of positive youth development into juvenile justice programs such as juvenile detention centers.
Increasing Fear of Crime, Getting Tough onCriminals and Rising Prison Population: Overcrowding in Japanese Prisons
Japan has enjoyed the reputation of the safest country in the world for a longtime. Crime and prison population havenever been a political agenda until very recently. Actually, the government was planning to close down a certainnumber of prisons. However, since 1990,after a consistent economic slump, people in Japan appears to be losingconfidence in its economy as well as in its safety. Newspapers are reporting a lot about the rising tide of violentcrimes, decreasing the figures of clearance rates by the police and overcrowdingin prisons. It has been asserted that $B!H(BJapan$B!G(BsMyth of the safest society in the world$B!I(B is finally becoming corrupted. Along with this, people are more worry aboutcrime and have begun to think that public safety has been worsened. According to the survey conducted by theInformation Research Office of the Cabinet, in December 2000, the percentage ofresponses to the statement, $B!H(BPubl! ic safety (security) is getting worse,$B!I(Bincreased from 18.8% in1998 to 26.6% in 2000. People are demanding tougher sentences for offenders to protect theircommunities. Accordingly, the prison population in Japan, which had been stableand never experienced overcrowding for more than 30 years, has begun to risesince 1993, just after the bubble economy burst. Now, the Japanese prison system is suffering from overcrowding inits prisons. This paper will explorewho are sending people in prisons and why they are doing so, especially byfocusing on the relationship between prison population and fear of crime.
Indigenous People and Criminal Justice Education
Over the past decade Australian universities have established degrees for those who wish to work in some area of the criminal justice system, such as policing and correctional services. This paper will report the findings of a project exploring the sensitivity of undergraduates to issues of race and diversity. The project investigates the knowledge and beliefs that criminal justice students bring with them to university, their readiness for content that focuses on Aboriginality, and whether their views change in ways over time. State and Federal governments of late have started to invest considerable resources, energy and rhetoric into the pursuit of ‘reconciliation’ — however, Aboriginal people remain vastly over-processed by the criminal justice system. Indeed, an eminent criminologist has said that the Australian criminal justice system itself is “a major institutional cause of the tearing, bleeding rift between black and white communities”. Yet, the whole area remains something of an orphan in criminal justice education and we know little about the attitudes that graduates take into the workplace. It seems that programs often touch upon relationships between Aboriginality and criminal justice, but there tends to be less rigour in handling the complexities and parameters of the problem.
Individual Difference and Attitude4 Change: A National Evaluation of Juvenile Boot Camps and Juvenile Correctional Facilities. Does Race Matter?
The burgeoning prison populations of the US have resulted in a need for alternative, more effective, and more efficient sanctions for prison bound offenders. Some advocate correctional boot camps to fill this role. This paper examines the argument by comparing the rates of attitude change in eight boot camps and eight traditional-confinement facilities. Further, the impact of race on adjustment, perception, and change is analyzed. This paper utilizes categorical and continuous measures of attitude change in a multivariate analysis of perception, adjustment, and change.
Influences of Social Disruption and Political Disaffection on Adult Imprisonment Trends
This study examined the extent to which extra-legal variables have influenced the use of imprisonment in the United States. Controlling for violent crime, population age structure, unemployment and economic instability, this study uses GLS regression models to examine the relationships between political disaffection, social disruption and adult imprisonment trends from 1952 to 2000 at the national level of analysis. Two dependent variables are examined, the combined state and federal imprisonment and admissions rates. An annual indicator of political disaffection is created using an algorithm that combines a number of self-report survey data from the General Social Survey, National Election Studies, Gallup and Harris Polls. Factor analysis is used to create an annual indicator of social disruption that includes the number of ethnic urban riots, protests and demonstrations, the number of labor disruptions as well as self-reported concern over social transformation and change.
Influences on State Punitiveness: An Examination of Crime Rates, Public Attitudes, and Political Ideologies
According to deterrence theory, high crime rates should lead to more punitive laws, in order to prevent future crime. An alternative explanation, the “democracy-at-work” thesis, explains punitive laws as a function of public attitudes towards criminals. For example, states with citizens who believe the courts are not treating criminals harshly enough should be the states with the most punitive laws. A third hypothesis is that underlying political ideologies, not crime rates or specific public attitudes, drive punitiveness. To date, little empirical research has been done exploring the relationship between crime rates, public opinion about crime, political ideology and punitive policies. This study tests whether, at the state level, crime rates, specific public attitudes, and political orientations affect punitive crime control policies directly, and how their effects might be mediated through other factors. Political ideology is measured using traditional indicators (e.g., outcomes of state elections) and possible explanatory structural indicators (e.g., Southernness). Punitiveness is measured as an index consisting of the presence/absence of four policies: three strikes, death penalty, sexual predator civil commitment, and juvenile waiver. Crime rates come from the UCR, opinion data come from the General Social Survey (GSS), and demographic and other control variables are taken from census data.
Infusing Conventional Sentencing With Restorative Justice: Police and Courts in England
The infusion of conventional sentencing with restorative justice practices could substantially improve justice for victims and reduce repeat offending rates. The question of how and where in the system to offer opportunities for restorative practices raises complex issues of policy implementation. Empirical analysis of this question in English courts reveals the extent to which conventional justice discards most arrests and prosecutions. The prospects for “mainstreaming” restorative justice may therefore depend upon the possibility that more criminal defendants might plead guilty if given the opportunity to participate in restorative justice. Whether legislative and other initiatives would be justified in order to facilitate that opportunity may depend on the empirically demonstrated success of restorative justice in reducing crime and helping victims. But testing the effectiveness of restorative justice requires the development of provisional systems allowing offenders and victims to volunteer to enter randomized controlled trials. This paper describes the development of such systems in England to test the effects of adding restorative justice to the sentencing process.
Initial Findings From the Evaluation of APT, a Drug Treatment Program for NYC Adolescents in Detention
This paper discusses initial findings from an evaluation of the Adolescent Portable Therapy (APT) program, a new demonstration program operated by the Vera Institute of Justice that provides drug treatment to adolescents involved in the juvenile justice system. Unlike virtually all other evaluations of adolescent drug treatment programs, the APT study involves a randomly assigned control group of kids who met the same drug use and symptom criteria as the treatment group. This report will provide an overview of the program’s clients, including their demographic and delinquency characteristics, drug use and substance abuse symptoms, and mental health. The paper also reports preliminary outcomes based on follow-up interviews with the study’s treatment and control groups. This will be the first outcome data available from a five-year evaluation effort funded by the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation. In addition to outcomes, the presentation will also discuss the research challenges involved in interviewing adolescents while in detention.
Inmate-on-Inmate Victimization Reported by Older Male Prisoners
As of 1/1/2000, federal and state prisons housed more than 103,000 older prisoners (OPs) in the US. Although OPs represent the fastest growing age-group in prison, little is known about their safety and victimization. This paper examines inmate-on-inmate victimization (IIV) among male OPs by: 1) documenting rates of psychological, property, physical, and sexual IIV; 2) exploring narrative descriptions for these four types of IIV; and 3) examining OPs suggested prevention policies for IIV. Data came from 109 male OPs (50 years of age and older) serving time in a state-wide prison system. Of the 109 OPs, 65 were randomly selected and 44 were purposively sampled. Face-to-face interviews elicited answers for open-ended and fixed-choice questions. All IIV rates and associated confidence intervals were calculated for randomly sampled OPs (N=65). Narrative descriptions came from content analyses of transcripts from the full sample (N=109). The findings indicated that about 55.4% of OPs reported psychological IIV, 44.6% reported property IIV, 15.4% reported physical IIV, and 10.8% reported sexual IIV. Content analyses suggested that OPs are often victimized by younger prisoners and that a majority of OPs support the use of age-segregated living arrangements to prevent IIV among OPs. In sum, the findings show that IIV among OPs is a legitimate problem, worthy of prevention programs such as age-segregation for Ops.
Inmate Values
An analysis of inmate values and an assessment of what we are teaching criminal justice students regarding inmate values.
Inmates’ Responses to Incarceration: An Inter-Gender Analysis
This research focuses upon the lives of inmates and whether inmates’ adaptation to the prison system differs by demographic characteristics, personal background and pre-prison experiences. The importation model shows that gender, race, age, and class are very important predictors in the analysis of inmates’ adaptation to prison. However, this explorative work shows that gender is the most significant variable in the analysis of inmates’ prison experiences. Multivariate statistical analysis of the data set “Survey of Inmates of Federal and State Correctional Facilities, 1997” shows that women adapt to the prison disciplinary regime far better than men. The aim of this research is to explain how inmates carry their background to the prison and they tend to reproduce the outside gender role expectations within the prison. The comparison between men and women prisoners aims to point out that women differ from men in their background and pre-prison experiences. hence their adaptation and integration in the prison system are very different from one another. This might suggest that prison programs, institutional organization, type of resources available, and rules of the disciplinary regime should also differentiate between female and male incarceration.
Institutional Differences in Staff Well Being Among Federal Correctional Officers
Amid the rising rate of inmate growth in the Federal prison system, there is an ever increasing strain on the individuals charged with the task of keeping them under lock and key. This strain can manifest itself in many ways, most notably heightened levels of depression and concern for personal safety. The goal of this research is examine this issue of correctional officer strain and depression levels. However, the present research will move further than a cursory examination of this by exploring this topic by dividing staff into institutional categories based on rates of imprisonment at the facilities that they represent and examine the corresponding levels of stress and symptoms of depression. This will enable us to examination any potential role that over- or under-capacity of facilities has on correctional officers. Further exploration will determine the extent to which any regional differences, in terms of institution location, might play as a contributory role in this equation. This research will be accomplished through the utilization of the Prison Social Climate Survey administered to correctional staff and inmates on an annual basis. This survey provides detailed information on all facets of the institutional climate (i.e. physical plant efficiency, security classifications, assault information) as well as a detailed set of demographic and personal information on correctional staff.
Instrument of Terror: The Body as the Battlefield
In February 2001, a landmark judicial decision was made at the United Nations War Crimes Tribunal at The Hague that recognized rape as a crime that occurs during war. This paper examines the use of rape in wartime as an instrumental and strategic part of warfare. In substantiating this objective, two arguments are presented. First, I argue that rape is an instrumental tool, or component of terror, in war. Rape uses the human body as territory upon which terror issymbolically marked. Second, I argue that rape in war is conceivable as symbolic genocide. By not limiting the conception of genocide to the natural or physical termination of life, rape becomes a battle raged upon the human body. Rape is symbolic genocide in the sense that raped women are symbolically marked through forced pregnancy, the bearing of mixed blood children, and the stigma of being raped by men from the “enemy” culture. In this respect, I argue that the use of rape is an invisible tactic with visible consequences in its destruction and elimination of a culture, evidenced through the sexual enslavement and rapes of Muslim women during the Bosnian war.
Integrating Critical Race Theory and Postmodernism: Implications of Race, Class, and Gender
The purpose of my paper is to indicate how critical race theory can be more fruitfully informed through a postmodern analysis. I will provide a brief explanation of critical race theory and postmodern fundamentals. The focus will be upon petit apartheid in addition to psychoanalytic semiotics and chaos theory. I shall then integrate the aforementioned perspectives with the intersectional nature of race, class, and gender. I will draw from four dominant texts within the discipline of critical race theory: Matsuda, Lawrence III,Delgado, and Crenshaw, Words That Wound (1993); Russell, The Color of Crime (1998); Milovanovic and Russell, Petit Apartheir (2001); and Delgado and Delgado and Stefancic, Critical Race theory (2001).
Integrating Public Health and Public Safety Concerns: Care Management for the Drug Using Individual in the Criminal Justice System
As a result of changes in sentencing policy and law enforcement practices, there has been a significant rise in the number of individuals under criminal justice supervision. A majority of adult offenders, and many juvenile offenders have drug problems that require intervention. Yet only a small percentage ever receive comprehensive treatment of a duration sufficient to have any significant impact. For example, it is estimated that of the more than 1.8 million incarcerated in adult prisons alone in 1998, approximately 65% had serious involvement with drugs while only 13% have received any treatment for drug abuse. The majority of these adult and juvenile offenders will return to the community with significant untreated drug abuse and related problems. Given the intricate nature of the relationship berween drug use and crime, it is ineffective to respond to the public health dimensions of the problem separate from the public safety dimension and vice versa. This paper will address a number of issues related to the public health-public safety relationshp by first examining a contemporary understanding of the nature of drug addiction and then various approaches currently being recommended to break the cycle of relapse, re-arrest, and re-incarceration such as treatment as an alternative to incarceration, drug courts, jail and prison-based interventions and community-based treatment post-release.
Integrating the General Theory of Crime Into an Explanation of Criminal Victimization Among Female Offenders
In a recent article, Schreck (1999) reformulated Gottfredson and Hirschi’s (1990) self-control theory into an explanation of victimization that examines the victim-offender overlap. His analysis of college students revealed that low self-control was significantly associated with various forms of victimization. We build on Schreck’s work by assessing whether low self-control contributes to victimization among a high-risk sample of females, while controlling for routine activities/lifestyle behaviors. We advanced two research questions concerning the integration of low self-control into an explanation of victimization: (1 Can self-control theory account for variations in violent victimization? (2) Do routine activities/lifestyle behaviors mediate the effect of self-control theory as a useful explanation of violent victimization? The results were consistent with the hypothesis that low self-control is a risk factor for criminal victimization. Low self-control maintained a significant and direct effect on personal victimization, when controlling for risky lifestyle behaviors. Our results suggest that self-control theory may be important for examining victimization among female offenders.
Intellectual Underpinnings of the (Conflicting) Individual Right, States’ Right and Collective Right Views of the Second Amendment
The Amendment embodies the twin views of classic liberal political philosophy that self-defense is the cardinal natural right and that only an armed people can preserve their liberties. In contrast, the states’ right theory is inconsistent with the Constitution and the “collective rights” theory is an oxymoron because a “right” which no one can enforce on behalf of him/herself or the people collectively is not a right at all.
Intensive Aftercare Programming for Female Juvenile Offenders
This presentation will discuss the applicability of the Intensive Aftercare Program (IAP) model for female juvenile offenders. An emerging body of “best practices” has developed to address the unique needs of young female offenders generally, yet there are few data upon which to construct gender-specific interventions for females at the “deep end” of the juvenile justice system. Although the Intensive Aftercare Program (IAP) model (Altschuler and Armstrong, 1994) was originally designed to counter reoffending among “high-risk” males, it has much to offer the small but growing number of “high-risk” female offenders. In particular, IAP’s overarching case management framework, which promotes individual case planning, graduated responses, and continuity of care and support in the community, appears to compliment and parallel what has been learned as to “what works” best with female juvenile offenders. To help female juvenile offenders make the transition across the institution/community boundary, IAP programming must address not only structural and systemic problems, but also integrate a greater understanding of and sensitivity to gender-role socialization, gender-specific developmental tasks, and the links between trauma and victimization and delinquency.
Interfaces Between Transnational Crime and Legal Actors
Between transnational crime and legal society all kinds of interfacing relationships can be found. Prof. Passas at Temple University developed a concept of interfaces that consists of two main and eight subcatories of relations between transnational criminals and legal actors. In my study I’m analysing these interfacing relationships and test them empirically. I’ll argue that the number of theoretical categories can be limited. Furthermore, I’ll argue that the occurence of specific interfacing relationships is connected with three different types of transnational crime, defined by the specific function crime has. While one type of crime, illegal markets, gets most attention in the literature on organized crime and relations with legal actors, the other types show far more relations (interfaces) with legal actors. In the second type, transnational crime consists of a fundamental cooperation between legal and illegal actors while in the third type, transnational crime acts as intermediary between legal actors. The empirical study to test these ideas will focus on the illegal art trade and human trafficking. These examples of transnational crime will be studied in the US and the Netherlands.
Intermediate Sanctions: An Effective Answer for the New Millennium in Brazil
As an answer to the failure of imprisonment and consolidating the perception that prison does not rehabilitate anyone and must be seen as an “extrema ratio”, a necessary evil that should be restricted to serious or violent crimes, there are the alternative or intermediate sanctions, much less expensive and more humane since they do not remove the convict from his/her work, family and social environment. A recent law in Brazil has enlarged the options of non-custodial penalties, causing a progressive change of the prevailing culture that sees the prison sentence as the only real punishment. The paper analyzes the development of these new types of sentences and the attitude of judges and prosecutors towards them.
Internal Investigations on Police Integrity Violations: An Overview
Our knowledge of the nature of police misconduct in its various forms is sketchy despite the history of research in this field. Several categorizations and typologies have been proposed in an effort to grasp the phenomenon. Some of these typologies are limited to specific forms, mainly corruption and violence/discrimination, most research is done on policing and police misconduct in the United States, and often research concentrates on serious police scandals. As a consequence, current research offers a limited view on the broad spectrum of integrity problems and violations that can be distinguished. In order to gain more insight in the nature of police integrity and the extent of different types of police misconduct, we did research in The Netherlands involving all 26 Dutch police forces. All forces submitted data on their internal disciplinary investigations undertaken in 1999 and 2000. About each investigation data were provided on the subject of the investigation, the type of investigation and the results and disciplinary measures taken. The data offer an overview of the scope of the forms of misconduct investigated by the Internal Affairs Bureaus and severity with which the misconduct is sanctioned. We conclude that the existing literature overestimates the importance of some integrity violations and neglects important others.
International Crime and Victims Survey in a Theoretical, Methodological and Broad Societal Context
In this contribution the theoretical criminological insights and the methodological assumptions, lying behind the ‘International Crime Victimisation Survey’ are studied. At the basis of the international crime victimisation surveys we find theoretical insights and methodological assumptions, which were developed in the eighties and nineties within the institutional framework of the British Home Office and the Dutch Ministry of Justice. North American conservative criminological theories have strongly influenced these theoretical and methodological developments. Following Jock Young these theoretical criminological insights are labelled as ‘new administrative criminology’. This is a neo-liberal governmental answer to the etiological crisis in the social-positivist criminology as well as to the crisis in the police and the criminal reaction on crime. Since the eighties the ‘new administrative criminology’ has had a strong and increasing influence on the security policy of a growing number of countries and has thus developed into a global neo-liberal theory on crime and crime control. As a research and policy supporting instrument the ‘International Crime Victimisation Surveys’ have made a strong contribution to this devleopment.
International Gender Differences on Three Aspects of the Experience of Fear and Crime
The consistent observation in the Anglo-Saxon and Dutch literature in this field is that more women than men experience unsafety. The question arises whether similar patterns appear in countries in Latin-America, Africa and Asia. To investigate this, it is not only necessary to develop hypotheses about the possible variety in patterns, but also to find relevant data and a method which can be more or less easily interpreted. A possible data source is the International Crime Victim Survey and although the items in the ICVS have been criticised justly, they can be used to do (explorative) research. Three items from the ICVS are selected for further analyses and described briefly. After that, the paper proposes a graphical approach that suggests different ways to look at the huge amount of data from all participating countries. Then, the paper deals with the question whether and to what extent male and female respondents differ in their experience of safety, using the data of three items of all participating countries. The variety of these differences among countries is further discussed. Then, logistic regression is used to study the research question which structural variables explain the gender differences on a macro-level.
International Historical Criminology
Globalisation and internationalisation of criminological research have had a stimulating effect on the development of a more or less homogenous, world – wide criminological culture. Cultural homogeneity stands for both, the primacy of empirical – positivism and / or critical rationalism in contemporary social sciences’ epistemology and an area of criminological research which is focusing on control of immigration, culture of violence, urban safety policies, organised crime and new forms of terrorism, development of safety policies that combine crime prevention with social safety and national defence. these issues are socially, economically and politically connoted world – wide problems which need enforcement of international co-operation, namely in the fields of criminal justice and safety policing. But the problem of common morals as original reference for crime, although it was at the heart of the pioneer years of criminology and social deviancy theory, was lost of eyes. The paradox of post – or late – modern societies is, that globalisation, cultural uniformity and development of technology go hand in hand with the fight against universality, development of self – referential culture and increase of archaic, i.e. ethnically connoted forms of social organisation. Fragmentation of social cohesion, decreasing common morals supra – individual consciousness and a twentieth – first century recurrent tendency that is characterised by both, the development of the culture of crime and violence and normalised anomie, are the most important consequences. In account of this situation, criminologists are committed more than ever before to investigating those areas of morals and ethics which are related to one of the most important problems of our times: The problem of the limits of social tolerance is closed to the contradiction between decreasing common consciousness, on the one hand, and the possibilities to define and implement prescriptive norms which refer to common morals and to the concept of common interest, on the other hand. Because the latter are closed to the tradition of enlightenment and modern culture, there is great need to face the question whether and how is it possible to re-invent social control and common morals in a context wherein decrease of universals and increase of multi-cultural society go hand in hand with the renewal of nationalism, new
International Human Rights Laws and Transnational Crime: Can the International Criminal Court Statute Be Used to Prosecute Transnational Criminals?
Arguably, the world community’s greatest concern about transnational crime is its attendant violence against human rights. Major actors in transnational crime may be implicated in crimes against humanity as they use murder, torture, and kidnapping to systematically terrorize, subdue, and exploit local populations. Where transnational criminal organizations actively commit such acts as part of subnational armed conflict, such as in Colombia, they may also be liable to prosecution as war crimes. Bringing transnational crimes before an international tribunal holds out the possibility of accountability where national governments are too weak or too implicated to prosecute. It also offers a hope of justice to populations who are otherwise victimized and exploited with impunity.
International Police Cartoons: Indicators of Cultural Consistencies and Variations
Humor is an important cultural resource in the process of establishing and maintaining conceptions of ‘normal’ behavior and attitudes within institutions. Much literature has demonstrated the importance which informal occupational culture plays in the delivery of routine everyday policing. By examining cartoons appearing in ‘in house’ Police magazines from different parts of the world, an attempt will be made to suggest that a sense can be gleaned as to both consistencies and variations in police perceptions and (more speculatively) practices. Cartoons from Australia, New Zealand, Denmark, and Normay may be examined.
Interpersonal Crime as Edgework
This paper explores the need for greater micro-macro linkages in criminological theory and research and offers a framework with which to undertake the task. The concept of edgework, initially developed to explain voluntary risk taking behavior, is applied to interpersonal crime. Through application of the edgework model and incorporation of existing criminological research and theory, this paper highlights the experiential elements of criminal action, such as control, suspense, coercion, victim resistance, and violence, while locating some of the impetus for seeking criminal edgework in various social-structural conditions, cultural contexts, and lifestyles.
Interpreting Gang-Related Problems Over Multiple Years in the NYGS
Using the 1996 to 2001 National Youth Gang Surveys, this paper will examine reports of gang problems by law enforcement agencies across various jurisdictional types. Special attention will be directed toward examining patterns of youth gang problems reported within agencies over multiple years. Preliminary results indicate greater variation in reports of gang-related problems within less densely populated areas while larger areas remain consistently affected. Findings will inform understanding of law enforcement perceptions and responses to youth gang-related problems.
Interracial Inequality and Lethal Violence: Revisiting Blau and Blau’s Hypothesis
Since the publication of Judith and Peter Blau’s (1982) seminal work on social inequality and violent crime, researchers have sought to better understand the influence of dimensions of inequality on rates of violence in the United States. Although a variety of themes have permeated this inquiry, two interrelated issues have been the focus of much recent research. Scholars have devoted considerable attention to examining whether, as Blau and Blau argued, inequality is more influential for racial minorities than for whites; and in so doing, they have explored the degree to which intragroup versus intergroup inequality is more salient in accounting for race-specific violence. According to the Blaus, in a democratic society, ascriptively-based inequality is especially consequential for violent crime because such inequality reinforces ethnic and class differences and engenders pervasive conflict, which find expression in diffuse aggression, including criminal violence. Thus, places and times with higher levels of social inequality should exhibit higher rates of violent crime, especially among minority populations. Blau and Blau’s own research demonstrated a positive link between inequality and violent crime, and showed that interracial inequality is more influential than intraracial inequality on such rates for metropolitan areas of the United States (U.S.). Noting that their findings were based on data for metropolitan areas as a whole rather than rates for minority versus non-minority populations, researchers responded to the Blaus’ study by examining race-specific models of violent crime (Harer and Steffensmeier 1992; Krivo and Peterson 2000; LaFree, Drass, and O’Day 1992; Messner and Golden 1992; Peterson and Krivo 1993; Sampson 1985, 1987; Shihadeh and Ousey 1998; Shihadeh and Steffensmeier 1994). Two interesting patterns emerged from these race-specific analyses. First, they often revealed that measures of inequality and other structural factors have stronger effects for white than black rates of lethal violence (Krivo and Peterson 2000; Messner and Golden 1992; Sampson 1987; Shihadeh and Ousey 1998). Second, and directly relevant to the Blaus’ ascriptive inequality thesis, intraracial inequality was often found to be more important than interracial inequality for understanding violence. In particular, research often showed that interracial inequality is unrelated to black criminal violence (Harer and Steffensmeier 1992; Peterson and Krivo 1993; Shihadeh and Steffensmeier 1994). While such findings raise questions about the Blau and Blau perspective, it is premature to conclude that their thesis is without merit. Rather, the results of previous studies signal that researchers should give attention to the role of inequality in different types of racially disaggregated violent crime. Blau and Blau emphasize that ascriptively-based inequality leads to diffuse aggression, which is likely to result in more expressive than instrumental forms of violence. If so, then there may be a relationship between intergroup inequality and minority violence, but this relationship would be revealed only when expressive forms of violence are considered. That is, analyses that consider overall rates of minority violence may mask the inequality-violent crime link. In this paper, we address this possibility by examining the differential role of interracial inequality on race-specific homicides that have been further disaggregated into instrumental (felony) versus expressive (non-felony) killings.
Intervening With Drug-Using Offenders: Lessons From Breaking the Cycle
The Breaking the Cycle Demonstrations in Birmingham, Alabama; Jacksonville, Florida; and Pierce County, Washington, were designed to test the feasibility and impact of appropriate drug interventions for drug using offenders under justice system supervision. BTC was based on research findings that court-supervised treatment for offenders through drug courts, community-based treatment administered by Treatment Alternatives to Street Crime (TASC) programs (see Belenko, 1999; Anglin, Longshore and Turner, 1999), in-prison treatment with aftercare, and specialized drug diversion programs can reduce offender drug use and crime. The goal of BTC was to reduce drug use and crime by making drug intervention strategies widely available by incorporating drug interventions into standard criminal justice operations. One of the first lessons learned was that the goal was too broad and all three sites early in program development chose to focus on defendants released to the community. Unlike drug courts, BTC targeted all defendants charged with a felony charge and did not limit the target population to defendants who were heavy or addicted users.
Intimate Partner Femicide: A Transactional-Ecological Approach
Intimate partner femicide is a serious international problem. Studies in North America, Britain, and Australia reveal that in any given year between 40-60% of all women victims of homicides are killed by an intimate partner or ex-partner (e.g. Brown, 1987; Campbell, 1986; Daly & Wilson, 1992). Previous research suggests that it may be possible to identify individual, relationship, and socio-cultural factors associated with lethal or life threatening violence (Campbell & Wolf, 2001; Dobash & Dobash, 2000; Grana, 2001). Despite the importance of these findings, these studies share a number of limitations (e.g. a single level of analysis, a limited criminal justice perspective, a failure to consider developmental processes, and a focus on cross-case similarities). Therefore, to address these limitations, this paper proposes an alternate framework incorporating elements of an ecological, transactional, and qualitative approach to studying femicide. The application of this framework to the analysis of 14 cases of femicide in British Columbia will be explored. In light of these cases, the implications for theories of domestic violence, treatment and supervision programs targeted at batterers, programs for enhancing the safety of victims, and policies and procedures for improving community response to intimate partner violence will be discussed.
Intimate Partner Violence in the Context of Aboriginal Women’s Lives
Many attempts to understand intimate partner violence against Aboriginal women ignore the fact that in many communities violence is a common dimension of social life within some households and extended families. Aboriginal women may find themselves at risk of being participants in violence in alternating roles of victim and offender. Using data from a study of women’s experiences of violence, the current study examines Canadian Aboriginal women’s early lfie experiences including physical and sexual abuse, as well as more immediate life circumstances, as a means by which to examine current offending and victimization incidents. A sample of 150 in-depth interviews were obtained from incarcerated women using a retrospective longitudinal design and a life events calendar to collect month-by-month accounts of life circumstances and incidences for a three-year period. The design of the study focuses on a span of time short enough to be reasonably studied retrospectively, yet still long enough to allow consideration of individual patterns of offending, the precursor and consequence of these, and their impact on women’s lives.
Introduction to Policing Dystopia
A dystopia is a utopia that turned for the worst, as utopia generally do when put into practice. This is a panel about the various models of dystopia. The best known policing dystopia is the society under total control that was described by George Orwell in 1984, “Big Brother” being its main malevolent character. The essential feature or Orwell’s dystopia is its rationalistic character: nothing is left to chance by bureaucrats hat succeed in enslaving the body politic. At the opposite end of the spectrum is Franz Kafka, where nothing happens as planned: the master of the penal colony ends up being killed by his own machine. Between Orwellian control and Kafkaesque chaos, there is a great variety of intermediate models. The panel will explore the various ways in which dystopa are constructed in imagination and in reality.
Investigating Adolescent Drug Dealing in Philadelphia
The literature on adolescent drug dealing is very limited. Using data from “A Cross-National Study of the Youth Drug-Violence Nexus,” this paper will examine the correlates of adolescent drug dealing. It will look at how drug dealing varies by age, race, and gender. We will also consider how drug dealing is related to drug use, violent behavior and differences in perceptions between drug dealers and non-drug dealers.
Investigating the Causal Effects of Neighborhood Social Processes on Criminal Behavior
In recent years, criminologists have become increasingly interested in how the social organization of urban neighborhoods can contribute to the reduction of crime (see Sampson, Raudenbush, and Earls, 1997, for a review). This line of research poses challenging problems of causal inference. While changes in social organizational properties of neighborhoods may cause changes in criminal offending and crime victimization, such changes may also reflect the demographic composition of the neighborhood. Moreover, past crime events may affect the motivation and capacity of residents to organize effectively to combat crime. Thus, selection bias and endogeneity challenge the validity of causal inferences. In this paper, we adapt recent statistical methods for causal inference to the multilevel setting in which potential offenders (or crime victims) are nested within neighborhoods. We illustrate how propensity score stratification, inverse probability of treatment weighting, selection modeling, and sensitivity analysis may be adapted to improve the validity of causal inferences about the effects of neighborhood social processes on crime. We illustrate these methods with longitudinal data from the Project on Human Development in Chicago Neighborhoods.
Investigating the Effectiveness of a Media Campaign to Curb Felons Carrying Firearms: Results from Operation “CEASEFIRE”
Operation CEASEFIRE is a mass media campaign currently being implemented in a large Midwestern metropolitan area. The advertisements associated with Operation CEASEFIRE are designed to disseminate information regarding new legislation. The legislation in question greatly increases the penalties for convicted felons who are found to be in possession of firearms in the community. Specifically, the legislation requires a mandatory minimum five-year sentence to Federal prison for felons who are convicted of carrying a firearm at any time. Operation CEASEFIRE, while having some unique characteristics is very similar to other media campaigns promoting very similar legislation in other metropolitan areas in the United States. The current research utilizes data from surveys of citizens within the community under consideration, as well as surveys of probationers and parolees in the same community. Comparisons are made between the awareness levels of the general citizenry as well as the true ‘target’ population of CEASEFIRE. The significant correlates of awareness and its impact on behavior are identified. Discussion will also include the status of the analysis of official data that will be used to determine the true deterrent effect of the media campaign amongst the felony population.
Investigating the Legitimacy of Juvenile Psychopathy Assessments: Contributions of Item Response Theory
The ability to identify psychopathy during adolescence is increasingly becoming a focal point of forensic research. Though results of the Psychopathy Checklist: Youth Version (PCL:YV; Forth, Kosson, Hare, in press), the primary assessment tool, appear promising, it is still unclear as to what extent personality disorder exists or can be measured reliably prior to early adulthood (e.g., Edens, Skeem, Cruise, & Cauffman, 2001; Vincent & Hart, 2002). A key criticism in this debate has been whether symptoms of psychopathy are manifested in youth as they are in adults. More specifically, adult psychopathic traits such as irresponsibility, impulsivity, and shallow affect have a different meaning during adolescence where these characteristics may be developmentally appropriate rather than pathological. To date, studies using the PCL:YV have adhered to classical test theory methodology to investigate the reliability and validity of psychopathy assessments in youth. However, modern test theory approaches are more appropriate for evaluating the extent of measurement bias (see Cooke & Michie, 1997; Nunnally & Bernstein, 1994) across age groups. This presentation employs item response theory to evaluate potential age bias in the measurement of psychopathy. Young offender PCL:YV assessments (n = 269; ICC = .92) are compared to adult offender PCL-R assessments (n = 400) to investigate whether test items appear to measure the same underlying trait across age groups. Preliminary findings suggest that most interpersonal and affective psychopathy symptoms are similar across age groups, whereas behavioral symptoms are over-represented in adolescents. Implications for the assessment of psychopathy in juveniles are discussed.
Investigating the Within-Individual Changes of Attitudinal Measures of Patriarchy: Implications for Power-Control Theory
Hagan et al.’s power-control theory (1985) posits that gender differences in delinquency and crime are at least partly attributed to the differential socialization processes that boys and girls experience within patriarchal versus egalitarian households. While empirical research has generally found support for a variety of hypotheses articulated from a power-control theoretical framework, no research to date has empirically investigated the life course implications of power-control theory. Using data extracted from the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth, we offer a first attempt at integrating Hagan’s power-control theory into a life course perspective. We first investigate whether within-individual attitudinal levels of patriarchy change over time. Assuming change occurs, we then explore the factors that are associated with these changes over time. Finally, we include in our analysis an investigation of within-individual levels of patriarchy over time across sub-groups defined by race. Theoretical implications for our research are discussed.
Investing in Marriage: The Relationship Between Time Spent Living With a Wife and Involvement in Criminal Activity
Horney et al. (1995) examined how changes in local-life circumstances influenced changes in criminal activity. They found that the probability of offending was typically reduced by 50% when offenders became involved in selected prosocial institutions such as work and marriage. Laub et al. (1998) argue that this “marriage effect” on criminal activity is not necessarily immediate, but instead happens gradually. They find that social capital stemming from a quality marriage grows with time, thereby increasing one’s stake in conformity and facilitating the desistance process. The current study further examines this accumulation of social capital and its short-term effects on offending using data from Horney et al.’s study of male offenders in Nebraska. Adopting an investment analogy similar to that of Laub et al., we examine the relationship between the number of months an offender lives with a wife and the probability of re-offending. Implications for theory and future research are discussed.
Invisible Punishment: An Instrument of Social Exclusion
As the rate of imprisonment and criminal justice supervision has increased over the past two decades, another form of criminal sanction, one that could be called “invisible punishment,” has increased as well. This term refers to the sanctions that follow a criminal conviction by operation of law but are not imposed by the judge at the time of sentencing. Sex offender registration, voter disqualification, bars to designated categories of employment are among the better known forms of invisible punishment. Yet the nature and intrusiveness of these collateral sanctions has also changed over this period of time as the federal government has enacted legislation disqualifying certain offenders from eligibility from many benefits of the welfare state such as housing, education and public support. This paper examines the growth of the network of invisible punishments, assesses their changing characteristics, develops a research agenda on collateral sanctions, and proposes a set of policy reforms.
Invisible Victims, Hidden Pain: The Effects of the Death Penalty on Families of Offenders
America is obsessed with murder, as evidenced by headlines such as a recent one proclaiming, “Killings Increase In Many Big Cities” (Butterfield, 2001). This fascination with murder is somewhat difficult to understand given the reality that murders accounted for only 0.1% of the Index Crimes in the year 2000 (Federal Bureau of Investigation 2000:5). Nonetheless, we are obsessed with murder. We love to be afraid, and we love to hate offenders. Indeed, Americans appear to want the media to help the average citizen distance her- or himself from victims and offenders alike. As one journalist stated, “Crime reports are cathartic; we feel relief that the victim and offender are not like us.” For obvious reasons, we do not want to be like the victim, who has suffered or is dead. We also do not want to be like the offender, who is seen as possessing some degree of “other-ness,” to be somehow less fully human, particularly when the crime is murder. When the offender is seen as “other,” it becomes far easier to sentence that offender to death. Not only does the offender become defined as “other,’ but the family members of the offender may be seen as having “Otherness by association.” In the current paper, I present a typology of family members based on their reactions to the strains of dealing with a relative facing capital punishment, including this sense of “otherness.” According to recent statistics, 6,588 men and women have been placed under a sentence of death since reinstatement of capital punishment under Gregg v. Georgia, (1976), with over 700 executions carried out at the time of the writing of this paper. As of December 31, 2000, the number of prisoners on death row was 3,593 (54 women and 3,539 men). In 2000, 85 inmates were executed, and in 2001 another 66 were executed. (Snell 2001). These numbers exclude those who were charged with a capital offense but for some reason – plea bargain, acquittal or lesser sentence – were never sentenced to death. It is imperative that we remember that those facing or under a sentence of death do not exist in a vacuum. They are someone’s brother or sister, mother or father, daughter or son, friend. Thus, our system of capital punishment creates stress, hardship and pain for persons other than those accused of a capital crime. Furthermore, the hardships occur whether or not the offender is executed. The question this project seeks to address is how America’s focus on murder and the concomitant response of capital punishment affect the families of those accused as well as those convicted and sentenced to death. In particular, this paper seeks to examine the problems faced by these family members, how they respond, and how their responses are shaped by social history, social placement and social support. The question arises, why study the families of persons facing a death sentence? First, they are a small group, as we have seen. Murder itself is an infrequent crime, and the death penalty is sought in only a small fraction of all murders. Second, the families of murder victims are seen as less culpable than families of those facing potential execution. Violent offenders frequently come from horrific backgrounds, fraught with abuse and neglect (Haney 1998; Lewis et al. 1988). Thus, the families of those accused of a capital crime are not only guilty by association, but they may be viewed as guilty in their own right. I suggest that as long as America maintains a system of capital punishment it is important to assess the costs of that system, both economic and social.
Involving Stakeholders in the Micro-Environment of Restorative Conferencing: Toward Principle-Based Evaluation
Restorative decision-making models – including family group conferencing, reparative boards, victim-offender dialogue and peacemaking circles – have emerged in the past five years as popular alternatives to adversarial procedures in juvenile courts. Using a variety of qualitative data from case studies of conferencing programs, this paper examines how conferencing practitioners operationalize the core restorative principle that victim, offender and community should have maximum opportunities for participation in decisionmaking. Using a principle-based observation approach, we describe how conferencing practitioners address the key dimensions of inclusion, communication, and role-taking – employing several intervention theories in the process.
Is Female Violence on the Rise? [Conflicting] Conclusions From Multiple Sources of Evidence
We assess the view that female violence has been increasing faster or catching up with male levels of violence as frequently suggested in both the popular press and social science writings. The principal goal of this paper is to examine trends in adult female violence over the past several decades to examine constancy and change in female-to-male patterns and to offer a framework for understanding these emergent patterns. We use multiple sources of data to evaluate whether the level and seriousness of female violent crime is escalating relative to males; these sources include official measures (e.g., UCR arrests, incarceration records) as well as unofficial sources (e.g., self-report surveys, NCVS). One main objective will be to present the factual material (e.g., rates, offender profiles, female share of offending) in a straightforward, easily understandable manner so the reader can draw her/his own conclusions regarding the extent of constancy or change in female-to-male criminal violence.
Is Job Accessibility Relevant to Crime Patterns? A GIS Approach
Economists and criminologists have long tried to establish linkages between job markets and crime. Most prior research, however, used large areas such as the whole nation, states, metropolitan areas or counties to identify job markets. Such large units are heterogeneous, and there may be more variation within such units than between them. This research uses two GIS-based methods to measure job access across census tracts in Cleveland, Ohio in 1990. The first is a ratio of jobs to resident workers (JR Ratio) within catchment areas defined by reasonable commuting times. The second approach is a gravity-based Job Accessibility Index, which accounts for job competition among workers and longer commute times by public transit riders. Controlling for spatial autocorrelation, we find consistent inverse relationships between gravity-based job accessibility and crime rates. These relationships tend to be stronger for economic crimes than for crimes of violence.
Is Prison Still a Total Institution? A French Point of View
In 2000 was prison in France much debated, but with two years gone one can say that not so much has changed : media has no interest on the issue anymore, politicians neither, and very few was done on a legislative level. My hypothesis is here to redefine the theory of prison as a total institution, pointing out that prison works as an autonomic entity and not much can affect its function. I say “total institution” because nothing can deeply critic the penitential ground : punishment. All persons and administrations dealing with prison are kept tight in a reduced area of speech where just the superficial elements of prison are discussed. But for practical, social and philosophical reasons, prison is thought as a masterpiece of the penal system, and people can’t find the tools to think prison without for first point that prison is eternal since it would be essential because necessary. I try to show in my work how prison, as a social organisation, has the power to perpetuate itself, although criticism is tough towards its negative aspects.
Is Social Control Theory Crime Specific? An Examination of the Relationship Between Societal-Level Bonds and Adolescent Criminal Offenses Using Structural Equation Modeling
Travis Hirschi (1969) posits that the bond an individual maintains with society is divided into four main components: attachment, commitment, involvement, and belief. The stronger the bond to conventional acts and the greater the belief in vested social institutions via the four main elements of the bond, the less likely the individual will be to engage in delinquent or criminal acts. The focus of this analysis is to determine if the four elements of the bond serve as a valuable buffer against all types of criminal offenses. Specifically, it is hypothesized that social control theory will be crime specific in that the social control elements will vary in their predictive power of the percentage of adolescents’ engaging in a variety of criminal offenses including personal crime, property crime, drug offenses, and status offenses. The data will be analyzed using the in-home questionnaires of both Wave I and Wave II of the National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent Health (Udry, 1997). Structural Equation Modeling will be used to explore the effects of societal-level bonds on adolescent personal crime, property crime, drug offenses, as well as status offenses.
Is There Constancy in Predictors of Deviance Across Cultural Settings?
An entire chapter of the General Theory (Gottfredson & Hirschi, 1990) deals with its cross-cultural/national application. Yet, surprisingly few empirical efforts have followed over the past decade to test propositions (cf, Vazsonyi et al., 2001). Gottfredson and Hirschi (1990) suggest that for a theory to be applicable cross-culturally, it must include a definition of crime that is culture free. In addition to the individual trait-like tendency of low self-control (“crimes require more than individual tendencies,” p. 177), the authors also suggest that different societies provide different “opportunities” to individuals (formal or informal social control agents) that are important in understanding crime. In the current investigation, we tested these ideas cross-nationally. More specifically, we predicted different “types” of deviance with self-control, with maternal/paternal family processes, and with measures of neighborhood cohesion. Self-report data from N = 8,417 adolescents from four countries were used. Our analytic approach consists of examining the direct effects of predictors as well as comparing both unique and shared variance explained by these variables in crime and deviance. Preliminary findings suggest that the model explains 33.1% in the variability of total deviance after controlling for age, sex, family structure, SES, and culture. Additional analyses will examine the potentially unique impact of culture in understanding crime and deviance.
Is There Honor Among Crooks?
This paper examines the importance of interpersonal trust for the emergence and continued existence of criminal networks. According to one frequently stated assumption, relations between cooperating criminal actors need to be founded on bonds of trust in order to reduce the risks inherent in such relations to a tolerable level. A conceptualization of “trust” for the purpose of analyzing criminal networks is proposed, and empirical findings are presented on trust and the lack of trust in the illegal alcohol market in Norway and the illegal cigarette market in Germany.
Issues in a 30 Year Follow-Up Critical Ethnography of Serious Thieves
This paper will discuss key theoretical and methodological issues in a thirty year follow-up study using critical ethnography to track events in the lives of some 40 serious thieves. The subjects were initially engaged through social agency contacts during the 1960’s and 1970’s, using snowball sampling within a grounded theory/analytic induction approach, and were involved centrally in a variety of serious (although “non-professional”) theft. Analysis from the initial research indicated that most would shortly “retire” from this short-term career: most “going straight”, but a few getting involved in service-industry crime (such as drug dealing or bootlegging), and those who persisted being incarcerated for increasingly lengthy sentences. The paper will focus on initial issues in doing the follow-up research.
Issues in Implementing an Intensive Supervision Program for Mid-Risk Youth
The Los Angeles County Probation Department is trying a new approach to serving mid-risk youth who are put on probation for the first time. Over the last two years, the county has been implementing this new community-based program. The program is build around a collaboration between probation staff and social service staff who are collocated at the same site. The model features case planning to coordinate needed services for the youth ands their families, intensive supervision of youth using a graduated sanctions protocol, and daily after-school activities including tutoring, mentoring, recreation and substance abuse education A comprehensive evaluation of this program is underway. This presentation reports preliminary findings from the process evaluation that relates aspects of ten unique sites participating and gender and risk level of client to services received, agency characteristics including philosophic approaches to service delivery, and risk levels of participating youth to program implementation goals and initial program completion goals.
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John Court: Comparison of Characteristics, Sexual Behavior and Sexual Attitudes of Clients of Prostitutes
The project presents a unique appliction of case-control methodology to investigate the differences between those men arrested for soliciting sexual favors from sex workers in four American cities. Using case-control methodology to highlight the substantive differences between men who solicit those who do not, this project will make an original and significant contribution to criminal justice policies that address clients of prostitutes rther than prostitutes themselves. Diversion programs such as the one employed in the cities under investigation must take into account the importance of culturally based differences among prostitute clients along the lines of race/ethnicity, attitudes toward women, and by extension female sex workers, and the sexual scripts they use in their interactions with prostitute women. This analysis will be important in the develo9pment of programs, training and eduation modules, as well as making a contribution to the paucity of literature in the social and behavioral sciences on clients of prostitutes.
Judging One’s Peers: How Teen Court Juries Make Decisions
Teen courts are diversion programs for at-risk youth charged with relatively minor offenses. In these programs, non-violent juvenile offenders plead guilty to criminal charges and have peers adjudicate the sentence. Although investigations of these programs typically focus on program effectiveness (i.e., does diversion reduce recidivism risk among offenders), teen courts represent a valuable opportunity to study how juveniles make decisions about the behavior of delinquent peers. This paper reports a study of teen court participants in a rural county of a northwestern state. The data are compiled from two samples: juveniles referred to teen court, and youths recruited to sit in judgement of their peers as teen court jurors. Subjects provided demographic information, self-reports of relationships with parents and peers, personal attitudes, and self-reported delinquent behavior. The analysis considers the characteristics of teen court jurors and offenders, and their association with sentences and post-sentence juror assessments of offender behavior.
Judgment Calls: The Judicial Construction and Evaluation of Social Science in Family Law
In this paper, I investigate the ways in which scientific and social scientific knowledge is constructed, framed, and delimited in the law through judicial narratives in child custody cases involving gay and lesbian parents. Family court judges are not equipped or positioned to decide empirical validity as a social scientist would, but take an active part in constructing expertise, evaluating the relevance and legitimacy of social scientific evidence, and ultimately deciding what is valid knowledge and what is not. In order to examine these processes, I draw on literatures involving the nexus of science (particularly psychology and theories of sexuality) and law, the gatekeeping function of judges, and the constitutive nature of law and social life; and employ a qualitative archival analysis of over 200 appellate decisions over the last 50 years and amicus briefs submitted by expert groups in these cases, as well as interviews with current family court judges. This investigation reveals not only the discursive production and re-production of science in family law, but has important practical implications for the practice of law and the use of expert witnesses more generally.
Judicial Review of Drug Courier Profiling: An Assessment of Court Oversight of Proactive Police Interdiction
Research on drug courier profiles concludes that continued use of these instruments raises considerable concerns. Scholarship of drug courier profiling asserts that these instruments may not accurately represent the behavior of persons transporting illegal narcotics. Moreover, researchers allege that the use of drug courier profiles by law enforcement agencies s institutional racism since evidence suggests that proactive pretextual encounters between police and citizens based on profiles represent biased application of race neutral instruments. The primary procedural mechanism of addressing the concerns of profiling by police is judicial review of police procedures and behavior. Through content analyses of court opinions at both the federal and state court levels, this research examines judicial review of drug courier profiling to ascertain if courts have addressed the validity and discrimination concerns inherent in drug courier profiling. This project will ascertain if drug profile characteristics are used with any degree of consistency in law enforcement, if courts critically analyze profile content, if courts require police to demonstrate the validity of profiles
Juror Yield and Community Micro-Neighborhood Fabric: Contextual Impacts of Race, Stability, and SES
Are there connections between whether a summoned juror becomes a potential juror, and community fabric of his or her micro-neighborhood. We develop a contextual model of micro-neighborhood impacts of race, SES, and stability to predict if a summoned juror will become a potential juror. Working with a committee of the Pennsylvania Supreme Court, we were able to obtain addresses or near addresses of 2001 summoned jurors in a representative sample of four Pennsylvania counties, where counties were selected based on their portion of the 1999 statewide African-American population (Philadelphia, Allegheny (Pittsburgh), Montgomery, and Lehigh Counties). The current paper looks at juror yield as the outcome of interest – whether the summoned juror actually was qualified and appeared on the day of service – in the largest the Philadelphia suburban county, Montgomery County. Predictors include location, 2000 census data on the juror’s micro-neighborhood for age and race, and 1990 census data on the juror’s micro-neighborhood for SES and stability variables. Logistic regression results show that successful yield is more likely for those living in micro-neighborhoods where there are fewer younger people 18-30, fewer elderly over 50, and a lower percentage of African-American population. The impact of race is relatively modest albeit in the expected direction and statistically significant. Most powerfully predictive is how far north the micro-neighborhood is located in the county. The full paper will complete comparable analyses for all four counties. In addition, we will model selection effects, controlling for selection as part of the excusal and ineligibility decisions that take place prior to the yield outcome and of course condition that outcome.
Justice Don’t Ride the A-Train
This paper explores the social construction of race/ethnicity, class, gender and crime in American popular culture and in social science. The author examines the social and historical contexts in which images and stereotypes of crime and criminals enter not only academia but mainstream mass culture. The author discusses the images of race/ethnicity, class, and gender in popular culture forms such as films, television, and mystery novels and the intersection of those images and real-life crime. The author asserts that these socially constructed images have cast women of color (and sometimes women in general), racial/ethnic minority males, and the poor in the role of “outsiders” in both fiction and real-life criminal justice dramas.
Juvenile Adjudications: A Cross-Cultural Examination
The United States has been named the country that prosecutes juveniles as adults at a higher rate than any other developed countries in the world. Other countries have caught on to the United States’ trend in prosecuting juveniles. This study’s results showed that incarcerating juveniles as adults rather as children would have a substantial negative effect. Such measures taken before the onset of waivers have been evaluated, and the practicality of waivers before and after, have been controlled for through the use of other variables contributing to the onset of waivers.
Juvenile Assessment Using the YSR: Moving Beyond the Standard Internalizing/Externalizing Dichotomy
Current research using the Youth Self Report instrument tends to classify adolescents into one of two categories: internalizing thoughts and behaviors versus externalizing thoughts and behaviors. Although this has been an informative approach, focusing on these two areas is limiting. Children who do not by current standards fit within one of the two broad categories of internalizing/externalizing may not be acknowledged as needing help when they indeed do. For example, when the YSR was revised in 2001, OCD (Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder) and Schizophrenia were eliminated when they could have been either assessed independently or subsumed under other categories. Our presentation will use data from 500 YSRs gathered as part of the Presley Center’s PREP project. A quantitative factor analysis combined with DSM definitions of OCD and Schizophrenia will suggest that these are significant issues that need to be addressed. In addition, data will be presented to show the importance of a qualitative approach in acknowledging and responding to comments written by the adolescents on the YSR.
Juvenile Drug Court Operations: Description of Six Sites
This paper will discuss key components and recent innovations across six juvenile drug court sites. As part of the National Evaluation of Juvenile Drug Courts, the Urban Institute studied juvenile drug court operations in: Missoula (MT), Jersey City (NJ), Las Cruces (NM), Dayton (OH), and Charleston (SC), and Orlando (FL). The evaluation collected data on the origins and developmental history of each drug court, including the organizational dynamics that led to the initiation and implementation of the program. Topics include the challenges faced by drug courts, the scope of their service networks, availability of treatment resources, gaps and barriers to service delivery, and the stability or fragility of operational arrangements. The paper will present the key organizational challenges common to these courts as well as innovative practices developed in response to operating challenges.
Juvenile Drug Courts: An Aggregate Outcome Evaluation
While the drug court model appears to be effective for adults, relatively little is known about its effectiveness with juveniles. This study presents findings from an outcome evaluation of three juvenile drug courts in the State of Ohio. While the programs differ in terms of size and region, they adhere to the “typical” drug court model by providing community based treatment, judicial monitoring, and frequent urinalysis. A non-equivalent control group design was used to compare juvenile drug court participants with a matched group of probationers. Groups were matched with regard to selected demographic characteristics as well as the presence of a substance abuse problem. Data were collected on demographic characteristics, offense and disposition, prior criminal history, drug use and treatment, treatment placement and outcome, court reported violations, and termination status of drug court participants. Recidivism data were collected between October, 2001 and January, 2002. Logistic regression was used to estimate the probability of rearrest. Drug court participants were significantly less likely to be rearrested than probationers.
Juvenile Drug Courts: Do They Work?
The use of Juvenile Drug Courts (JDCs) for the purpose of treating non-violent juvenile drug offenders committing a first offense has increased rapidly in recent years. In 1995 over 140 JDCs were in existence, and an additional 125 are currently being planned throughout the United States (Cooper, 2001). JDCs serve to provide drug-abusing juveniles with the treatments and services they would not receive in detention or on regular probation. To address juvenile drug use in Arizona’s rural counties, in the summer of 2000 judges and probation officers began encouraging the adoption of juvenile drug courts into the state’s rural areas. Some research exists pertaining to adult and family drug courts, but very little concerning juveniles. The evaluations that have been conducted are not encouraging. One program in the Santa Clara County, California JDC in 1998 found that after a year and a half only 15% had graduated (n=9); 52% were still in the program (n=32); and 33% had dropped out (n=20). Those in the program had tested clean for 3.58 months (CCPA: April 8, 1998). Another program in Orange County, Florida had even less successful results: 10% were arrested while in the program and 56.7% were discharged as unsuccessful (Goldkamp and Weiland, 1993). We are in the third year of an evaluation of Arizona JDCs for three rural counties: Cochise, Pinal, and Yavapai. Our paper elaborates on the problems currently facing these JDCs, and incorporates the responses received from juveniles and parents of juveniles involved in a JDC. Briefly, the major difficulties facing Arizona’s rural JDCs include: ú Getting the JDC organized and accepted by county and defense attorneys, and probation officers; ú Getting parents involved in the program; ú Lack of treatment programs and positive incentives for the juveniles; ú Lack of transportation for families that often have far to travel; and ú Possible net-widening. One of the assumptions made by the Arizona Parents’ Commission, who financially support the program, is that the main reason juveniles become drug offenders is poor family communications and lack of parental supervision. Through intensive interviewing with juveniles and their parents in three rural counties, we are seeking to determine whether or not the parent-child relationship has improved as a result of drug court interventions.
Juvenile Female Offenders in Cook County: Trends and Outcomes
Much has been said lately about rising crime rates for juvenile female offenders. over two decades of data are examined from the Cook County Jvenile Court, the oldest and one of the largest Juvenile Courts in the country, in an attempt to ascertain what if any trends exsit within this jurisdiction. Illinois essentially removed status offenders from their system in the early 1980’s. It provides an interesting insight into the delinquent behavior of females absent their entry into the system as status offenders. Comparisons are also made with males regarding differences in offending, outcomes, and prior dependent neglect background.
Juvenile Justice Administration in India: Recent Developments
Juvenile Justice Administration in India has been revamped consequent to the enactment of Juvenile Justice Act 1986 and again after the amendment of this legislation as the Juvenile Justice (Care and Protection of Children) Act 2000. Prior to these federal legislations, there was no uniform policy in the Administration of Juvenile Justice. Several states had their own children Acts but they were not effectively implemented and as a result children were sent to prison. Now the recent developments changed the scenario and they are milestones in the history of child protection. An active partnership between Governmental, Non Governmental organizations, individuals and group of people, is visible now. The present paper made an attempt to analyse these developments in Juvenile Justice Administration in India
Juvenile Sex Offenders: Differences Between Child Molesters and Other Juvenile Sex Offenders
Using psychological screenings from case files, we distinguish between juvenile sex offenders (ages 12-18) who have made victims 5 or more years younger, and those who have made victims from their own age group. We show how child molesters, a.o., have fewer social skills, worse relations with their peers, have been bullied more often in school, are younger, report having committed more sex offenses and make male victims more often. We discuss implications for treatment. —
Juvenile Victimization and Offending Patterns
Recent research has shown that youths experience elevated levels of victimization and delinquency during after school hours. Theoretically, after school programs may impact levels of victimization and offending by providing a “safeguard” for adolescents during unsupervised hours. Utilizing funds from the Maryland After School Opportunity Act of 1999, the state of Maryland provided funding to develop a statewide plan to support after school program designed to keep children safe, increase healthy behaviors and decrease negative behaviors. This paper examines the self-reported victimization and delinquency of a sample of approximately 300 after school participants in the state of Maryland. More specifically, this paper examines the impact of time of day on the types of crimes committed by and against juveniles, as well as the compounding factors related to delinquent behavior.
Juveniles in the Federal Criminal Justice System: Trends in Their Prosecution and Sentencing and Comparisons With State Juvenile Justice System Outcomes
Comparatively few juvenile delinquency proceedings are handled in the Federal courts. For example, in 1995, there were 122 juvenile delinquency proceedings that terminated in the U.S. district courts, while the volume of juvenile delinquency dispositions in the U.S. district courts declined between 1989 and 1994. However, relatively larger numbers of juveniles are sentenced in Federal criminal courts after having been tried as adults, and their numbers appear to be increasing. Very little is known about the youth who are handled in Federal criminal courts, whether they appear in delinquency cases or whether they are sentenced as adults. This paper provides descriptive data on the trends in cases and sentencing outcomes for juveniles handled in the Federal criminal courts between 1994 and 2000, and it compares them to national-level estimates of juveniles handled in the states juvenile courts over the same period. Comparisons are made between the types of offenses proceeded against, the personal characteristics of the juveniles, and the geographic distributions of cases. Additionally, the cases of juveniles in the Federal system are compared to those of young adults.
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Keeping the Faith: Program Religiosity and Its Effect on Crime Prevention
Some research has found that involvement in religious activities and religious beliefs has a deterrent effect on criminal behavior. Faith-based organizations (FBOs) possess religious characteristics that may enable them to influence criminal behavior through interaction with their clientele. This paper examines how religiosity in programming might influence an organization’s ability to affect criminal behavior. The paper presents a model that allows researchers to examine the religious character of an organization and the effects these characteristics may have on an organization’s ability or inability to prevent the initiation or continuation of criminal behavior. Propositions are presented detailing the expected relationships between the religious character of organizations and program effectiveness.
Keeping Women Out of Prison: A Community-Based Program That Works
Increasingly under-skilled, undereducated female offenders are sentenced to prison because there are no options. Typically the nature of their offenses are non-violent which means they pose little or no threat to the community. However because they lack the basic skills needed to secure employment, judges do not view them as viable candidates for community-based work release programs. This paper presents research on a community-based intermediate punishment program for female offenders that demonstrates the effectiveness of the program’s comprehensive services tailored around the specific needs of the women. The paper also reviews the key components needed to effectively implement this model program.
Korean Adolescent Alcohol Drinking: A Test of Three Theories of Deviant Behavior
Social learning, social control and strain theory are tested with survey data on Korean adolescent alcohol use. The study was a self-report questionnaire survey of a sample of 2,700 high school seniors in Seoul, Incheon and Junju in 1992. Even in Korean society, social learning theory is strongly supported as an explanation for adolescent alcohol use. Social control theory receives some support, and strain theory receives little support. Compare with previous study (Akers and Cochran, 1985), the measures of family (parents) influence in both social learning theory and social control theory remain strongly to explain the Korean adolescent alcohol drinking. The social processes of drinking alcohol among adolescents are somewhat culture bound.
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Labeling Theory as a Paradigm for Prison Rape Etiology
The prison subculture consists of beliefs and attitudes that condone and support prison rape. For victims of prison rape, potential recourse from such victimization is greatly limited. Because of this, many victims of prison rape concede to repeated incidents of victimization that ultimately force the inmate-victim into a role of subservience. Labeling theory is presented as one means of explaining the complex developments that lead from an inmate’s first victimization, to the eventual acceptance of their new role. This new social role is rooted in an ascribed social status that ultimately leads to the internalization of their new sex role as part of their self-identity.
Language, Culture and the Interpretation of “Victim”: An Analysis of “Innocent Victim” in Media, 2000-2002
Taking a discourse analysis theoretical perspective that is equidistant from a positivistic structural approach and a postmodernist strict textual approach, this paper looks at the use of the phrase “innocent victim” in media. The paper is based on a study of major US newspapers through the LEXIS-NEXIS database and involves a comparative analysis of the usage of “victim” (300 times daily on average) and “innocent victim” (10 times daily on average) from March 2000 to March 2002. The analysis examines the context of usage for each term arguing for interpretations based on meanings people attach to situations rather than on causal factors or variables. Additionally, the comparative analysis explores how the usage of “victim” and alternatively “innocent victim” displays the ways in which their meaning is socially created. Finally, in the context of my research, I examine Max Weber’s notion of the Protestant Ethos, (a) as a theory of human action denoting an interpretive and interactive process, and (b) for its usefulness in locating the meaning of responsibility and the assignment of guilt and innocence.
Latch Key Killers
There is a hidden crisis that plagues American children- absent parents. Children thrive in homes where parents are present. They are more likely to develop serious lapses in moral, emotional, and intellectual development if they are left on their own. In March, 2001, when the latest teen-age killer to make national news opened fire, in a high school near San Diego with the deadliest display of such violence since the murders at Columbine, the public scrambled for explanations for his behavior. Looking back, there are two other “celebrity” killers whose childhood backgrounds bear a striking resemblance to the San Diego killer. All three cases involved parental divorce in middle childhood, after which the mothers abandoned the boys. These were teenagers who spend most of their time either unsupervised or in other people’s homes. These two young men were Timothy McVeigh and Jeffrey Dahmer. Divorce and out-of-wedlock births means that the country is guaranteed a steady quotient of single-parent, nor more often than not, often absent parent homes. Futhermore, the exodus of women- meaning mothers, both divorced and otherwise- out of the home and into the workplace will also result in absent parent homes. What troubles the public about these teen-age killers is not that they seem anomalous, but precisely that they may be embelmatic.
Latin Kings and Young Lords in Chicago and New York City
Under what conditions do gangs transform into street gangs and vice versa? Both the Young Lords Party and the Latin Kings formed as street gangs in Chicago in the 1960s. While the Young Lords transformed into a revolutionary nationalist community organization, the Latin Kings consolidated as a street gang. While the Young Lords have disbanded, the Latin Kings have persisted and have become politicized. The paper examines the factors influencing these developments, including the role of political repression. incarceration, the underground economy, and gentrification.
Law, Crime and Imprisonment: Relative Sentence Severity in California, 1983-1998
During the past three decades, crime control legislation in California has been designed to increase prosecution and lengthen terms of imprisonment. The prison population grew dramatically with a decline in crime in the 1990 s; Americans believe the War on Crime has been a success. The present research will use California parole and crime data to construct a sentence severity index, which can be used to calculate the probability of a prison sentence given the index crime rate, and the expected number of days in prison per reported crime. These indices demonstrate offender likelihood of imprisonment and length of stay as these trends have changed over the last twenty years in California. This analysis examines what part of the criminal justice system (e.g. arrest, prosecution, conviction, imprisonment) has sustained the bulk of the impact of this tough-on-crime legislation. While the California prison population has increased dramatically over the last two decades, the expected number of days in prison per index offense is shorter today than in the past. These findings suggest that our tough-on-crime approach has not produced the intended consequences, and that more people are serving shorter terms of incarceration per reported index offense in California.
Law and Disorder in Belize, Central America
Combining a field research and photo-journalistic approach to the topic, this poster session reports on the state of crime and law enforcement in the small Central American nation of Belize. With unprecedented access, the researcher conducted a two week observational study of the crime problem and police function in Belize. This including interviewing police supervisors and officers in urban and rural areas in addition to observing the operations of the police training academy. In addition, the researcher observed the functions of the courts and prison system in Belize to add needed detail and substance to the study. This poster session highlights and summarizes the major findings of this field research project via text and images.
Law and Officials’ Behavior in the Bureaucratic Context of Corrections
The context of corrections has been subjected to three powerful continuing legal trends: 1) Supreme Court decisions that either freeze or diminish the definition and scope of constitutional rights for prisoners; 2) statutory enactments that impose significant impediments to prisoners’ access to courts and their use of law to seek remedies for alleged constitutional violations; and 3) regular occurrences of publicized incidents in which prisoners endure violations of their legal protections, including protections against sexual assault and deprivation of medical care. This paper will evaluate the implications and consequences of these trends in considering the symbolic and practical effects of law in a bureaucratic setting that provides a fertile environment for the influence of the “penal harm” philosophy.
Law and Order in North India: Perspectives on Village and Jungle
This presentation explores the concept of the jungle as a metaphor for deviance and disorder. In India the jungle as a physical space is seen as the natural habitat of many deviant and marginal groups. In a metaphorical sense, it is also a space that is deeply feared within Indian culture. Indian and British colonial concepts of the jungle are explored in the first part of the poster. The second section considers views on village India, ranging from colonial discourse to the rural idyll of the anti-colonial nationalist. Discourses contrasting village and jungle as opposing spaces are also considered. A central theme is implicit here: that the maintenance of social order in rural India is dependent on ‘keeping the jungle out’. Finally, a case-study based on the author’s own fieldwork in one village in western Uttar Pradesh is presented. Taking the idea of the Indian village as a self-regulatory entity as a starting-point, two scenarios are considered. Systems of regulation within Nagaria are considered from the perspectives of consensus and conflict. The conclusion is an open one, allowing for the possibility that both readings may have a valid application to the understanding of law and order in contemporary village India.
Law and the Rule of Law
Laws usually imply broad values but often promote narrow interests. This may reflect cynicism or it may reflect a human tendency to confuse interests with values, especially in conflicts where interests are at stake. Either way, law often depends on whose ox is gored. In the rule of law, however, individual laws are decided prior to conflicts and then followed in conflicts even if all parties are dissatisfied with the results. Over time, this drives laws towards broader values: deciding beforehand what to do whenm an ox is gored requires that I consider the possibility that my ox will be gored and the possibility that my ox will do the goring. At present, lawyers and the media often ignore the law and argue in terms of values — truth, justice, righteousness. This plays on inevitable dissatisfactions that result from following pre-determined rules in particular cases, and weakens public commitment to the rule of law. But the direct pursuit of societal values is extremely dangerous, since uitlimately it can free individuals to pursue narrow interests under the rubric of broad values, whether from cycnicsm or from the human tenmdency to confuse values and interests. Thus, the rule of law is a protective device that accommodates shortcomings in human nature.
Law Enforcement and Local Media: Who is Influencing Who?
What role do local media (newspapers, broadcasting) play with respect to the formulating, planning and execution of intervention strategies? Do local media set agendas of police and local government? Or do police and local government use local media for informing the public and influence public opinion? On the one hand, journalists publish about crime and safety, trying to show to police and authorities the urgency of certain crime and safety issues. At the other hand, police use the media to make clear what special intervention programs they consider or perform, and to enhance their public image. The interplay of this type of mutual influences is the topic of the present research. In the last few years, police force in one of the dutch cities has set up a special intervention scheme against drugs-related disorder on the street, in which CCTV and more surveillance have been introduced. In this paper we try to reconstruct the decision process to launch this scheme, and especially what role the local media have played. We reconstruct the sequencing of rising media concern and rising police and local government concern.
Law Enforcement Officers Killed in the Line of Duty: A Comparison of Juvenile and Adult Offenders
Between 1980 and 1999, over 1,400 law enforcement officers were killed in the line of duty. Ten percent of these cases involved juvenile offenders. Past studies on this topic have not examined adult and juvenile offenders separately, in essence offering a tacit assumption that the patterns of law enforcement homicides are the same for adult and juvenile offenders. However, research on violent crime and homicide indicates that the patterns and likelihood of committing a homicide are different for adult and juvenile offenders. We propose that the same conclusion can be applied to situations in which law enforcement officers are killed. We employ the Federal Bureau of Investigation’s LEOKA data (Law Enforcement Officers Killed and Assaulted). In our analysis we employ log-linear models to compare adults and juveniles who have murdered police officers between 1980 and 1999 on a variety of socioeconomic, demographic, and circumstances of the event (i.e. drugs/alcohol involved, type of weapon, type of jurisdiction, etc.). The findings have substantive implications for the literature on juvenile homicide offenses, methodological implications for the manner in which these types of studies are modeled, and potential policy implications for police officer training and safety
Law Enforcement’s Use of Cutting Edge Technology: Maximizing-Less-Than Lethal and Information Technologies for Police Agencies
IACP is heavily involved in developing information systems for police agencies. They have developed a process to assist agencies in this task that focuses ont he functions of the agency and not the hardware. The paper will describe this processw and give examples of its use and impact on police planning.
Learning Assessments Through Criminal Justice Internship: Issues and Considerations
This paper presents the findings of a review of the social and criminal justice internship program at a Midwestern university, in the university effort to validate its academic program. Recently, many colleges and universities have been required by internal and external forces to demonstrate how well their academic programs are performing-particularly, with respect to the mission and goals of the institution. Looking at student learning outcomes as a means of demonstrating the performance of the program is probable the most straightforward assessment tool. Accordingly, the paper focuses on the internship program that in many criminal justice programs is configured as a capstone course. As a capstone course, the internship programs integrate knowledge, concepts, and skills associated with an entire sequence of study in a program. This method of assessment is unique because the courses themselves become the instruments for assessing student teaching and learning. Evaluation of students’ work in these courses is used as a means of assessing student outcomes. The paper discusses the bridge between theory and practice, the usefulness of participatory and applied learning, and the challenge of preparing students for the world of work in the 21st century.
Learning Assessments Through Criminal Justice Internship: Issues and Considerations
This paper presents the findings of a review of the social and criminal justice internship program at a Midwestern university, in the university effort to validate its academic program. Recently, many colleges and universities have been required by internal and external forces to demonstrate how well their academic programs are performing-particularly, with respect to the mission and goals of the institution. Looking at student learning outcomes as a means of demonstrating the performance of the program is probable the most straightforward assessment tool. Accordingly, the paper focuses on the internship program that in many criminal justice programs is configured as a capstone course. As a capstone course, the internship programs integrate knowledge, concepts, and skills associated with an entire sequence of study in a program. This method of assessment is unique because the courses themselves become the instruments for assessing student teaching and learning. Evaluation of students’ work in these courses is used as a means of assessing student outcomes. The paper discusses the bridge between theory and practice, the usefulness of participatory and applied learning, and the challenge of preparing students for the world of work in the 21st century.
Learning in Action: The New Police Training
This research seeks to describe the mechanisms through which police recruits become socialized into police culture. Data for the research were gathered through participant-observation at a regional criminal justice training center. Recruit classes from both traditional and new “scenario-based” curriculums were observed with special attention focused on the learning process. Using a Social Learning perspective, I describe some of the processes through which formal and informal rules and norms are communicated in the police training and socialization experience. In particular, I examine how various definitions are constructed during officer training, including the use of war stories, images of “good guys” versus “bad guys,” and specific aspects of the scenarios themselves.
Learning Online Course Delivery: A Traditional Faculty Experience
The University of Phoenix, a pioneer in online education, recently expanded course offerings to criminal justice. The University of Phoenix Online College recruits academics and professionals to deliver online courses. Recruited academics and professionals become acquainted with the university’s teaching model by following a two-phased training process. First, the prospective faculty member completes an extensive four-week training program that requires substantive participation five out of seven days per week. Second, a closely monitored initial class is delivered by a new faculty member called a mentee and monitored by an experienced faculty member called mentor. This paper follows the chronological experiences of mentee, who was a ful-time tenure track faculty member at a state university with an interest in oneline course delivery. The paper makes recommendations for those considering online course delivery.
Legal and Media Enmeshments: Criticizing “Objectivity” Through High Profile Crime Cases
This paper draws on an ongoing research project concerning high profile crime cases to examine how media influence poses special problems for the law. Once individual cases swell into social causes, perceived as having general and symbolic implications, can and does the law still operate under “business as usual” conditions? In order to probe what I call a problem of enmeshment (one which also puts legal “objectivity” into question) I interviewed judges, lawyers and jurors in seven high profile crime cases. These ranged from the 1989 Central Park Jogger case to the 1995 O.J. Simpson case. The paper argues that high profile crime cases present an opportunity for analyzing how social problems in the American context are often thought about legalistically. At the same time, this analysis suggests that in reverse, the legal system starts to process symbolic high profile crimes as through they were social problems.
Legal Culture in a Multi-Cleavage Society: The Israeli Case
This study examines the legal culture in the Israeli society through the comparison of attitudes toward the law and the legal system among several groups in Israel. Two surveys compared the legal attitudes of Ultra-orthodox Jews (N=104), settlers in the occupied territories (N=262), Israeli Arabs (N=752) and Yeshiva students (N=464), with the attitudes of a representative sample of the general Israeli Jewish population (N = 1,434). The surveys were conducted via phone interviews. The results of path analyses conducted for each survey show that the effect of group affiliation on the readiness to take the law into one’s hands is mediated by perceived justice of the police and courts, the perceived supremacy of other rules and laws over state laws, normative commitment to the law, social alienation and perceived anomie.
Legal Rationality and Jurisdictional Transfer: Comparing Sentencing of Adolescents in Juvenile and Criminal Courts
Despite a recent proliferation of laws transferring adolescents from juvenile court to criminal court, no research has examined whether these transfer policies subject adolescents to a more ‘formally rational’ sentencing process than in juvenile courts. In response, this paper assesses whether adolescents prosecuted as adults are subjected to different sentencing criteria and outcomes than are adolescents prosecuted in juvenile courts. It does so using comparable samples of cases, matched by age and offense, from two adjacent jurisdictions with different thresholds for criminal court eligibility. The results indicate that a criminal court tariff exists, whereby criminal court actors are more likely than juvenile court actors to sentence convicted defendants to incarceration. The possibility is considered that relative to one another, juvenile courts operate via substantive legal rationality and criminal courts via formal legal rationality; contrary to this theoretical contrast, the results indicate that similar factors predict sentencing in both types of courts.
Legal Responses to Internet Child Pornography: The Way Forward
The paper analyzes the legal responses to Internet child pornography in the backdrop of the arguments presented before the United States Supreme Court in Ashcroft v. Free Speech Coalition, in October 2001. The debate between freedom of speech on the one hand and criminalization of child pornography on the other has been thrown into sharp focus because of the constitutional challenge to the CPPA. The paper aims to examine such fundamental questions as the link between child pornography and child sexual abuse, the appropriateness of criminal sanctions to tackle the menace, the extent and limits thereof, and the viability of legal responses given the fact that technology does not respect national boundaries. The research covers case law, treatises, scholarly articles, criminological studies, congressional findings, and psychological data. The paper attempts to formulate responses that the law could adopt to deal with child pornography on the Internet, and draws from the lessons learnt from other attempts to regulate conduct on the Internet. It is hoped that the paper would be an important addition to scholarship in the area, given the reality that the briefs filed before the court revealed a paucity of research supporting many hypotheses.
Legally Imposed Costs, Self-Imposed Costs and Socially Imposed Costs: Why Men Don’t Rape
Violence prevention efforts can only improve if we discover what factors deter people from committing violent behavior. It has been suggested that moral deterrent factors may be just as effective in curbing illegal behavior as legal sanctions. Originally, the central concept of deterrence theory was the fear of legal punishment, and the importance of informal social sanctions was largely ignored. There is no theoretical reason however, why the notion of deterrence cannot be extended to other types of sanctions. State imposed costs are material deprivations in the forms of arrest and/or incarceration. Self-imposed costs, as defined by Grasmick and Bursik (1990), are shame or guilt feelings which actors might place on themselves when they engage in behaviors that they consider morally wrong. Socially imposed costs are the embarrassment or loss of respect people might experience when they violate norms, which their peer gro! ! ups support. While much research has been done on why men rape, this research will take a look at why men don’t rape. The purpose of this research is to not only explore the deterrent effects of legal sanctions, but to also focus on the deterrent effects of perceived threats of shame and embarrassment on men’s inclination to force sex on an unwilling woman.
Lethal and Non-Lethal Gun Violence and Neighborhoods: The Relationship Between Ecological and Individual Longitudinal Approaches to Guns, Gangs, and Drug Dealing
Lethal and non-lethal violence is often concentrated in certain neighborhoods of cities. This paper addresses ecological and individual factors that contribute to such concentration, and tests Blumstein’s thesis that the rise in gun-related violence is associated with the combination of gun availability and drug dealing. Data are used from two sources: longitudinal data from 1,517 males in the Pittsburgh Youth Study, and city-wide police data on gun-related violence and delinquent offending among 12-25 year-olds. An earlier study on homicide offenders in the sample (N = 29) concentrated on predictors of violence, and predictors of homicide among violent offenders (Loeber et al., 2001). The majority (83%) of the homicide offenders were black males. This paper put these findings and other findings from the Pittsburgh Youth Study on gun-related nonlethal violence in an ecological context. The paper shows the degree to which gun carrying, gang activity, and drug dealing covary, first, with gun-related violence among young males in the community and, second, with gun-related violence by males in the Pittsburgh Youth Study. The paper demonstrates which individual characteristics and which ecological factors (measured for the individual and for the neighborhood in which the individual lives) best predict gun-related violence.
Lethal Southern Justice: A Study of Executions and Lynchings in Dyer County, Tennessee
In the early part of the twentieth century, Southern communities made use of both legal and extra-legal executions. The relationship between these two deadly social responses to perceived deviance remains unclear. Were these two forms of “lethal social control” (Beck, Massey and Tolnay, 1989, 317) different expressions of the same phenomenon, with executions ultimately substituting for lynchings? Or were they opposites, in that lynchings defied the law and executions carried out legal sentences? Did the use of one form of killing tend to incite or reduce the use of the other form? This study examines cases from Dyer County in northwest Tennessee, where six extralegal and three legal executions occurred between 1900 and 1940. Several of the lynchings imitated legal proceedings, with the accused person “tried” inside the courthouse by a judge and jury that consisted of members of the mob. One legal death sentence resulted from a trial moved from the county because of the threat of mob violence. Information on the cases comes from contemporary newspaper accounts, diaries and local histories, court records, and correspondence files of the Tennessee governors.
Life on the Edge of Insanity: The Daily Lives of Female Inmates in Two Texas Prisons
Numerous books and articles have been written about doing time as a female inmate. The focus is often on the subcultures formed, the children and family missed, health problems encountered, mental health treatment, work programs, and their behavior which may include homosexuality, violence, manipulation, and/or sexual misconduct. On the other hand, as important as these issues are the monotonous everyday life of female inmates is often given only superficial recognition. With this in mind, the following paper explores the lives of female inmates in two Texas prisons. The focus is on how the majority of these women manage the boredom, humiliation, shame, and the lack of human compassion frequently found in female facilities.
Line of Duty Police Deaths: Before and After 9/11
Expanding on previous research (Quinet et al., 1997) that analyzed line of duty deaths and injury to police from 1960-1992, this paper expands analysis through 2001. In addition to replicating previous analysis on felonious and non-felonious line of duty deaths, this paper also offers some analysis on the data and policy implications of the line of duty police deaths of September 11, 2001.
Linking Child Welfare With Juvenile Justice
Fourteen states have established 6 to 10 years old as the minimum age for delinquency. Many legal issues arise when the courts have jurisdiction over children this young. There are both current and proposed alternatives. Programs designed specifically for child delinquents are a promising approach. In these programs, children are referred by police based on current delinquent behavior, but the interventions target children based on risk of delinquency in the future. One question is whether the early delinquency of children along with the presence of risk factors for future delinquency should dictate new standards for child protection intervention. Child delinquents often come from families who have had multiple contacts with the child protection system. Yet, the child protection system is not designed to take actions that will help prevent future delinquency. This presentation will discuss the opportunity in the child protection system to shift some of its focus from short-term protection of children to long-term outcomes, particularly for children who exhibit multiple risk factors for serious and violent delinquency in the future.
Linking Residential Burglaries by Modus Operandi: An Empirical Test of Some Findings That Emerge From Interviews With Offenders
Researchers have often carried out interviews with burglars in an attempt to identify the various ways in which they commit their crimes. Based on findings from such research, claims have been made that the police should be able to use an offender’s modus operandi in orer to link together the crimes he has committed. This study empirically examines the police practice of utilising modus operandi to link crimes to a common offender in cases of residential burglary. Data from 140 solved residential burglaries committed by 28 offenders in the UK are analysed to identify behavioural features that reliably distinguish between linked and unlinked crimes. The results indicate that few of the crime scene behaviours focused on in traditional interview studies are associated with high levels of linking acuracy. however, high levels of accuracy can be achieved by drawing on certain aspects of an offender’s spatial behaviour. The importance of including offender spatial behaviour as a topic for discussion in interviews with offenders is explored, as are the practical implications of the findings.
Links of Terroro
Since the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001, a great deal of interest has been expressed in what terrorists believe, or profess to believe, and how these beliefs are transmitted. Recent media and analytical reports have presented a bleak picture of the television, print, radio, and Internet material made available by reactionary extremists and terrorists. Other reports have focused on the similarity between the ideational messages (definitions) presented by reactionary Muslum outlets with material available from neo-fascists, and American extremists. The purpose of this paper is to present, compare, and contrast extremist and terrorist ideational constructs from a variety of movements. Moreover, this paper will focus on those messages found on the Internet and the use of the Internet as a means to transmit extremist and terrorist definitions. This ideational material includes, but is not limited to, material presented on extremist Jewish sites such as the Jewish Defense League’s and Kach’s, American extremist sites such as those maintained by the National Alliance, Aryan Nations, and the League of the South, and reactionary Islamic sites like RadioIslam.Net. This paper will also analyze the geographic locations of the organizations and compare this information with basic Internet capabilities for those areas, such as fiber optic capacity and computers-per-person information. This should allow for prediction regarding Internet capability as the infrastructure for the Internet expands in the U.S. and iun other countries. Preliminary analysis of extremist websites in the U.S. indicates that a pattern does exist.
Litigation as a Mechanism of Problem Recognition in the Case of Big Tobacco
An issue is often not considered a problem until a remedy is sought. In the past four decades, we have experienced a proliferation of litigation used to establish a remedy in cases where the legislature has hesitated to respond to an issue. Litigation increasingly has been used as a tool of problem recognition to this end. Utilizing the framework in Stone’s Causal Processes and Kingdon’s concepts of policy formation, this paper examines the tools implemented by the state in the successful prosecution of Big Tobacco
Location of Community Corrections Centers
Community corrections centers have been shown to be effective in reducing recidivism rates as compared to direct release of incarcerated individuals. However, location of CCCs is challenging because residents of communities in which they would be sited often see them as “undesirable land uses”. On the other hand, CCCs function best when they are proximate to employment and educational opportunities and are well integrated into the fabric of residential communities. We present a quantitative planning model to identify sites for one or more CCCs. These sites are intended to represent desirable tradeoffs of efficiency (net societal costs), effectiveness (likelihood of successful reintegration of CCC residents into civil society) and equity (fairness of location strategies from the viewpoint of potential destination communities). These policy alternatives may be used as input into a community discussion process by which a specific siting strategy is agreed upon. This presentation addresses: (a) leveraging social science knowledge to influence strategic planning for CCCs, (b) integrating notions of value-focused thinking, OR-based decision models and group negotiations and (c) identifying specific policy alternatives from an planning model applied to data from Pittsburgh, PA. Keywords: Facility location, criminal justice, integer programming, multi-objective programming, value-focused thinking, group negiotiations
Logical and Consistent? An Analysis of Supreme Court Opinions Regarding the Death Penalty
This paper examines opinions by Supreme Court Justices of the most significant death penalty cases decided during the 1970s and 1980s (i.e., Furman v. Georgia 1972, Gregg v. Georgia 1976, Woodson v. North Carolina 1976, McKlesky v. Kemp 1987). The main purposes of the analysis are to determine: 1) what main justifications were used by Justices to support their own opinions; 2) how consistent over time were individual Justices in issuing their opinions; 3) what factors led to changes in opinions across time; 4) what was the role of political party affiliation in issuing opinions; and 5) what factors in larger society likely affected the decisions by the Court in each of these cases. The purpose of the paper is not to declare one side right or wrong, but to reach a fuller understanding of Supreme Court activity on the issue of capital punishment.
Longitudinal Measures of Restorative Justice
There is very little research on Restorative Justice which uses longitudinal measures other than of re-offending. The Thames Valley research project interviewed participants of 93 restorative conferences at three intervals: just after the conference, 3 months later and 12 months later. The interviews were qualitative in nature and were designed to illuminate what sense people made of their experiences, what they thought they’d got out of it, and whether their sense of achievement altered (for better or worse) over the course of the following year (and if so, why so). Some apparent ‘successes’ turned into failures over time and, perhaps more surprisingly, some ‘failures’ turned into successes.
Looking at the Tail: Does Ohio’s Correctional Control After Prison Resemble a Pussycat or a Scorpion?
The Ohio Department of Rehabilitation and Correction, through its component, the Adult Parole Authority (APA), supervises many offenders after they exit from prison. Before a criminal code revision in 1996, those under supervision were parolees who could be returned to prison for the remainder of a fairly long maximum sentence. For those convicted since 1996, those released under supervision (Post Release Control, or PRC) can be returned to prison for a much shorter total period of time, with a maximum of nine months at a single interval. This paper details a study of the violation behavior of the two types of offenders for the first twelve months under supervision. The response of the APA is studied. At the local level the decisions of the supervising officer and the unit supervisor are detailed, even for minor incidents where revocation is not likely. For cases where revocation is considered, several factors are reviewed at the “due process” hearing. The most critical issue examines the difference in patterns between the parolees and PRC offenders.
Looking Inside the “Black Box” of Drug Court Treatment Services Using Direct Observations
Recently, evaluations of drug court programs have begun to provide evidence of their effectiveness in reducing criminal behavior and drug abuse. In light of these findings, several authors have called for a more thorough examination of the therapeutic services offered within these courts in order to determine their mechanisms of effect. Unfortunately, the existing attempts at this examination of the “black box” of drug court treatment services have employed evaluation methods that fail to directly observe the services being offered in this context. The current study examines the implementation of substance abuse treatment within the drug court context, using a combination of traditional evaluation techniques (e.g., staff surveys, interviews with program administrators), as well as the use of a structured, direct observation tool, designed to quantify the type and amounts of various treatment topics and activities offered in a sample of four, diversely-organized adult drug courts. Results are presented in terms of the ability of these courts to offer services that are consistent with what is known about effective treatment of drug-involved offenders. Suggestions for the improvement of these courts’ substance abuse treatment services are also discussed.
Looking Outside the Box in Research on Police Encounters With Citizens: A Re-Examination of the Power of Observational Research
Despite the rich history of observational research in the field of criminology, such research is still under utilized in the field despite the new levels of understanding that can come from in-depth, field observations. In the area of policing, for instance, field research can provide us with better insight regarding officers’ applications of community policing principles, the decision-making processes that officers engage in when handling calls for service, and the dynamics of officers’ encounters with victims, offenders, and other citizens. Despite the fact that observational research provides researchers with opportunities to obtain new insights about the field of policing, much research in this area continues to be dominated by quantitative analysis. In this paper, the power of observational research is examined in the context of community policing. The authors use four hundred hours of field research with patrol officers to underscore the importance of conducting observational research in the area of policing.
Low Income Neighborhoods and Sex Offenders: A Case Study in State Indifference
Society’s concern for protecting its most vulnerable members from being victimized by pedophiles and sexual predators has led to widespread adoption of sex offender notification laws. The policy of notifying communities about the placement within their borders of prison- released sex offenders has affected mostly low income neighborhoods. Notifying> residents and businesses of such areas that convicted sex offenders have been located near their premises has had consequences for these places. This paper reports on the second part of research conducted in 2001 that examines the impact of sex offender community notification on neighborhood life – specifically on perceptions of safety and quality of life, fear of victimization, and the will of residents and business owners to preserve and restore their neighborhood. The literature hypothesizes that neighborhoods are stable social entities that react to destabiliziing events by finding ways to resist unwanted change and bounce back to a semblance of their former selves. This resiliency factor may be problematic in those neighborhoods beset by a variety of social problems. Data for this paper were derived from tape-recorded interviews and an in-person survey of 121 households and businesses located within an area officially notified about a convicted sex offender living there. The findings suggest that the state practice of targeting already fragile neighborhoods for publicized sex offender placements may be destabilizing events of such magnitude as to weaker their ability to recover. >
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Making Good: How Ex-Convicts Reform and Rebuild Their Lives (Sponsored by the Division on Corrections and Sentencing)
At the 2001 Annual Meeting, the American Society of Criminology awarded this book the Michael J. Hindelang Award, the award is given annually for book published during the previous two to three years that makes the most outstanding contribution to research in criminology. The book examines desistance from crime based on intensive interviews with career offenders who seem to have changed their careers and have discontinued offending. These desisters are compared to comparison group of felons who have not desisted. Maruna analyzes why some chronic offenders manage to change while others do not.
Making Sense of ‘Senseless’ Violence. Analyzing Offender Accounts
In this paper, results are presented of research on ‘senseless’ street violence, i.e. random violence between strangers outside, i.e. in the street. In order to gain insight into their motives offenders were interviewed and asked to describe at length what had happened and why. In order to do justice to the complexity of the notion of offender motivation a careful analysis of the narrative, interactive, cognitive, affective and reflexive aspects of their accounts was required. In conclusion, an integrated model is presented which combines the aspects of agency, identity, dioscursive consciousness and embodiment.
Making Some Noise: Degradation as Tension Reduction for the Criminal Court Punishment of Adolescents in New York
Due to its low age boundary for criminal court punishment of adolescents, New York is a frontrunner among states getting tough on juvenile crime by punishing children as adults. This paper draws on ethnographic research in a New York criminal court specializing in the prosecution of adolescents, and on interviews of courtroom decision-makers in this court. It explores the tensions and contradictions that are produced when adolescents are prosecuted as if they were adults. By focusing on this court’s balance of both traditional ‘juvenile justice’ concerns and formally rational ‘criminal justice’ concerns, I discuss these tensions and one strategy used by the court to resolve them – degradation. In this court, the judge uses degrading language as an intermediate sanction in lieu of severe punishment. This use of degradation resolves some of the conceptual contradictions and practical problems of prosecuting adolescents in a formal criminal court environment. I argue that the use of this tactic is structured by the setting of criminal courts and the difficulties inherent to prosecuting adolescents as adults.
Making the Connection: Linking Students’ Perceptual Measures of School Climate to Academic Performance
Despite multiple studies (see Hawkins, Farrington and Catalano, 2000 for review) describing the connection between school climate and academic achievement, preliminary findings from the Safe Communities ~ Safe Schools project indicate that many schools in Colorado are reluctant to embrace the idea of improving school climate as a means of enhancing students’ academic performance. As such, programs directed at school climate are considered ancillary, at best, to a narrow focus on basic skills and higher test scores, and schools often overlook this necessary precondition to students’ academic achievement. This presentation explores the link between social environments in school and academic achievement. The research examines data from eight middle schools in a district in southwestern Colorado. It uses several standardized measures of academic performance and a survey of self-reported indicators of school climate, in addition to selected disciplinary referrals and school reported measures of delinquency. Preliminary research with a much larger sample of Colorado schools showed only qualified links between the variables. However, the purpose of this research is to assess the magnitude of the connection between school climate and academic achievement.
Maltreatment, Revictimization, and Outcomes for Young Adult Women in the Rochester Youth Development Study
Results from several longitudinal studies converge in finding that childhood maltreatment is a risk factor for a range of problem outcomes in adulthood. Previous investigations employing Rochester Youth Development Study (RYDS) data have utilized substantiated incidents of maltreatment (20% in this sample) as the indicator of maltreatment: In the current analysis, we investigate the role of self-reported maltreatment in addition to official maltreatment on the young adult antisocial behavior of young women. We employ data from RYDS, a longitudinal investigation of the development of problem behaviors in a high-risk urban sample of 1,000 urban youth followed from age 13 into adulthood. Subjects are 68% African American, 17% Hispanic, and 15% White. The sample for this analysis is the 27% of RYDS subjects who are female. In this analysis we identify cases where adolescents report or have an official record of revictimization, and compare outcomes among those with multiple victimization experiences versus single episodes. Outcomes explored in young adulthood include arrest, drug use, partner violence, and self-reported offending. We control for confounding variables, including gender, poverty, family structure, and race/ethnicity in our analyses. Implications for theory and intervention in the life course of young women are discussed.
Managing a County’s Jail Population: Part II
MANAGING LOCAL JAIL POPULATIONS IS A MAJOR PROBLEM FOR MANY COUNTY OFFICIALS WHO MUST BALANCE THE NEED FOR JAIL SPACE WITH THE COSTS OF INCARCERATION. THIS PAPER REPORTS ON THE AFTERMATH OF EFFORTS BY A SUBURBAN MIDWESTERN COUNTY TO CONTROL THE USE OF ITS JAIL THROUGH A JAIL POPULATION MANAGEMENT COMMITTEE. INCREASES IN JAIL COMMITMENTS HAVE FOLLOWED THE COMMITTEE’SDEACTIVATION. THE IMPLICATIONS OF THIS SITUATION FOR LOCAL JUSTICE SYSTEMS AND THEIR CONSTITUENCIES ARE DISCUSSED.
Managing Mentally Ill Offenders in the Community With Sort-Term Intervention
Fifteen California counties are completing demonstration projects under the Direction of the State Board of Corrections that are designed to reduce the return of mentally ill offenders to jail detention. As one of the projects, San Bernardino County Sheriff’s Department and Department of Behavior Health are jointly implementing the San Bernardino Partners Aftercare Network (SPAN) project, which involves multi-agency cooperation to link mentally ill inmates to mental health services in the community upon their release from jail. About 10 to 12 percent of the inmates in detention at any time are diagnosed as mentally ill. Jail Mental Health Services processes about 250 mentally disordered offenders each month, many who are also involved in substance abuse. Evaluation goals include to determine if short-ter, intervention reduces subsequent returns to jail and days in jail or psychiatric in-patient services over a three year period, and if it can do so for individuals with particular types of diagnoses or background characteristics. A cost-benefit evaluation is also being completed. Preliminary findings suggest that short-term intervention alone does not reduce returns to jail.
Mapping Intimate Assault
Since the advent of desktop-based Geographic Information System (GIS) software, the application of GIS analysis to understanding and responding to a variety of crime and public safety problems has expanded. Researchers as well as practitioners have found GIS an invaluable tool for spatially examining crime by place. Researchers have used GIS to measure the effect of police response on crime hot spots, and police managers have adopted GIS as a means for understanding and responding to crime in their jurisdictions. GIS has, however, rarely been used as a tool for examining domestic violence. The paucity of GIS applications to the study of domestic violence is easy to understand. Researchers and practitioners have been disinclined to spatially analyze domestic violence because it is not considered a crime in which patterns are driven by place and environmental characteristics such as street lighting, type of road, or even neighborhood crime levels. Prior literature has stressed that domestic violence permeates society irrespective of type of neighborhood, type of housing, socioeconomic status, and the absence or presence of other crime In a report from the 1992 National Crime Victimization Survey, BJS authors Ronet Bachman and Linda Saltzman note that “Women of all races and Hispanic and non-Hispanic women were about equally vulnerable to violence by an intimate (BJS, 1995). However, more recent findings from the NCVS show that the rate of non-lethal domestic victimization for white women is 8.2, for black women is 11.1, and for other races is 4.1; and the rate of female victimization for households making less than $7,500 is 20.3 and for households making over $75,000 is 3.3 (BJS, 2001). This suggests that there are differences in the distribution of domestic violence across race and class leading to the question of what characteristics of people or places drive these differences. If these differences do exist, then spatial analysis may be a useful tool for identifying them. This analysis is part of a broader project that examined one city’s inter-agency repose to intimate violence (see Farrell et al., 2002). The analysis presented here involves mapping the intimate assaults reported to the city police in a two-year period. Census block group boundaries are used as a proxy for neighborhood boundaries. The demographic data associated with each block group were joined to the block group boundaries, allowing an examination of police response by neighborhood characteristics such as wealth, and race. The census data were provided by ESRI.
Marijuana as Currency: The Creation of Drug Equivalency Measures in the Federal Sentencing Guidelines
Over the last twenty-five years, a sizable amount of research has been dedicated to examining discrepancies in sentencing for similar drug offenses within the federal courts. When the federal court sentences drug offenders under the Federal Sentencing Guidelines, the quantity of the illicit drugs largely determines the length of sentence. However, in the case of a defendant convicted of drug offenses involving multiple classifications of controlled substances, each drug is converted to its “marihuana equivalent weight” to calculate a single drug quantity to determine a final offense level. According to the Guideline manual, “Because of the statutory equivalences, the ratios in the Drug Equivalency Tables do not necessarily reflect dosages based on pharmacological equivalents.” This paper examines the use of marihuana as a measurement unit or currency within the Federal Sentencing Guidelines. Within the sentencing phase of federal criminal cases, marihuana is socially constructed as a currency of exchange to determine an offense level based on the Drug Equivalency Tables. Marihuana’s high rates of use and a common knowledge of marihuana, however, allow court officials to interpret the seriousness of other drug offenses through existing symbolic understanding of marihuana.
Marital Conflict and Violence: A Taxonomy of Sources of Conflict and Predictors of Violence
Theory and research have identified a number of interacting factors that threaten mate solidarity in species in which males and females form long-lasting pairs who cooperate to rear their young. The same considerations are of clear relevance to the human case: (1) temptations to abandon the present partner and “upgrade”; (2) temptations to free-ride on the partner’s investments in the relationship; (3) nepotistic interests in the well-being of distinct sets of relatives (the in-law problem); (4) dependent offspring from prior unions (the stepchild problem); and (5) covert extra-pair sexual liaisons (the adultery/cuckoldry problem). These basic sources of conflict suggest a number of hypotheses about risk factors for intimate partner violence, only some of which are presently testable from data in existing archives on homicide and non-lethal assault. We will illustrate the applicability of this framework to the generation and testing of hypotheses about violence against intimate partners and relatives of the intimate partner victims.
Marital Failure and the Aggravation of Criminal Behavior
Sampson and Laub (1993) have demonstrated a relationship between involvement in committed, affectionate marriages and desistance from offending. The current study focuses on their reference category by examining the criminological implications of low-bonded marriages and other forms of marital failure. Data are drawn from seven waves of the National Youth Survey (sub-sample n=1,621; ages 11-27) and analyzed within a pooled time-series, fixed effects framework. The results are difficult to reconcile with the social control perspective typically used to explain the marriage-desistance relationship.
Masculinities Without Men? On Girls, Gender, and Violence
This paper reports partial results of a life history study on girls, gender, and violence. The sample of the larger study consists of fifteen white New England working-class girls, age 15-18: five “sex offenders,” five “assaultive offenders,” and five “nonviolent girls.” The chief questions addressed in the broader study are: Why do some girls engage in violence and some girls do not? Why do girls who engage in violence commit different types? In this paper I focus on the first question, discussing why some girls specifically engage in assaultive violence. The goal was to grasp each girl’s unique viewpoint?her personal vision of why she engaged in assaultive violence. Each interview, then, was an attempt to disclose the situational accomplishment of gender and eventual use of assaultive violence as a result of personal life history. The life history data shows that assaultive violence was an accountable practice for “doing” masculinity and/or femininity, depending upon the particular social setting in which the violence occurred.
Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs as Applied to the Japanese Yakuza
This work provides an initial portrayal of the historical evolution of the Japanese Yakuza, providing the reader with a general notion of the Yakuza subculture’s development. From this point, theoretical applications are utilized to explain why individuals acculturated in Japanese mainstream society may choose to enter a subculture of crime and violence. Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs is employed as the primary theory in explaining initial selection and life-long membership within the Japanese Yakuza subculture. The contention is that members of the Yakuza have both extrinsic and intrinsic needs that are met by the unique structure of the Yakuza subculture. Thus, membership attraction may go well beyond simple monetary rewards that are often associated with many organized crime elements.
Mass Imprisonment and Mass Disenfranchisement
This paper will assess the consequences of felon disenfranchisement laws that have resulted in the loss of voting rights to nearly four million Americans due to current or previous felony convictions. While these policies were initially adopted at the time of the founding of the nation, at various times since then their intent and/or impact has been racially biased, with an estimated 13% of African American males today currently excluded from the ballot box. In recent years, there has been a great deal of activity on this issue in state legislative bodies and prospects for reform are promising at the moment.
Mass Legal Executions in the United States, 17th-20th Centuries: An Exploratory Study
Throughout recorded history, governments have executed their own citizens, sometimes in groups at the same time for the same offense. Fortunately, the U.S. has done less of it than most, either with or without due process; and our mass executions without due process during the past century, at least, have generally been limited to a few widely-publicized episodes. But while never numerous, this exploratory look at an unstudied aspect of both multiple homicide and capital punishment shows the occurrence of post-trial mass executions — four or more persons at approximately the same time for the same incident — interesting for what they tell us about the social climate of the eras in which they occurred. With some exceptions, they show changes in concerns from witches, to wartime desertion, minorities (slaves followed by Indians and “Jim Crow” era Blacks), labor unrest, and organized crime. One could argue that the demise of mass executions indicates a concern about capital punishment itself.
Matching Services to Risk: One Size Doesn’t Fit All
Child delinquents referred to ACE have widely varying needs that are reflected in their risk assessment score. Some children have committed only the referring offense, have good social and academic skills and few serious risk factors in their family, school or neighborhood context. Many of the children screened by ACE, however, have a history of prior police reports despite their young age. These children typically have volatile temperaments and are exposed to chronic and serious levels of risk in multiple domains. Matching children to services requires attention to both the overall level of risk, and attention to the specific nature of those risks. This presentation will review how ACE set guidelines for assigning children to interventions of different length, scope and intensity based on their risk assessment, and how the guidelines are adapted to fit the specific needs of different children and families. Preliminary outcome evaluation data will be reviewed that indicates the level of risk determined at screening predicts the likelihood of intervention success, in part because higher risk child delinquents require more time as well as a broader scope of services to achieve meaningful change.
Measures of Learning and Crime: Theoretical and Empirical Links
Little previous research exists that has examined the relationship between measures of student learning and reported crime. using state-level data from the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) administered by the U.S. Department of Education, this paper explores the link between NAEP test scores and crime while controllig for other relevant predictors of criminality. Various theoretical explanations are posited for the strong and positive relationship observed between test scores and reported crime.
Measuring child Maltreatment Using the National Electronic Injury Surveillance System All Injury Program, United States, 2000-01
Currently, the source for estimates on the prevalence and incidence of child maltreatment is the child protective service system. However, many cases of child maltreatment never come to the attention of the CPS system and, therefore, the number of cases is underestimated. With the development of the National Electronic Injury Surveillance System All Injury Program (NEISS- AIP), there is an opportunity to develop more accurate estimates of the occurrence of child maltreatment across the United States. Included in the NEISS-AIP data is information on injuries to children ages 0-17 caused by assaults; both sexual assaults and other forms of assault. These data have been analyzed for their utility for detecting injury cases attributable to child maltreatment. This presentation will provide estimates of injury due to child maltreatment for a year of data (2000-2001). Information will be provided on the ages of the victims, the mechanism of injury, and the relationship of the perpetrators to the victims.
Measuring Criminal History in a Guideline System: When “None” Is “Some”
In the federal courts, one of the factors determining guideline sentence length is prior criminal experience, where offenders without any, or with only minimal, criminal history (as measured by the guidelines) receive shorter sentences that offenders with more prior criminality. However, the current guideline measure results in a lowest Criminal History Category (CHC I) that includes offenders with varying amounts of prior involvement with the criminal justice system. This study proposes alternate measures of criminal history that more accurately distinguish among the criminal experiences of CHC I offenders, and suggests a strategy that defines “first offender.” Using new data from the U.S. Sentencing Commission, the study compares offenders in CHC I with other federal offenders, demonstrating how the guidelines’ current criminal history definitions operate and how they may be deficient in isolating the more culpable offender. This study is a statistical analysis of the association between offender culpability and the following traits of prior criminal history: minor offense convictions, serious convictions from distant years, foreign or juvenile convictions, dangerousness of prior offenses, prior arrests without convictions, or characteristics of the instant offense.
Measuring Delinquency in the Context of the Swiss Heroin Prescription Programs
This paper is based on a comparative analysis of police records, court records, and self-reported delinquency for a sample of 500 adult drug addicts. According to these three different crime measures, most of the members of the sample were heavily involved in delinquency, but their delinquency rates decreased drastically after they joined a heroin prescription program. Thus, the comparative analysis of their delinquency rates (including incidence, prevalence and variety of delinquency) both during the months preceding their admission in the program and during the first year of treatment can be used as a way of assessing the validity of the crime measures involved (i.e. police contacts, court sanctions and a self-reported delinquency survey). In that context, content validity (including face and logical validity) and pragmatic validty (including correlational and known-group validity) are tested. Finally, the paper includes some considerations about the relationship between police contacts and prevalence, incidence, variety and seriousness of self-reported delinquency.
Measuring Self Control and Perceived Opportunity in a Controlled Experimental Setting
This paper addresses the methodological shortcomings of measuring self-control through a traditional set of attitudinal and quasi-behavioral self-reports and survey questionnaires. Attitudinal measures suffer from the complaints that low self-control, itself, may bias response patterns and that behavioral measures are a more accurate indicator of how likely a respondent will, or did, actually do as they say. Additionally, verbal statements of attitude are more prone to variation in interpretation, especially among different ages, genders, and ethnicities; whereas physical acts provide less ambiguous meaning. Finally, the idea of self-control lying along a continuum begs the question of why we do not measure behavioral indicators in a continuous manner as well. To explore remedies for these problems, a controlled experimental design was created to measure levels of self-control and perceived opportunity in 10-year-old children. The setting was a decisionmaking computer lab in a university environment. Children were randomly assigned to control and experimental groups where they completed computer-based exercises, a continuous behavioral survey measuring self-control and a separate non-computer based experimental manipulation involving a delay of gratification activity. Results and implications are discussed
Measuring Self-Control in Children: A Three-Wave Study
This study is attempting to measure self-control among children at a very young age. In spring 2000, 617 students were recruited at first grade (average age is 7 and half) in a mid-sized city in China. A 18-item self-control scale was created and evaluated by both teachers and parents of the children. Then a year later in 2001, the same measures were retested. The third year follow-up will be done in spring 2002. All three waves of data will be analyzed longitudinally, to examine the factor patterns, inter-correlations, stability and predictive power of these items.
Measuring Sentencing Disparity: A Significance Test
Beginning in the 1970s, the federal and state governments have engaged in wide-ranging sentencing reform efforts. One important goal of these reforms has been the reduction of sentencing disparity. Over the past two decades a body of research into the effects of sentencing reforms has developed. This research has suffered from the lack of a simple test of statistical significance of changes in the variance of criminal sentences. While there is some evidence that the implementation of sentencing reforms have resulted in substantial reductions in disparity (Goffredson, 1979; BJS, 1996), no empirical tests have been reported that determine if sentencing reforms have produced statistically significant reductions in disparity. This paper describes such a test using data on sentences imposed on offenders in North Carolina before and after that state’s 1994 implementation of structured sentencing guidelines.
Measuring the Relationship of Residential Segregation and Robbery
This presentation will demonstrate spatial measures of residential segregation within cities that can be used to examine the relationship segregation has with locations of robbery incidents. Many studies have examined the relationship of crime with segregation using the Index of Dissimilarity, and the P* index to measure the unevenness of and isolation between racial and ethnic groups respectively. These studies examined the segregation rates and the crime rates as citywide statistics. This presentation expands on these studies by examining the unevenness and isolation within cities to see if the distribution of robberies co-varies with segregation. In addition, this presentation further expands research by including the spatial segregation measures of centralization, concentration and clustering as defined by Massey and Denton (1988). Massey, D.S. and Denton, N.A. (1988). The Dimensions of Residential Segregation. Social Forces, 67(2):281-315.
Media Coverage of the Timothy Thomas Shooting, the Cincinnati Riots, and Implications for Law Enforcement
On April 7, 2001, Cincinnati police officer Stephen Roach shot and killed area resident Timothy Thomas, an apparently unarmed man wanted on misdemeanor charges. Mr. Thomas was the thirteenth African-American killed by the Cincinnati Police Department in a year. The Thomas shooting ignited a powder keg of violence and mayhem in the city, as angry citizens burst onto the streets in protest. When the smoke cleared a week later, Cincinnati residents were left to dig out from some of the worst rioting in the city’s history. The present study is a case analysis of the media coverage of the events leading up to the Cincinnati riots. It examines media coverage of the Timothy Thomas shooting and shows how police hesitancy in publicly responding to the incident could have contributed to the eventual riots. The paper concludes by offering some simple public relations strategies police can use to reduce the likelihood of similar events happening in the future. Background and Theory News media coverage of high-profile events such as police shootings is guided in part by economic considerations. The economic theory of news making posits that the probability of an event becoming news is negatively related to the expense involved in discovering its existence and positively related to anticipated interest among audiences that advertisers are seeking to reach (McManus, 1988). To increase the profitability of their commodity (i.e., news), journalists and editors often employ specific strategies to maximize audience interest. One such strategy is sensationalism-the more sensational the event seems, the greater the likelihood of its coverage (Jeffres, 1994). Police shootings have an inherent element of sensationalism, and they can be made even more sensationalistic by how they are framed and presented. A social frame, for example, places an isolated incident (e.g., a police shooting) into a larger societal context (e.g., all recent police shootings). Style of presentation can also increase a media message’s impact on audiences. For example, (a) intensity of language (Walker & Meyer, 1980) and (b) sequencing of content (Yarborough & Gagne, 1987) have been found to relate positively to (a) perceived importance of information and (b) recall of communicated information. Taken together, the research findings on news suggest that it can have powerful effects on audiences, especially when newsmakers present information in particular ways. Priming theory (Jo & Berkowitz, 1994) offers one explanation for how news coverage could lead to rioting. According to priming theory, exposure to an event via the mass media activates ideas with a similar meaning for a short time afterward. These thoughts, in turn, can activate other semantically related ideas and action tendencies. For example, a person who reads a news story about an unjustified police shooting may recall their own negative experiences with the police, which can then “activate” a desire to lash out against the police. Several intervening variables may positively facilitate this relationship, including identification (e.g., with a same-race victim of police violence) and the reality of the depiction (i.e., news events lead to greater priming than fictional events). Rationale and Hypotheses The above summary of theory and research findings offers several plausible reasons for why the media coverage of the Timothy Thomas shooting could have contributed to the ensuing violence. First, police response to the incident may have been too slow, forcing the media to take the “less expensive” route to coverage, which in this case would have been relying mainly on information from community leaders, victim’s family members, and others with interests counter to those of the police. This “slanted coverage” could have made a bad situation seem much worse. The first question addressed in this research will therefore be: How does the coverage of police response differ from the coverage of responses of others during the days leading up to the rioting? Second, the shooting had lots of potentially sensational elements, which may have been compounded by the police failure to address them. The shooting took place in the context of several other shootings by police in the city, for example, and seemed unjustified in light of the victim being unarmed (Vela, 2001). This combination of factors gave news makers plenty of material to frame the story as “sensational.” The sensational aspects of the story could have “primed” residents to erupt into violence, especially those residents who saw themselves as similar to the victim. The second question, then, is: What inflammatory and/or sensationalistic techniques were employed in presenting this story? Methods and Preliminary Results To examine how the Cincinnati media covered the Thomas shooting, a content analysis of several area news sources (including The Cincinnati Post and The Cincinnati Enquirer) will be performed. Content analysis refers to the “systematic, objective, quantitative analysis of message characteristics” (Neuendorf 2002, p. 1). This content analysis will be supplemented with quotes and other qualitative information to provide a richer understanding of what occured. The primary time frame for the investigation will be the three days from the shooting to the start of the riots. Coverage of previous police shootings will also be explored. The content analysis phase of this research is currently in progress. Instead of reviewing all that has been done so far, selected preliminary findings from one source, The Cincinnati Enquirer, will now be presented. To get a sense of the sheer amount of coverage the Thomas shooting and riots have received, several searches were performed in March of 2002 using the Enquirer’s online database. A search for the phrase “Thomas shooting” yielded 913 results. A search for “April riots” results in an even more impressive 1106 returns. Apparently, the shooting and riots have garnered a lot of attention in the area since their occurrence last April. During the three day period from the shooting to the full-blown outbreak of rioting, The Cincinnati Enquirer included six stories on the incidents-one the day after in occurred, two the next day, and three the day after that. By day four, there were 15 related stories. Looking at the three days before the extended riot coverage, a qualitative analysis reveals how the shooting story progressed. On day one, the Enquirer immediately framed the larger implications of the occurrence. The headline read, “Officer shoots, kills suspect: Man was unarmed, wanted on misdemeanor charges.” The story is then framed in light of past instances of police violence against residents of the area. Interestingly, residents and citizens groups responded to the situation immediately-they expressed outrage about what happened in the story. The police, on the other hand, only provided basic factual information about what happened (Vela, 2001), and it took three days for a police press conference to appear in the paper. By then, it may was probably too late. Angry citizens had already begun to take to the streets. And at the press conference, the police only announced that much of the investigation was being kept confidential. This type of response seems pallid in contrast to the response from area parents and citizens. On day two of the coverage, a story with the headline “Mom Asks: Why?” appeared-in the story, Timothy Thomas’ mom and other residents demanded that the police address their relationship with the African-American community. Unfortunately, the response from CPD came too late to stop the rioting. The full version of this paper will look at coverage in The Cincinnati Enquirer and other area media sources in more depth, mainly through quantitative content analysis. Conclusions The results of this paper may suggest a direct linkage to media coverage and public unrest. Since we live in a country that ensures the freedom of the press to cover events as they see fit, it is incumbent upon those who protect the public to understand how media coverage can incite unrest and how public officials can best respond to critical incidents in an effort to maintain public order. The conclusion of this paper will discuss some basic public relations strategies that can be implemented by the police in an effort to keep public anger from boiling over as it did in Cincinnati. These strategies could be implemented by law enforcement agencies in the future to assuage the public before rioting occurs. References Jeffres, L. W. (1994). Mass media processes. Waveland Press: Prospect Heights, IL. Jo, E. & Berkowitz, L. (1994). A priming effect analysis of media influences: An update. In J. Bryant and D. Zillmann (Eds.), Media effects: Advances in theory and research. Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, Hillsdale, NJ. McManus, J. (1988). An economic theory of news selection. Paper presented to the Mass Communication and Society Division at the Annual Conference of the Association for Education in Journalism and Mass Communication, Portland, OR. Neuendorf, K. A. (2002). The content analysis guidebook. Sage Publications: Thousand Oaks, CA. Vela, S. (2001). Officer shoots, kills suspect. The Cincinnati Enquirer [Online]. Available at: http://enquirer.com/editions/2001/04/08/loc_officer_shoots_kills.html Walker, C. H. & Yekovich, F. R. (1980). Integrating different types of information in texts. Journal of Verbal Learning and Verbal Behavior, 19, 357-370. Yarborough, D. B. & Gagne, E. D. (1987). Metaphor and the free recall of technical text. Discourse Processes, 10(1), 81-91.
Media Depiction of the Attach on America on September 11, 2001
Media has always had a great impact on how we see the world around us. It shapes our ideas about every day life as well as dramatic events. The September 11th attack on America is no exception. This terrorist attack has dominated the media over the past six months. This research examines how the terrorist attack on September 11, 2001 has been depicted in newspaper media. A content analysis of three different newspapers, the New York Times, the Topeka Capital Journal and the international Swedish paper Svenska Dagbladet will allow me to examine how distance from the event impacts the media coverage. Further, a comparison of how the different newspapers portray the terrorists, their religion and religious groups will be made. This study will examine the different ways the incident on September 11, 2001 is depicted in newspaper media and how location, culture and political views can lead to bias within media’s portrayals of such violence.
Mediation vs. Litigation: An Extensive Review of an Alternate Resolution to Child Custody Disputes
Over the last 15 years, much research has been done on the effects of using mediation as opposed to litigation in child custody disputes. Mediation involves a non-bias third party, usually a social worker or someone in the mental health field; done in the same way for civil disputes. The mutually exclusive third party sits with the family and makes an assessment for custody. It has been found that mediation may facilitate such things as better and quicker adjustment, increased coping ability, parents’ time spent with children, communication both between parent/child and also interparent cooperation. Mediation also minimizes the “cat fight” qualities that come out of litigation. There will be a thorough review of available literature from the mid-1980’s to the present. Robert Emory, PhD of the University of Virginia, has done most of the work that will be looked at. The psychology behind these two approaches will also be studied. Mediation seems to be an excellent way to resolve divorce and child custody issues for all parties involved. The data available shows promising results that mediation should and will take precedence over litigation.
Men Killing Men: What’s Honor Got To Do With It?
Using data from the recently completed Homicide in Britain study and a separate study of men convicted of assaulting their intimate female partner, this paper explores individual, contextual and situational factors associated with intimate partner violence. The study yielded a number of data sets, including intensive information on 866 cases of convicted murderers. Using these data we compare men who have killed intimate partners (n=106) with those who have killed in other circumstances (n=680). This comparison reveals that men who kill intimate partners are, for example, much less likely to have ‘untoward’ experiences in childhood and criminogenic backgrounds than men who kill others. Situational factors also vary. Men who kill intimate partners are more likely to be employed and less likely to be drinking at the time of the murder than men who kill in other circumstances. Overall, the comparisons reveal that intimate partner killers are rather more ‘conventional.’. When intimate partner killers were compared to men convicted of assaulting their partners (n=122), the results also suggest intimate partner killers are likely to be more conventional than men convicted of assault and ‘contested’ relationships, particularly those characterised by estrangement, constitute a significant risk factor for intimate partner murder.
Men’s and Women’s Alcohol Use, Mediating Factors, and Violence in Intimate Relationships
Few studies have examined alcohol use of both partners in relation to intimate partner violence (IPV). This paper will assess the individual and joint effects of women’s and men’s alcohol use on patterns of IPV victimization and perpetration. In addition, we will examine individual and contextual factors that mediate the effects of alcohol use on IPV. In-person interviews were conducted with eligible women arrestees booked in the Oklahoma City/County Jail over 14 consecutive days during seven separate quarters of 2000-2002. Violence measures included the CTS2, a multi-item power-control scale, and a multi-item measure of motives for IPV. Past-year prevalence of IPV was high (67.6%). The most common (30.7%) pattern of IPV was relationships in which both men and women perpetrated severe IPV, although even in these relationships women were more likely to be severely injured. Mutual severe IPV was strongly associated with men’s and women’s problem drinking. In relationships in which neither partner was a problem drinker, rates of mutual severe IPV were relatively low (17% – 28%); however, rates of mutual severe IPV were considerably higher (57.4%) when both partners were problem drinkers.
Mental Health Among Rural and Urban Drug-Involved Offenders
Although much research has examined substance abusers’ mental health problems and their use of mental health services, the bulk of this research has focused on samples from urban settings. The present study examined the types of mental health problems and mental health services utilization experienced by chronic substance abusers from rural areas and compared them to the mental health problems and services utilization of chronic substance abusers from urban areas. As part of the NIDA-funded Health Services Use by Chronic Rural Drug Abusers project, a total of 661 prisoners from four Kentucky State Correctional facilities completed a face-to-face baseline interview with research staff. Participants’ mental health problems and mental health services utilization were measured by the Addiction Severity Index. When compared to chronic substance abusers from urban areas, a significantly larger percentage of chronic substance abusers from rural areas reported experiencing depression, anxiety, and cognitive problems at some point during their lifetime. After controlling for sociodemographic background and mental health status, a significant rural/urban effect was found for services utilization with participants from rural areas reporting more mental health services utilization than those from urban areas. Implications of findings are discussed.
Mental Health and the Juvenile Justice System: Exploring the Extent of the Problem
The mental health needs of youth in the juvenile jsutice system have received more attention at the Federal level in the past two years than in the past three decades combined. Recently, the Civil Rights Division of the U.S. Department of Justice undertook a series of investigations that documented the consistent inadequacy of mental health care and services in juvenile correctional facilities in a number of states (Butterfield, 1998). Also, the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services’ Center for Mental Health Services initiated the first national survey of juvenile justice facilities to identify available mental health services (Center for Mental Health Services, 1998). A multi-state survey, conducted by the National Mental Health Association (NMHA) and the National GAINS Center for people with Co-Occurring Disorders in the justice system, found that mental health problems typically are not identified until after children are involved in the juvenile jsutice system, if at all. These children get little if any treatment (Senate Research Center, 2001). The NMHA/GAINS Center survey found an inadequate, fragmented system for youth with behavioral health problems in justice settings, with few specific programs available in jurisdictions surveyed. In communities where programs are available, the efforts address only a portion of the juvenile justice population, and even fewer communities have programs that target youth with co-occurring mental health and substance abuse disorders (Juvenile-Justice Systems, 1999). The “get tough” attitude toward crime has shifted the mission of the juvenile justice system from rehabilitation to punishment and retribution. This philosophy combined with largely successful efforts in many states to abolish state mental health care for children and adolescents has creayed a population of seriously ill youth for which adequate services do not exist or cannot be assessed. Many juveniles with serious mental disorders have not been responsive to outpatient intervention (Ryan, 2001). The trend has also forced courts and the juvenile corrections system to address mental-health related issues for youth that had been previously restricted primarily to adults, such as a constitutional right to mental health treatment (Woolard, et al., 1992), the applicability of the “not guilty by the reason of insanity” defense (Hebran, hawk, and Tate, 1996), and mental competency guidelines (Woolard, Reppucci, & Redding, 1996).
Mentoring Girls in Juvenile Facilties: Connecting College Students With Incarcerated Girls
This paper presents the results of an effort to enlist college students to act as pro-social supportive mentors for incarcerated girls. Beyond the unique experience and learning opportunity this class would provide the students, one goal was to provide beneficial, one-on-one relationships to girls placed in a residential correctional facility. The paper addresses issues and challenges in the development and implementation of this undergraduate criminal justice class. A discussion of the impact of the mentoring experience on the college students and the incarcerated girls is included.
Methamphetamine Use and Violence
The current research analyzed the pharmacological effects, situational contexts and processual dynamics of methamphetamine use, distribution and violence. Interviews were conducted with a targeted sample of 130 respondents. The research was based primarily on in-depth, life-history interviews with individuals who used methamphetamine for a minimum of three months and who resided in Los Angeles County. Of the 130 respondents, 48 (36.9%) had committed violence while under the influence of methamphetamine. Males comprised two-thirds of the 48 respondents (N=32). Of the total sample, 40.5% of males and 31.4% of females committed methamphetamine-related violence, respectively. Seventeen of the 48 respondents who committed methamphetamine-related violence (35.4%) reported that they had never committed a violent crime prior to the methamphetamine-based events. However, 82.4% (N=14) of these respondents had committed aggressive acts while under the influence of other drugs. Overall, the 48 respondents reported 70 separate violent events while using methamphetamine. Of these 70 events, 36 (51.4%) acts of violence involved domestic relationships, 28.6% (N=20) of the violent events were drug related, 8.6% (N=6) were gang related, and 11.4% (N=8) involved random acts of violence (e.g., road rage, stranger assault).
Methodological Issues in Longitudinal Research Designs: An Assessment of the National Youth Survey’s Delinquency Measures and the Age-Crime Curve
No issue is more critical to the study of crime and delinquency than the issue of measurement. At the heart of this have been ongoing debates over the relative advantages and disadvantages of self-report measures of delinquency. While it is widely accepted that crime rates increase during adolescence to a peak close to 17 years of age, findings from self-report measures of multiple cohorts from the National Youth Survey show declining trends in delinquency regardless of age. Various researchers have debated the reasons for these discrepant findings, including period effects, testing effects, and changing content validity of delinquency measures to name a few. The present paper engages in these debates and augments previous findings in two ways: 1) by using multi-level modeling to account for the presence of missing time points in longitudinal designs, treating these missing data as latent variables in multivariate outcome models, and 2) by relaxing the classical assumptions of independent errors and equal variances of these errors. One of the key benefits of multi-level modeling is that it utilizes all available longitudinal data even if a respondent misses a time point, thereby letting researchers assess the effects of sample attrition across waves of longitudinal data collections.
Methodological Problems in Conducting a Longitudinal Self-Report Telephone Survey of Juvenile Justice Youth
In much of the criminological literature, little attention is given to the gap between methodological theory and practical research. However, practical applications of these theories often highlight the sometimes imperfect fit between theory and practice. In the summer of 2001, the Juvenile Justice Educational Enhancement Program undertook a longitudinal self-report study to determine how youth released from Florida’s juvenile justice facilities reintegrated into their communities, homes, schools, and work environments. Numerous obstacles to this research objective developed throughout the first year of this follow-up study. The primary problems identified were the study’s organizational structure, an inability to obtain crucial contact information for the study’s subjects, and the inability to research the sample subjects even when correct contact information was obtained. This project is an illustration of the limitations and constraints of methodological theory when applied to actual research endeavors in the field. This paper serves as a case study of the numerous obstacles encountered in a longitudinal study and the subsequent attempts at overcoming these difficulties in an attempt to inform and improve future research.
Middle Market Drug Distribution: A Study of Serious Crime Networks
This study, commissioned by the UK Home Office, aimed to look at the `middle market’ of drug distribution– i.e. middle and upper level dealing networks, the structure of the UK drugs market, and the nature of serious crime networks operating at this level. The methodology was based on prison interviews with convicted offenders (n=50) and an equivalent number of interviews with enforcement personnel (police, intelligence and customs). The main findings to be presented in this paper concern the price structure of drug markets and their profitability; the relations between middle market drug dealers and their customers and suppliers; the internal organisation of such networks in terms of kinship, ethnicity, etc.; and the nature middle market brokerage.
Midnight Basketball and the 1994 Crime Bill Debates: Racial Codes and Symbolic Politics in Contemporary U.S. Culture
This paper is a case study of the symbolic politics implicated in the legislative process that produced the omnibus $30 billion federal crime bill of 1994. It focuses on a small, previously obscure program that came to sudden prominence in the public and congressional debates surrounding the bill-namely, “midnight basketball.” Based upon race-based critical theories and close readings of Congressional hearings and print media coverage, we argue that race-or, to be more precise, the images of young African American men associated with this policy initiative-was the key to midnight basketball’s symbolic prominence. We then use content analysis and binary logistic regressions to specify how racially-coded references to midnight basketball exerted their impact on the political process. Our account focuses on how midnight basketball served both to heighten fears of crime and to transform images of criminals contained in the public discourse thus rendering liberal, prevention-oriented components of the legislation vulnerable. These findings and the emphasis discourse also allow us to go beyond standard racial coding theory which typically conceives such effects in one-directional, psychological terms. The paper concludes by drawing out the implications of this case study for the politics of social problems and public policy in contemporary American society, especially insofar as race and popular culture are concerned.
Migrations, Imprisonment and Crime in Italy, 1863-1998
Interest for the relationship between migration and crime goes back to the fascination of modernity with mobility. Liberty and mobility have increasingly been coupled not only in the realm of international relationship but especially in the everyday life experiences and perceptions of Western societies. It is the destiny of modernity to continuously excite movement–but at the same time fearing it when uncontrolled and then aspiring to put “checks” on it. This is true from the very beginning of modernity, starting with the “free and ‘unattached’ proletarians” narrated by Marx in Volume One of Capital. In the develo9pment of Western societies, unchecked mobility (both “spatial” and “social”) has recurrently been connected with crime. I investigate empirically this set of assumptions by analysing the relationships of im-migratory movements, crime and punishment in Italy, from 1970 to 1998, and of e-migratory movements, crime and punishment in Italy from 1863 to 1984.
Minimizing Errors of Justice: The Role of the Police
The legitimacy of the criminal justice system is undermined by errors of justice, two major categories of which are harms imposed on innocent persons by the criminal justice system and failures to bring culpable offenders to justice. This paper considers the evidence that points to the police as a source of those errors. It then asks what police can do to minimize the social costs associated with errors of justice — through better systems of accountability, more effective leadership and supervision, and improved screening and training. Specific sources of errors examined include the flawed exercise of discretion in responding to calls and in reporting crimes and making arrests, improper witness identification proceures, false confessions, improper use of informants, flawed and fraudulent evidence processing and forensic procedures, and incentive systems that induce covering up of errors. The effects of recent developments in policing arealso considered, including community and problem-oriented policing, investigative profiling and use of modus operandi files, and the effects of the federalization of policing associated with the new terrorist era of policing. This paper is part of a larger project to identify the nature and sources of justice errors and find remedies.
Minority Attitudes Toward the Police: Results of a National Survey
The paper presents preliminary results from a national survey of citizens’ attitudes and reported experiences with the police. The survey covers issues such as police misconduct, racial bias, community policing, and a set of reforms that might improve police services and accountability. Data analysis will focus on the effects of citizens’ race and class on perceptions of police practices and reported experiences with officers.
Minority Trust and Confidence in the Police: Findings From a Study of New Yorkers
It is a truism that minority group members have lower trust and confidence in the police than do Whites. Despite widespread recognition of this reality, however, there is not a clear explanation for why it is true, nor is there a consensus concerning the implications of this finding. Using the results of a survey of the residents of New York two models of trust and confidence are examined within the White and minority communities. One model links trust and confidence to police effectiveness in controlling crime. The other model links trust and confidence to issues of justice in police behavior. Findings support both models, but suggest that the primary issue in evaluating the police is an assessment of their fairness. This is true among both White and minority respondents. These findings suggest that the police can best build and maintain public trust and confidence by focusing on how they treat members of the public.
Missing Guns: Evaluating the Canada Firearms Centre’s Estimates
By comparing the number of fatal firearms accidents and suicides per 100,000 firearms in Canada and the United States we find that the rate of accidental shootings and suicides is considerably higher in Canada. We propose that these findings are a consequence of under-reporting the true number of firearms in Canada. Our findings suggest that the number of firearms in circulation in Canada is at least 10 million, about forty percent greater than estimated by the Canada Firearms Centre. Such findings have implications for evaluating the success of Bill C-68, legislation that made it mandatory to license all Canadian gun owners and register all firearms.
Mobile Phone Robbery: A Growing Menace
As a small, potentially valuable item, high on ‘image’ for the young in particular, it was probably inevitable that mobile phones would become an attractive target for theft. Nonetheless, an awareness of the problem of mobile phone theft is relatively recent and there has been little research to date. Perhaps more surprising still is that currently no consolidated figures exist on the extent of the problem. This paper will outline some of the results from recent Home Office research. This estimates that more than 700,000 mobile phone thefts occurred in England and Wales over the last year and that the risks for young people are far greater than for adults. Although in quantitative terms more phones are targeted in offences other than robbery a higher proportion of robberies tend to involve the theft of a phone. Moreover, while only a small proportion of robberies involved the theft of a phone in 1998/99, two years later this had a risen to more than a quarter. The greater growth in phone robberies which involve the theft of only a phone will also be discussed. Does this suggest that phone robbery has had a part to play in the recent upward robbery trend in England and Wales?
Model-Based Estimation of Offending and Co-Offending Using the Criminal Participation Matrix
Police data under-report the numbers of incidents and of offenders, the numbers of offenders participating in individual criminal incidents (incident sizes) and the numbers of incidents in which individual offenders participate (offender activity). We show that co-offending is a concept which underlies, and unifies, all of these phenomena, so that the numbers of incidents and of offenders, and incident size distributions and offender activity distributions, can all be derived from the co-offending (criminal participation) matrix. Two related statistical models are presented which permit the estimation of numbers of incidents and offenders, incident size distributions, offender activity distributions, and co-offending distributions, from police-reported crime data, and data on the reporting of crime to police. These models rely on simple probability mechanisms for incident reporting and identification of offenders. The models are estimated, using Canadian Uniform Crime Reporting Survey and victimization survey data for 1995-99, and offender activity data from criminal careers studies. The implications of the results of fitting the models are discussed, as are other data which might be used.
Modeling a Structural Pattern of Delinquency and Firearms Ownership and Carrying
According to previous literatures, delinquency is significantly associated with illegal gun use. Based on an empirical and theoretical framework of social control theories, the present study attempts to identify a structural relationship between juvenile delinquency and gun carrying among high school students. In particular, we attempt to delve into the recursive effects between delinquency and gun carrying in relation to social control forces. A national survey of high school youth in the U.S. is employed in this study and structural equation models are designed to estimate direct and indirect effects of social control factors on delinquency and firearm carrying among high school students. A preliminary analysis suggests that recursive effects exist between delinquency and gun carrying among high school students. Interestingly, those effects estimated are less influential than the indirect effects of informal social forces in terms of delinquency and gun carrying.
Modeling Limited Judicial Discretion
Sentencing Guidelines have been promulgated in many jurisdictions around the United States in an attempt to reduce, or even eliminate, unwarranted sentencing disparity, i.e., disparity not attributable to legally-relevant factors. Structured sentencing guidelines, based on legal factors such as prior criminal record and offense severity scores, aim to make sentencing more equitable by curtailing the amount of discretion available to judges. When analyzing samples of data from structured sentencing systems, however, researchers continue to rely on traditional (unrestricted) methods that do not adequately reflect the structure within which judges are sentencing. In this paper, using simple examples, I highlight a fundamental problem that arises when attempting to derive inferences about the impacts of legal and extra-legal factors on judicial decision making. I then suggest an alternate information-theoretic approach that allows one to impose on the model the kinds of restrictions that guidelines impose on the judges. Since the research is ongoing, empirical findings comparing inferences derived from the proposed approach with those derived from traditional methods will be presented at the conference.
Modeling Sentence Length Decisions Under a Guidelines System: An Application of Quantile Regression Models
How should sentencing disparity be assessed when decisions are constrained under a sentencing guidelines system? Recent debate over the measurement of sentence disparity under a guidelines system has focused primarily on using interaction terms in regression models to capture the nonadditive effect of offense severity and prior record on sentence length. In this paper, I propose an alternative method to assessing sentencing disparity under a guidelines system that uses quantile regression models. These models offer several advantages over traditional OLS analyses of sentence length, but more importantly, allow for a test of questions such as: Do variables, such as race or offense severity have the same effect on sentence length for the 10% of offenders receiving the most lenient punishments as they do for the 10% of offenders receiving the most severe punishments? I illustrate the application and interpretation of these models with 1994 sentencing data from Pennsylvania. The effects of the independent variables using several different quantiles (10%, 25%, 50%, 75% and 90%) differ in important ways from the effects found when using OLS. I explain how this approach may provide an interesting avenue for further methodological analysis of sentencing decisions made under a guidelines system.
Modeling Spatial Dimensions of Pre-Trial Jury Selection Bias
The issue of racial representation on jury panels has received increasing attention over the last twenty years in the United States. A number of studies have examined the courtroom selection procedures at the point of trial, though the issue of representation equality prior to approval to the voting panel has been less documented. Many jury selection committees across the country have introduced measures in an attempt to arrange for a representative sample of their population to be available for jury service with varying degrees of success. While many procedures employed seek a representative sample at the point of mailing – the point where a member of the public is informed that they are required for jury duty – there are a number of factors that impact on the likelihood that an individual will be eventually approved for jury service at the court. By examining over 270,000 jury selection records for the City of Philadelphia over a one year period with a Geographical Information System, this paper will explain some of the spatial dimensions of the pre-trial jury selection process. In a city such as Philadelphia, where spatial divisions are often translated into racial divides, the issue of jury representation can be explored in geographical context. Location Quotients are used to measure the impact of the problems encountered.
Modeling the Main and Interactive Effects of Gender and Race/Ethnicity on the Case Processing of Criminal Defendants in Large Urban Courts
Recent assessments of the research on gender disparities in the case processing of criminal defendants highlight a major shortcoming: scope. Limitations in scope mainly involve (i) the scarcity of research on decision making at earlier stages of case processing, including the impact of prior decisions on subsequent decision making (most notably, the sentencing decision) and (ii) the scarcity of research examining possible interactive effects between gender and race, and even more so, interactive effects between gender and ethnicity — i.e., the inclusion of Hispanic defendants. In the present study, we use data from the State Court Processing Statistics (SCPS) program of the Bureau of Justice Statistics (BJS) to address this shortcoming and develop a fuller, and more fully verified, account of the relationship between gender and case-process decision making. The research improves upon the existing empirical literature in several ways. In contrast, to many previous efforts, this one: (i) examines gender disparities in judicial decision making as a process across four stages: pretrial release, adjudication, incarceration, and sentence length; (ii) tests main and interactive effects of gender on decision making across different stages, contexts, and offense categories; (iii) disaggregates the data to include comparisons involving White, Black, and Hispanic defendants; and (iv) profits from improved statistical approaches for modeling selection bias and understanding court decision making as a process. In addition, the analysis benefits from a large, representative sample covering different social settings and handling a substantial proportion of all felony cases in the United States.
Modelling College Students’ Perceptions of the Legitimacy of Rape Complaints
Victim falsification is an issue that is unique to female victims of the crime of rape. A national study of sexual victimization on college campuses showed that the rate of rape victimization among young college women is disproportionately high. Despite the significance of research concerning rape victim believability among college students, few studies have explored predictors of their attitudes about victim falsification. This research represents a pilot study of college students’ opinions about the extent of false claims of rape. This study will test a path analytic model of attitudes separately for males and females. It is hypothesized that sociocultural factors, such as subject’s level of acceptance of traditional gender role stereotypes and acceptance of interpersonal violence, as well as background variables like socioeconomic status, and religiosity will distinguish level of agreement with statements about victim falsification. Possible avenues for intervention, especially education, are discussed.
Money Laundering Cases in Federal Court 1990–2002
Congress made money laundering a federal offense in October 1986 in an effort to prosecute criminal organizations who funnel illegal proceeds. This paper analyzes the cases that have been prosecuted by the federal courts across the United States. Characteristics of the offenses, offenders and types and lengths of sentences were examined for trends and commonalities. This presentation will summarize the major findings from this data collection effort which mirrors that of the U.S. Sentencing Commission’s efforts. Discussion will also include policy recommendations given the findings.
Moral Communities and the Impact of Individual Religiosity on White Collar Crime
There has been debate over the effect of individual religiosity on criminality in the context of moral communities marked by low and high levels of group religiosity. Most of the bi-level research on this issue has been based on limited samples, and ranges in religiosity. Typically research is done within a single nation. The present study extends the analysis to several dozen nations using the World Values Surveys for 1990. White collar crime predispositions of over 45,000 individuals constitute the dependent variable. Controls are introduced from alternative theoretical perspectives including social bonds, economic strain, and demographic factors. The results of a multiple regression analysis indicate that individual level religiosity lowers criminality more in nations with low levels of religiosity. The results support the notion of writers such as Tittle and Welch that religion will have its strongest effect on the individual when societal institutions are weak. The results offer less support for the moral communities perspective of writers such as Stark which contends that the impact of individuals’ religiosity needs to be multiplied by societal levels of religiosity in order to have its full impact on criminality.
Moral Emotions and Moral Reasoning in an Inmate Population: Preliminary Results from the GMU Recidivism Study
Initial results will be presented from a prospective study designed to evaluate the impact of moral emotions (i.e., feelings of shame, guilt and empathy) on criminal recidivism, and to assess whether existing services and interventions are effective in modifying the moral affective capacity of offenders, thereby reducing rates of re-offense. To what degree do feelings of shame, guilt and empathy foster reparative behavior and reform? And how can prison programs promote the development of adaptive moral emotions? In Phase1of the project, recently incarcerated offenders complete baseline measures of moral emotional style (proneness to shame, guilt, and empathy), moral reasoning, criminogenic beliefs, psychological adjustment and psychopathy. In addition, inmates’ behavioral adjustment and use of offender services are tracked. Initial analyses will focus on the following questions: (1) Do inmates scoring high on the Hare Psychopathy Checklist actually show an impaired capacity for moral emotions and moral reasoning? (2) Do moral emotions and moral reasoning predict jail adjustment and behavior, above and beyond level of psychopathy? (3) Regarding use of offender services (e.g., substance abuse treatment, GED, Chaplain), what kinds of offenders, from what kinds of backgrounds, with what profile of moral affective characteristics, opt for certain services as opposed to others?
Moral Justice: The Issue of Jury Nullification
Jury nullification is when a jury ignores the law during their deliberations. Several legal and social scholars have advocated the use of jury nullification to acquit nonviolent drug offenders, particularly if the defendant is a minority. This study looks to see under what circumstances college students would or not convict a sympathetic defendant when the evidence strongly suggests guilt beyond a reasonable doubt. A discussion of the use and impact of jury nullification will also be presented.
More Bobbies on the Global Beat?” Transnational Policing and Local Police Accountability
The idea of a ‘global police force’, waiting in the wings for more than half a century, has stepped out on to the world stage. As one British newspaper put it: “Even before September 11 there was a very strong case for a global force to tackle the underground economy of laundered money including drugs, crime and the fruits of government corruption that is estimated to top Âœ1,000bn. The unpaid taxes on these sums should alone be incentive enough for the global police”. But this answer to the “new world disorder” simply raises more questions. Who would govern the ‘global police’, manage its resources and supervise its investigations? How would its priorities be set and by whom? The questions of effectiveness, integrity and accountability – unresolved in relation to local policing – are if anything more acute in relation to transnational policing. This paper invites reflections on the globalisation of policing and considers the implications for research and practice.
More of Less(ig)! Virtual Utopias and Dystopic Networks
An integral part of the debate over the politics of policing cyberspace crime are two contrasting visions of Cyberspace, which compete for the public’s attention. On the one hand are the (Thomas More inspired) Utopian visions of Cyberspace promoted by commercial, media and governmental agencies, which exude optimism and hope. On the other hand are the dystopian so-called realities of the same Cyberspace that are “exposed” by other concerned commercial, media and governmental agencies: they paint pictures of a very different actuarialist cyberspace defined by predators and terror. In the midst of the public debate over the policing of cyberspace is a practical need to dispel myths and hyperbole inorder to inform the criminal justice processes and policies. This paper will draw upon the findings of recent research into Internet related crimes with small impacts and multiple victimisations and, in seeking to contrast risk assessments with realities, it will explore issues of trust, tolerance and tenacity. The first part of the paper will overview the various utopian and dystopian perspectives. The second will draw upon and apply Lawrence Lessig’s “digital realist” theory to provide a grounding for the debate over the policing of cyberspace.
More Punishment for the Buck: Arizona’s Fiscal Politics and the Making of a Contemporary Penal Regime
A major feature of Arizona political culture is fiscal conservatism, in which economic frugality is lauded as a goal in nearly all spheres of state and local governance. This feature, combined with a co-existing and long-standing punitive political culture, has contributed to the development of a particularly harsh state penal system over the past 30 years. This paper will illustrate several instances where these forces have shaped contemporary penality in Arizona.
Moroccan Street Youth: Gangs or Victims of Assimilation?
Field research conducted in Amsterdam, The Netherlands, investigated Moroccan street youth. Moroccan youth between the ages of 12 and 21 are arrested for more street crime than youth of any other nationality in Amsterdam. This research had the purpose of determining if Moroccan street youth could be classified as a youth gang in the American sense of the term. Multiple perceptions about Moroccan youth were gathered in informal and semi-structured interviews with business, school, and government personnel, including the Amsterdam police department’s gang unit. One outcome of this research was to propose policy interventions that would likely be effective in complex, multi-national neighborhoods. Another outcome was to determine if the term gang should be applied to Moroccan street youth. This research was funded by the Dutch Ministry of Justice.
Motivation or Opportunity: Which Serves as the Best Mediator in General Theory of Crime?
Gottfredson and Hirschi’s (1990) General Theory of Crime begins by assuming people are rational; they assume people are pleasure seekers and pain aversive. The assessment of pleasure versus pain is affected by a person’s level of self-control. Self-control is essentially a person’s level of self-restraint, which is developed from parenting. Gottfredson and Hirschi (1990) say ineffective parenting results in low self-control, which affects a person’s ability to assess the consequences of their actions, leaving a person vulnerable to commit deviance when given an opportunity. They say opportunity is the necessary element to commit deviance without any specific motivation. Agnew (1995) says motivational forces that propel people to commit deviance should be developed and tested when assessing the leading crime theories including General Theory of Crime. The purpose of this study is to empirically compare the moderating influences of opportunity and motivation to determine which variable provides the best influence. This study will assess General Theory of Crime while including measures of opportunity and motivation using a sample of college students and path analysis as the analytic technique. The expectation is motivation will serve as a strong moderator for self-control and deviance, while opportunity will serve less of a role.
Motivational Influences on Early Engagement and Treatment Satisfaction in Drug Court
Studies of community-based substance abuse treatment show that motivation for treatment is important for retaining clients in the program and for their becoming personally engaged in their recovery process. Relatively little research, however, has examined the impact of motivation for treatment on personal engagement in Drug Court. As part of the NIDA-funded Enhancing Drug Court Retention in a Rural State project, data were collected from 350 drug court clients. Face-to-face interviews were conducted by research staff using elements of the Addiction Severity Index, Stages of Change Readiness and Treatment Eagerness Scale, and the TCU Motivation Assessment. Findings showed that initial motivation levels were associated positively during the first 30 days of drug court (including higher ratings of rapport with the case specialist, greater satisfaction with the case specialist and with the drug court program, and more positive ratings of their own personal progress in treatment), even after statistically controlling for additional factors that could have confounded these relationships. Targeted motivational interventions; therefore, are recommended for individuals who enter Drug Court with low motivation to improve the probability that this type of client will become personally engaged in the treatment process.
Motorcycle Theft and Helmet Law Enforcement in Taiwan
Motorcycle theft is the most common crime in Taiwan. It occupies more than half of the total police recorded crime from 1996 to 1999 .The purpose of this study is to examine the correlation between implementation of helmet law and motorcycle theft in Taiwan. Taiwan ‘s Helmet Law took effect on June 1,1997. Monthly data on the number of motorcycle theft as well as number of helmet violations were obtained from Criminal Investigation Bureau of the National Police Administration. Data on the number of registered motorcycles were obtained from the Department of Communication One sample t-test shows that there is a significant mean difference on the monthly number of motorcycle thefts between before and after the helmets law took effect. One-way ANOVA shows that city and counties with stronger police enforcement on helmet law also have a higher reduction in motorcycle thefts rates. There is also a significant negative Pearson correlation between police enforcement of helmet law and motorcycle thefts rates. That is, the stronger the police enforcement , the lower the motorcycle theft rate. ARIMA Intervention model shows that implementation of helmet law has a significant impact on the time series of motorcycle thefts in Taiwan. ARIMA Transfer Function Model further shows that enforcement of helmet law is the leading factor on the reduction of motorcycle theft rate. Data analyses also found that the decline of motorcycle theft rate does not increase other theft cases. On the contrary, the decline of motorcycle theft also has the benefit diffusion of lowering the robbery and stolen goods rates in Taiwan. To sum up the above findings, implementation of helmet law is one of the factors for the decline of motorcycle theft in Taiwan. And Taiwan’s experience further supports Felson and Clarke’s(1998) Opportunity Theory.
Moving Beyond Census Boundaries With Geographic Information Systems
The arbitrary nature of Census boundaries has been recognized as a problem in urban analysis for some time. For example, old East Coast cities have not changed their political boundatires in many years although the contiguous built up area has continued to expand outward. The census bureau has recognized this problem by establishing Metropolitan Statistical Areas that include the politically bounded city plus the contiguously built up surrounding counties. Within cities, census tracts, block groups and blocks incorporate ever decreasing areas that are as internally homogenous as possible. However, they are never completely homogenous with respect to a census variable. This creates an analytical problem. For example, suppose that a census tract is recorded as 50 percent black and 50 percent white. Does this mean that approximately every other household is of a different race or ore likely, that one side of the census tract is predominately black and the other side predominately white? Furthermore, we do not know the spatial arrangement of the racial groups from the census figures. They are assumed to be uniformly distributed since it is a characteristics of the bounded area. In the present analysis, GIS is used to evaluate the importance of three theoretical explanations of the spatial arrangement of illegal drug sales arrests in Wilmongton, Delaware. The first explanation is taken from marketing geography and is a measure of the local demand for illegal drugs in residential communities taken from census variables. The second explanation is a measure of how accessible an area is to regional customers measured by access to expressway, highway and public transportation facilities using GIS methods. The third explanation is taken from routine activity theory that identifies facilities that are used on a routine basis by people with a high propensity for illegal drug use such as high schools and homeless shelters.
Moving Beyond Correlational Penology: Conducting Qualitative Research Amongst Prison Inmates and Staff
By their nature and locations, prisons are places in which few criminologists study first-hand. It is far easier to gain access to study the residents of a remote Alaskan village than to study the lives of prison inmates and/or those persons whose task it is to keep them within the prison walls. This article explores some of the interrelated challenges (access, rapport, honesty, confidentiality, compromise, etc.) faced by researchers conducting qualitative research within correctional environments. Examples are drawn from the literature as well as recent studies by the author on the work environment of correctional officers and a prison substance abuse treatment program.
MST — A Fit for Child Delinquents?
Ramsey County ACE is a comprehensive intervention for child delinquents under age 10 who have multiple risk factors for future serious and violent offending. At the time of the program’s inception in 1999, little was known about the characteristics of child delinquents as a clinical target population. Consequently, ACE looked to the literature on interventions for older offenders as a guide. One nationally evaluated model that works well with recidivist adolescent offenders is Multisytemic Therapy (MST). This intensive, short term intervention focuses on improving parenting skills. Since child delinquents are not yet alienated from their parents or entrenched with antisocial peers, it was expected to be even more effective with child delinquents. A grant from the McKnight Foundation allowed ACE to conduct a randomized trial of MST. After two years, it was determined that MST is not a cost-effective intervention for high risk child delinquents under age 10. The reasons include differences in parent motivation, parent characteristics, child’s developmental stage, and lack of someone to introduce the intervention. These insights suggest that the very risk factors that make some child delinquents highly likely to escalate into serious and violent offending also make it highly unlikely that any short-term parent-focused intervention will work in isolation.
Multi-Agency Collaborations and Youth Homicide: The Origins and Potential Effectiveness of Gang Task Forces
Gang task forces are multi-agency collaborations focused on prevention, intervention, or suppression of gang activity. This paper attempts to explain why some jurisdictions organize such task forces while others do not. We hypothesize that jurisdictions with higher rates of youth gang homicide are more likely to participate in a gang task force. We then attempt to determine the effectiveness of such gang task forces in curbing gang crime. Using data collected in the National Youth Gang Intervention and Suppression Survey (Spergel and Curry, 1992) as well as the UCR’s Supplementary Homicide Reports 1976-1998 (Fox, 2000), we find that cities with high youth gang homicide rates are most likely to form task forces. We find some evidence suggesting that such multi-agency collaborations may engender a marginal short-term reduction in youth gang homicides. Our lagged dependent variable regression analysis comparing cities with and without task forces, however, failed to detect any statistically significant differences in rates of youth gang homicide.
Multi-Level Comprehensive Community Justice Partnerships: Understanding Partnership Dimensions
The paper will discuss the key components of a number of comprehensive initiatives, including the SafeFutures program and Cities/Communities in Schools program to illustrate the different types of partnerships between justice agencies and communities. Multi-site comprehensive programs are usually large programs encompassing multiple “mini programs” within the structure. The paper will highlight how the different partnership structures relate to the successes these programs can have in different communities. Barriers to effective partnership formation will also be discussed.
Multijurisdictional Collaboration — Unnatural Acts Between Non-Consenting Adults
Research recommendations for targeted early intervention with child delinquents emphasize the importance of having a multidisciplinary professional team with flexibility and authority to guide service integration across multiple domains. These typically include such diverse departments as Child Protection Services, Corrections, Mental Health Services, Financial Services, and Public Health. A number of challenges to multidisciplinary collaboration can limit the effectiveness of this otherwise valuable approach. These challenges occur at both the system level and personal level. At the system level, different departments have different missions, different indicators of success and often are prevented by confidentiality statutes from sharing information or developing joint case plans. At the personal level, there are differences in disciplinary perspective, concerns about increased workload as a result of collaboration, and potential conflicts in perspective. An advocate for a battered woman, for example, may view placement of her child in foster care as punishment of the mother rather than protection for her abused child. This paper will review these and other issues that need to be considered when designing an effective multidisciplinary intervention, along with examples of solutions that work and challenges that remain.
Multiple Identities and the Effect of Social Stability on Time Until Rearret
In order to have a complete understanding of criminal behavior, it is important to consider how people’s experiences vary based on their personal identity. At the most basic level this means considering how the experiences of males and females differ and how this in turn influences criminal behavior. At a more complex level this means considering the various ways people differ (e.g., gender, race and social class) or multiple identities, with the belief that not all females or all males will have similar experiences. Drawing from this belief, literature on the lives of offenders, and social control theories, this study uses data on white-collar criminals convicted in federal court (N=549) to examine whether the impact of social stability on time until rearrest is conditional on identity. More specifically, it examines whether the influence of marriage, parenthood, employment, and educational attainment on time until rearrest is conditional on gender, race, and social class. The findings indicate that while social class is not an important factor, gender and/or race modify the impact of several of these factors on time until rearrest; although, not always in the expected manner. While many of the findings can be best understood from a social control perspective, other findings are in need of additional theoretical consideration and empirical examination.
Multiple-Methods and Practical Research: The Value of Using Both Quantitative and Qualitative Data to Assess a Cognitive Based Program
This paper will explore the value of using multiple-methods of research to evaluate a cognitive based program. Results from a cognitive program evaluation study will be used to discuss how the combination of quantitative and qualitative data revealed the limitations of using one form of data and how these multiple methods can be used to examine change in behavior. The paper will conclude with a discussion of the dilemmas researchers face in presenting findings to the funding agency when they are only seeking measurable change through quantitative data.
Murder One: An Exploratory Analysis of Case Clearance and Official Charges in Homicide Events
Over the past 20 years there has been a wealth of research pertaining to the phenomenon of homicide. Research on homicide has produced important findings concerning patterns of homicide occurrence, causes of homicide, and media coverage of homicide and its resultant impact on public perception. Despite the volume of research on homicide there has been a general lack of research on both homicide clearance rates and official charges in homicide cases. Specifically, there is little empirical research into what factors impact whether a homicide case is solved and which incidents result in a murder charge. The purpose of this research is to explore how extra-leal factors such as victim S.E.S. and media coverage impact homicide clearnace rates and official charges. In addition, research will attempt to determine if there are any spatial patterns in the clearance of homicides and homicide incidents that receive a murder charge?
‘My Heart Attack in Prison’: Penal Harm, Bureaucracy, and a Narrative of Personal Crisis
This paper, co authored by a professor and a prisoner currently incarcerated for armed robbery, uses the prisoner’s narrative description of his heart attack in prison as the basis for analyzing the human consequences philosophy and the impact of bureaucratization in the aftermath of more than a decade of rapid expansion of prisons. The paper also illuminates the gap between formal rights (e.g., right to be free from deliberate indifference to serious medical needs: Estelle v. Gamble) and human experience in a bureaucratic setting.
N
Native American Offenders Under the Federal Sentencing Guidelines
Native American criminal offenders are in unique situations throughout this nation. For Native Americans residing on Reservations, there are three possible jurisdictions for handling criminal cases because of the laws governing the reservations they inhabit; federal, state and tribal courts. Offenders who are subject to being sentenced under federal jurisdiction are in a unique circumstance because they are often sentenced under rules and guidelines that were, for the most part, created to handle different types of offenders. This study will look at the effect of the federal sentencing guidelines on the sentencing of Native American offenders. Specifically, the affect of Congressional directives on the sentencing of Native Americans under the Sexual Abuse Guidelines will be examined.
Neighborhood, Drug Lifestyle, and Maternal Social-Familial Setting Influences on Children’s Risk for Poor School Performance and Children’s Trauma Symptoms
Self-report data from Mother and child pairs (N=499) were used to analyze relationships between neighborhood problems, mother’s drug lifestyle involvement, monitoring and punitiveness and their children’s school performance and trauma symptoms. Two research questions are examined: Does living in neighborhoods characterized with many systemic problems increase children’s chance of developing trauma symptoms, controlling for maternal monitoring and punitiveness behaviors? Second, does mothers’ drug lifestyle involvement increae their children’s poor performance in school, controlling for parental monitoring and punitiveness behaviors? Correlation and regression analyses revealed that drug lifestyle involvement along with neighborhood problems contribute to children’s poor academic performance and their develo9ping child trauma symptoms (e.g., anger and sexual preoccupation), respectively. Findings suggest joint influences of maternal behaviors and neighborhood factors that contribute to children’s negative internalized and externalized outcomes. Prevention models need to be developed and existing prevention programs need to integrate interventions and programs to reduce the risk of maternal behaviors and environmental conditions impacting children lives. Based on the findings, a prevention construct, as well as, an established preventuion risk-focused model are adapted to the present work that addresses precursors to adolescent problem behavior.
Neighborhood Culture, Crime and the Police: Understanding the Importance of Neighborhood Culture on Pllicing
Recently, more attention has been given to developing a better understanding of the role neighborhood culture has in the development and maintenance of criminal behavior. Moreover, the ability of police to develop productive partnerships with neighborhood areas appears to be related to the culture of the area. Still, little is known, however, of the relationship between race/ethnicity, neighborhood culture (i.e., sense of community, social cohesion, social capital, collective efficacy) crime and the police. In an effort to build upon existing research, the current study focuses on this relationship. Along with census data and official crime reports, door-to-door and telephone surveys were administered to residents throughout Neighborhood Groups in Reno, Nevada. Results and policy implications are discussed.
Neighborhood Disadvantage, Self-Control and Socialization: A Test of a Multi-Level Theoretical Model
This work attempts to incorporate self-control within a social disorganization framework. Although focused on different levels of analysis, I suggest that self-control and social disorganization are complementary perspectives with each offering something new and productive to the other. Specifically I argue that parenting occurs within a neighborhood context and is, in part, a reaction to community concerns. Additionally community level processes such as collective efficacy, social capital, and intergenerational closure are important links between community structural context and self-control. In order to test this multi-level theoretical perspective, I utilize hierarchical modeling to analyze data from the National Longitudinal Survey of Adolescent Health. The results indicate that community disadvantage is a significant predictor of adolescent self-control. Furthermore, this relationship holds controlling for relevant demographic and social selection variables. Additionally, I find that self-control mediates as much of the relationship between disadvantage and violent offending as the traditional mediators of social disorganization theory. I discuss implications for criminological theory, limitations and directions for future study.
Neighborhood Institutions and their Effects on Collective Efficacy
Collective efficacy research has furthered the discussion of how neighborhoods organize themselves and maintain public order. This paper adds to this ongoing discussion by examining how institutions affect collective efficacy levels in neighborhoods. Because many people today are engaged in community building activities, such as civic groups, block groups and even religious organizations, their participation in these institutions may foster many of the secondary social capital ties that help a community build collective efficacy. Thus, this paper examines how institutions and participation in those institutions both inside neighborhood and outside that neighborhood relate to levels of collective efficacy. Preliminary findings suggest that participation in religious organizations yield significantly higher levels of collective efficacy when the religious organization is located within the neighborhood, and significantly lower levels of collective efficacy when residents participate in religious organizations outside of their neighborhod. Other institutions such as neighborhood watch programs and political ward groups yield significantly higher levels of collective efficacy only if that participation occurs within the neighborhood setting.
Neighborhood Watch After the Hanshin-Awaji Great Earthquake
Right after the Hanshin-Awaji Great Earthquake in 1995, community leaders organized neighborhood watch activities, including night patrolling, day patrolling, increasing streetlights, surveillance and monitoring risky spots. My paper will analyze the activities in detail. When did they start and how long did they last? How did they react to likely crimes and criminals during patrolling? Were the activities independent of the police or local government? I collected the data from questionnaire surveys to community leaders (heads of neighborhood associations) and their interviews. My paper will suggest some theoretical implications especially effectiveness of “anomie vs. synnomie perspective” by Freda Adler to understand the neighborhood watch activities after the Great Earthquake.
New Directions in Funding Local Initiatives
The McKnight Foundation has three goals related to children, families and communities: (1) to encourage children’s emotional security, social development, and academic achievement; (2) to strengthen families’ capacity to support, nurture, and guide their children; and (3) to create supportive communities at the neighborhood and city levels. This presentation will review how a wide variety of local initiatives currently funded by the McKnight Foundation support the efforts of programs that target high risk children and families. Grants by the foundation support system reform and services for students with challenges, enrichment and development opportunities for youth, parent education and strengthening the public infrastructure that serves families, programs that educate men to assume full fatherhood responsibilities in child rearing, and programs to prevent abuse and provide protection and healing for victims. McKnight grants also support public policy initiatives, including welfare reform, neighborhood and supportive housing, and overcoming barriers to employment success. Future directions in these areas will discussed
New Directions in Repeat Victimization Research
Research consistently demonstrates that the risk of burglary is elevated following an initial incident of crime, particularly during the first few weeks. Such findings have clear implications for policing and crime prevention, and successful resource targeting strategies have been developed accordingly. However, one drawback with these strategies is that properties are only identified as being vulnerable after they have been victimised on at least one occasion. In the current paper, we will focus on the concept of ‘near repeats’ which are said to occur when offenders target (different) households that are in close geographical proximity to a previously victimised properties. Using police recorded crime data from both Australia and the UK and, using statistical models developed to examine the spread of infectious diseases, we will demonstrate that consistent with the near repeat hypothesis burglaries do cluster in both space and time. Moreover, the analyses indicate that the degree to which burglaries cluster in this way varies across different types of area. For instance, in contrast to incidents of repeat victimisation and ‘hot spots’ of crime, space-time clusters appear to be more evident in affluent than deprived areas. The practical implications of these findings for crime prevention resource targeting and future directions for repeat victimisation research will be discussed.
New Measures for Assessing Perceptions of Justice System Involvement
The perceptions of adolescents about the likely impact and fairness of their involvement in the justice system may have considerable impat on the effectiveness of interventions with serious adolescent offenders. Questions regarding perceptions of procedural justice and the costs/benefits of involvement in crime seem particularly relevant to developing an understanding of how adolescents react to sanctions and interventions that might occur to them as the result of juvenile and criminal justice involvement. This study developed several measures of these two constructs in an effort to tap the potential impact of these perceptions on later community adjustment. The logic behind these measures and initial findings regarding the psychometric properties of these instruments will be reported.
News Media and Popular Cultural Representations of the Electronic Monitoring of Offenders in England and Wales
The electronic monitoring of offenders (EM) was begun experimentally in England and Wales in 1989/90, was not taken seriously by government until the mid -1990s, and was not available nationally (as a community sentence and as an early release from prison mechanism) until 1999. Its protagonists in government and the private sector consistently promoted it as a tough new penalty which would impose unprecedented levels of control over offenders in the community. It was initially opposed by the probation service, whose professional territory it was seen to threaten, and by liberal penal reform organisations who saw it as an unneccessarily draconian measure, but it has become established and widely used (esp for early release) nonetheless. This paper looks at press coverage of EM since 1995, and at selected representations of EM on television (drama and documentary), in film and in novels. > Although there are exceptions, the dominant mode of > representation has been sceptical to hostile; the English press, in > particular, having portrayed it as a dubious American gimmick. > There is no significant sense in which it is seen, in popular culture, > as a punitive measure, nor as a threat to civil liberties. Changing > conceptions of privacy in contemporary culture will be tentatively > advanced as explanations for the discrepancy between the tough > image of EM shared by supporters and opponents alike, and the > more innocuous portrayal of it in popular debate.
Newspaper Reporting on Trial: A Cross-Cultural Comparison of Two Murder Cases
This study compared the newspaper coverage of the trials of two similar crimes in two different countries to examine similarities and differences in coverage. The U.S. coverage of the trial of Theodore Kaczynski (the Unabomber) and the British coverage of the trial of David Copeland (the Nailbomber), both of whom were found guilty for their crimes, were compared as to the underlying narrative structure, themes and motifs that characterized each. In a total of 133 articles from six broadsheet, middle-brow and tabloid newspapers, there was a prevailing use of narrative and stereotypical frameworks in the coverage in both countries. For example, Kaczynski was characterized as a hermit, while Copeland was labeled a Nazi. Yet the coverage differed in emphasis: the British coverage obsessed with the story of the crime whereas the U.S. press emphasized the story of the trial. Just over 50% of the U.S. articles (compared to 2% of the British coverage) focused on the trial, in particular the legal strategy of the defense and prosecution. In comparison, 40% of the British coverage (vs. 8% of the U.S. coverage) focused on the crimes themselves for the most part retelling the stories of the events and of the victims. In both cases, particularly in the U.S., this resulted in an almost total absence of a wider discussion of relevant criminal justice issues, particularly concerning the treatment of defendants with mental illnesses. These findings are supported by other scholarship that discusses how the critical questions of “how” and “why” are often ignored in contemporary reporting in favor of stories that rely too heavily on stereotypes and thematic narrative representations of the events. What makes these cases significant is that they were about an issue that is central in society, crime and how we deal with those who commit it. These results demonstrate the need for more responsible journalism, particularly in the reporting of trials, so that a public dialogue on criminal justice issues can be encouraged. While journalists continue to ignore the wider questions, they are simply perpetuating the ignorance that persists about mental illness, crime and punishment.
Nodal Governance, Democracy and the New ‘Denizens’: Challenging the Westphalian Ideal
Established notions of citizens and citizenship are informed by the Westphalian ideal of autonomous, territorially bounded nation-states . As collective life is defined and explained by reference to ‘national’ cultures, politics and economic systems, to be a ‘citizen’ means to have rights and responsibilities consistent with “substantive incorporation into society” (Young, 1998:65). In this ‘modern’ world “at one with itself” (Ibid), governance, and hence citizenship, is understood in reference to the classic liberal distinction between the ‘public’ and the ‘private’. This Westphalian ideal, which continues to inspire the governmental structures and processes of many nations, is no longer as self-evident as it once was as a prescription for good governance. The features of the world that this ideal signifies (namely sovereign nation states with responsibility for governance exercised through state agencies) have always been layered into, upon and around assemblages of governance that do not fit the ideal (Krasner 2001). However, it is only recently that the Westphalian model and its utility as an organizing concept began to be seriously questioned. Today, as this layering of multiple worlds becomes increasingly visible, the simple elegance of the Westphalian model is no longer as compelling as it once was. Within our changing world, because states continue to exist as important sites of governance and political authority, citizenship remains relevant and most people today continue to be defined as citizens of one or more nation states. However, as new auspices of governance are emerging and re-configuring collective life, people are finding themselves with a host of non-state affiliations and associated expectations. If we are to understand these new statuses and their implications we need to extend our conceptual framework in ways that enable us to home in on them as central objects of analysis. As we have argued elsewhere (see Hermer et al., 2002, Wood and Shearing, 1999) our conceptions of governance and citizenship, and the worldview such conceptions support, are lagging considerably behind our practices. As such, we will begin this paper by reviewing some of the transformations in governance that have taken place. We will then propose three new conceptual pillars that we suggest should be employed in coming to terms with these new worlds and the political statuses that have emerged as part of them. These concepts are “nodal governance”, “denizens” and “communal space”. We will explore these terrains through the empirical window of the governance of security. Following this we will explore the normative implications of nodal governance as it has taken shape to date, with an emphasis on the ‘governance disparity’ that is paralleling the ‘wealth disparity’ across the globe. In response to this disparity, we will end with an outline of our normative vision and practical program aimed at deepening democracy in poor areas of South Africa, Argentina and elsewhere. We will argue that the main virtue of nodal governance – namely, the emphasis on local capacity and knowledge – can be retrieved, re-affirmed and re-institutionalized in ways that enhance the self-direction of poor communities while strengthening their ‘collective capital’.
Non-Economic Institutions and Age-Stratified Homicide Offending: The Differential Effects of Secular and Religious Institutions on Adult and Juvenile Homicide
This analysis extends prior research on macro-level homicide rates by examining the role non-economic institutions play in depressing violent crime. Drawing from theoretical themes suggesting non-economic institutions buttress community integration and normative consensus, we propose an age-graded perspective on the link between non-economic institutions and violence. Specifically, we expect secular institutions such as political participation and social and civic organizations to provide protective effects for adults but not juveniles, primarily because juveniles rarely engage or are exposed to such institutions – and therefore derive no benefit from them. Conversely, we expect widespread participation in religious institutions to benefit both adults and juveniles, because young people do participate in such institutions, and when they do it is typically with their parents and family. Our analysis of county level adult and juvenile homicide offending patterns provides robust support for these expectations, suggesting that non-economic institutions play important -yet age-specific-roles in reducing interpersonal violence
Normative Embeddedness and Ambivalence in Generational Social Change: Social Capital and Urban Youth in Transition
This paper investigates the role of norm enforcement and normative commitments in the transition from adolescence to adulthood. Drawing on longitudinal data of two cohorts of high-school students in Toronto, we examine the relationships between community and familial norm enforcement, individual risk-taking, direct and indirect contact with the police, and normative ambivalence regarding rule-breaking and social norms of conduct. This model posits that youth behaviors and normative settings are contingent on one another and produce unique outcomes when combined. Relying on two cohorts of data collected nearly 25 years apart (1976/2000) with rigorous controls for comparability, this paper provides the opportunity to examine the role of normative emdeddedness over a period of significant social and economic change, and its role as a form of social capital for urban youth experiencing the transition to adulthood.
Not All Fun in the Sun: An Analysis of Homicide in Florida
A variety of national studies have examined the relationship between homicide and economic factors. Although the findings from the majority of this research suggest a relationship between these factors and homicide, we ask how these factors impact homicide in the state of Florida? Specifically, using the sixty-seven Florida counties as the unit of analysis we investigate the effect of socioeconomic variables. Results of statistical analysis are discussed, as are implications for future research.
NYPD and Problem-Oriented Policing
Over the last decade, much attention has been given to the crime reduction tactics performed by the New York City Police Department. This attention often focuses on those tactics, such as ‘order-maintenance’ and Compstat, that are well publicized by academics and journalists. While these tactics are important to the crime-reduction story in New York, often overlooked is a strategy of problem-oriented policing performed at the local level. Similar to the SARA model of police problem-solving, NYPD’s problem-solving model – Accurate and Timely Intelligence; Rapid Deployment; Effective Tactics; and Follow-up and Assessment – is routinely employed by precinct personnel in order to manage crime problems in local neighborhoods. This paper examines data collected from a multiple-case study of six NYPD police precincts. Information from analyses of precinct crime trends, interviews with precinct personnel, and observations of strategy meetings is used to demonstrate the effectiveness of NYPD’s model of problem solving.
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Oakeshott and American Criminology
Michael Oakeshott founded the history of political thought program at the London School of Economics. Although Oakeshott has been categorized as a political philosopher-Rationalism in Politics (1962) among his best known works-he has important things to say to criminologists. This paper reviews several of his ideas and discusses their application to American criminology. Specifically, it discusses Oakeshott’s poetic imagination, his concept of a person, his view of human association, and his description of the rule of law.
Obsessive Security and the Emergence of a Police Society
When George Orwell put down his vision of the society to come in “1984”, he depicted all-pervasive methods of policing under an authoritarian regime. The most distinct element in Orwell’s dystopia is the systematic use of advanced surveillance technology. One of Orwell’s merits is to have anticipated the growing and potentially crucial role of technology in modern policing, due to its character as power-amplifier. Today, the applicable arsenal of surveillance systems has grown beyond Orwell’s, let alone Kafka’s, imagination With the presnt uynparalleled pursuit of security, the principle of permanent suspicion is progressively being seen as “normal”, even in democratic and liberal societies. However, our world in this early 21st century differs significantly from Kafka’s or Orwell’s. In the course of so-called “globalization, the nation state has lost a part of its role in generating and perpetuating social order(s), through policing. With the imperatives of marketization, privatization and deregulation, the rules for producing and appropriating security have changed. Thus, the notion most adequate for pinning down the present nature of dystopia is not so much that of “police state” as that of “police society”.
Obtaining Sensitive Information From a Wary Population: A Comparison of Telephone and Fave-to-Face Surveys of Substance Use and Treatment Needs Among Families Receiving Government Assistance
This paper compares the responses to identical telephone and face-to-face surveys of substance use and treatment needs among low-income families receiving government assistance. Beyond the general methodological points to consider when deciding between telephone and face-to-face interviews, the idiosyncratic substantive issues of a study must also be taken into account. These include the population surveyed and the potentially sensitive nature of the questions asked. While computer-assisted telephone interviewing is often more efficient and standardized than face-to-face interviewing, undertaking surveys in person can also be advantageous. One key advantage is that it may be easier to create a rapport between the interviewer and the respondent, thereby establishing a greater level of trust. This is vital when asking sensitive questions of wary subjects. Here, we compare the responses to sensitive questions of those interviewed telephonically and those surveyed in person. The results are then discussed in terms of their importance both to general survey methodology and to obtaining sensitive information from a wary population.
Offender’ Treatment Programs for Battered Women Arrested for Domestic Violence
As an unintended consequence of mandatory and pro-arrest policies aimed at deterring domestic violence offenders, many battered women are finding themselves arrested and court-mandated to a treatment program designed for male abusers. Is this policy appropriate? Did these women use aggresive violence, self-defensive action, or something else? Do these programs offer any benefits to battered women, or does their existence undermine decades of work designed to help victims and punish offenders? This paper explores one state’s experience with the legal and moral ambiguity surrounding offenders’ treatment programs for battered women.
Offender Interaction With Victims in Homicide: An Analysis of Crime Scene Behaviours
Homicide grows out of a transaction between individuals. This transaction is a product of the individuals and their relationship. More may therefore be understood about the nature of homicide, by examining how the offender acts towards the victim during the crime. It is proposed that different forms of interpersonal transactions, and thus variations in homicide ‘styles’, will be reflected in the murder crime scene itself, through the victim the offender chooses and the behaviors they do onto the victim. An analysis of the co-occurrences of the actual behaviors used by offenders at 247 single offender-single victim homicide crime scenes indicated a descending structure moving on a continuum from high-frequency impulsive behaviors, where the offender reacts in an impulsive way towards the emotions engendered through the conflictful inter-personal relationship with the victim, to low-frequency behaviors, where the offender interacts with the victim much more at a removed level, both physically and emotionally.
Offender Reentry and Community Response: The Ex-Prisoner’s Dilemma
This paper describes a study of recently released prison inmates and their reentry into the community. This study will problematize the assumption that “criminal” is an offender’s master status, and that it is equally relevant in all situations and all relationships. It will build on the work of Irwin (1970) and Maruna (2001) by adding the perspective of the offender’s community (both geographically and network-based), and exploring where and how the perspectives of the offender and his community correspond or differ and how that impacts an offender’s attempts at reintegration. I first provide a theoretical and empirical background to structure the present study and then describe the methodology of this project.
Official Status and the Switness of Criminal Arrest: A Chinese Case of the Impact of Social Position on Criminal Justice
The impact of an offender’s social position on the response of criminal justice system has been a classic issue in the Western criminological literature. This issue is derived from the conflict paradigm which assumes that political and economic structures significantly influence the structure and function of the criminal justice system, such as police arrests, court disposition, and correctional decisions. Western research adhering to the paradigm usually focuses on the effect of social class, race, or gender on criminal justice. However, the nature of social position and its impact may depend on political, cultural, and economic systems, as a few studies have argued. This study argues that cadre (official status) is one of the most privileged and powerful social positions in Chinese society because of the official-centered culture and system. The hypothesis is that official status as a powerful social position may have a significant negative effect on the swiftness of criminal arrest, because people who hold official status have more resources to cover up their criminal activities and interfere with the criminal justice process than the general population. Their official power and social privileges themselves may pose difficulties toward police actions. Further, it is argued that friends’ official statuses may reinforce the effect because of the important role of personal networks (guanxi) in Chinese life. Using data from a survey of inmates in Tianjin, China, 1991, the study assessed the hypothesis and the interactive effect. The data indicate a significant negative effect of official status on the swiftness of criminal arrest when important legal and other extra-legal factors were held constant, which supports the hypothesis. The data also reveal a significant interactive effect of an offender’s own and friends’ official statuses on the swiftness of criminal arrest, implying that a criminal arrest of a cadre who has friends with official statuses was more likely to be delayed than one who had no friends holding official statuses.
Old and New Terrorism: A Theoretical Explanation
This paper introduces the concept of glocal terrorism to criminology, examines its etiological antecedents, and distinguishes between old and new forms of terrorism. Using a specific theoretical perspective, it explains how terrorism is borderless, more dangerous today than in the past, and characterized by a cycle of carnage.
Oleoresin Capsicum (OC Spray) as a Police Force: An Overview of Research Findings and Policy
Despite nationwide popularity of OC spray (or “pepper spray”) as a less-than-lethal weapon for subduing a violent suspect, OC spray has received little scholarly attention. The purpose of this study is to review and analyze the previous studies on OC, focusing upon five issues: debate over safety between ACLU and IACP, evaluation of effectiveness, correlates affecting the application of OC, policies of law enforcement agencies, and recommendations for future study and policy. As far as policies are concerned, an application of force continuum, medical aid, use-of-force reports, and training requirements are discussed.
On Being Informed About the Death Penalty: A Test of the Marshall Hypothesis
This paper examines the Marshall hypothesis, posited by Justice Thurgood Marshall, in Furman v. Georgia (1972) and Gregg v. Georgia (1976). As noted by Justice Marhshall, a test of this hypothesis would examine “not whether a substantial proportion of American citizens would today, if polled, opine that capital punishment is barbarously cruel, but whether they would find it to be so in the light of all information presently available.” Marshall suggested that the American people, if fully informed as to the purposes of the death penalty and its liabilities, would reject it as morally unacceptable. This paper tests this hypothesis by using pre-test, post-test data from a death penalty class offered at a comprehensive university in the south. Students were surveyed on the first and last days of class after being presented with all sides of the issue for a semester.
On the Relationship Between Violent Recidivism and Violent Death
The relationship between criminal behavior and risk for early death has been observed in several empirical efforts. However, the factors associated with this relationship have not received sustained attention. In this paper, we examine the prediction emanating from Gottfredson and Hirschi’s general theory of crime that the predictors of criminal behavior are the same as the predictors of analogous-type behaviors, including the experience of an early death. To examine this issue, we employ data on two cohorts of serious offenders paroled from the California Youth Authority and followed for five years to examine the joint covariation between violent recidivism and risk for death from violence. In particular, we also examine the extent to which theoretically-derived causal factors can Account for the relationship between violent recidivism and violent death as well as the extent to which the causal factors influence violent recidivism and violent death in the same manner.
On the State Uses of Memories of Terror: Deterring Political Participation in Democratic Argentina
Terrorism is broadly understood as the purposeful act or threat of violence by non-state actors to create fear and/or compliant behavior in a victim and/or audience of the act or threat. Terrorism’s analogue, terror, has also been used by states. However, the dimensions of state terror are still relatively negleted in the literature on the subject. The academic and analytical avoidance of state terror seems to be linked to the problematic dimensions of the modern state that terror brings to light, as well as to the special difficulties its analaysis poses. from the Nazi genocide to the Stalinist purges to the more recent authoritarian regimes in Latin America between the 60s and the 80s, it is possible to see how in certain circumstances the state develops policies of annihilation to target a part of its own civilian population. The purpose of this paper is to begin to explore the need of modern states for internal pacification with state produced genocide, ethic cleansing, and mass execution. Moreover, this paper examines some of the discursive uses of the memories of terror by democratic governments to deter people from engaging in political participation, as well as to explore the reasons for their differential effectiveness through time. State terror appears as a problematic conjunction that challenges the semantic stability of the two apparently antithetical notions involved. The generalization of fear, the emergence of a permanent state of threat among the population and their consequent political docility are some of the main effects of policies of state terror. Yet, the effects of those policies may reach far beyond the concrete victims and spectators involved. Indeed, even under democratic rule the memories of state terror may be used discursively by the state as a form of threatening a part of its population in order to achieve similar effects than terrorist policies but without apparently doing any violence to the people. In order to do this I will present and contrast the following two cases from Argentina: the government of Carlos Menem’s successful deterrence of schooll teacher mobilization during 1992 through the use of a threatening appeal to memories of the “disappeared”, with the 2001 fall of Fernando De la Rua’s government accelerated by the Argentine public’s paradoxical reaction before the declaration of the state of siege.
One-Year Outcomes for Delaware Drug Court Clients
Our study examines the influence of drug court on treatment retention and post-treatment success for substance-involved offenders. Here we present preliminary follow-up results for respondents 12 months after being discharged from their drug court treatment programs. Criminal activity, substance use, medical/psychiatric status and family/social relationships are examined using a modified ASI. We also re-examine clients’ satisfaction with their treatment and drug court experience. Respondents include those who have participated in either a drug court diversion program for first-time offenders or a post-adjudicatory drug court program for sentenced offenders. Interviews were voluntary and were administered to clients who completed drug court as well as those who failed the program. Results are compared with a control group of clients who attended the same treatment programs, but were not under the supervision of the drug court.
Only the Lonely: Crime and the Collective Lonliness of Contemporary Society
The notion of the ‘loner’ the ‘stranger’ and the ‘outsider’ has a long and deep history within western culture and is often seen as an explanation for crime. Literature, film and television have all portrayed the mystique and fear of those who appear to stand outside of the ‘commuity’. It is as if the explanation for much crime, say murder, resides in the notion of the ‘loner’ itself. We need say no more, it is self explanatory. The murderer of British television presenter Gill Dando was a Loner. The Dunblame mass killing of children was by a ‘loner’, the Colorado school killers were ‘loners’. This paper explores this cultural phenomena in light of the increasing collective loneliness experienced in contemporary society whereby the isolated millions of urban life contain within them the potential for more and more ‘senseless’ acts of crime.
Onset of Alcohol Use: A Comparison Between Early Drinkers and Non-Drinkers in the Continuity of Aggression and Delinquency From Preschool to Adolescence
: Although drinking during adolescence is not uncommon (and generally not a precursor of future abuse or dependence), early onset of alcohol use has been associated with a constellation of other problem behaviors and may be a marker for more serious developmental outcomes. This research explores the relationship between drinking and aggression/delinquency. Data are from adolescent participants in the prospective Michigan – Michigan State Longitudinal Study (i.e., a group of adolescent children of alcoholics and an ecologically comparable group of adolescents from families without alcoholic parents). It is hypothesized that early onset is associated with a hard-continuity model of problem behavior, with stronger autostability between aggression/delinquency from the preschool years and middle childhood through early adolescence among early drinkers versus non-drinkers. Notably, this would be consistent with Moffitt’s developmental theory and Zucker’s risk-cumulative, nested model. Exploratory findings of causal models will be discussed in relation to contextual regulators (i.e., mediators) of the hard-continuity hypothesis. (Supported by NIAAA Grant 2R01AA07065)
Open-Air Drug Markets in Jersey City, NJ
This paper report on 467 incidents of on-street drug sales and police interventions (arrests and investigations) in Jersey City, New Jersey, during a 3-month period in the fall of 1997. Data are drawn from Jersey City PD Incident and Arrest records, and include content analysis of the report narratives. Offender demographics (including repeat offenders), types of contact and market behavior, types and quantities of drugs recovered, weapons used and recovered, and the nature of the police observations are reported, along with a discussion of the temporal patterns observed in the data.
Opened Eyes and Closed Doors: How Juvenile Justice Involvement Affects School Performance
A case-specific interview design (N=20) was chosen to explore the processes through which involvement in the juvenile justice system can shape educational trajectories. Informal interviews were conducted with ten Chicago youth, aged 18-19, who exhibited–according to official school and juvenile justice records–a pattern of academic failure or decline following juvenile justice contact and ten youth who evidenced at least one period of substantial educational achievement or improvement subsequent to juvenile justice contact. The interviews revealed that juvenile justice involvement was often precipitated by conduct in the school and that the experience generally was a serious educational handicap, poisoning their relationships with school administrators and leading to their immediate or eventual exclusion from mainstream school. On the other hand, participation in juvenile probation as well as alternative schooling reportedly bolstered the ability of the school to control students’ conduct and attendance. The interviews also emphasize the importance of supportive relationships with family members and teachers in conditioning the impact of juvenile detention and formal sanctions on school performance. The theoretical and policy implications of the findings are considered.
Operationalizing Academic Justice: A Second Conceptual and Methodological Report
Applying the empirical law of effect, Margolis explains Kuhn’s idea of incommensurability as learned belief barriers, i.e., habits of mind that block scientific use of data and undermine problem-solving potential. This paper reports on a project that applies Margolis’ analysis to university governance and the quality of academic justice. Conceptually, academic justice reflects the degree to which shared governance facilitates the production of knowledge diversity and controls knowledge destruction. Discussion of refinement and further pretests of a 48 item survey explains how academic justice can be operationalized as a management tool to identify Kuhnian problem exemplars and exemplary problem solutions.
Oppressed Women: Victimization, Marginalization and the Criminal Justice System
The treatment of women of colour and immigrant women by the criminal justice system in Canada has been defined as problematic by researchers and community groups. This research explores the manner in which police institutions respond to women of colour and immigrant women who are victims of male violence. The perceptions of women are elaborated in terms of abuse and neglect. This paper highlights the “multiple oppressions” of colour/culture, gender, and class. It is argued herein that the criminal justice system trivializes violence against women, and in particular violence against marginalized women. Marginalized groups of women experience heightened neglect and racialized treatment due to their combined status as female, poor, and members of immigrant and racialized groups. This paper also examines a programme of action involving anti-racist feminist organizing and popular protest by interest groups in pressing for legal and social change.
Organizational Factors That Affect Police Participation in Hate Crime Reporting in Large U.S. Cities
The passage of the Hate Crime Statistics Act of 1990 resulted in the creation of a new crime category within law enforcement, i.e., “hate crime.” Linking the collection of national hate crime data to the FBI’s Uniform Crime Reporting (UCR) Program required changes in organizational policies and structures within thousands of police organizations throughout the United States. In this paper, the authors build on prior research that examined factors that affect the level and quality of law enforcement participation in hate crime data collection. Using data obtained from the 1999 Law Enforcement Management and Statistics (LEMAS) and the FBI’s Hate Crime Statistics 1999, the authors use multivariate techniques to examine the organizational policies, structures (e.g., community policing, bias crime units, etc.), and hate crime reporting practices of police departments in approximately 120 cities ranging in size from 100,000 to 250,000. The authors discuss the relevance of their findings for improving the quality of the national hate crime statistics.
Organized Crime: A Study in the City of Chennai
Organized Crime is on the rise in Chennai. Recent murders in the city have either been a fallout of inter-gang rivalry or mercenary killings. In the last few months at least five prominent gangsters were slain. A social worker was murdered recently in broad daylight and in public view. According to reports, the victim had mobilized public opinion against local goons and reportedly paid the price for it. Recent killings have shown that gangsters are not just organized, but meticulous in their operations. It also gives an indication of the extent of planning that goes into the execution of a crime. One need not be surprised. This is base on a research study on ‘Organised crime – a study of criminal gangs in Chennai, among 59 criminal gangs and 341 criminals who share 1351 police cases between them. The study revealed that gangs have hierarchy, territorial limits, and strike strategic alliances.
Organized Religion as Organized Crime
his paper is a theoretical exploration of the differences and similarities between traditional organized crime structures and the structures that are found in organized religion. While ultimately the goal of this project is a more comprehensive look at formal structures of many different religions, this preliminary work is focused primarily on the structures of the Catholic Church in the United States. More importantly, information structures that lie within and between formal organizational structures are proving to be the most interesting. Like the “families” in traditional organized crime structures, the Church has operated in a way that protects the inner sanctum at all costs. Further, information about activities that go directly against Church doctrine and are in violation of the law are “handled” within ranks regardless of the law. Three court cases that have used RICO statutes to outline the prosecution of Catholic priests who have been accused of sexual crimes are used to provide additional information that proves interesting for the discussion
Organizing to Manage Risks in Law Enforcement
Risk management has become a popular practice in modern organizations. An emerging body of literature has shed light on the phenomena by focusing in the nature of risks and resulting responses in organizations. This literature has given particular attention to those risk situations that have the potential to cause serious physical injury to individuals and/or destruction of valued objects. The present study extends this literature to police organizations. This is done by integrating the findings of an extensive multi-level study of a police tactical unit with the propositions identified by the organizational risk literature. Discussion is given to applying this framework to future research on tactical units, and police organizations in general.
ORP — A Community Agency Approach to Comprehensive Intervention
The Under 12 Outreach Program (ORP) is a comprehensive voluntary program in the community for children under age 12 who have committed delinquent acts. ORP was established in 1985 by the Earlscourt Child and Family Centre in Toronto, Canada in partnership with the Toronto Police Service. It is funded by the Ontario Ministry of Community and Social Services. The ORP uses a social learning and behavior systems treatment intervention approach to reduce the likelihood of future offending and promote healthy development. A core element of the program is a behavioral self-control strategy called “SNAP” (Stop Now and Plan). This 12-week group course is supplemented by a parallel 12-week parenting course, individual counseling for parents, mentoring of the children, tutoring, and after school activities. Although typically short-term, the length of the program can be extended for up to several years, depending on a child’s treatment needs. A gender-specific adaptation of the model has recently been implemented for girls. The various components of the program will be reviewed in this presentation, along with evidence of both short-term and long-term improvements in behavior.
OSHA’s “Recommendations for Workplace Violence Prevention Programs in Late-Night Retail Establishments” — Do They “Work”
In reaction to the perceived amount of violent crime perpetrated upon employees of retail establishments, the Occupational and Safety Health Administration, a division of the U.S. Department of Labor in 1998 established prevention programs to reduce these types and amounts of violence. The guidelines, “Recommendations for Workplace Violence Prevention Programs in Late-Night Retail Establishments”- included multiple interventions and recommendations for their implementation. However, as in earlier attempts at legislating robbery prevention programs, many of the interventions were not based on empirical research. In the present research OSHA recommendations were reviewed using Sherman et al (1997) scientific standard levels, to assess the validity of the various interventions. The research revealed that many of the interventions did not meet the necessary criteria necessary to establish their scientific validity.
Other Than the Fact of Prior Conviction: Apprendi v. New Jersey and Sentence Enhancements Based on Juvenile Adjudications
In Apprendi v. New Jersey, the Supreme Court held that any fact, other than the fact of a prior conviction, that increases the penalty for a crime beyond the prescribed statutory maximum must be submitted to a jury and proved beyond a reasonable doubt. Since Apprendi, some courts have applied that principle to the use of juvenile prior convictions for purposes of enhancements, reasoning that most states obtain delinquency adjudications without giving juveniles the right to a jury trial. E.g., United States v. Tighe, 266 F3d 1187 (9th Cir, 2001). This paper analyzes the implications of Apprendi for the use of juvenile prior convictions for adult enhancements as well as recent state supreme court decisions that have upheld the denial of jury trials in delinquency proceedings despite the increased punitivess of delinquency sanctions.
Out in the Midwest: Examining Homophobia in the Police Force
During the past decade there has been increasing gay and lesbian visibility in urban U.S. police forces. There is a tension between assimilation and discrimination in the work experiences recounted by lesbian and gay police officers. This paper includes a brief review of court cases focusing on discrimination and harassment inside U.S. police departments, an interdisciplinary literature review, and descriptions of occupational history interviews with lesbian and gay police officers in the Midwest. What kinds of legal cases have been brought, particularly in the Midwest, concerning the rights of gay and lesbian officers? How do the experiences of lesbian officers differ from those of gay male officers? What are some coping strategies employed by the gay and lesbian officers interviewed? To what degree are there promotion or pay differences between heterosexual and non-heterosexual officers in the Midwest? What makes some city forces less discriminatory than others as assessed by gay and lesbian officers? This research examines these questions to understand some of the professional challenges faced by these officers in the Midwest.
Outcome-Based Program Area Budgeting
When addressing juvenile crime, policy makers have placed a tremendous amount of resources into punishment. One of the reasons is that crime and punishment are highly visible and easy to measure. It is much more difficult to convince a taxpayer that spending money on prevention is important. Recent research on the cost effectiveness of early intervention programs is an important step. It will be equally important to demonstrate that local government is spending tax dollars efficiently. In combination with accountability for results, programmatic area budgeting can accomplish the goal of cost-effective delivery of high quality services. Outcome-based program area budgeting combines resources from different departments into a single budget based on a common program emphasis, such as keeping kids out of trouble. It is a substantial departure from ‘business as usual’. It holds the promise of reducing duplication of services, and enhancing effectiveness through mutual cooperation towards common goals. In contrast to fragmented budgets, which support fragmented programs, the integrated budget approach is designed to support service integration across jurisdictions. This presentation will review how the principles of outcome-based program area budgeting are being applied in the pilot program for child delinquents called Ramsey County ACE.
Outcomes and Cost-effectiveness of Drug Courts in Kentucky
An outcome and cost-effectiveness evaluation was conducted on three adult Drug Court programs in Kentucky. Multiple research methods were used, including (1) a 12-month post-program follow-up of 745 individuals from three sites comprising 3 study groups (i.e., graduates, dropouts, and a comparison group of individuals assessed as eligible for but who did not enter Drug Court); (2) data from 14 different sources from four areas, including program records, criminal justice records, supplemental data, and face-to-face interviews; (3) interviews with a random sample of 136 graduates and dropouts from the drug court programs; and, (4) the examination of the costs and benefits of Drug Court. Results showed that, particularly for graduates, Drug Court involvement was associated with pronounced reductions in post-discharge incarceration, mental health services use, and in the legal costs associated with criminal charges and convictions. In addition, there was a significant increase in job earnings and in child support payments made by the Drug Court graduates.
Outcomes of a Reintegration Program: Comparison of Completers and Dropouts
An outcome evaluation is conducted to compare rates of reincarceration, parole violations, employment, housing and family functioning among ex-offenders who either left a reintegration program early, and those who completed. Information is gathered on all clients in one program from case records, a mail survey, and telephone interviews. Findings are analyzed from three theoretical perspectives. Implications of the findings are discussed
Outlaws in the Empire of Scrounge
By choice or necessity, a gret variety of groups and individuals scrounge the materials of everyday life from the trash piles of contemporary society. Such scrounging functions as a form of ecological direct action, saving countless tons of materials from overburdened landfills. It also generates a steady stream of food, clothing, and building products utilized by individuals and groups on the social margins, and provides the raw materials for a wide range of artistic endeavors. As such scrounging constitutes a secret empire, an informal safety net sown from bits and pieces, and a thriving alternative ulture flowering from the dustbins of soceity. At the same time, through, legal authorities work to criminalize this empire of scrounge, as both the collection and distribution of scavenged goods are outlawed. Based on field research and participant observation with various urban scroungers, this paper attempts to document the richness of scrounging practices. It concludes that scrounging and its criminalization expose something of the contradictory dynamics that drive profligate consumption, material inequality, and political and cultural change.
Overcoming Risk for Delinquency: Recovery From the Life-Course-Persistent Trajectory at 14 Years
Early onset of delinquency is associated with an increased likelihood of chronic, persistent and violent offending across the life course. Risk factors and theoretical pathways for this early delinquent onset are identifed in extant literture and have respectable support in the literature. Despite this, the fact remains that many individuals who exhibit an early onset of delinquency do not persist in offending over the life course, demonstrting resiliency in the presence of risk factors. This research attempts to establish which factors moderate this risk and whether resiliency among high-risk youth differs for males and females. Moffitt’s dual typology of life-course-persistent and adolescence-limited antisocial behaviour is examined using data from the Mater-University Study of Pregnancy (MUSP. This prospective longitudinal study has data on approximately 5200 mothers and their child spanning from pre-natal period to when the child was 14 years of age. Risk factors such as neuropsychological deficits at birth and during early development, aggression, parental monitoring, stability of the home environment, and socio-economic indicators are examined in an attempt to understand the ‘spontaneous’ recovery of those who exhibit resiliency in the face of risk. Implications for Moffitt’s typologies and early/late starter theories are discussed.
Overview of a Multidisciplinary Intervention: The Big Picture
ACE (All Children Excel) is a multidisciplinary program that uses research-based strategies and the integration of services across jurisdictions to prevent serious and violent delinquency, drug abuse, and school failure among child delinquents under age 10. Without special intervention, up to 62% of these children will become chronic, serious and violent offenders. Currently, ACE is one of only a handful of programs in the world that intervenes with these especially high risk children to prevent negative outcomes and promote healthy development. This presentation will provide an overview of the program’s structure. This includes oversight by the county Board of Commissioners; guidance by a Leadership Team composed of the Directors of four county departments; Screening and Integrated Service Teams composed of representatives from seven divisions within those four departments; and contracts with community agencies to provide case management services to the children and their families. The program also fosters collaborations between police, schools, and other service providers in the community and at the county level with the aim of promoting resiliency among these high risk children and their families.
Overview of and Update on the National Evaluation of the Safe Schools/Healthy Students
This paper will present an update on the national evaluation of the Safe Schools/Healthy Students Initiative, a federal program sponsored by the US Departments of Education, Justice and Health and Human Services to promote healthy childhood development and a safe school environment. The Initiative provides support for school districts in partnership with law enforcement and local social service agencies to identify, develop and implement programs, policies and services in six ‘domain’ areas. These six areas are school safety, safe school policies; alcohol, tobacco and other drug and violence prevention and intervention; early childhood measures; mental health programs and services; and early childhood. A comprehensive, multi-method evaluation of the implementation and impact of this Initiative is currently underway. Findings from the first two waves of data collection will be presented, following a brief overview of the evaluation methodology.
Overview of the National Electronic Injury Surveillance System All Injury Program
The National Electronic Injury Surveillance System All Injury Program (NEISS-AIP) which began in July 2000 is a collaboration between the U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission (CPSC) and the National Center for Injury Prevention and Control (NCIPC), CDC. The NEISS–designed, operated, and managed by CPSC–collects emergency department-based data on consumer product-related injuries. The NEISS-AIP expanded the NEISS and collects data on nonfatal injuries across all intents and mechanisms. The NEISS-AIP provides national estimates of nonfatal injuries and makes available a rich data source for research, epidemiology, public health decision-making, and education. In an effort to make these data available in a timely manner, NCIPC designed and implemented the Web-based Injury Statistics Query and Reporting System named, “WISQARS.” This system is an Internet-based interactive data system that allows users to create tailored injury data reports to meet their individual needs, making knowledge of external cause of injury coding and computer programming unnecessary. WISQARS can be accessed at http://www.cdc.gov/ncipc/wisqars.
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Paradigms Lost: The Current Crisis in Second Amendment Scholarship
Two paradigms have dominated scholarly writing about the Second Amendment: individual rights and collective or states’ rights. Scholarship is now experiencing a classic paradigm crisis. Prevailing frameworks can no longer account for the complexity of the historical evidence. After surveying the current state of the debate this paper will suggest new directions for scholarly discussions of the Second Amendment.
Parental Efficacy, Self-Control, and Delinquency: An Empirical Test of a General Theory of Crime
A General Theory of Crime (1990) has received extensive empirical attention in the past decade. The relationship between self-control and delinquent or analogous behaviors has received considerable empirical support. Nevertheless, only a few studies have focused on Gottfredson and Hirschi’s proposition that parenting has a primary influence on the development of the child’s self-control. The data used in this study came from the first wave of the National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent Health (Add Health). The Add Health study uses a large nationally representative sample of adolescents and their parents. The Add Health study contains questions on parental efficacy, delinquent and analogous behaviors, and behavioral and attitudinal measures of self-control. This paper addresses the gap in the literature by testing the effects of parental efficacy on self-control and delinquency. The paper employs factor and path analyses to test whether parental efficacy has an impact on self-control, which, in turn, affects delinquency. Alternatively, this study tests the direct effect of parental efficacy on delinquency.
Parental Liability and Truancy: Is It Effective? Is It Fair?
Charging parents with the truancy of their children is an action many communities and local governments are using to combat high rates of unexcused absences in their schools. Truancy is often blamed for high daytime crime rates and is considered a risk factor of more serious delinquent behavior. These links often result in truancy programs implemented through interagency collaboration including a law enforcement element such as police involvement, court appearances, and fines and jail time. Instead of threatening the truant child with legal punishment these programs target the parents. One such program, the Right Track Truancy Reduction pilot program, implemented by the Office of the Illinois Attorney General’s office, was evaluated using attendance data that monitored the progress of the program’s students. Although it showed favorable results with regard to increased attendance, it did not address the parent’s response to the program. This current study attempts to understand just how effective the parents felt this policy is or can be and whether or not they should be held liable. Interviews with forty (N = 40) participating families indicate that there is support for parental responsibility. However, those who were in favor of this approach more often found themselves outside of the circumstances for which they felt these laws should apply. A review of these circumstances is addressed as well as implications for future program modifications.
Parolees Perceptions of Their Parole Officers: It’s Role in Successful Reentry
In a qualitative study of twenty adult ex-offenders, all having served lengthy sentences for serious crimes, the authors found that the parollees relationahip with their parole officers often plays a significant role in their adjustment to the community and taht the relationship is highly influenced by the clients expectations and perceptions of their PO. Those who reintegrated into the community were compared with individualls who either committed new crimes or violated the conditions of their parole.
Partitioning the Growth in State Prison Populations, 1983-2000: An Analysis of Ten States
The indeterminate sentencing structures that dominated state systems through the 1970s fragmented over the last twenty-five years. These manifold changes in state-level sentencing policies accompanied equally dramatic changes in national incarceration rates, leading many criminologist to conclude that increases in prison populations were directly attributable to changes in sentencing policies. However, while all states experienced growth in prison populations over the last twenty-five years, national figures hide the variation in policies and rates of growth across states. Previous research on state differences in incarceration focused primarily on identifying state characteristics (e.g. racial composition, urbanization) associated with variation in imprisonment. However, these studies tend to consider a state’s incarceration rate in isolation from the rest of its criminal justice system. As such, previous work fails to view changes in incarceration rates as the result of the combined effects of changes in crime rates, arrest rates, or sentencing decisions (commitments to prison and sentence lengths). By partitioning the criminal justice system into stages and examining growth within each partition, the relative contribution of each stage to the growth in a state’s incarceration rate can be determined. This paper analyzes the factors affecting variation in growth of state incarceration rates between 1983 and 2000, isolating the contribution of changes in crime rates, arrest rates, commitments to prison, and sentence lengths. The paper focuses on ten states and examines how growth differs across crime types and across states during the period, ultimately evaluating the affects of changes in sentencing decisions and policies on crime-specific and overall incarceration rates.
Pastel Fascism: Reflections of Social Control Techniques Used With Women in Prison
Women’s issues and prison issues are part of the same struggle. Prison issues are important because individual women are being oppressed by prison and, in a wider context, because the judicial/prison system exists to support the larger power structure that oppresses us all. If we hope to facilitate the re-entry of incarcerated women to “free” society, we must attempt to reform current policies and programs which tend to reinforce women offenders’ dependency upon the system. The intent of the current effort is to begin the re-examination of the relationship between prisons, society, and social justice.
Patches of Dystopia Within Democratic Space
In contrast with u-topia, a place existing nowhere, there are actual locations that exemplify the features of a policing dystopia. This paper bears on two kinds of such places. Belonging to the first one are international airports, which we shall study through the French airport of Orly. Particularly after September 2001, airports are being maximum security zones where persons perceived as having no legitimate business are expelled or arrested and questioned and where suspicious objects are destroyed. The second kind of places are “legal no man’s land”, that is violent pockets within urban space where relationships are governed by unbridled power. Social housing projects located in the suburbs of French cities are such danger zones. Both kinds of places — airports and legal no man’s lands — share common features in respect to space, such as their closure. Their time-features, however, are opposed: people briefly pass through airports where relationships are kept at an impersonal minimum, whereas the population of a legal no man’s land is made of “permanent transients” pinned down by a shared fate of which there seems no escape. The paper will explore what is common and contrasting in these patches of dystopia.
Pathological Gambling, Drug Abuse, and Criminal Behavior
The spread of legalized gambling over the past decade in the United States has sparked considerable concern, debate, and research. Much has focused on what many contend is an inevitable product of the movement: an increased incidence of pathological gambling disorders and a corresponding increase in social disorder, most notably crime. This presentation summarizes findings from research examining the extent, nature, and consequences of pathological gambling disorders among arrestee populations. A particular focus is given to the interaction of gambling disorders and drug abuse on criminal behavior (both level and type of offending). Data for the study comes from a gambling addendum administered to 2,596 adult male and female arrestees in conjunction with the federally-sponsored ADAM (Arrestee Drug Abuse Monitoring) programs in Las Vegas, Nevada and Des Moines, Iowa. The addendum included a DSM-IV based pathological gambling screen, measures of the type and frequency of gambling behavior in the past 12 months, substance abuse immediately preceding and during gambling, and motivations for criminal behaviors.
Pathways Into White-Collar Crime
Based on published sources and current research in financial services the author wishes to focus on the pathways into crime, the motives and the rationalizations of white-collar criminals. Using primary sources and published interviews with white-collar criminals, the paper will investigate the context for crime (opportunity structures), the moral career of the offender ( the socio-psychological path into deviance), the mechanisms involved in camouflaging the deviance, and the vocabularies of motive that they give on exposure. He will construct a typology of white-collar criminals to capture the range of paths into crime involved; some do it ostensibly for the company, others seem to revel in dirty work, some speak almost in terms of addiction regarding risk and “kicks” ( echoing the rhetoric of violent criminals), and others employ the metaphor of a “slippery slope”. The analytical insights can be applied to published cases – Leeson and Barings Bank, the A.I.B. in Baltimore, and Anderson/Enron – as well as to cases from the author`s research. This paper contributes to examining the variety of trajectories by which white-collar criminals enter crime as well as eliciting the diversity of their motivations and expressed rationalizations.
Pathways to Becoming a Serious Youthful Offender
The serious youthful offender has garnered much attention from criminologists for reasons of both theoretical and public policy importance. Serious youthful offenders, however, are an elusive class of offenders because they are (fortunately) rare in the population of offenders, and thus researchers are often forced to empirically “lump” together offenders who have met some minimum definitional criteria that usually involves a measure of either seriousness and/or chronicity (McDermott, 1983). After “making the cut,” this group of offenders is usually treated as a homogeneous group. In this paper, we investigate the degree of heterogeneity in the youthful offending careers of three samples of youthful offenders released from the California Youth Authority in 1981-82, 1986-87, and 1991-92. Analyses include investigations of the distribution of age of onset and application of the mixed Poisson model of Nagin and Land (1993) to separate the offenders into discrete groups on the basis of similar offending trajectories. Results indicate that age of onset, even among this extreme group, is a smooth continuous distribution that is not easily parsed into two discrete groups (i.e., early vs. late onset) and that there is more than one “pathway” or trajectory to the status of youthful offender.
Patterns From Multiple Indicators of Illicit Drug Use in Queensland, Australia: Implications for Effective Illicit Drug Use Interventuions
An important issue for effectively informing policy initiatives on illicit drug concerns accessing timely and diverse indicators of illicit drug use. Embracing such a multiple indicator approach, in this paper we explore the recent patterns of illicit drug use among various populations in Queensland, Australia. In particular, we explore recent information from a systematic, state wide household survey on illicit drug use, results from Drug Use Monitoring of Arrestees (DUMA which is identical to ADAM in the USA) surveys, and results from a trial survey of individuals entering hospital emergency rooms. Our analysis examines the nature of the patterns of illicit drug use across these diverse indicators, paying particular attention to the degree of overlap and disjunction revealed from this information. Implications for National and State-level policy initiatives aimed at reducing illicit drug use are discussed in light of the information revealed across such diverse indicators.
Patterns of Help-Seeking Among Battered Women From Two Inner City Communities
This paper analyzes the help-seeking behaviors of battered women who are marginalized because of their low socio-economic status as well as their participation in the illegal drug market. It is based on interviews conducted among poor and working class women — all with a history of domestic violence — from two ethnically and racially diverse inner city communities in New York. The analysis of the collected data not only presents women’s perception of themselves and their ways of coping with the violence, but also reveals how race, ethnicity and gender shape the nature of domestic violence. The involvement of these women in the drug trade, either as users, low-level drug dealers and/or girlfriends of drug dealers, places them in a dilemma with the police: many women fear that the police will target their drug behavior instead of protecting them against their abusers. Others regard the police with mistrust due to law enforcement practices in their communities which result in the mass incarceration of young minority males and sometimes excessive force and brutality. Without police protection and with little social service support or economic resources, women rely on their own means to protect themselves and their children, often in very extreme ways. The perception–by some of these women–of the police as perpetrators of violence, rather than protectors of the community carries serious implications for policy makers. If the police are not trusted by the communities that are hardest hit by violence, criminal justice efforts to reduce domestic violence are bound to fail.
Patterns of Murder in Death Penalty Cases: Not Necessarily What You Think
An analysis of 503 cases of murder convictions associated with death penalty trials in North Carolina is conducted to determine the general patterns revealed in these cases. Compared to general national patterns of murder, “capital” murders are more likely to have male perpetrators, female victims, and non-Black victims. However, they have similar proportions of non-Black perpetrators as well as victims who were strangers to the perpetrator. Further, the proportion of deaths by gunshot was less than the national figure and the motivational circumstances associated with the murders were relatively broad in scope. The implications of the findings are discussed, especially that the types of murders selected for possible imposition of the death penalty are more diverse than is generally assumed.
Patterns of Repeated Involvement in Violent Incidents of Police Officers: The Case of Switzerland
This paper examines determinants of police officers’ involvement in violent incidents, that is victimization and use of force respectively, on the basis of a self-report survey of frontline police officers in a Swiss city. We show that a small proportion of police officers account for a disproportional amount of all violent incidents reported. We examine several explanations for high involvement in violent interactions. According to routine activity theory high involvement in violence may be due to a high-risk work profile. Strain theory would lead us to assume that stressful conditions may trigger stressrelated outcomes which in turn may be associated with higher levels of violent involvement. Accordingly, we test effects of operational and organisational stress, dissatisfaction, commitment and burnout. Finally, high involvement in violence may result from personality-related variables such as low self-control. We estimate multivariate logistic regressions examining the relative impact of these concepts. Deeper insight to the mentioned patterns might be of crucial importance for an administration’s policy of protecting officers from both physical and psychological harm.
Patuxent Institution: An American Experiment in Corrections
INTRODUCTION Patuxent Institution, a maximum-security prison located 15 miles south of the City of Baltimore, Maryland, is the nation’s most intriguing and most experimental prison. It has been called the nation’s most sued correctional facility (Carney 1985, 4). In years past, Patuxent was a place an inmate could be sent by the courts with an indeterminate sentence, to be released when the prison treatment staff determined it was safe to send you back to society, even if that meant you would stay in prison past the length of the sentence handed down by the courts. The prospect of such a sentence, coupled with the lack of information about how the prison operated, created a state of ignorance and uncertainty, for justice system professionals as well as inmates and their families, that eventually became intolerable. In 1976, the law authorizing Patuxent’s existence and practices changed (it changed again in 1990), and Patuxent Institution became what it is today — a prison that inmates volunteer for, where treatment programs are available and the hope of rehabilitation exists. Patuxent has changed in significant ways since 1976. Its programs have changed; the inmates allowed in have changed. It is now a co-education facility housing both male and female adult inmates, as well as incarcerated youths of both genders. It offers mental health programming for inmates preparing to go back to society, or to go back to the regular prison population after a mental health crisis. It offers special drug treatment for women. It offers educational programs ranging from traditional schooling to keyboarding classes to horticulture classes. Patuxent is unique in other important ways. Patuxent operates its own ‘mini’ correctional system, with its own admissions, inmate review, and paroling functions separate from the Maryland Division of Correction (DOC) in Maryland. Both Patuxent and the DOC exist side-by-side within the Maryland Department of Public Safety and Correctional Services, and significant links exist between the two systems, but Patuxent operates independently, with a different mission, different resources, and a different approach to the business of inmate correction. A prison (or a correctional system), as a public organization, receives legitimacy from the society that surrounds it and more directly from the political bodies in its external environment, perhaps most directly from the legislature that appropriates its funds, presumably in the public interest. If Patuxent Institution still exists as a treatment?providing prison, how has it managed to survive when the general public, the political climate, and its legislature question rehabilitation as a legitimate goal for a prison? In one sense, Patuxent is an anomaly, an irregular or chance occurrence among prisons in this conservative era, or in any era. On the other hand, Patuxent’s long history of conflict and confrontation with the public and legislature, and the fact that it still exists as a correctional institution, suggest that we look for another explanation. As one of the most controversial prisons in America’s history, Patuxent fought and survived several major legal and legitimacy battles in its time. This paper examines the adaptive behavior of Patuxent Institution, which has survived the conservative trend in politics and the administra-tion of criminal justice over the last 20 to 30 years. The analysis is based on an historical case study of Patuxent that identified key legitimacy crises in the history of the organization and conducted research to explore, in-depth, the actors, decisions, external influences, and outcomes of each legitimacy crises. Using the grounded theory approach, a theory of Patuxent’s adaptive process is explained. The question of Patuxent’s survival and adaptation touches on many aspects of the sociology of complex organizations??organization creation, development, structure, and culture; organization environment, and organization-environment interactions; adaptive strategies; institutionalization; the political economy of public organizations; and external influences on organizations. This research examines these issues for the case of Patuxent Institution and answers questions regarding how adaptive mechanisms operate to insure survival for a public organization such as Patuxent.
“Payback’s a Bitch”: The White Supremacist Response to the 9/11 Terrorists Attacks
Since the 9/11 terrorist attacks on New York City and Washington, DC, most major cities across the United States have experienced a rash of hate crimes against those presumed to be Muslim, Arab, or Middle Eastern. One could be forgiven for expecting members of white supremacist groups to have been behind at least some of this retaliatory violence, or to have taken rhetorical advantage of the attacks to further their agenda of hate against the Other, in this case, those from the Middle East. However, the response of white supremacists has not been quite so simple. As I will argue in this paper, they have exploited the attacks, not in order to berate Muslims, but to wage a further assault on Jews in particular, and American immigration policy in general. Moreover, there is a fairly large contingent of the hate movement that sees in the attacks evidence of a conspiracy to contract civil liberties in this country.
Peacemaking as a Mediation Process
Peacemaking can be generalized as a mediation process which takes the same form and operates by the same principles across settings, as in victim-offender and community mediation, and in teaching. The timing of offering and acknowledging empathy, as among accommodation to a world of command and obedience, is crucial. The central question of mediation in all our relations is, essentially, whose turn is it to speak and whose turn to listen next? Examples from various settings are offered as to how mediation form and principles apply.
Peacemaking Criminology Aproaches to Crime Prevention: A Review of Successful Primary, Secondary, and Tertiary Strategies
As Ronald Berger, Marvin Free, and Patricia Searles (2001) note, human beings are seen by peacemaking criminologists to be estranged from their fundamental state of goodness. Thus, peacemaking criminologists become involved in “imagining the possibility of a better world as a first step toward its realization” and generally believe that more can be done to improve our situation on crime in present society. In essence, the vision is to make peace, rather than war, with crime. More specifically, peacemaking criminology focuses on the prevention rather than the repression of crime. Peacemaking criminology thereby proposes three approaches to crime prevention: primary, secondary, tertiary. This paper explores the nature of the peacemaking criminology approach to crime prevention across these three levels. In keeping with Elliott Currie’s (1998) current research, an effort is made to identify successful crime prevention approaches that reflect peacemaking criminology values.
Peeking Behind the Backstage Curtain: A New Approach to the Study of Prosecutorial Discretion
A substantial body of research has investigated the issue of unwarranted disparity in the sentencing of criminal offenders. In general, this research has focused on the discretion of sentencing judges; however, some researchers have recognized that other courtroom actors also hold considerable discretion in determining sentence outcomes for offenders. In particular, prosecutors enjoy almost unfettered discretion in determining how to charge offenders and when to bargain for a guilty plea. These charging decisions may have a differential effect on groups of offenders depending on their age, gender, or race. Past research on the causes of prosecutorial discretion has involved labor-intensive data collection efforts utilizing files that contain relevant information on this backstage process. The present study uses frontstage data, normally used to study judicial discretion, to determine the factors that influence prosecutorial discretion. By using a mandatory firearm penalty as an anchor, I will isolate prosecutorial discretion and determine when prosecutors do not charge as the law prescribes.
Peer Influences on Property Crime, Violence, and Drug Use: Congruence and Developmental Timing
If deviancy training is unidirectional influence from peers to adolescents, there should be congruence between the types of delinquent behavior engaged in by adolescents and their peers. If deviancy training involves more general change in normative beliefs about deviance, such congruence would not be expected. Using growth modeling, this study explored the degree of congruence between peers and individual adolescents’ delinquent behaviors with six waves of data from a sample of 227 urban, minority, adolescent males. Congruence was found for drug involvement only. Peer drug involvement at any time in adolescence predicted growth in individual drug involvement. Peer violence in early adolescence predicted growth in individual violence and individual property crime. Involvement with violent peers throughout adolescence predicted growth in individual violence. Surprisingly, peer property crime throughout adolescence was negatively associated with growth in individual violence and drug involvement, and did not positively predict growth in individual property crime.
Penal Harm Embedded Within Prison/Jail Health Care: Individual, Family and Community Consequences
The notion of penal harm refers to the social perspective wherein society wishes to not only deprive prisoners of their liberty, but also wishes the sine qua non of jails and prisons to be about the actual infliction of pain and suffering. Numerous examples within various prison and jail contexts illustrate how health care is structured in ways that effect penal harm upon prisoners. This conflation between the structuring of health care and penal harm also requires that individual practitioners participate in delivering health care in ways that both sustain and re-create penal harm through their individual practices. Mostly, the practice of health care from a penal harm perspective is so routinized, mundane, and banal, that it passes for standard operating procedure. And, our “normalized” routines are practiced without the slightest thought that they are, or could be, wrong. And, those who do think about it are quickly disposed of. Exemplars will be presented that illustrate penal harm health care (with its intended and unintended consequences) for individuals, families and communities. Ultimately, it will be argued, these consequences seriously impact the public health and social well-being of everyone in society.
Penal States and Economic Governmentality
The states of the Sun Belt stretch in an arc from the theme parks and planned comunities of Orange County, California to those of Orange County, Florida. Over recent decades, these Sun Belt states have provided the backdrop for a hit-parade of high-profile media-mediated homicide trials (Ted Bundy, Susan Smith, Karla Faye Tucker, Andrea Yages, Richard Allen Davis, Charles Ng, O.J. Simpson, and the Brothers Menendez, among many others). All of these Sun belt states have been much occupied by the theater and politics of state penality — capital punishment, three-strikes laws, sex-offender on-line databases, etc. During this same period, but much less remarked, these same Sun belt states have also led the way in the proliferation of strategies of private ordering and a very general evolution toward economic governmentality in which traditional state regulatory functions have been strikingly “captured” by a variety of private regimes such as gated communities and kindred forms of planned urbanism and suburbanism, in the mass-marketing of fear/security, and in zip-codified, geo-spatially distributed risk-pooling. One hypothesis to be explored is that the geographic and historical co-occurrence of these apparantely divergent logics of state and economy may not be an altogether random coincidence.
Penalty and the Politics of Representation, Post 9-11
In the aftermath of September 11, 2001, Americans immediately perceived themselves and their ways of life as transformed. At the center of this transformation are many emergent questions for criminology (and Americans alike), including how have citizens come to interpret the acts of September 11 and how have those interpretations come to shape the United States’ pursuit of justie as well as its definitions oof crime and punishment. As most Americans learned about 9-11 through the media, this study seeks to map the course of social reaction debates as present (or absent) in major media outlets by identifying 1) the predominant ways in which social reaction has been presented (frames of war, grief, victimization, solidarity, retribution, etc.); 2) the manner in which these frames have been signified, disputed, and justified; and 3) the relationship of these frames to American penal philosophies. Based upon accessibility and specialization of coverage, a number of news sources (all print or internet) have been selected in the hopes of identifying a range of representations, culminating in a provisionary map of how social reaction and contemporary philosophies of punishment have (or haqve not) collided in post 9-11 media.
Pennsylvania’s Boot Camp Offender Survey: The Initial Findings on Offender Characteristics and Attitudinal Changes
This paper presents the initial findings from a boot camp offender survey that is part of an ongoing research effort to evaluate the Pennsylvania State Motivational Boot Camp Program. Based on a sample of 293 offenders admitted to the Boot Camp from October 2000 to October 2001, this paper presents findings from (1) a Self-Report Survey and (2) a Boot Camp Evaluation Survey. The Self-Report Survey, given at the time of admission, provides in depth information on offender characteristics (e.g. demographics, family background, education and employment,) as well as prior offending and substance abuse histories. Preliminary results from the Boot Camp Evaluation Survey, given at both admission and graduation, compare offenders’ expectations for the program with their actual experiences, as well as measures attitudinal changes along the following dimensions: self-control, decision-making, problem behaviors (particularly drug and alcohol abuse), desire for help, and expectations for the future. Combined, these surveys provide valuable information regarding the type of offender attending the boot camp and the program’s ability to meet offender expectations and effect positive change.
Perceived Racial and Ethnic Composition of Neighborhood and Support for Punitive Measures
The equation of race and criminal threat is so well established in American culture that some regard popular discourse about crime and punishment to be part of the rhetorical code of “modern racism.” It has been hypothesized that the increasingly punitive attitudes of Americans toward crime is related to this association of blacks with criminality. This study examines the link between perceived racial and ethnic composition of neighborhood and support for punitive measures to deal with criminals. Using a 1997 statewide sample of 2250 Florida residents, we hypothesize that the greater the percentage of blacks and Hispanics perceived to be in a neighborhood, the more support there will be for harsh measures to deal with crime. Regression estimates will control for fear of criminal victimization, fear of racial and ethnic “others,” racial prejudice, demographic variables, and other factors related to punitive attitudes.
Perceptions of Labor Relations and Managerial Decision Making by Police Chiefs
Police chiefs are important municipal policy makers. Little is known, however, about what factors affect and limit their decision making. Police employee associations and police unions are thought to limit the power of police chiefs in several ways (Walker 1984). This paper explores police chief perceptions of police labor relations and how these perceptions might structure police chief decision making, using data from a national survey. The correlates of these perceptions are also examined and policy implications are discussed.
Perceptions of Male Privilege and the Physical, Psychological and Economic Abuse of Economically Disadvantaged Minority Women
Poor minority women’s experiences of violence have received minimal scholarly attention. Further, few studies have attempted to study such experiences using broad definitions of victimization that include psychological and economic dimensions of abuse. This paper reports preliminary results of a 2001 study of poor minority women’s experiences of psychological, physical and economic abuse in a public housing estate located in a Midwestern city. It also examins the idea that such experiences are conditioned by ethnic and cultural histories, particularly in terms of the connections between these histories and strong beliefs in the legitimacy of male privilege. The results suggest that poor minority women’s experiences of victimization are both profound and multi-dimensional. However, there was virtually no variation in victimization rates between women of different ethnic and cultural backgrounds, and most of the victimized women manifested some level of belief in the legitimacy of men’s “rights” to abuse. Implications for theory and further research are discussed.
Perceptions of Minority and Female Opportunities for Job Advancement: Prison Staff and Beliefs About Equal Opportunities
Perceptions of job advancement opportunities are examined for a large correctional agency that practices affirmative action. Outcome measures are analyzed that compare respondents’ perceptions of their own job advancment opportunities with the opportunities they believe to exist for women and minorities. The attitudinal data are taken fromthe 2001 administration of the Prison Social Climate Survey by the Federal Bureau of Prisons. Multilevel models are employed that permit the simultaneous examination of individual- and institutional-level covariates. The respondents were taken from 99 different prisons (N=4,596). Individual-level variables include race, sex, ethnicity, education, supervisory status, and occupation. Institutional-level variables include sex of the warden, proportion of supervisors who are female/minority, the proportion of promotions/new hires going to females and minorities, and similar types of measures. Also included at the institutional level are variables often seen in correctional research such as security level of the institution.
Perceptions of Police and Safety in a Small Town
A great deal of research has been conducted to determine what influences community attitudes toward police. In a second body of literature, researchers have studied community fear of crime or feelings of safety. This study is an attempt to bring together these two literatures by examining how perceptions of police and feelings of safety are related to each other. In addition, this study contributes to these literatures by examining these issues in a largely rural, non-metropolitan county in the mid-west. The data was collected as part of an annual evaluation of the county Police Department. Preliminary analyses indicate there is a significant correlation between perceptions of police competence and feelings of safety in the community. The next step of this project is to conduct regression analyses to determine to what extent perceptions of police can predict feelings of safety. We expect that positive direct experiences with the local police or general perceptions of police competence will increase feelings of safety.
Perceptions of Violence in the Emergency Department
This research investigates the assertion that violence in hospital emergency departments (the most dangerous area of the hospital) and concern about violence (fear of crime/fear of victimization) are significant environmental stressors in the workplace. This study uses both qualitative and quantitative methods to discover how hospital personnel perceive violence and the threat of violence (answering the question “what is violence?”), which types of patients (or non-patients) pose the greatest threat of violence, and what precautions (both target-hardening and training) have been taken to ensure the safety of emergency department personnel.
Persistent Offending and Persistent Victimization: A Comparison of Psycho-Social Risk Factors
The overlap between victims and offenders is increasingly being recognized, due to mounting evidence that victims and offenders have similar demographic characteristics, that victimization increases the likelihood of offending, and that offenders are at high risk for becoming victims of crime. Despite this evidence, litte research has been conducted to determine whether or not the predictors of victimization and offending are similar, particularly when examining repeated victimization and persistentinvolvement iun crime. This paper employs a life course developmental perspective to identify predictors of persistent offending and victimization during adolescence and early adulthood, using data from a longitudinal study of young people in Brisbane, Australia.
Personal and Career Characteristics of Prison Wardens in Virginia
This paper examines the personal and career characteristics of prison wardens in Virginia by tracing the number and types of positions the wardens have held during their professional careers. The information is related to personal characteristics such as gender and education major and degree. Several paths to becoming a warden are identified. Career factors are more important than personal factors in understanding the wardens’ leadership styles as indicated by the Leadership Practice Inventory and Leadership Behavior Analysis II scales. All wardens in Virginia participated in the survey conducted in 1999. The data have implications for persons pursuing management careers in corrections.
Personal Assessments Adolescent Suicide Victims
The rates of suicide in Florida are significantly above the national rate, and over the prior two years, Volusia County has recorded among the highest number of suicides in the state. This research focused on the recreation of the mental and physical state of the suicide victim during the time leading up to their death. Psychological autopsy interviews were conducted with family members, teachers, friends, coaches, physicians and law enforcement. The psychological autopsy was chosen to help identifying risk factors for youth suicide that might allow for both early detection and intervention.
Perspective of a Current Fulbright: Personal and Professional Rewards
This presentation will discuss the personal and professional experiences and excitement of a Fulbright opportunity from the perspective of a current Fulbright scholar. The research in progress, the creation of drug policy in Eastern European nations, will be discussed in the context of how the Fulbright opportunity has impacted it. Additionally, the role of environment provided by host colleagues will be discussed.
Perspectives on School Violence and School Policies
In recent years, several sensational acts of school killings have focused our attention of how to respond to violence in our nation’s schools. How should parents, teachers, and students react? What type of policies should be implemented to prevent recurrences of senseless acts of violence? This paper examines various policies and procedures that schools have implemented to address these acts of violence, aggression, and crime among our youth. The paper reviews research on the definitions and frequency of various different acts of school violence. It explores the type of data and variables that are collected about school violence as well as the problems associated with collecting and distributing school violence and school crime data. The paper presents recommendations for further research assessing safe schools and violence prevention.
Picasso as a Criminologist: The Abstract Art of Racial Profiling
Pablo Picasso was a renowned 20th century abstract artist recognized for his disfigured human portraits. The subjects that comprise his portraits were based on factual observations of real humans. It is our contention that current practices of racial profiling are similar to one of Picasso’s poortraits: both are unrealistic abstractions based on real observtions and data. To be sure, racial profiles are often constructed from real observations and data about crimes and criminals. Statistical methods used to build criminal profiles, however, are often misleading and inappropriate. Further, the choice of data sources is also often improper. Using inappropriate methods and improper data sources, statistical models for building profiles are applied which appear to generate useful otucomes. To provide evidence supporting our contention we employ various data to illustrate the real relationship between race and crime. We argue that the real profile of a criminal should be a white offender, but that the race of a victim is highly related to the race of the offender. We conclude with an argument against racial profiling which questions the efficacy of profiling as an effective law enforcement strategy and as an approach to solving crimes that is contradictory to American principles of law and justice.
Picturing Community Factors That Make Residents Feel Unsafe
During the summer of 1997, I conducted seven focus groups with residents of six Santa Ana, California neighborhoods regarding the community factors that made them afraid of gangs and gang crime. Groups were conducted in two lower income, two middle income and two upper income communities. To supplement the discussions, I gave participants disposable cameras and asked them to take pictures in their neighborhood to illustrate the fear-inducing factors that they had discussed during our focus group session. Participants primarily took pictures of physical (e.g., graffiti, bars on windows, and trash) and social (e.g., youths in the park) incivilities, thereby verifying the results of many empirical studies showing that concerns about disorder are key factors prompting people to fear crime. This poster presentation will display pictures taken by these participants to illustrate the cues that prompted them to fear gang crime.
Place Space and Crime Revisited: Targets and Offenders Converge in Violent Index Offenses in Chicago
This preliminary paper is designed to describe a method to study the relationship between routine activities, environment, and UCR Index Violent Crimes. Records of all index aggravated sexual assaults, robberies, and aggravated assaults recorded by the Chicago Police in 1998 are analyzed. The base of the analysis is the triadic relationship between victim, offender, and incident for crimes where both victim and offender had a known address in Chicago. Each incident, victim and offender address was geo-coded and the incident was placed within a social and built environment. The usefulness of analyzing the triads was is demonstrated by looking at the distance between victim’s and offender’s residence and the location of the crime. It is found that these distances varied by crime type and by the age of victim and offender and by the nature of the built environment. These differences probably reflect the routine activities of victims and offender as they converge in a violent incident. The paper to be presented at the ASC will include triads from 1966 thru 1998 and will have additional analysis of the environment in which the crime occurred.
Plea Agendas in Federal Sentencing: Quantittive and Qualittive Evidence From Three District courts
The Federal Criminal Justice System applies a single set of federal statutes using identical rules of procedure through the joint interaction of a common set of officials and organizations (U.S. attorneys and assistant, federal judges, U.S. Probation Officers, U.S. Public Defenders, court-appointed CJA attorneys, and private attorneys). It does so in the full diversity that characterizes the people, culture, and politics of the United States. It provides a heretofore largely unexploited research setting rich with potential to advance our theoretical understanding of how important sociological and political processes work. Our paper addresses the gap in the literature identified by LaCasse and Payne (1999:268): “An analysis of differences in practices across district courts, as well as a more explicit examination of the prosecutor’s role, are fruitful avenues of future study, likely to contribute both to our understanding of the true process by which penalties are rendered and of the effects of the reforms on this process.” In this paper, we examine plea agendas and their role in sentencing processes and outcomes in four U.S. district courts, using quantitative data on sentencing outcomes and qualitative data from field interviews and observations. We focus on plea agenda items such as the following: the decision to prosecute and the nature of charges, the timing of plea negotiations, relevant conduct stipulations in plea agreements, the definition of “substantial assistance” and the use of “substantial assistance” (5K1) guideline departures, the definition of “acceptance of responsibility” and circumstances of granting sentence reductions for it, the circumstances surrounding judicial discretion (5K2) departures, the role of Federal Probation Officer presentence reports, the use of federal Rule 35 (which permits resentencing of an offender up to one year after initial sentencing), and the use of plea agreements that bind federal judges (under Rule 11(e)(1)(c)). The role of these plea agenda items and the variation in their use is sometimes reflected in quantitative models of sentencing outcomes for each district. More often, however, quantitative models of sentencing outcomes obscure these important inter-district variations in the nature of case processing and sentencing in the federal system.
Plea Bargain or Trial?: Effects of Evidence on Three Legal Professionals’ Expectations of Rape Case Disposition
The purpose of this study is to investigate different effects of testimonial evidence, nontestimonial evidence and victim’s credibility on three legal professionals’ expectations of rape case disposition after the offender is charged. It is suggested that the legal professionals would weight each type of evidence differently because of their different predictions of convictability on the basis of victim’s credibility and their different case processing strategies in rape cases. Analyzed with the binary logistic regression model, when rape victims do not have reputation of promiscuity, the data indicate that: 1) prosecutors expect more trial when the victims have no prior felony conviction. In contrast, prosecutors expect more plea negotiation when there are corroborating witnesses for rape offenses involving promiscuous victims; 2) defense attorneys’ expectations of trial increases upon existence of physical evidence; and 3) judges’ expectations of trial increases when there is evidence that shows the victim resisted. In addition, the findings indicate when the victims have reputation of promiscuity, defense attorneys and judges are ambivalent in their expectations of the rape case dispositions. Findings suggest that even after the rape law reform victim’s credibility is still significant factor affecting legal agencies’ decisionmaking in rape cases process.
Poland in the Post-Communist Era: Systemic Changes and the New Face of Crime
An essay and review examines the effects of the collapse of communism and subsequent social changes on crime in the Republic of Poland. A brief overview of the post-war socialist regime and Communist rule helps to shed light on Poland’s social and economic reform since 1989. Official statistics are used in an effort to describe and analyze the significant increase of crime rates and the new structure of crime in a period of rapid systemic changes towards a free-market economy. The transition from socialism to capitalism is further investigated to explain recent crime trends and elucidate how the phenomenon poses a likely threat to Western countries, as well as to reflect upon the potential for crime prevention in post-communist Poland. Crime prevention strategies are surveyed and new policing trends are also described. Finally, the relative inadequacy of Western criminology in the Eastern European context is discussed in order to emphasize the irrelevance of Western theories on the etiology of crime and social deviance to the Polish model. An original theoretical approach is therefore suggested that focuses on the peculiarity of the socio-political transformation of Poland since the late 1980s.
Police Accountability in Post-9/11 America
The terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001, have resulted in the passage of several important pieces of federal legislation, have broadened our country’s focus on national security, and have caused a shift in law enforcement expenditures and priorities. Many important decisions were made with limited information, abbreviated discussion, and little review; some aspects of these decisions are of questionable legality and prudence. This paper will consider changes in American policing (at the federal, state and local levels) which were brought about by that critical incident. Attention will be given to the ability of the courts, the government and the public to ensure police accountability in the face of these changes.
Police Bureaucracies: Debunking the Myth of Singularity
Police organizational literature is replete with references to police organizations as rigid, hierarchial, para-military bureaucracies. This singular definition of police organizations ignores variation in organizational structure, stifles research about structures, and impedes systematic understanding of research findings. This poster will explore the singularity myth along organizational structure lines and propose an empirically defined taxonomy of structures.
Police Culture: A Product of Policing or Society?
Research suggests there are some distinct characteristics of police officers. The threat of constant danger, the need to ensure unchallenged authority, the distrust of people outside the immediate circle and a defensive attitude towards constant criticism are traits commonly found in several research studies. Most of the research suggests that these are linked to the nature of work done by the police and the relationship the officers have with the citizens. However, such traits have been reported from foreign police departments also. This suggests that officers’ perceptions are shaped perhaps more by organizational activities than by external factors. A comparative study of three police departments in Canada, Japan and India was undertaken to compare the perceptions of officers about a variety of organizational issues. The same set of questions was administered to judge if responses vary across the nations. The findings suggest that despite clear differences in the nature of society and culture the police personnel share similar concerns. The research supports the idea that it is the nature of policing rather than economic, social, political and cultural factors that influence the officers. Several implications of this study are suggested.
Police Discretion and Traffic Enforcement: A Government of Men?
The paper examines the law of traffic stops and the existing restraints on police discretion in the decision to issue a traffic ticket (or lack thereof). The data on how frequently police issue a summons and the criteria utilized by police in deciding to issue a summons are reviewed. The paper concludes by applying general legal principals, not yet applied to police traffic enforcement practices, and addresses inconsistencies between the law as it is written and the law as it is enforced from a constitutional, socio-legal framework.
Police Influence in Policy Development
Previous studies of influence on Canadian organized crime legislation have focused on American influence and internal politics. This paper suggests that excessive police influence may have shaped the resulting law. Despite vociferous opposition from civil liberties groups and members of the legal community, new Canadian organized crime law (Bill C-95) was enacted in 1997 fulfilling what many argued was a “wish list for police”. This law has subsequently described as invasive, overly broad and draconian. To examine police influence, this paper will provide a contextual profile of the law reform period and an introduction to the history of police in law reform. Using a policy community methodology, the government sponsored organized crime forums and parliamentary debates are studied. The paper concludes with a critique of police influence in organized crime legislation.
Police Legal Advising and Risk Management: Innovative Approaches to Police Liability Management
The nature of police work exposes police officers to liability risks everyday, resulting in greater chances of police officers becoming the subjects of civil litigation. Monetary payouts to citizens by police departments in litigation cases have increased since the late 1960s. For example, both Los Angeles and New York City paid out over $70 million in settlements for police misconduct from 1991 to 1996 (Human Rights Watch, 1998). Police managers have recognized this increase in payouts, and have begun to take proactive measures to reduce exposure to liability risks. Two of these proactive measures are police legal advisors and risk management. This study will examine the use of risk managers and legal advisors by police agencies to control police exposure to liability incidents. Both risk managers and police legal advisors are included in this study because both approaches share common goals and roles within police organizations. Additionally, both approaches use similar methods and techniques to accomplish those shared goals. More specifically, this study examines: (1) The prevalence of the use of risk management and legal advising in law enforcement agencies in the United States, (2) some of the characteristics and roles of the identified risk management and legal advising programs in police agencies, (3) some of the factors associated with the adoption of such programs, and (4) the perceived impact of utilizing police legal advising and/or risk management to handle police liability issues.
Police Mentoring: Moving Toward Police Legitimacy
This paper will focus on combining two distinct crime prevention strategies to present a more integral approach in addressing the issue of juvenile delinquency and juvenile crime. Mentoring programs have proven themselves effective as having a beneficial impact in the lives of youth lacking adequate role models or adult guidance. Effective mentors are not available in numbers that can meet the demand of the juvenile population which requires such guidance. Police legitimacy has been viewed as a promising approach to effective community policing. The regulation of public behavior in a consistently polite and professional manner may go far in promoting police legitimacy and consequently affect the police-community relationship. While other community policing strategies have failed, police legitimacy has been shown to be effective in preventing crime. Both research and theory would support the use of law enforcement personnel as mentors as a logical and coherent strategy in providing appropriate and effective role models juveniles.
Police Recording of Crime Incidents
This paper focuses on victims of crime who report their crime to the police. Although the police must always take down the report, it is known from survey research that the police do not always register the reported crimes. Police decisions to record or not record incidents as crime are an important but neglected aspect in criminology. The police decision not to record an incident is especially important because it is the first decision within the system and thus the first decision over which the system maintains control. This paper combines earlier research using individual and incident characteristics to explain the recording of crime, and research examining the role of neighborhoodcharacteristics and will answer the question: to what extent can recording of crime by the police be explained by individual, incident and neigborhood characteristics? To answer these question data will be used from the Police Monitor, a biannual national crime victimization survey in the Netherlands. This survey is carried out since 1993 and it contains information on about 300,000 respondents across 3,500 neigborhoods. The individual and incident data will be matched with information on the neighborhoods, such as poverty rate, percent minorities, and residential mobility. The data will be analysed with multilevel analysis.
Police Research in Slovenia: Political and Cultural Obstacles
Appointed a Fulbright Scholar, the objective of my proposed Fulbright research was to examine the practice of community policing in Slovenia, to examine community policing within the broader context of the newly independent country’s transition to democratic law enforcement – a transition from its former Yugoslav political history. Anticipating the unforeseen obstacles inherent when conducting international research, the planned methodology was modest in nature with hopes of setting an initial framework for more complex research in the future. Predominantly qualitative, the methodology included field observation, interviews, and a random sample survey of officers from Slovenia’s eleven police directorates. Instead, the resulting research consisted of a Ministry of the Interior approved, five-question, attitudinal survey of a Ministry approved group of officers from one of Ljubljana’s two city police agencies. Highlighted in this paper are the political and cultural obstacles likely to be encountered when conducting police research in former socialist countries such as Slovenia. Although an independent country since its break from Yugoslavia, there existed a strong sense that the “old regime” still exists and shapes policing from beneath the surface. This socialist hold was evidenced to cause a degree of fear, confusion, and uneasiness in officers.
Police Satisfaction and the Structural Determinants of Collective Efficacy: Formal Contributions to Informal Social Control
Research and theory in the ecological tradition have focused largely on informal social processes that enhance a neighborhood’s capacity to control deviance, including social ties to neighbors and, more recently, collective efficacy. However, few ecological studies have attempted to measure whether formal control processes contribute to informal social controls in neighborhoods (e.g., collective efficacy). To fill this gap, the current study examines the effect of police satisfaction on neighborhood levels of collective efficacy using data from the Project on Human Development in Chicago Neighborhoods (PHDCN) (n = 7,061 subjects nested within 342 neighborhood clusters). We hypothesize that neighborhoods in which residents are generally satisfied with the social controls provided by police will be those in which residents are more willing to behave in a collectively efficacious manner. Using multilevel regression methods and controlling for a host of theoretically relevant variables, we find that neighborhoods in which residents perceive the police as satisfactorily dealing with local issues, such as preventing crime, responding to victims of crime, and maintaining order on the streets, have higher levels of collective efficacy. Moreover, police satisfaction mediates much of the effect of neighborhood disadvantage on collective efficacy. Thus, satisfaction with formal controls (e.g., police) makes a potentially important contribution to neighborhood levels of collective efficacy.
Police Use of Deadly Force: Law’s Impact on Policy and Practice
The issue of police use of deadly force has received prominent news coverage over the last several years. In the city of Boston, for example, a group of prominent African-American leaders called for an investigation into five “deadly force killings” that occurred over a nine-month period. Similarly, investigations into police use of deadly force have taken place in Maine and Maryland. Though the police were exonerated in many of these investigations, there are still questions of whether they followed proper procedure. In light of these incidents, the Supreme Court’s decision in Tennessee v. Garner takes on a great deal of importance in terms of evaluating whether the officers may be considered blameless relative to these “deadly force killings.” This paper will examine the recent spate of police shootings within the context of Garner where it will be suggested that police officers, and police departments, are failing to heed the Supreme Court’s admonition that law enforcement practices will not be hampered by using measures less drastic than “deadly force” when attempting to apprehend unarmed, fleeing suspects.
Police Victimization by Violent Suspects in Korea
Even though violent encounters between police and citizen frequently result in harm to police officers, as well as to citizens, the previous studies mostly have paid attention to excessive use of force by police rather than use of force against police by violent suspects. The purpose of this study is to examine the correlates affecting police victimization in police-citizen violent contacts and to analyze fear for future victimization perceived by injured police officers. Samples are drawn from Korean police officers who reported violence on themselves by suspects. This study adopts a somewhat different approach to the issue of citizen-police violent encounters from the previous studies in that police officers are viewed as a victim of crime, referred to as violence by suspects. That is, focus is shifted from police as a subject of violence to police as an object of violence in this study. Then, the final part of the study is devoted to discussion about legal and administrative policy implications, based upon outcomes emerged from the study.
Policing for Securitisation
In this paper we analyse the business management model in police organisations. We argue that it is an instance of securitisation, or the process by which security is detached from the political. We begin by observing how we have come to understand politics in contradistinction to expertise, bureaucracy, and technology. We also review how power may be seen as having ‘prohibitive’ and ‘productive’ dimensions in a connection of capacities, actions and consequences in programmes, technologies and rationalities. After examining police partnerships, we begin to trace how a policing beyond securitisation needs to redress the relation between minor and major politics.
Policing Identifications: Black or Blue?
This paper concerns the identification of African American police officers with either being black or with being “blue” (officers). It follows Lee Ross’s coinage: “black or blue, which are you?” It will describe some of the contradictions faced by African American police officers in doing their jobs. Such things as racial profiling, for example, becomes problematic in the eyes of those who identify one way rather than another. The kind of community being policed also becomes problematic in identifications. Accordingly, this paper will explore the various dimensions of identifications faced by African American police.
Policing International Terrorism: Law Enforcement 9-11
I analyze the organization and functions of counter-terrorist strategies of law enforcement in the United States since September 11. Drawing on data from relevant police agencies and related legislative and executive sources on the organization of counter-terrorist policing, the law enforcement dimensions in response to the threat and reality of international terrorism will be analyzed at the federal level in the United States. This includes analysis of the counter-terrorist efforts by relevant federal agencies, in particular the Federal Bureau of Investigation, the U.S. Immigration and Naturalization Service, and the relevant policies of the Office of Homeland Security. International terrorism presents a global battle field on which many of the nations of the world are at war. In consequence, September 11 has brought about a retreat of police institutions back to the political powers of national states. These reorganizations of police may have effects that will endure until long after the more immediate repercussions of terrorism have faded. But the political retreat of police under conditions of terrorism today is not complete and cannot be easily achieved because of a now long-established independent police culture on the basis of a shared professional expertise in terms of the means and objectives of policing. Thus, I argue that although a ‘war-time’ reorganization of international police is under way, functionally and organizationally, the emphasis on efficiency of police technique and the treatment of terrorism as a purely criminal matter reflect the impact of a professionalized police culture across nations.
Policing International Terrorism: Options
Analysis of issues and options in efforts to curtail international terrorism, focusing on recent and current events. Key issues include (1) the legal orientation toward individualized justice when dealing with organizations, networks, and movements; and (2) the problem of balancing (a) repression of immediate threats with (b) policies aimed at the conditions under which terrorist ideologies are generated and accepted–which means going beyond “public relations” rhetorics to real investments in alleviating the social injuustices that fuel terrorism. Options for dealing with terrorism are reviewed, including monitoring (e.g. profiling of travelers), extradition of suspects, extraction of “known” terrorists, confiscation of assets, isolation and harassment (e.g., anti-terrorism coalition politics), and war (both “low intensity” and total).
Policing Race and Gender: An Analysis of Prime Suspect 2
“Prime Suspect,” which features the life and exploits of Jane Tennison, a fictional Detective Chief Inspector with the Lond police, is one of public television’s most successful film series. The award winning series has been praised for its accurate and trenchant treatment of women professionals, and critics have hailed Tennison as one of the most popular TV policewomen ever. Others, however, see Tennison and “Prime Suspect” as a failed, if valiant attempt, to transcend the stereotypes common to women in this television genre. In this paper, we consider the second film in the “Prime Suspect” oveuvre, “Prime Suspect 2.” We focus first on the film’s treatment of race (in terms of individual vs. institutional level racism). Second, we consider Tennison’s increasing characterization as a lonely, isolated figure in a post feminist narrative.
Policing Small Communities: Exploring the Relationship Between Structural Characteristics and Agency Styles
Using data collected through the systematic social observation of police officers employed by twenty rural, small-town, and suburban agencies in the Greater Cincinnati, OH area, our research explores the hypothesized link between the structural characteristics of communities and police agency styles. The research examines whether officers working in small, but structurally diverse types of communities behave similarly in terms of officer activities and citizen interactions. Comparisons across small community types identified both similarities and differences in terms of the way in which officers spent time on patrol, however, the organizational styles exhibited by these agencies were somewhat inconsistent with those hypothesized in prior literature. Possible factors that may have influenced these findings are discussed.
Policy on Crime on Measures and Punishments to Deprive People of Their Freedom: Positions Held by the Candidates for the Presidential Elections of 2002 in France
In March 2002 the French association of Criminology has sent to the 20 main candidates to the French presidential election a questionnaire where the association reminds them of its positions in favor of the universal ban on death penalty, on the perpetual punishment, on the safety periods and generally on problems linked to measures and sanctions to deprive people from freedom. The author of this paper will describe the analysis of the answers. The questions will be put in perspective of the European environment.
Policy Recommendations to Improve the Police Response to People With Mental Illness
Law enforcement agencies are continually challenged to respond effectively to people with mental illnesses they encounter in a range of situations. The Police Executive Research Forum joined the Council of State Governments to develop a comprehensive set of policy recommendations for police that promotes appropriate and just approaches to people with mental illnesses. The recommendations are informed by a survey and a 30-member advisory board, which includes chiefs, consumers, advocates and service providers. This presentation addresses the resulting recommendations for training, on-scene policieis, community education, and privacy of information.
Polydrug Use: Is the Picture Changing?
The introduction of club drugs into the United States in the late 1980s and early 1990s altered patterns of drug use, particularly among youth and the young adult population. Some have argued that one of the greatest risks of the club drug phenomenon is the witting and, perhaps more importantly, unwitting use of multiple or polydrugs. Particularly, with such drugs as ecstasy, drug users and even drug sellers have little knowledge of the purity of each dose. In fact, ecstasy is often found to contain adulterations, including such things as PCP, LSD, GHB, or methamphetamine. In addition, club drug users tend to use ecstasy in combination with drugs such as methamphetamine, inhalants, marijuana, and increasingly cocaine. Does this relationship between club drug and polydrug use and the increase in club drug use overall portend changes in drug treatment, health care, and law enforcement practices? We propose using the Arrestee Drug Abuse Monitoring (ADAM) data to examine patterns of polydrug use among the recent arrestee population, and question whether these patterns have changed over time. While the introduction of club drugs may increase the likelihood of polydrug use, some professionals believe that the arrestee population is not the appropriate target for testing hypotheses about club drugs, arguing that the population using club drugs is not represented by arrestees. Similarly, some question the frequency with which polydrug use occurs in the arrestee population, with some evidence that its frequency limits our ability to make determinations based on these data. We believe that the question of club drug and polydrug use among the recent arrestee population is an empirical question and use this study to illustrate club drug usage among arrestees as well as address questions about changing patterns of polydrug use. The Arrestee Drug Abuse Monitoring (ADAM) program has been collecting data from recent arrestees since 1987. In the past few years, the ADAM program has undergone several methodological changes, including an increase to 35 sites, standardization of catchment areas to the county level, implementation of a new, more comprehensive data collection instrument, and the introduction of probability-based sampling. These changes aim to improve the data collection system to be more representative of the communities in which data are collected, allowing counties to make generalizations about their arrestee populations in general and practitioners and researchers to explore a greater variety of policy issues. The following provides a set of questions we hope to address in this paper. For the most part, we will use descriptive statistics to analyze these questions. However, there are some comparisons over time that need multivariate techniques to control for multiple explanations, including interactive explanations. How widespread is polydrug use in the arrestee population and what are the drugs being used? Who are the polydrug arrestees and how do they compare to non-users and single-drug users? How old are they? What gender matter? When did they begin using drugs? What is their educational and employment background? Is race or ethnicity a factor? How do polydrug users who combine single drug use with alcohol compare to polydrug users who combine multiple illegal substances or multiple substances and alcohol? What is the relationship between club drug use and polydrug use among arrestees? Is the rate higher among arrestees who report club drug as opposed to other drug use? Does region of the country play any part in explaining use of multiple drugs? If so, is there an interactive relationship between region of the country and drug type? For example, are arrestees who use methamphetamine more likely to use multiple drugs? If true, the West should have higher rates of polydrug use given what is known about methamphetamine use. Are there patterns of polydrug use among arrestees, not only type but frequency? Do arrestees for various crimes have different rates of polydrug use? Are arrestees who commit violent crimes as opposed to property crimes more likely to be polydrug users? Have polydrug users sought treatment at lower or higher levels than other arrestees? Are polydrug users more transient and more often unemployed than other arrestees? Has polydrug use increased or decreased over time? As different drugs have come into vogue, has this altered the rates of polydrug use?
Portable Drug Treatment for the Juvenile Justice System
One out of every five juveniles entering urban detention center has been using drugs nearly every day for the past month. Mostly, these young teens have been smoking marijuana and drinking alcohol. Although they may not be chemically dependent, using so frequently is a clear sign of a serious problem and, for many, the first step toward using harder drugs. Despite this concentration of heavy users, juvenile justice systems are rarely provide treatment. Children often move thru facilities too quickly for staff to provide meaningful drug treatment, and authorities often view post-release treatment as the responsibility of social services agencies. Involving family members, a critical component in adolescent drug treatment, is difficult when kids are located in remote and/or secure facilities. To quickly identify and treat young offenders with the most acute drug habits, New York City and New York State agencies are working with the Vera Institute, the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, and the U.S. Center for Substance Abuse Treatment, implementing a unique treatment program called Adolescent Portable Therapy (APT). By providing individual therapists who travel with adolescents as they move through the system, APT works with kids inside detention facilities and continues treating them in their home communities. And APT is designed to cost no more than other intensive treatment programs for very troubled teenagers.
Possible Problems With Standard Surveys of Gun Ownership
Over the past two decades some respected standard national surveys on gun ownership have shown a marked drop of about ten points in the percentage of households with firearms. At the same time, the proportion of persons reporting personal ownership of a firearm has not changed. While many surveys do report a drop in households with guns, others have shown no such decline, resulting in findings that are well outside statistical margins of error for the different studies. One hypothesis for the changes over time and between studies is that demonization of gun ownership by the media and others may have caused more gun owners to falsely deny household ownership. We conducted survey of gun magazine subscribers, an anonymous survey but of a self-selected group of gun owners. The survey findings support the theory that a substantial minority of gun owners may lie about ownership when asked questions by telephone or in-home. There is an even greater likelihood of dishonest reporting of the number of guns owned, even where gun ownership is acknowledged. Concerns included the true anonymity of the surveys. Accurately measuring gun ownership in the United States by standard survey methods may have become problematic.
Post Cold War Political Espionage: From the Rosenbergs to Hanssen
Spying, the secretive theft of information by “sub rosa” criminals has been described as the world’s oldest profession. Despite inattention to the issue in criminology, the activities of spies such as the Rosenbergs or Robert Hanssen have been more costly than most traditional crimes. Hanssen’s treachery is one of the worst compromises of U.S. national security and the worst case of treason and espionage on the part of a special agent of the Federal Bureau of Investigation. The Hanssen spy case is compared with a previously developed typology of spies that includes: the mercenary, ideological, alienated/egocentric, buccaneer, professional, compromised, deveived (false flag recruit), quasi-agent, escapee and miscellaneous types.Hanssen was an egocentric spy with buccaneer and mercenary motivations. The changing nature of spying in postmodern society is also discussed.
Post Hoc Evaluation of Sex Offender Treatment: A Collaborative Approach Using Qualitative and Quantitative Methods
The success of field-based evaluations of treatment relies heavily on collaborative relationships between clinicians and researchers, and on mutual efforts to develop the most effective evaluation strategy possible under existing constraints. Ideally, however, the future data needs of program evaluators should be built into the structure of the treatment program from the outset. This presentation provides an overview of the important offender- and treatment-related variables, as well as the basic parameters of research design, that should be considered when implementing or revising treatment programs for sex offenders. The presentation is designed for clinicians, as well as for research sponsors and program evaluators. Information and recommendations, grounded in current empirical and clinical guidelines for the treatment of sex offenders, will be presented and will include examples of research strategies and measures drawn from a recent implementation and impact evaluation of several specialized, probation-based, treatment programs for sex offenders.
Potential Sources of Observer Bias and the Face Validity of Observational Data
In order to address criticisms about the validity of observational data, anecdotal accounts of problems encountered in the field were categorized as four potential sources of observer bias. Observer bias can be categorized as threats to the validity of observational data collected at different stages of field research. Three types of observer bias are also used to illustrate the potential for human error implicit in the collection of observational data. Anecdotal evidence from a variety of field settings is overviewed to point out contradictory accounts of: (1) the direction of behavioral change caused by reactivity; and (2) the impact of rapport on the accuracy of observational data. Key concepts for each type of observer bias are specified as a first step toward operationalizing observer effects. Finally, the incorporation of a semi-structured field diary is suggested in order to incorporate measures of observer bias into the research design of observational studies.
Power, Corruption and the Legal Process in China
This paper examines three major types of corruption-related white-collar crimes in China: graft, bribe-taking and embezzlement. We discuss the nature and characteristics of these offenses, the relevant laws, and the criminal justice responses to these crimes. An analysis of 182 court cases involving these types of offenses, adjudicated between 1986-1999, suggests that these cases have distinctive offender and offense characteristics, especially in offenders’ status, co-offending pattern, offense severity, and legal decisions. A further analysis on the determinants of legal decisions reveals that, while offense severity has consistently significant effects on pretrial detention and sentence decisions, offenders’ status affects pretrial detention decisions, but not sentence length. The paper closes with discussions of policy implications.
Power-Control and the Gender-Crime Relationship: Does Low Self-Control Intervene?
The intervening variables of perceived risk and “taste” for risk are included in the traditional power-control model, which aims to explain gender differences in minor forms of delinquency and the larger gap found in more, compared to less, patriarchal households. It is argued that in more patriarchal families, boys perceive lower risk for acts of delinquency and are less deterred by the risks they do perceive than do girls. Thus, it is inferred that sons are more impulsive, and give greater weight to proximate rewards and less weight to distal costs. In contrast, gender convergence in minor delinquency occurs in less patriarchal families because mothers socialize boys and girls similarly, yielding gender convergence in perceived risk and presumably, in impulsivity. Similarly, Gottfredson and Hirschi (1990) identify perceived risk and impulsivity as two of the central components of low self control, a trait resulting from parental socialization. This research first examines the viability of power-control theory for explaining gender differences in low self-control. In addition, low self-control is added to the power-control model in order to ascertain its impact as an intervening variable in the model. The implications of the findings are then discussed.
Predicting Crime Type: The Effect of Individual Characteristics on Patterns of Specialization and Escalation
This research investigates the association between offender background characteristics and patterns of specialization and escalation. Specialization refers to the tendency of an offender to repeat a given offense type. Escalation refers to the tendency to switch from a less serious offense to a more serious offense. Constructs included were: age, age at onset, race, family environment, alcohol and drug abuse, gang membership, child abuse, school performance, and prior aggression. The specific research questions addressed by the analysis were: 1) do offender background characteristics effect patterns of escalation and specialization, and 2) do age and race have time varying effects on patterns of escalation and specialization? To answer the research questions four conceptually distinct multinomial logit models were estimated. Model 0 was a na‹ve model that assumed the probability of each type of crime is fixed across arrests. Model 1 took into account information on the arrest number (i.e., first second, etc.). Model 2 included offender background characteristics in addition to the arrest number. Model 3 included interaction effects of age at time of arrest and race with arrest number. Results indicated that behavioral and social correlates of crime had a substantial impact on patterns of specialization and escalation.
Predicting Lethal Versus Non-Lethal Outcomes: The Impact of Offender and Offense Characteristics on Violent Incidents
This study seeks to identify key factors associated with lethal versus non-lethal outcomes of violent incidents. Data for this study are derived from the National Incident-Based Reporting System (NIBRS). A number of contextual factors, including weapon choice, victim/offender relationship, the nature of the incident, and other offender and offense characteristics will be examined to determine their impact on the lethality of violent crimes. Results will be discussed in terms of policy implications.
Predicting Patterns in Domestic Hate Crime
A number of recent events highlight the continuing danger of domestic hate crimes. Despite the excessive violence associated with these offenses, criminologists generally have failed to examine the underlying factors contributing to hate crimes. The absence of hate crime data has prevented the systematic study of this behavior but, as a result of the Hate Crime Statistics Act (1990), the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) now provides publicly available data on hate crimes known to the police. We will examine predictors for hate crimes derived from strain theory proposed by Merton (1968) and developed by Agnew (1992). We will use US Census data as indicators of change in causal variables derived from strain theory, and FBI hate crime data to measure patterns of hate crime activity. We hope to identify factors most useful for explaining hate crime, and to determine whether there are predictable patterns of this behavior. The findings will have important implications for the development of effective hate crime prevention policies. We will also examine the deterrent impact of legislation permitting enhanced sanctions for hate crime offenders.
Predicting Police Stops: Integrating Self Reports and Community Data in a Multilevel Model
The poster presents results from multilevel modeling procedures that account for driver and community-level factors that influence the likelihood of being stopped by police. Disaggregating self-reported stops by local police versus the North Carolina State Highway Patrol yields patterns reflecting the differential organizational goals, connection to local structural conditions, and primacy of driver and driving characteristics of these two types of police organizations. Self report data from a telephone survey of 2920 licensed drivers in North Carolina conducted in 2000 is integrated with county level 2000 Census data to perform the hierarchical linear models.
Predicting Retention in Drug Court: The Effects of Static and Dynamic Factors on Program Completion
Drug Courts have been widely adopted as a response to the large numbers of drug using offenders. While these courts offer an alternative model of treatment intervention which may prove beneficial to those exposed to treatment, as many as half of those assigned to court fail to complete the program. Our analysis of nearly 500 adults sentenced to Drug Court in Maricopa County, Arizona during 2001 uses logit regression to identify the static and dynamic predictors of successful program completion. The findings suggest that the threat of legal sanctions is insufficient to coerce program completion among offenders, and that attention should be given to those factors which better predict program participation.
Predicting the Deviant Behavior: A Sociological Test
Recent developments in sociology and economics allow finding a compromise between two mutually excluding in the past research programs. Putting the emphasis on the way the actors justify their everyday behavior represents not only a purely theoretical interest. Such a research program helps us to differentiate legal and deviant orientations (“sets”) and, consequently, to predict the probability of committing the deviant acts in the future. The behavior in so called “critical” situations is especially revealing. An everyday situation is called “critical” if it is not possible to find any more a unique, natural way to behave allowing to solve the coordination problem. Practically speaking, we propose a kind of sociological lie detector implying the analysis of norms and values revealed when the individual is put in a critical situation, even artificially initiated. To test the validity and the reliability of our approach, we conducted a series of in-depth interviews with businessmen and those who were sentenced for economic crimes. The first empirical results look very promising.
Predicting the Occurrence of Stalking in Relationships Characterized by Domestic Violence
Of critical import to the study of stalking in the context of domestic violence is the ability to predict in what domestic viiolence relationships iut is most likely to occur. Using longitudinal interviews of abattered women whose cases have gone through the criminal justice system in three jurisdictions in the U.S., this paper attempts to do this. Explored are the types of stalking behaviors experienced, the prevalence of stalking in this population, and how these behaviors change over time. The goal is to identify specific variables that predict whether or not stalking is likely to occur over time. Implications for how we respond to this problem will be discussed.
Predicting the Risk of Reassault Among Batterer Program Participants: Does Race Matter?
There have been increasing efforts to predict reassault among batterer program participants. Prediction efforts using risk factors and risk assessment instruments has been rather weak. Researchers and practitioners have argued that prediction may be weakened because different risk factors are predictive among various racial and ethnic groups. We have demonstrated that prediction is improved by using a conditional prediction model with multiple outcomes. Distinguishing repeat reassaulters from one-time reassaulters and men who use threats without physical reassaults, improves prediction. Yet prediction is still far from ideal. We develop separate prediction equations for whites, AFrican-Americans, and Latinos, using a database of approximaately 500 cases drawn from 840 men and 688 female partners recruited at program intake. Using multinomial logistic regression to predict 15-month cumulative outcomes, we find that prediction of repeated reassault using risk markers is strongest for whites and stronger for whites than for the combined sample. Prediction for Latinos is the weakest. We also simulate three popular risk assessment iunstruments and find that the risk assessment instruments predict repeated reassault reasonably well among whites, modestly among African-Americans, and poorly among Latinos. We speculate that risk assessment uinstruments, which have been developed primarily using white samples, should be used with caution with minority batterers. When attempting to predict reassault, it appears that race does indeed matter, and future research should develop separate prediction by race.
Predicting Violent Behavior in Adolescent Cannabis Users: Correlates of and Changes in Social Environment Over Time
Violence, aggression, and criminal offenses are common among adolescent substance abusers and the criminal justice system is the largest single source of referral for adolescents to the substance abuse treatment system. Using Moffitt’s (1993) taxonomy of offending behavior theory, we examine which social environment factors (e.g. peer group criminality and drug use, family criminality and drug use) are correlated with criminal activity and violence among adolescent entering substance abuse treatment. We then predict how changes in social environment factors affect criminality and violence over time. We use data from the Cannabis Youth Treatment (CYT) multisite randomized field experiment of 600 adolescents meeting outpatient patient treatment placement criteria. The original CYT study followed clients 12 months after treatment intake and, under a CSAT contract, the participant follow-up was extended to 30 months post-intake with follow-up rates averaging above 92% across the four sites. This large sample of in-treatment youth combined with several measures of their social environment, criminal activity, violence, and legal system involvement, along with the longitudinal nature of the study makes this an especially rich dataset for analysis. Ability to generalize findings to in-treatment youth in the United States will be discussed.
Prediction of Recidivism in Adult First-Time Offenders
Much research on criminal careers consists of longitudinal studies of onset and development of criminality in youthful populations, generally using birth cohorts. Typically, researchers resort to those same longitudinal studies to examine the criminal careers of adults, reflecting the generally accepted view that most adult offenders began their careers as juveniles. This approach to understanding criminal careers has resulted in an emphasis on criminal history variables in formal instruments for assessing the likelihood of reoffending. A limitation of such tools emerges in the context of community corrections, where large proportions of adult offenders have no criminal history other than the instant offense. Though these first-time offenders generally score low on risk assessments, they nonetheless contribute substantially to rates of rearrest, revocation and rules violations. This paper introduces a empirically-based typology of adult first time offenders, using a large (n=1,736) cohort of first time offenders sentenced to felony probation in Texas during a one month period. It then develops and compares the utility of alternate models for predicting recidivism in these subjects, roughly one-third of whom were rearrested and roughly one-fifth of whom were revoked over a subsequent three year follow-up.
Predictive Efficacy of the Community Risk/Needs Assessment Instrument
Analyses are reported that explored the predictive characteristics of the items that make up the Community Risk Needs Assessment (CRNA) instrument, which has been used by case managers to assist in setting community supervision levels for offenders in British Columbia since 1996. A variety of analytical techniques were used, including simple correlation, multiple regression, discriminant analysis, principal components analysis, and logistic regression. The intent of these analyses was not to identify a “best” set of predictors, but first, to ascertain how well the set of CRNA items function with respect to predicting the final supervision level ratings completed by case managers, and second, to determine the utility of the CRNA items to predict future re-offence. With respect to the first issue, the analyses indicate that there are substantial relationships between case managers’ ratings of CRNA items and their global recommended supervision level ratings. Depending on how offender groupings were defined, correct classification rates ranging from 71-83% were attained. The CRNA items were also found to be related as might be expected to subsequent re-offence. It was possible to correctly classify offenders with between 70% and 75% accuracy with regard to whether or not they had subsequent re-offences.
Predictors of Program Completion and Recidivism at the Bronx Misdemeanor Domestic Violence Court
A growing number of domestic violence courts require convicted offenders to participate in batterer intervention or other treatment programs and intensive court monitoring. Yet the benefit derived from batterer intervention programs in particular is still under debate, and program failure rates are often high. Moreover, both programs and monitoring are time-consuming and expensive for the court as well as the offender. This has led court administrators to question whether specific offender subgroups might benefit more or less than others from programs and court monitoring. If such subgroups could be identified, an individual defendant’s likelihood to benefit from a program and from monitoring could be made a factor of sentencing. Accordingly, analyses were conducted of the correlates of program completion and recidivism for 440 cases sentenced by the Bronx Misdemeanor Domestic Violence Court, a high volume urban domestic violence court. Cases were mandated to one of three program conditions: (1) batterer intervention alone; (2) batterer intervention with substance abuse treatment; and (3) substance abuse treatment alone. Hypotheses were tested concerning the impact of program condition, age, employment status, defendant-victim relationship, current charges, criminal history, and several interim program compliance measures. Results demonstrated significantly better outcomes among those assigned to batterer intervention alone, without a prior criminal history, and in compliance as of the first court monitoring appearance (usually one month post-sentence). Also, meeting a somewhat weaker significance threshold, better outcomes resulted among defendants employed at arrest and defendants pleading to a charge other than criminal contempt. Policy implications of all findings are discussed.
Predictors of Rape Myth Acceptance Among Criminology and Non-Criminology Majors
Rape is one of the most commonly committed crimes, yet it often goes unreported (McGregor, Weibe, Marioin, & Livingston, 2000; Richie, 2000). With an increase in literature addressing rape on college campuses, students are aware that rape is a significant social issue. The myths that accompany rape also have a serious negative impact on the victim and need to be addressed. Many Criminology students will become professionals within the criminal justice system. In this capacity, rape myths can influence their perceptions of victims. Due to their pervasiveness, it is important to understand what encourages rape myths in society. The primary emphasis of this study is to investigate the level of rape myth acceptance among students on a university campus, by major, class standing, and gender.
Predictors of Recidivism for Women Prisoners
An increasing number of women are serving time ins tate and federal prisons, and their rate of annual growth is increasing faster than that of male prisoners. The majority of research about women prisoners has focused ong ender differences in crime rates and etiology, court processing or sentencing, or have provided descriptive profiles. Very little research has focused on the factors predicting female reoffending and/or whether they differ from those that are predictive for male offenders. This study examines the extent to which demographics, family and childhood history, relationships, institutional experiences, offense history, and physical and emotional needs affect recidivism among female prisoners. One-hundred-sixty-eight women prisoners slated to be released within a 6 month period were administered an extensive survey covering demographic variables, education and work history, family history and relationships. legal and institutional history, substance use, and physical and mental health. One year after rlease, arrest records of participants were examined. Regression and survival analyses were performed to determine what factors consistently predicted recidivism, as well as patterns of recidivism among women offenders.
Predictors of Success in Drug Court Treatment: Findings From Four New York State Adult Drug Courts
Corresponding with their vast national expansion, as of December 2001 there were 35 operating adult drug courts in New York State alone. These courts provide an alternative-to-incarceration, coupled with intensive judicial monitoring, to substance abusers arrested for nonviolent offenses. A large body of existing research has identified significant predictors of success in treatment. However, fewer studies have focused specifically on drug courts, and hardly any have applied a comparable research design across multiple sites, spanning large urban, suburban, and medium-size city jurisdictions. Accordingly, this study analyzes predictors of success across four New York State drug courts-Brooklyn Treatment Court, Queens Treatment Court, Suffolk Drug Treatment Court, and Syracuse Community Treatment Court – varying in population size, demographics, and baseline participant characteristics. The dependent variable, for three of the courts, is graduation versus failure for participants enrolled at least two years prior to the analysis. In Brooklyn, the dependent variable is whether the participant is retained as of the two-year mark. Synthesizing cross-site results, participation in the thirty-days immediately following program entry strongly predicts ultimate success. Also predicting success in multiple courts were prior criminal history, age, sex, race/ethnicity, socioeconomic status, primary drug of choice, and level of legal coercion (i.e., incarceration time faced in the event of program failure). Key differences across the four sites are interpreted, and policy implications are discussed.
Prefrontal Dysfunction and Impulsive Aggression: A Meta-Analysis
Although the idea that the expression of aggression may be related to brain function is not a new one, recent research in neuropsychology and neuroimaging has helped clarify biological correlates of impulsive aggression and violence. In particular, different behavioral neuroscience paradigms are beginning to converge on the conclusion that prefrontal dysfunction may disrupt the regulation of aggressive impulses, thereby increasing the probability of physical violence toward others and oneself. In this meta-analysis, we assess the magnitude of the hypothesized link between prefrontal dysfunction and impulsive aggression. The analysis will include neuropsychological and neuroimaging studies of patients with ostensible prefrontal injury as well as studies of violent and criminal populations who do not have discernible brain trauma. Using a biopsychosocial framework, implications for future research are provided.
Pregnancy and Birth Control Among Drug Users: Reproductive Conduct Norms Among Inner-City Distressed Households
This presentation will analyze several conduct norms of street subcultures with a focus upon those associated with pregnancy and reproductive decisions among inner city African-American women where one or more household members participate in crack and other drug consumption and or sales. The analysis focused upon the normative standards among illicit drug users who become pregnant and upon their: sexual behavior patterns, use of contraceptives, reasons for having children, dealing with and the decision making process to complete or abort pregnancies. Reproductive patterns are learned and reproduced from one generation to another. The street/drug subculture conduct norms provide pivotal factors in the nature, types, and consequences of the female reproductive decision-making. Data comes from an eight-year ethnographic study entitled “Co-occurring Drugs & Violence in Distressed Household.” The study consisted of 72 families and 158 subjects. Findings indicate that above and beyond role modeling and family systems, the conduct norms of street/drug subcultures increase the likelihood of getting pregnant, frequency of getting pregnant, and the types of birth control/contraceptive and reproductive decisions made.
Preliminary Findings from an Evaluation of Youth Handgun Violence Prevention Programs
Handguns continue to play a lethal role in the lives of youth even with the downturn in youth handgun violence in recent years. Despite widespread youth handgun violence prevention and intervention efforts, little is known about their effectiveness. The lack of research on program effectiveness in this area has prompted several center and school based violence prevention programs to evaluate their youth handgun violence prevention efforts. These strategies are in the final stages of an evaluation using a quasi-experimental design. This paper presents preliminary findings from the evaluations of these efforts to prevent and intervene in youth handgun carrying and use.
Preliminary Findings From the Safe Schools/Healthy Students National Evaluation: Perceptions of Safety on School Grounds
This poster will provide a brief overview of and present some findings from the initial wave(s) of data collection from school-based individuals in sites receiving federal Safe Schools/Healthy Students (SS/HS) grant funds. Through 2001, the SS/HS Initiative had provided funds to 97 sites across the country to provide a comprehensive, community-wide approach to promote healthy childhood development and mental health and to address problems of school violence and drug abuse. The national evaluation of the Initiative is collecting data from a variety of key stakeholders, including students, teachers, principals and the individuals who coordinate substance abuse, violence prevention and mental health services in schools. The first two waves of data collection were accomplished in 2001 and 2002. Survey responses from the school-based respondents on questions related to perceptions of safety in school buildings and on school grounds will be compared. Responses across respondent categories and regional and urban strata will be compared and presented.
Prevalence and Patterns of Violent Sexual Victimization Among Delinquent Females
Female juvenile arrest and detention rates are growing faster than those for juvenile males. While females are increasingly arrested for crimes against persons and violent crimes, little is known about their rates of victimization. Public health professionals believe that rates of sexual victimization are extremely high among female detainees. However, there are few empirical data and no large-scale studies. We examine lifetime experiences of different forms of violent sexual victimization among female juvenile detainees and compare them to the rates of sexual victimization among male juvenile detainees. Respondents were part of a larger study of 1829 juvenile detainees, 1172 males and 657 females, ages 10-18. We present data on 895 subjects (364 female, 531 male) who were administered measures of sexual victimization. Forty-seven percent of the female detainees reported sexual victimization at some point in their lives, compared to 12% of male detainees. These rates are much higher than the general population rates of 1.6% and 0.4% for females and males, respectively. We will present rates and patterns of violent sexual victimization by gender, race/ethnicity, and age, and examine the respondent’s relationship to the perpetrator. These findings have important implications for services and prevention programs targeting juveniles both in the justice system and in the community.
Preventing Repeat Victimization: A Systematic Review
The first published studies that recognized the extent of repeat victimisation were in the early 1970’s (Johnson et al. 1973; Zeigenhagen 1976). The potential to utilize the phenomenon of repeat victimisation as a focus for crime prevention strategies was formally recognized with the publication of the Kirkholt burglary experiment that was conducted in the mid-1980’s (Forrester et al. 1988, 1990). The basis premise of this approach to crime prevention is that, since victimisation is a good predictor of further victimisation of the same target within a short time, this fact can be used to locate crime prevention resources where they are needed. Targeting repeat victimization is a means of improving the efficient of crime prevention resource allocation. With hindsight, it is now known that some crime prevention projects aimed to prevent repeat victimisation even though this was not necessarily formally presented as the initial basis for the intervention. For example, the Minneapolis domestic violence experiment and subsequent replications (SARP) (see e.g. Sherman 1992), aimed to assess the effectiveness of arrest in the prevention of repeated domestic assault. Although the initial driving force was the prevention of crime against women and an assessment of policing practice in this area, the projects also assessed a tactic for the prevention of repeat victimization. Similarly, there is evidence that some studies based upon the prevention of repeated abuse of children can be categorised as preventing repeat victimization. The Kirkholt burglary experiment, evaluated with a quasi-experimental design, reduced repeat burglary to zero and produced a 70% fall in all burglaries in the test site. It spurred a set of replication experiments tackling residential burglary (Tilley 1993a; Webb 1997; Anderson et al. 1995; Chenery et al. 1997), commercial burglary (Tilley 1993b), and led to a prolonged research program in the UK on repeat victimization (reviewed by Laycock 2000). Research on repeat victimization has taken off in a number of countries and studies now exist that examine the phenomenon in countries including Australia, the Netherlands, England and Wales, the United States, Scotland. Cross-national comparative studies of rates of repeat victimization have also emerged, although not incorporating an evaluation of interventions. While there are now many dozens of studies of repeat victimization, the number that incorporate formal evaluations of preventions efforts is relatively small. Our ongoing review of the literature, following the systematic review process of the Campbell Collaboration, suggests that there are close to two hundred articles now published that relate to repeat victimization. The bulk of these have been published in the last decade as the subject area has mushroomed. Of these studies however, perhaps only two dozen incorporate an evaluation that utilizes and experimental design. Preliminary findings (which will be completed by the ASC in November) suggests that efforts to prevent repeat victimization which utilize strong preventive mechanisms and multiple interlocking situational crime prevention techniques, tailored to specific crime types and circumstances tend to produce more significant reductions in crime than those that do not. While there is now growing evidence that it is often the same offenders who commit repeat victimization (Bennett 1995; Everson and Pease 2001), there appears to have been little evaluation of the potential to combine the prevention of repeat victimization with efforts to detect offenders who return to commit these offences. Similarly, while there is considerable evidence that repeat victimization is more prevalent in crime hot spots (Bennett 1995; Bennett and Durie 1996; Townsley et al. 2000), there appears to be little formal evaluation of the potential of the prevention of repeat victimization as a strategy to tackle crime hot spots. The review will incorporate a systematic review of such issues and their potential for preventing crime, following the protocol developed earlier in the review (Farrell and Webster 2001).
Principal Components and Best Practices in Juvenile Drug Courts
Despite the immense growth in drug courts, and parallel growth in drug court evaluations, there are very few evaluations of drug courts for juveniles. Evidence of the impact of drug courts on reducing juvenile recidivism and drug use remains largely anecdotal. This paper examines the results of drug court evaluations conducted to date, with particular attention to the limitations of existing research in establishing strong links between drug court components and participant outcomes. Much of the weakness in these studies can be attributed to characteristics endemic to the evaluation of limited social experiments: small sample sizes, short operating histories, and limited resources. Yet, some standard approaches to evaluating drug court models have emerged, and the strengths and weaknesses of these methodologies are described.
Prior Sexual Abuse Reported by Male Inmates in Turkey
This paper presents data from convicts reporting sexual abuse before and after sentencing. A total of 802 adult male convicts incarcerated in 17 correctional facilities throughout the country were surveyed using “The Survey of Inmates in Correctional Facilities (SICF)” 1.4 % of male convicts (n=802) reported they have been sexually abused. Age 32.9ñ11. 63.63% were sexually abused before age 18, % 9 before and after age 18, 27.28% after age 18. 54.54% of the sexually abused male convicts reported said they had known their abusers. % 45.46 of the persons were sexually abused more than one time. 29% of all male convicts in Turkey (717.342) were serving a sentence for homicide in the year 2000. 33.3% of the surveyed persons with former sexual victimization had committed homicide. Among men reporting abuse before prison 33.3% were serving a sentence for sexual assault including rape. On the other hand only 1.95 % of the general male convict population was serving a sentence for sexual assault including rape. As rape is heavily underreported in Turkey these figures are certainly higher. But nevertheless it can be stated that a past of abuse is specifically linked to sexual assault and homicide. An estimated 65% of sexually abused men had used illegal drugs regularly. About 82% sexually abused men reported drinking regularly at some time in their lives.
Prison Chaplains’ Affective Responses to Work
It is often assumed that prisons are stressful and unrewarding places in which to work. This research explores how those responsible for the spiritual welfare of inmates-prison chaplains-respond to working in a potentially brutal, dehumanizing, and unjust environment. This research reveals that chaplains experience moderate to low levels of work stress and consider their work highly rewarding. These findings challenge the notion that prison work is inherently “dirty work.” This study also examines the sources of these work experiences. The analysis revealed that the determinates of prison chaplains’ work stress and job satisfaction are similar to those of correctional officers and prison wardens.
Prisoners of War: African-American Female Incarceration at the End of the 80s
Using the 1991 study of State and Federal Prisoners conducted by the National Institute of Justice, we examine factors that distinguish between African American women and White women who were incarcerated in prison for drug offenses and violent offenses. As proxies for level of criminality, we test variables from three theoretical positions and involvement in the criminal justice system. We find that proportionately more African American women are incarcerated for drug offenses relative to White women. Additionally, we find that African American women who are incarcerated for drug offenses are substantially less likely to have been involved in the criminal justice system and to evidence fewer factors associated with criminality than their violent offense counterparts. These findings are in contradiction to those of White women. We conclude that this provides evidence that the ‘War on Drugs’ has in effect been a mechanism to punish African American women drug users, not to punish criminals.
Private Industry Behind Bars: Does Work Work?
The Bureau of Justice Assistance and is responsible for monitoring the Prison Industry Enhancement Certification Program (PIECP). The PIECP includes a private sector company that hires inmates to work for them at the prevailing wage (e.g., minimum wage or above). The work ranges from labor intensive routine tasks (i.e., assembly line) to highly skilled craftsmanship (i.e., sheet metal welding). PIECP has been operational since 1979, yet no evaluation has been conducted. Among many reasons, the program has continued to be funded because it is hypothesized that joint venture industries between inmates/Department of Corrections and the private sector is a promising type of re-entry preparedness. However, there is little empirical data to support or refute this belief. This poster session will present preliminary results of a national study.
Privatising Violence: Mercenaries, States and the Sub-Contracting of Human Rights Obligations
Recent statements emanating from the United Nations and proposals currently in the legislatures of at least two UN Security Council members suggest an impending official endorsement of the use of private armies for mediating in international conflict. Whilst the UN has sanctioned the use of private armies for protection in previous diplomatic missions, current developments signal a new direction for UN policy, and for the policy of western states in this area. Although criminological literature on the consolidation of private sector security in domestic crime control has grown rapidly over the past two decades, concomitant developments in international security and human rights have received relatively little attention. This paper traces the recent history of the use of private armies for the protection of western corporate and state interests in the developing world and argues that the latest developments suggest a fundamental and potentially catastrophic shift in the politics of conflict mediation. These developments also raise a series of profound political and legal questions for the ability of the international community to exert control over the commission of state crimes and corporate crimes.
Proactive Approach to Family-Based Crime Prevention: Family Preservation vs. Multi-Component Programs
Family preservation programs seek to avoid out-of-home placements for children suffering from abuse, neglect, inadequate parental supervision, and children with behavior problems. These programs have increased in number in the 1990s, in part due to the success of early family prevention services. However, evaluations of these programs have provided mixed results. Citing recent program evaluation studies, this paper argues that a multi-component approach to family-based crime prevention is more effective than the reactive approach evidenced by the family preservation programs.
Probation Violations and Social Bonds
The current study examines probation violations in a sample of probationers from Michigan. Characteristics of probationers are examined, paying particular attention to those characteristics that indicate the probationer’s ‘stakes in conformity.’ This research draws upon Hirschi’s (1969) social control theory as well as Sampson and Laub’s (1993) extension of this theory to include meaningful adult bonds. Variables such as work, marriage and family, residential stability, education, and involvement in conventional activities are included in the model. Implications for policy and theory will be discussed.
Problematic Passages to Adult Status: The Effect of Early Adulthood on Young Adult Educational and Occupational Attainment
A diverse set of life changes mark the transition from adolescence to young adulthood, which include the completion of school, entry into full-time employment, economic and residential independence, family formation, and intimate cohabitation or marriage. In some instances, youth prematurely enter adult roles before they are considered developmentally and socially mature to for the responsibilities of young adulthood. Adolescent “transition proneness” (Jessor and Jessor, 1977) has also been referred to as a general syndrome of “precocious development” (Newcomb and Bentler, 1988), an indication of “hurried adolescence” (Safron, Schulenberg, and Bachman, in press) and a marker of “pseudoadulthood” (Greenberger and Steinberg, 1986), typified by intensive work hours, teenage pregnancy, school drop-out, residence away from parents, and increased sexual activity, drug and alcohol use, and deviance. Teenage pregnancy is a salient marker of a premature transition to adulthood. In the United States, 10% of all women between the ages of 15-19 (almost one million teenage women) become pregnant each year (Alan Guttmacher Institute, 1994; 1999). Recent cohorts of adolescents face the challenge of early family formation without the support of a partner. According to the National Center of Health Statistics, the percentage of unmarried teenage mothers increased dramatically in recent decades. Twenty-three percent of teenage mothers ages 15-17 were unmarried in 1950, while 84% were not married in 1996 (Ventura, Curtin, and Mathews, 1998). Intensive adolescent employment is an additional marker of a premature passage to adult status. In the United States, 75% of 12th grade students worked during the school year, and over one-third of these adolescents averaged more than twenty hours of work per week (Bachman, Safron, and Schulenberg, 2001). For many youth, early markers of “adulthood” shorten adolescence, indicated by the prevalence of adolescents employed in adult-like patterns, as well as the substantial number of teenage mothers. The problem behaviors associated with an early transition to adulthood, such as the higher than average rates of sexual intercourse, deviance, and substance use, are also recurrent among recent cohorts of U.S. youth: Fifty percent of teenagers reported sexual intercourse by age seventeen (Alan Guttmacher Institute, 1994, Synder and Sickmund, 1999). Furthermore, adolescents under the age of eighteen accounted for 40% of vandalism arrests, 26% of disorderly conducts, 33% of burglaries, 32% of larceny-theft arrests, 31% of motor vehicle thefts, and 53% of all arson arrests (Uniform Crime Reports, 2000). And finally, 17% of sixteen-year-old adolescents used marijuana, 33% smoked cigarettes, and 37% drank alcohol in the last thirty days (Snyder and Sickmund, 1999). In short, a sizable proportion of American youth partake in the “forbidden fruits” of adulthood, such as using alcohol, cigarettes, and sexual activity, as well as making up a disproportionate share of total arrests among all age groups.
Process and Outcome Evaluation of a Rural Domestic Violence Court
In the past decade there has been a growing awareness that domestic violence is a serious social problem. One of the responses to this social problem has been the creation of domestic violence courts. Through funding provided by the National Institute of Justice, the current study examines the effectiveness of a localized domestic violence court in a rural county located in South Carolina. Results from a series of qualitative interviews and courtroom observations are presented. Recidivism rates between defendants tried in the local domestic violence court and those in a historical control group are examined, controlling for both legal and extralegal factors. Time series and geographic analyses of the patterns in domestic violence before and after the implementation of the court are presented. The results from this study help increase the knowledge on the effectiveness of the domestic violence court option and the factors associated with recidivism among prosecuted batterers. The findings from this research also help increase the understanding of the role that localized domestic violence courts situated in rural settings can have in enhancing victim safety.
Process Evaluation of Juvenile Intensive Aftercare Program in Mobile, Alabama
Aftercare has been shown to be a crucial part of juvenile corrections. We will report on a process evaluation of an intensive aftercare program that was implemented in Mobile, Alabama during 2001-2002. The implemented program is based Altschuler’s and Armstrong’s (1994) innovative model of intensive aftercare. This is the first time that this model has been applied to a local juvenile correctional facility and the first time the model has been applied to females. Our paper will report on the ways that the model was adapted to the unique social, political, and economic environment of South Alabama and the challenges confronting the model in this environment. Our work will show how lessons learned from this process evaluation can be applied to the implementation of juvenile aftercare programs in other jurisdictions.
Process Evaluation of the Reentry Court Pilot Program
In an effort to improve offender reintegration into the community, the Office of Justice Programs (OJP) established a Reentry Court Initiative in February 2000. Nine pilot reentry court programs across the nation were identified, receiving technical assistance but no financial support. The pilot programs proposed several core elements of reentry courts including assessment of offender needs and planning for release, active judicial oversight during the period of supervised release, use of supportive services with community involvement, and the use of graduated sanctions and positive judicial reinforcement; however, the programs are diverse in their proposed target populations, partnerships, and court operations. The current study is a process evaluation of the pilot programs, with the primary purpose being to explore the functionality of the nine grantee sites and to assess barriers to implementation. Based on interviews with key stakeholders involved in the programs, analysis of programs materials, and observations of court proceedings, we will present the following findings: 1) the various approaches utilized in establishing reentry courts, 2) the target populations, organization, and operations of the courts, and 3) the barriers encountered and solutions implemented in establishing the courts.
Profiles in Terrorism: A Comparison and Contrast of International and Domestic Terrorist Groups
Following the events of September 11, 2001, the issue of terrorism, both domestic and international, has been a subject of much debate and concern. To achieve a better understanding of the organization and ideals of terrorist groups, a general profile of domestic and international terrorists was prepared using information from previous academic writings and government documents. A comparison and contrast of the two types of terrorist organizations was made to give a better understanding of the motivations and goals of these groups. Based on this analysis, it will be possible to establish a set of guidelines for law enforcement agencies and policy makers.
Profiles of Youths Involved in Jurisdictional Waiver in Maryland
Researchers partnered with the Maryland Department of Juvenile Justice to provide data to the Commission on Juvenile Justice Jurisdiction to make recommendations to the Legislature jurisdiction issues. Representative characteristics were collected on a sample of youths (n=320) from the domains of community, school, peers, family and individual following the work of Hawkins et al. (1999). Each of the five domains has a fluid wall whereby the impact on one domain flows through the walls and impacts each of the other domains. (See Figure 1.) For example, high unemployment rates in the community will negatively impact the number of employed youths, as well as the employment of the caregivers and the family functioning. Equally, the behavior or state of being of the individual will impact the family, school, peers, and community.
Profiling the Profilers: An Exploratory Analysis
This research sets out to determine whether variations between educational and professional backgrounds of those in the business of profiling yield markedly different profiling practices and outcomes. If this proves to be the case, it would give credence to the evolution of a specific research program designed to train and educate those working in the field in the most efficacious methods. Regardless of the label given to a particular type of profiling – crime scene profiling, geographic profiling, psychological profiling – all have in common the goal of making some useful inference about an individual’s personality or behavior. Much of profiling practice rests on the assumption that at least certain offenders possess consistent behavioral traits. This consistency is thought to persist from crime to crime and also affect various noncriminal aspects of their personality and lifestyle, thus making them, at least to some extent, identifiable. There is enough research to suggest that profiling may have sufficient reliability and validity to be useful for some purposes, however, there has been little empirical study of the abilities that mark proficient profilers.
Program Analysis of Esuba: Women Helping Women Turn Abuse Around
This psycho-educational abuse and violence intervention program has been running in Florida’s female prisons since 1990. This study addresses whether the Esuba program has an impact on female offenders who participated and for whom it had the greatest impact. Thyrough cluster analysis, four optimal group solutions for offenders who completed the Rosenberg Scale at two measurement occasions were used. Members of Cluster 3, mixed group of offenders with aggressive offenses, and members of Cluster 4, young, white, less aggressive, female offenders appear to benefit from the program. This presentation will provide an outline of this offender treatment program and review the preliminary outcomes. The results from this initial investigation are promising and provide a foundation for program development and continued investigation.
Program Evaluation as Outcomes Monitoring and Outcomes Management
The paper presents research findings for a three-phased evaluation of a community-based addiction recovery program. The evaluation was conducted during the years 1995 to 2002. The research design included both process and outcomes measurements. Program processes studied included: client assessments, case management, and case follow-up. Program Outcomes measurements were made in three areas of post-treatment adjustment: (1) Evidence of sobriety; (2) evidence of improved change in quality of community adjustment; and (3) evidence of post treatment criminal behavior and reduced conflict with the law. A unique feature of the research design was its use of ongoing research activities to deliberately impact program processes and outcomes introducing the role of outcomes monitoring and outcomes management as a feature of the treatment process. By periodically reporting on clients’ status to treatment staff during the course of treatment, a goal was to have the research evaluation make a positive contribution to the delivery of services and to deliberately effect program outcomes. The evaluation consisted of three phases, each drawing a separate sample of clients and replicating the same research design with one exception in the Phase II evaluation. For Phases I and III stratified random samples of clients were utilized, whereas in Phase II staff selected the sample following a formal criterion. This paper presents data comparing the findings of each phase to determine whether the research activities did in fact motivate managers and staff to increase productivity and effectiveness, and thus better reach their program goal.
Program Retention and an Incarcerated Population: An Assessment of Individual Level Factors and Perceptual Determinants of Program Completion
Attrition rates for in-prison treatment programs typically hover around 50% or higher. Program completion is essential for treatment to be an effective and viable source of recidivism reduction. Factors associated with treatment retention are well understood in regards to community based and out-patient treatment programs. They are less well understood for those programs that exist within prisons. It is quite possible that those variables associated with treatment completion in non-incarceration settings would have differential effects with an incarcerated population. Therefore, those factors associated with treatment retention for non-incarcerated populations (e.g., prior treatment experience, race, age, etc.) are examined for groups of inmates who either completed or dropped out of an in-prison treatment program during the 2 year study period. For those who quit, or were removed for behavioral reasons, factors associated with length of stay in treatment are also explored. Further, semi-structured interviews with groups of program refusers and those who volunteered for treatment are also conducted. Findings, along with suggestions for programmatic changes and more broad policy recommendations are discussed.
Progress Report on assessment of Organized Crime in Central Asia
Central Asia has been known as a region facing problems relating to massive illicit drug trafficking activities from neighboring Afghanistan which is a producer of 75% of illicit opiates in the world. This particular form of transnational organized crime became a basis for development of other forms of organized crime whose scope and intensity has not been comprehensively assessed. With the adoption of the United Nations Convention against Transnational Organized Crime by the General Assembly and its signing by Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan and Uzbekistan, there is a legal basis and operational need to assess the problem of organized crime in Central Asia, so as to identify its patterns and dynamics, and make recommendations on ways and means to enhance the control and prevention of organized crime in the region through better domestic, transborder and international cooperation and technical assistance. On the basis of a United Nations survey on assessment of transnational organized crime, and other information and data, either arranged by ODCCP or/and external, the purpose of the report is to present types of and tendencies in organized crime in Central Asia in the context of internal and external illicit markets and smuggling and trafficking activities of, e.g., drugs, firearms, previous materials, money and human beings, and propose recommendations improving the control and prevention of organized crime in technical assistance terms. A progress report covers initial findings from the above project covering Kazakhstan, the Kyrgyz Republic, Tajikistan and Uzbekistan.
Project Overview
Recent debate in the juvenile justice system has focused on what to do about serious adolescent offenders. This debate is occurring, however, with little data on either a) the patterns of desistance or escalation among serious adolescent offenders or b) the effects of interventions or sanctions on trajectories of offending in late adolescence. While we have considerable knowledge about the factors related to the onset of delinquency, we know surprisingly little about the changes that promote positive transitions to adulthood for adolescents with histories of offending. The present study is an effort to provide information about the pathways out of juvenile justice involvement and the role of development, social context, sanctions, and program involvement in promoting positive adjustment to young adulthood.
Projecting the Life Course for the Marijuana/Blunts Generation
In the 1990s, marijuana become the drug of choice of many youths particularly when smoked in a blunt, an inexpensive cigar in which the tobacco filler is replaced with marijuana. This trend was especially pronounced among youthful arrestees as identified by the ADAM program. This paper ponders the extent to which these youths might likely desist from marijuana use; continue marijuana use throughout their lives; or progress to other illicit drugs. By way of possible precedents, the paper examines NHSDA and ADAM data regarding use over the life course for previous birth cohorts of alcohol, cigarettes, marijuana, cocaine (including crack), heroin, and hallucinogens. Within the general population, use of illicit drugs declines with age while use of alcohol and cigarettes mostly persists. Among arrestees, however, both licit and illicit substance use tends to persist. (Note: The analysis of ADAM data is limited since individuals who cease criminal activity are no longer potential respondents.) Arrestees who came of age since 1990 will likely continue their marijuana use throughout adulthood. To date, these individuals have mostly not progressed to crack, heroin or ecstasy. The conclusion contemplates the extent to which these individuals might be affected by future drug epidemics. This research was supported by grants from the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation Substance Abuse Policy Research Program (037864), the National Institute of Justice (1999-IJ-CX-0020) and the National Institute on Drug Abuse. Points of view and opinions expressed do not necessarily reflect the positions of the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, U.S. Government, National Institute of Justice nor National Development and Research Institutes.
Proliferation of Black Gangs in Los Angeles County
The formation of street gangs in the United States has been increasing at an alarming pace during the past decade. In addition to street gang activity in urban areas, rural and suburban areas have been reporting an increase in gang activity during the past 12 years. The US Department of Justice reported in 1997 that there were approximately 650,000 gang members in the United States. According to the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department, in 1999, there were approximately 150,000 gang members and about 1,000 in Los Angeles County. The number of gang members and gangs has been increasing steadily for the past 20 years in Los Angeles even though there have been major declines in gang crime, specifically homicides. The goal of this research was to examine the growth of black gangs in Los Angeles, specifically the number of gangs, the geographic extent of gangs, and the development of gang territories in other places within the county. Using simple Geographic Information Systems, gang territories were digitized for different time periods, and an analysis of their territories revealed that gangs grew from 18 in 1972 to an astounding 274 in 1996. Additionally, black gang territories spread from occupying 29 square miles in 1972 to 61 square miles in 1996. [Key words: gangs, Los Angeles, territory.]
Promising Practices Guide: Batterer Prevention and Intervention Programs
The Division of Violence Prevention at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) and RTI are conducting an evidence-based review of batterer intervention and prevention programs. The purpose of this review is to examine what is known about batterer intervention and prevention programs and to make recommendations on promising and effective programs. This examination is being conducted through a systematic review of current results of evaluated and unevaluated batterer prevention and intervention programs. The study will follow the methodology developed by the Task Force on Community Preventive Services for the Guide to Community Preventive Services: Systematic Reviews and Evidence-Based Recommendations (the Guide). Using this evidence-based approach to identify and recommend effective interventions allows the researchers to reduce errors in how information is collected and interpreted, identify important gaps in current knowledge, and enhance the ability to assess whether recommendations are valid. The results will be used to develop a Promising Practices Guide as well as an Executive Summary. This presentation will provide an overview of the project, a description of the methodology being used to conduct the evidence-based review, and a discussion of preliminary findings.
Propensity-Induced, Life-Style Dependent and Situationally Limited Adolescent Offenders: Exploring the Interaction Effects Between Individual Risk, Life-Style Risk and Neighbourhood Risk
The staring point for this paper is the familiar finding from longitudinal criminological research of two main groups of offenders (for example, as labelled by Moffitt; life-course persiters and adolescent-limited offenders). The study (which is cross-sectional) focuses on exploring the relationship between individual-risk protective characteristics, life-style risk and neighbourhood risk in adolescence. The main aim is to study the potential interaction between individual characteristics and social contexts (as represented by life-style and neighbourhoods). The data used are from a survey of about 2000 adolescents in the city of Peterborough in the United Kingdom. The findings show a strong interaction effect between individual risk-protective characteristics and life-style risk in explaining adolescent offending. The form of the interaction is analysed and three different groups of adolescent offenders are suggested: propensity-induced, life-style dependent and situationally-limited offenders. The key argument of the paper is that life-style as a risk factor for offending operates differently for different groups of adolescents classified by their risk-protective characteristics. Implications for theory and prevention are discussed.
Proposition 36: History and Preliminary Research Findings of California’s Mandated Drug Treatment Legislation in San Diego County
The State of California recently passed mandated drug treatment legislation, generally known as “Proposition 36.” Effective July 1, 2001, persons convicted for new non-violent drug offenses and existing County probationers and State parolees who commit offenses contained within the statute are sentenced to probation and referred to substance abuse treatment in lieu of incarceration. Although Prop 36 was promoted to the voting public as a treatment program for first time offenders, analyses of the first six-month of data from San Diego County suggest that this not the population enrolled in the new program. Instead, offenders that have lengthy drug and criminal arrest histories make up the bulk of the population, and many are being diverted from prison sentences. Most participants require far more drug treatment than was originally planned for; and although the average length of self-reported drug use is 11 years, 43% reported never having received any prior drug treatment. Initial data also suggest the need for comprehensive ancillary services in addition to treatment to help make this population more likely to succeed. Most are unemployed, have very low levels of education, and many are homeless and mentally ill. The policy implications given this treatment population are discussed.
Prosecuting Juveniles as Adults in New York State: A Contextual Analysis
New York’s Juvenile Offender (JO) Act of 1978 provides for the prosecution of juveniles ages 13-15 as adults for certain violent crimes and for the removal to family court of juveniles whose acts do not warrant criminal prosecution. A number of studies have been conducted examining the effects of the JO Act on conviction, incarceration, and recidivism rates, as well as its deterrent effect. The research discussed in this paper differs from past studies in three ways. First, it involves a longitudinal-comparative analysis which examines reasons for jurisdictional and temporal disparities in the prosecution of JO offenders over a ten-year period in each of New York City’s four most populous counties. Collectively, these four counties account for approximately 85 percent of JO arrests statewide. Second, conviction and incarceration rates for JO offenders are contrasted with those for youth ages16-21 arrested for comparable offenses in these same jurisdictions. Third, it considers whether the availability of Youthful Offender (YO) status in the adult court system for youth ages 14-18 has influenced the felony prosecution of juveniles as adults. With YO status comes sanctions that are less severe than those imposed on adults – a type of “youth discount.”
Prosecutorial Decision-Making in Maryland: A Study of the Specific Factors Which Influence Prosecutors
One of the most important yet neglected aspects in the field of criminal justice is prosecutorial decision making – namely, what factors contribute to a prosecutor’s decision to either proceed with trial, plead, or forego prosecution altogether. Using Maryland prosecutors as a sample, surveys are analyzed to determine the weight given to specific factors which may enter into such decisions. It is hoped that this study will serve as a springboard for further research.
Prosecutorial Discretion: Organizational, Inter-Organizational and Extra-Organizational Constraints
To explain persistent disparities in punishment by race and social class, researchers have focused on prosecutorial discretion. Such research exaggerates the systemic impact of prosecutorial discretion by downplaying organizational, inter-organizational, and socio-political factors that strongly circumscribe the decision-making prosecutors. This paper examines the organization, inter-organizational, and socio-political constraints on proseutorial discretion. After a brief history of the public prosecutor, an explication of Weber’s concept of social action and consdquent notion of legal formalism is provided as the foundation of the current legal system in the United States. The goals and basic tenets of bureaucracy are described before a reiew of the organizational context of the criminal justice system. The topics of prosecutorial discretion and the institutional factors that constrain discretion in the criminal justice system is then explored. After a case study review, the paper summarizes the institutionalization of these constraints and the permanence of impact on the decision-making prosecutors. We conclude that there are several substantial organizational, inter-organizational and socio-political constraints that significantly impact, if not dictate, the actions of the prosecutor in the criminal justice system.
Prosecutorial Discretion and Real Offense Sentencing Under the Federal Sentencing Guidelines: An Analysis of Relevant Conduct
The adoption of the Sentencing Reform Act of 1984 and the promulgation of the federal sentencing guidelines in 1987 dramatically altered the federal sentencing process. The primary objective of the guidelines is to prescribe like sentences for like defendants convicted of the same offense. The federal sentencing guidelines are based on real offense sentencing, which links “relevant conduct” or actual offense behavior to the sentencing process. In essence, the sentencing guidelines were adopted to reduce judicial discretion and unwarranted sentence disparity. Likewise, the real offense sentencing system, as opposed to the charge offense system, was adopted to reduce prosecutorial discretion and prevent circumvention of the guidelines through charging and plea bargaining decisions. Current research suggests, however, that discretion has shifted from the judge to the prosecutor. More importantly, although the federal sentencing guidelines narrowed the discretionary powers of sentencing judges, they did not restrict prosecutorial discretion. As a result, the discretion of the prosecutor combined with the effects of real offense sentencing has the potential to produce disparity. To date, there is no empirical research that investigates the effect of prosecutorial decisions and relevant conduct on sentence outcomes; therefore this study represents a first attempt to address this issue. This study analyzes the indictment stage where the charging decisions by the federal prosecutor in conjunction with relevant conduct are first conceived. This research reveals that the legal variable – the number of counts within an indictment – does influence the length of sentence, the magnitude of the discount for downward departures, and the ratio of the difference between the presumptive sentence and the sentence discount. In contrast, the number of counts within an indictment has no effect on the likelihood of who receives either a downward departure or a substantial assistance departure. Thus, the number of counts within an indictment has an indirect effect on sentence severity through its effect on relevant conduct and real offense sentencing.
Providers and Philosophies in Batterer Intervention: A Review of Changing Paradigms
Professionals who deal with domestic violence have increasingly recognized the need to assist the offender as well as the victim. Over the past few decades, they have developed batterer intervention programs to address these needs. This paper presents a comprehensive review of the various paradigms employed in batterer intervention programs. The philosophy of the initial feminist programs is compared and contrasted with other current trends in batterer intervention. Special attention is paid to the emerging role of faith-based counseling in dealing with domestic violence. The policy implications of an increase in faith-based service providers are carefully examined.
Psychometric Characteristics and Short-Term Stability of the PCL:YV and Its Relation to the Youth Psychopathic Inventory
Most measures of “juvenile psychopathy” are direct downward extensions of adult measures of this disorder. Despite concerns about the developmental appropriateness of measures of juvenile psychopathy, a growing body of literature indicates that the measures are moderately predictive of adolescents’ involvement in institutional and community violence. Based on a sample of 100 juvenile offenders, we present preliminary data on the psychometric characteristics and short-term stability of the leading measure of juvenile psychopathy (the Psychopathy Checklist: Youth Version) and a promising self-report measure of this construct (the Youth Psychopathic Inventory). We also present data on the extent to which these measures assess similar constructs. We discuss the implications of this work for research and practice, focusing on the contexts in which it is (and is not) appropriate to use these measures to inform decision-making about adolescent offenders.
Public and Private Corrections: A Comparison of Civil Rights Violations
There exists a tremendous gap in the literature about how public and private prisons differ (if any) in terms of facility conditions, the types of activities that their inmates engage in, or the types and frequencies of lawsuits that emanate from each. The purpose of the present study is to determine if differences exist between public and private prisons with specific regard to the nature and frequency of civil rights litigation. This analysis also helps identify characteristics and qualities of private sector operations by using public facility litigation as a comparison group. Furthermore, this study helps identify the legal issues involved in privatization, the various forms of legal liability for which private correctional operators are at greatest risk, as well as identifying contractual arrangements that government may implement to ensure that the rights of its inmates are protected. By closely considering correctional privatization as well as the issues related to the quality of confinement and the role that profit plays within this process, a determination can be made about the current status of punishment and correctional ideology.
Public Confidence iun the Administration of the Death Penalty in Texas: An Assessment of Public Attitudes and the Need for Evaluation
Recent media and political attention has raised public awareness of the extant issues surrounding the death penalty. Questions regarding innocence, fair trials, and equitable access to counsel and the appeals process are ubiquitous in the news media’s reporting on death penalty cases. The degree to which such factors have impacted public confidence in the administration of the death penalty is unknown. As part of both the 2000 and 2001-2002 Texas Crime Poll, questions ascertaining confidence in the administration of the death penalty and support for a moratorium and associated evaluation of the death penalty process were asked. Specifically, confidence in regard to adequacy of counsel, access to appeals, racial and socioeconomic disparity, and protection of the innocent was gauged. Furthermore, support for a moratorium in light of these factors was examined. Descriptive analyses of public opinion on these matters as well as more in-depth analyses of the factors related to public support of and confidence in the death penalty are presented. Finally, the implications of these findings in regard to the future of the death penalty as a criminal sanction and a potential moratorium and evaluation of the administration of the death penalty are discussed.
Public Knowledge of Executions: Results of a National Survey
The large number of executions for criminal offenses imposed in recent years could only deter prospective offenders if they knew of the executions. This paper reports the results of a national mail survey of the American public that assessed knowledge about the frequency and recency of executions nationally and by respondents’ state of residence. The results of this survey reveal that the public underestimates the actual frequency of executions. The implications for a policy of deterrence through executions are presented.
Public Opinion of Police: Determinants of Citizen Satisfaction of Police Services
Public opinion of criminal justice systems has been found to be essential for the proper functioning of police departments. Research has revealed that public opinion has a large influence on police operations and policies. This study explored determinants of satisfaction with a police department’s overall presentation and effectiveness. In a study of 235 residents of a small northeastern city in the United States, we examined minority status, victimization, suspect status, age, sex, and perceptions of safety in relation to satisfaction with the police. Our analyses revealed that minorities, victims of property crime, prior suspects, younger individuals, men, and individuals who did not feel safe were less satisfied with the police. The study concludes that police departments must work harder at gaining public trust and confidence among minority groups and as well as work toward increasing public feelings of safety in order to ensure proper support of departmental policies and programs.
Public Opinion on Liberty as a Core American Value: Crime Control Versus Due Process
A public opinion survey of citizen attitudes toward crime control and due process issues was conducted in the Southeastern United States during the fall of 2000. Responses indicate that citizens pay lip service to liberty in the abstract, but are willing to sacrifice liberty when it comes to concrete instances of social control. A crime control/due process index was constructed for use in subsequent analyses.
Public Opinions About the Police: Experiences From Eastern and Western Europe
This paper examines public views about the police in the countries in transition and compares them with the views about the police in Western democracies. Using the data from the International Crime Victimization Survey, the paper analyzes citizens’ satisfaction with the police in general and satisfaction with the way the police handle reported cases. The results suggest that the attitudes about the police in the European countries in transition (still) differ from those held by the respondents from the European democracies. The differences in the attitudes do not extend uniformly to all crimes; they are more pronounced for property crimes than for sexual crimes or violent crimes.
Public Perceptions of Fair Punishment for Hate Crimes
Hate crime has emerged over the past fifteen years as a distinct category within criminal law. Hate crime laws “recriminalize or enhance the punishment of an ordinary crime when the criminal’s motive manifests a legislatively designated prejudice like racism or anti-Semitism” (Jacobs and Potter 1998: 6). The introduction of harsher penalties for crimes motivated by hate has been primarily a result of strong lobbying by interest groups rather than a result of public demand that crimes motivated by hate should be treated differently than the same crimes without such motivation (Jenness 1999; Jacobs and Potter 1998). While national polls conducted in recent years have uncovered general support for hate crime laws, there is no evidence demonstrating that this support translates into support for the actual sentence enhancements, mandatory minimums, and other tools mandated under such laws. In the absence of such evidence, there is no way to know whether public support for hate crime legislation is real or symbolic. Criminologists have studied public perceptions of fair sentencing by asking people to make sentencing decisions, then assessing the impact of respondent, offender, and offense characteristics on severity of punishment. Drawing from established methodologies in this area, we use a nationally representative sample of American adults to answer the questions of whether the public supports harsher penalties for hate crimes generally, whether support for such penalties varies by respondent characteristics, and whether there is more support for punishing hate crimes against certain minority groups than others. In doing so, we hope to ascertain whether attitudes reflected in polling data translate into actual sentencing decisions. In our analyses, we compare individual responses regarding appropriate sentences for two offenders committing identical crimes in which the only difference is that one was described as being motivated by one of three kinds of prejudice (race, religion, or sexual orientation), while no specific motivation is provided for the other. Three findings stand out, and suggest that public support for enhanced penalties for hate crimes is limited. First, while respondents generally ask for slightly more severe penalties for the offenses motivated by hatred, the additional amount is not statistically significant, and is certainly not as much as most hate crime laws mandate (See Table 1). Second, this finding does not hold true across all respondent groups (See Tables 2 and 3). Specifically, significant differences between sentences for non-hate and hate crimes arise within several groups of respondents who are generally found to be more lenient in sentencing, such as women, respondents at both the youngest and oldest ends of the age spectrum, and respondents with liberal attitudes. Members of these groups ask for sentences for non-hate crimes that are significantly shorter than the sample mean, while requesting sentences for hate crimes that are equal to or larger than the sample mean. Thus, the lenience these groups generally afford to offenders does not carry over to those committing crimes motivated by hatred. Finally, respondents feel that some kinds of prejudice are more deserving of punishment than others (Table 4). Specifically, hate crimes against Jews and blacks incur significantly more severe penalties than hate crimes against homosexuals; indeed, when hate crimes against homosexual victims are removed from the hate crime category, significant differences arise between non-hate and hate crimes.
Public Services and the Willingness to Enact Control: Expanding Our Understanding of Neighborhood Crime Rates
Though recent conceptualizations of social disorganization theory have begun to consider the role of the willingness to enact control (see Sampon et al., 1997), since its inception the emphasis in social disorganization has been on the variations that exist in neighborhoods’ ability to control what goes on in the neighborhood (see for example, Shaw and McKay, 1942; Shaw et al., 1929; Bursik and Grasmick, 1993). As attention increases on the role of public control in understanding neighborhood rates of crime, the need to understand the willingness to enact public control becomes increasingly important. The purpose of the research presented in this paper is to develop a model of social disorganization that explores two neglected areas in social disorganization research – neighborhood variation in the willingness to enact public control, and the causes of neighborhood variations in the willingness to enact public control. Data from the Project on Policing Neighborhoods (POPN) are used to test the model
Public Support for Correctional Rehabilitation: Change or Consistency?
For three decades, “get tough” thinking has shaped American correctional policy. One common justification for this sustained effort to increase the punishment of offenders is that these policies reflect “what the public wants.” It is often assumed that public attitudes have shifted in a decidedly punitive direction, so much so that support for rehabilitation is virtually non-existent. Based on a 2001 national survey of 327 respondents, we question this commonly held view. Although members of the public endorse punishment goals, they also express high support for rehabilitation. Thus, citizens are more likely to embrace rehabilitation as a goal of prisons than either “punish” or “protect society.” Support for juvenile rehabilitation and for early intervention programs is especially high. These results suggest that the public wants the correctional system both to punish and rehabilitate offenders. Further, the consistency of support for rehabilitation over time indicates that rehabilitation is a core cultural belief that is unlikely to dissipate in the time ahead.
Public Support for Faith-Based Correctional Programs: Should Sacred Places Serve Civic Purposes?
In light of recent legislation and the enthusiastic support of President Bush, there is a growing call to fund “faith-based” social service programs, including those focused on juvenile and adult offenders. These programs are controversial because they seek to reconfigure the line separating church and state. Based on a national 2001 survey of 327 respondents, we assessed public support for this policy initiative. The major findings were: 1) the respondents were divided evenly on whether the government should fund faith-based correctional programs; 2) a clear majority opposed having a religious content to the programs; 3) most opposed discrimination on religious grounds in the hiring of program staff; 4) a clear majority favored funding all religious groups as opposed to only “Christian churches”; and 5) the respondents did not view faith-based programs as more, or less, effective than traditional correctional rehabilitation programs. The study also explored now religious beliefs and other social factors affected support for faith-based interventions.
Punishing the Punished: A Critical Analysis of the 21st Century Child-Saving Movement
Recently, the British Columbia government passed legislation that provides social control agencies with the power to remove “children at risk” and place them in detention for 72 hours. Additionally, under provisions of the Secure Care Custody Act, provincial officials in BC now have the power to place youth in custody for 30 days, with possible 30-day extensions following an initial disposition. According to authorities, this legislation is intended to protect high-risk youth who are involved in self-destructive behaviours. Although the motivations of British Columbia legislators may appear to have been humanitarian, a critical analysis of the Act and the rhetoric preceding its initial drafting demonstrates that the law’s driving force was less the “saving of children” than it was the actualization of changing notions of “childhood,” along with shifting ideologies surrounding the role in children’s lives of social institutions such as the family and the school. Due to the provincial government’s failure to effectively protect at-risk children and youth, there has been an increased presence of street youth involved in self-destructive conduct. As in the late-nineteenth century, under the guise of “child-saving,” the state response to a perceived crisis in childhood has been to enact legislation that effectively ‘punishes the punished.’
Punishing the Victim or Practicing Tough Love: Exploring Police Officer Justifications for Using Dual Arrest in Domestic Violence Cases
Mandatory arrest policies may be resulting in a backlash of victim arrests. Reports of dual arrest vary from jurisdiction, ranging from a low of 8.7% (Jones & Belknap, 1999) to 33% (Martin, 1997). This paper examines the rationales employed by police to justify dual arrests. Content analyses of the thought protocols of experienced police officers (n = 24) who reported that they would arrest both parties was undertaken. Three themes emerged from this analysis. Officers justified arrest of both parties citing concern for civil liability, the desire to force both parties to obtain counseling for their relationship, and their deference to the court as the authority that is most qualified to settle the dispute and to determine responsibility.
Punishment and the Postmodern
This paper will attempt to analyze the changing forms, presentations and discourses of punishment in the wake of Sept. 11. Special attention will be paid to changes in news reporting and local political rhetoric.
Punishment as Paperwork: White-Collar Offenders Under Community Supervision
Little is known about how white-collar offenders react to community supervision. Discussions of community supervision as a form of sanction for white-collar offenders are usually presented as an example of the lenient treatment afforded to these privileged offenders. Research on the relationship between treatment and class position has found that the shared class and cultural background among criminal justice practitioners and white-collar probationers is a source of empathy and affects the supervision given to these offenders. However, no research has investigated the experiences of the offenders to examine how supervision affects their lives. Using data from in-depth interviews with 35 white-collar offenders the impact and affect of community supervision is presented. The reactions of the offenders are used to discuss how changes in the broader filed of corrections have influenced the traditional implementation of community supervision. The paper concludes with an examination of the utility of community corrections for white-collar offenders.
‘Punishment or Justice’: The Notion of ‘Community’ and the National Probation Service of England and Wales
This paper looks at some of the issues inherent in the move towards a national, unified Probation Service in England and Wales and on-going debates surrounding the use of community penalties. It examines the development of community punishment and more recent aspirations towards the delivery of community justice and attempts to unpick how notions of ‘community’, ‘justice’, and ‘punishment’ relate to contemporary probation practice. In this respect it is argued that the pressures facing the Probation Service have to be understood against a background of prevailing policy debates regarding the nature of its practice, how it should be organised, and what is its place within the criminal justice system. Critical themes in these debates have been the continued interest in the effective central direction of the Probation Service and the maintenance of an unashamedly populist punitive rhetoric on the part of Home Office Ministers. How far then can the National Probation Service meaningfully engage with a notion of community justice operating in neighbourhoods and based upon a decentralising impetus in terms of authority and accountability?
Punitive Attitudes: The Relative Contributions of Crime Salience and Economic Insecurity
In The Culture of Control: Crime and Social Order in Contemporary Society, David Garland suggests that recent increases in support for punitive policies among the middle-class have been due both to an increase in the salience of crime and individual insecurities created by the social and economic transformations characteristic of “late modernity.” Personal experience and political rhetoric have encouraged the middle-class to perceive that they are being victimized by the lower-classes both criminally and in terms of government policies intended to assist the “undeserving poor.” As a result, it is suggested that the middle-classes have become more supportive of punitive policies directed toward the “undeserving poor,” including criminals. Using OLS regression, the present study examines the relative contribution of both crime salient factors (i.e., victimization experiences, fear of crime, and general concerns about crime) and individual economic insecurity in the formation of punitive attitudes toward criminals, welfare recipients, and immigrants among 2,250 Florida residents. In addition, we also test for the presence of an interaction effect between crime salience measures and economic insecurity on individual punitiveness.
Punitivity in Germany
This paper will present data regarding the same two groups of felons (those who are sentenced to prison and those who are sentenced to community programs). The distinctive characteristics of both groups will be closely examined, and their differences with one another will be noted and controlled in computing a ratio of punitivity for Germany, while controlling for gender, previous offending, and age.
Punitivity in Japan
This paper will present data regarding the same two groups of felons (those who aresentenced to prison and those who are sentenced to community programs) forJapan. The distinctive characteristics of both groups will be closely examined,and their differences with one another will be noted and controlled incomputing a ratio of punitivity for Japan.
Punitivity in the United States
Punitivity is best measured by looking at the tendency to imprison those who are eligible- felons. A ratio will be computed for two groups of felons – those who have been imprisoned for their crime, and those who have been sentenced to community programs (probation, drug courts,treatment programs). Since both groups reflect different slices of the felon population – only those who have been convicted of murder, armed robbery, burglary, or drug offenses in state courts will be included in each group. Four states – Texas, California, Minnesota, and Massachusetts – will be examined,and each type of felon will be compared with the other three types in each state. Data on gender, total offending, and the severity of the instant offense will be used insofar as possible. This paper will present evidence drawn fromthe most comprehensive, recent edition of Maguire & Pastore’s SOURCEBOOK.
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Quality of Life Policing in New York City: A Partial Evaluation based on Arrestee Self-Report and Official Data
As partial evaluation of New York City’s quality-of-life [QOL] policing initiatives, this presentation examines data from 892 New York City arrestees that completed an ADAM-Policing addendum in 1999. Three key sets of findings are highlighted. Regarding efficacy, arrestees reported an awareness of the QOL initiatives; many reported having stopped or reduced their involvement; most reducers cited a police presence (and not personal contact with the criminal justice system) as the reason. Apparently, QOL initiatives had an even broader general deterrent than specific deterrent effect. Regarding potential net widening, a comparison of arrestees for QOL and serious offenses found them to have similar prior records, race/ethnicity, and other characteristics. This suggests that New York City’s QOL initiatives had not widened the criminal justice system’s net (at least for arrests in late 1999); rather, QOL enforcement mostly provided an additional intervention into long-term, varied criminal careers. Regarding methodology, a validity analysis identified substantial variation in disclosure rates across persons and questions. These findings suggest when accurate self-reports may be obtained to questions about behaviors that are less easily verified.
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Race, Child Protection, and Criminal Involvement
Professionals familiar with the criminal justice system can provide abundant anecdotal evidence that a very large proportion of inmates were wards of the child welfare system during their childhood years. Most observers also beleive that members of disadvantaged racial and ethnic minorities are more likely to have been in care. Little empirical evidence is available, however. to show how experiences in non-family care contribute to later criminal activity. Using structured interviews we examine the experience of 50 Aboriginal inmates and 50 White inmnates with respect to the child protection system. Control theory provides a conceptual framework for the research. The results reveal dramatic differences in the extent and quality of care between the two groups,. We argue that differential experiences in care provide a partical explanation for the overrepresentation fo aBoriginal persons in the Canadian correctional system.
Race, Region, and Death Sentencing in Illinois, 1988-1997
This paper summarizes a research project (completed March 2002) conducted for the Office of Governor George Ryan in Illinois and the Commission on Capital Punishment he appointed to study the state’s death penalty. Confidential data on Illinois homicides were obtained for this analysis. Included are data from Illinois Department of Corrections on all inmates convicted of first-degree murder, 1/1/88 through 12/31/97 (N=5,310). Victim data were obtained from various state sources, the Chicago Homicide Data File, and the Supplemental Homicide Reports. Some two dozen measures of death penalty eligibility and aggravating factors were used, as well as measures of victim’s and defendant’s race and the county of conviction. The role of political and psychological factors in death penalty decisions will be discussed. The Office of the Governor and the Governor’s Commission on Capital Punishment will release our report within the next few weeks; meanwhile, the results are embargoed.
Race, Single-Mother Households, and Delinquency: A Further Test of Power-Control Theory
Power-control theory attempts to explain the gender gap in delinquency by linking work-place authority to parental socialization and supervision of sons and daughters in the home. While research has produced some support for power-control theory, questions remain concerning the validity of the perspective to explain the gender gap in delinquency among African Americans and youth that reside in single-parent households. Data from Add Health is used to determine if power-control theory is race-specific and applicable to single-parent homes. The implications of the findings for power-control theory will be discussed.
Race and Legal Handgun Concealment in Southeast Louisiana: A Spatial Examination
This study focuses on actions taken by the citizenry after the passage of the 1996 Shall-Issue Act in Louisiana. Much attention is particularly given to the geographic distribution of concealed handgun permits throughout southeast Louisiana, an area that is well known for its cultural and racial diversity. The research effort we present here is unique, as it pertains to the attempt to legitimize the carrying of firearms in a historical “hot bed of racial tension” (Inverarity 1969). We also view legal gun concealment as a unique issue to that of illegal gun ownership that has been the main focus of much previous firearms research. Since the decision to legalize concealed weapons in Louisiana in 1996, approximately 11,000 people have applied for a permit to carry firearms. Of these only 120 had been denied by the spring of 1999. We first report the geographic prevalence of licensed handgun permits and discuss the characteristics of those regions with a higher percentage of concealed weapon permitees. Geographic patterns among legal gun concealers in Southeast Louisiana are of particular interest because these patterns indicate that the distribution of legal handgun concealment follows a pattern of hypersegregation. As we report, the highest rates of handgun concealment licenses are in “white-flight” areas surrounding New Orleans. In sum, there is much statistical evidence to support the argument that in southeastern Louisiana, legal handgun concealment is more a function of political views on race than a function of rational fear of victimization.
Race and Sex Differences in the Impact of Youth Employment on Problem Behavior
It has become common knowledge that employment during adolescence is positively associated with a variety of delinquent and problem behaviors. What is not so common knowledge is the reason for this positive association. One possibility is that youth employment causes problem behavior, while a second (but not necessarily mutually exclusive) possibility is that the positive association is a spurious consequence of self-selection. Prior research in this tradition has not adequately dealt with the issue of selection effects, and thus runs the risk of mistaking a selection effect for a causal effect. This paper uses three waves of data from the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth 1997 to examine in greater detail the association between adolescent employment and problem behavior. Our analysis deals directly with self-selection by introducing controls for observed and unobserved heterogeneity through the use of a random effect probit model. This paper builds on prior research by estimating all models separately by race and sex, modeling two distinct types of employment (freelance and employer work), and accounting for seasonal variation in employment (school-year vs. summer work). Preliminary results indicate that school-year employment (particularly intensive school-year employment) is unrelated to problem behavior net of controls for observed and unobserved heterogeneity, contrary to findings from prior research. Additionally, both summer work and freelance work are associated with increases in problem behavior, but with differing sex-race interactions.
Race and Social Class Differences in Perceptions and Use of the Police in Chicago
The University of Illinois-Chicago study examines how residents’ race, class, gender, age, personal experiences, and neighborhood characteristics affect their attitudinal and behavioral responses to the police. This paper will provide an overview of this NIJ-funded project and report specific findings from a second wave of telephone interviews with Chicago residents. New dimensions of public attitudes toward the police are being developed and tested.
Race Based Policing and DePolicing: A Research Note on the Potential for Reactivity
Race based policing, sometimes called racial profiling is arguably, one of the most important issues facing American policing today. In response to internal, but more likely external demands, many police departments are engaged in data collection programs designed to determine the potential for race based policing within their routine enforcement practices. More often than not these data gathering techniques require police officers to either report additional information within an existing reporting procedure or within a specifically designed reporting mechanism. Among policing administrators and scholars there is some concern that police officers, because of their fear of repercussions should the results reveal a racially disparate pattern, will either fail to report pertinent information, report false information, or simply choose not to conduct certain routine stops or other enforcement options. This has the potential of affecting police services, especially in minority communities. The purpose of this article is to determine the effect of officer generated race based policing data gathering strategies on routine enforcement patterns and levels. A preliminary analysis reveals a statistically significant reduction in the number of citations written in departments following the initiation of officer generated data gathering strategies.
Race/Ethnicity and Victim-Offender Relationships in Miami Aggravated Assaults
This paper examines victim/offender relationships in aggravated assaults, with particular attention focused on racial/ethnic differences in types of relationships. Research has shown that there are fundamental differences between stranger and nonstranger homicides that call for the disaggregation of homicide data. However, research on victim and offender relationships for assaults is limited, often due to data limitations, but this is an important issue to examine. To do so we use a sample of aggravated assault cases from Miami, FL for 1996 and 1997, and explore whether there are racial/ethnic differences (White, Black and Latino) in victim-offender relationships, net of the effects of relevant variables (e.g., whether multiple victims). Logistic regression is used to examine the following outcomes: stranger vs. non-stranger, intimate/family vs. other, acquaintance vs. other, and unknown relationship vs. known relationship. The results indicate that there are racial/ethnic differences among both victims and offenders in the relationships. Further, other characteristics of the assaults, such as gun use, also vary by victim-offender relationship.
Race-ing to Control Space?: Community/Police Relations in a Latino/a Barrio
Law enforcement is charged with the important task of maintaining social control in fair and equitable ways. However, communities of color are more likely to report problems with policing than are white communities, suggesting possible racial discrimination. The major problem with the extant literature is that it has focused largely on blacks. Because of the narrow focus of the existing research, little is known about policing in impoverished Latino/a communities. The purpose of this research is to explore the racialized, classed and gendered ways in which space in a Chicano/a community is controlled. This research project is set in a predominantly Mexicano/a and Chicano/a communited located in the Phoenix Metropolitan area. This site has been chosen because it reflects the diversity of Latinos/as in terms of immigration status and income and because the media have depicted this area as a “hot spot” for crime. To assess how space is controlled in the barrio, a qualitative research approach is utilized. Research tools include 100 observation hours of police work during ride-alongs and 17 semi-structured interviews with officers/administrators in a precinct in the Phoenix Metropolitan area. Fifty-five semi-structured interviews have been conducted with Spanish speaking and bilingual residents, including high school students. Interviews were also conducted with high school teachers and security personnel. Research findings reveal that the type of space–public or private–helps explain how space is controlled in racialized, classed and gendered ways. The police have implemented new policies and made organizational changes that have helped improve community-police relations in private space (i.e., residents’ homes). However, interactions with police officers in public space (i.e., vehicle stop) increase the perception of racial discrimination from the perspective of the community. in interactions in public space there is an increased perceived threat to the officer. Moreover, in an economically disenfranchised barrio, one’s ethnicity, gender, age, assumed legal status in the U.S. help inform the perceived threat, especially in public spaces. As a consequence, officers rely on racial/ethnic stereotypes causing them to use a harsher form of policing to control space in Latino/a communities.
Race-Specific Gender Inequality and Female Homicide Rates in U.S. Cities
According to feminist perspectives, both gender inequality and gender equality could increase female homicide victimization rates, the former increasing the structural disadvantage of women, and the latter representing a “backlash” effect. Considering the significant changes in women’s absolute status and their status relative to men over the past several decades, the present study examines the impact of gender inequality, measured along economic, educational, and occupational dimensions, on homicide rates using city-level data for 1980, 1990, and 2000. In addition, the data are disaggregated by race to explore whether the results differ for White and Black women.
Racial and Ethnic Differences in Pretrial Release Decisions and Outcomes: A Comparison of Hispanic, Black, and White Felony Arrestees
The relationship between race and sentencing remains an issue at the forefront of research on inequality and stratification in the criminal justice system. But, the focus on race and sentencing brings to light two notable gaps in our knowledge about the sanctioning of criminal defendants. First, researchers have been slow to investigate whether Hispanics are treated differently than whites and blacks in the criminal courts, despite the dramatic increase in the Hispanic population in the United States. Second, while a substantial amount of research has investigated the sentencing stage, considerably less research has examined the effects of race and ethnicity at earlier stages of the criminal case process. Given the substantial discretion available to decision makers at earlier stages and the considerable attrition that occurs as cases move through the criminal case process, it is necessary to more closely examine earlier stages of the process. Using felony defendant data collected by the State Court Processing Statistics (SCPS) program of the Bureau of Justice Statistics, the focus of the present study is on Hispanic, black, and white differences in pretrial release decisions and outcomes in large urban courts.
Racial Disparities in Substance Use Trajectories Among Adolescents and Young Adults: The Role of Neighborhood Context
Large racial and ethnic disparities exist in substance use prevalence in the U.S. The reasons for these disparities are not well understood, however, particularly given the fact that they operate in a direction opposite that suggested by most theories of disadvantage (most theories of disadvantage predict higher rates of problem behavior and delinquency among minority and disadvantaged youth). In this paper we investigate the possibility that differences in the social environments of youth_specifically their neighborhoods of residence_may play a role in the observed disparities in substance use. Using data from 2,100 adolescent subjects age 12-21 living in 80 neighborhoods of Chicago included in the Project on Human Development in Chicago Neighborhoods (PHDCN), we estimate race-specific population-average age-prevalence curves for alcohol and marijuana use. We then examine the extent to which race/ethnic disparities in these curves are reduced when we explicitly account for neighborhood residence in the models. We find that racial disparities in alcohol use are reduced by roughly 30% when we account for neighborhood residence. We observe no significant racial/ethnic disparities in marijuana use, a fact that remains after controlling for neighborhood contexts as well. We conclude that neighborhood context may influence adolescent substance use patterns.
Racial Disparity in Felony Sentencing Re-Contextualizing a Community Concern as a Research Problem
In 1999, Reverend Al Sharpton came to Canton Ohio to investigate allegations that the police were involved in racial profiling, and that the Stark County Courts exhibited discriminatory sentencing practices. Meetings ensued between African American leaders in the community, representatives of the Stark County Court of Common Pleas, and Kent State University. These meetings resulted in the current study in which legal and extra-legal factors were used to evaluate the differences in sentencing patterns between all felony offenders (over 6000 charges) from 1999-2001. Specific predictors (in addition to the primary focus of race), limitations, and findings are discussed.
Racial Profiling: a Comparison of Different Measures
Heightened concern over racial profiling has resulted in a significant amount of attention to the issue on the part of both scholars and practitioners. However, little empirical research has been conducted on the nature and extent of this phenomenon. Those studies which have been done suffer from methodological problems. Of particular interest in this study are the problems surrounding the operationalization of the concept of racial profiling. We examine a variety of different methods of quantifying racial profiling using data from a midwestern city. The advantages and disadvantages of using the different indicators to measures the existence and extent of racial profiling are discussed.
Racial Profiling: An Overview of Both Criminological Research and Legal Appellate Case Analysis of the Issue
This paper will address our current state of understanding relative to the controversial issue of racial profiling. A literature review of social science research pertaining to the question will be undertaken. Additionally, a thorough assessment of appellate cases that have reviewed the matter will be summarized and assessed. This paper will address our current state of understanding relative to the controversial issue of racial profiling. A literature review of social science research pertaining to the question will be undertaken. Additionally, a thorough assessment of appellate cases that have reviewed the matter will be summarized and assessed. This paper will address our current state of understanding relative to the controversial issue of racial profiling. A literature review of social science research pertaining to the question will be undertaken. Additionally, a thorough assessment of appellate cases that have reviewed the matter will be summarized and assessed. This paper will address our current state of understanding relative to the controversial issue of racial profiling. A literature review of social science research pertaining to the question will be undertaken. Additionally, a thorough assessment of appellate cases that have reviewed the matter will be summarized and assessed.
Racial Profiling, Racial Bias and Issues of Methodology and Interpretation
Municipal studies of “racial profiling” present several methodological and interpretive challenges. This paper will present data from a six-month study of officer-initiated stops and searches in a medium-sized city in a large eastern state. Data will be presented on over 2500 police stops and searches. Problems of implementation, methodology and interpretation will be discussed and approaches to some of the problems will be presented.
Racial Profiling: We Know It Exists But Are We Asking the Right People
A hot issue across the United States today is the incidence of racial profiling by police. Currently, only a moderate amount of empirical research exists concerning the practice of racial profiling and the empirical evidence that does exist has elicited both theoretical and methodological problems that necessitate further exploration. Moreover, almost all studies to date have focused upon studying only police practices, thus leaving out one crucial element- the perspective of ordinary citizens. Therefore, through a review of the current research, as well as an analysis of data pertaining to citizen’s attitudes concerning racial profiling and the New York City Police Department, a number of hypotheses will be explored. First, do racial differences exist in people’s belief in whether they have ever been racially profiled by the New York City Police Department? Second, do racial differences exist as to people’s opinion about whether or not racial profiling is widespread in New York City? Last, do racial difference matter in people’s opinion about the job that the NYPD is doing? Through this paper, I will explore the implications within a broader literature concerning racism and policing.
Racial Profiling and Police Vehicle Stops: The Cincinnati Data
The purpose of this paper is to attempt to determine whether or not there is racial disparity as to who the police stop and to narrow the possible explanations for any findings of racial disparity. Data was gathered from contact cards completed by officers whenever a vehicle stop was initiated during the officer’s shift from July through December 2001. Drivers’ license and census data was used to estimate the driving population, by race, during different times of the day using traffic modeling software. Information on repeat stops was also compiled through drivers’ licenses and vehicle license plate numbers. Police calls for service and crime data were used to identify any hot spots of crime and disorder. Finally, all four forms of data were also analyzed using GIS software to offer a spatial and temporal distribution of stops across neighborhoods. The authors discuss their findings and the implications for further research in this area.
Racial Profiling in the Retail Store: The State of Affairs Regarding Stops for Shoplifting
The practice of using race as the principal criterion for “profiling” and arresting suspected offenders by public law enforcement officers has received a great deal of interest in recent years. Another area where racial profiling allegedly is used to identify law violators involves the crime of shoplifting in retail stores. During the past decade the number of retail store chains that have been involved in civil damage suits for false arrest, illegal detainment, and even wrongful death has increased. This paper reviews the current state affairs regarding the use of race-based profiling in US retail store chains, including the important legal cases and the resultant private security and loss prevention policy issues.
Racial Profiling Practices in Law Enforcement: An Intra-Racial Phenomenon?
Despite the attention devoted to racial profiling, very little has been done to measure racial profiling practices of individual police departments while relying on DPS (Department of Public Safety) data. Most studies that have measured profiling trends have relied on Census Bureau Data; this source is not representative of the driving population. Thus, the purpose of this study is to address the existing gap in the literature by examining racial profiling trends while comparing the percentage of minorities stopped by police officers in North Texas with the percentage of minorities that hold drivers’ licenses in the same jurisdiction. Further, the study aims at determining if traffic-related stops are interracial in nature. That is, if minority officers stop, at disproportionate rates, suspects of their same race/ethnicity.
Racial Segregation, Disadvantage and Crime: A Comparison of Neighborhoods in Portland, Oregon and Columbus, Ohio
: Recent research has noted the importance of racial segregation for predictions of violent crime. However, the process by which segregation is thought to generate increased crime is disputed. Using neighborhood-level data from Portland, Oregon and Columbus, OH, this research demonstrates that the effect of segregation on crime is conditional, depending upon the social and economic context of the area.
Racial Segregation of Schools and Communities: Implications for Social Disorganization and School Violence
As a result of several recent and highly publicized incidents of school violence, most notably the massacre at Columbine High School, this issue has become one of increasing public concern, particularly among the middle and upper classes who formerly were seen as largely immune from such problems. Along with the increase in public concern has come an increase in scholarly interest, although at present this remains a relatively uninvestigated area. The area of racial segregation has also seen something of a revival of interest in recent years among researchers, if not the general public. Specifically, nearly 40 years after the Supreme Court’s ruling in Brown v. Board of Education, there is a growing body of evidence that schools remain relatively segregated. Similarly, recent research indicates that nearly 30 years after the passage of the Civil Rights Act and the abolition of Jim Crow, we may actually be more racially segregated residentially than ever. Drawing on social disorganization theory, the present paper integrates these previously separate lines of research by examining the relationship between racial segregation at both the school and residential levels, and school crime and violence. After reviewing recent research on both school crime and racial segregation, we argue that the segregation of both schools and communities has implications for school crime and violence by fostering social disorganization. Social disorganization is typically characterized by weak social bonds, both formal and informal, among members of a community as well as weak or absent informal social controls on behavior. We specifically suggest that school desegregation in the absence of residential segregation at the community level may contribute to social disorganization in two ways, and thus also contribute to school crime and/or violence. First, the presence of a desegregated school in a residentially segregated community may weaken the ties between the school-and the students in that school-and the larger community. Second, this could also weaken ties between students and the school itself, especially if there are large numbers of students attending the school who reside outside of the community where the school is located. The weaker social and institutional connections in this context would thus weaken the ability of both the school and the community to exert informal controls over the behavior of students and result in higher rates of school crime. Based on this argument, we propose a typology, shown in Table 1, of schools and their expected rates of crime based on their level of racial segregation and the segregation of the communities in which they are located. As the table indicates, we anticipate minority-segregated schools located in minority-segregated communities to have the largest amount of crime. This is due to the fact that large numbers of such schools will be located in relatively high-crime urban areas and will draw their student population primarily from the surrounding community. Thus, high rates of crime in the schools will reflect the high crime rates in their communities. For similar reasons, and recent publicity notwithstanding, we anticipate that white-segregated schools in white-segregated communities will have the lowest rates of crime since these schools will be predominantly located in relatively low crime areas and will again largely draw on the surrounding community for their student populations. We further predict, based on social disorganization theory, that non-segregated schools located in either white- or minority-segregated communities will continue to have relatively high rates of crime in spite of desegregation. Although racial desegregation is expected to have a positive impact in terms of reducing school crime, it is also expected, as discussed above, that these benefits will to a large extent be offset by a weakening of social ties between students, school, and community. The resulting social disorganization will thus contribute to crime in such schools. Finally, we expect non-segregated schools in non-segregated communities to have relatively low rates of crime, although recent research on racial segregation shows that this is a relatively rare situation. It is assumed that in a community that is not residentially segregated the schools will be de-facto desegregated because they will be able to draw a racially diverse student body from the surrounding community. In such schools and communities social and institutional bonds and informal social control will remain strong and thus from a social disorganization perspective contribute to low rates of school crime. We attempt to empirically validate the above typology using data from schools in Florida. Specifically, we compute segregation scores for each school and its surrounding census tract in order to classify them based on the typology of school and community segregation and then compare school crime rates across categories of the typology. Preliminary data analyses indicate that our empirical results are consistent with the patterns of crime proposed in the typology
Racial Typification and Support for Harsh Punitive Policies
The explosive growth of prison populations, the proliferation of mandatory sentencing statutes, and the expanded use of the death penalty are among the indicators of a well-documented surge of punitiveness in American criminal justice. Also well documented is the strong popular support for punitive policies. It has been hypothesized that some portion of the greater willingness to punish criminals is linked to the general perception that crime is disproportionately committed by black males. Using nationwide survey data (N = 900) collected in spring 2002, we first assess the extent to which specific crimes are perceived to be committed by blacks, whites and Hispanics, and the extent to which media are thought to represent crime in racial and ethnic terms. Next, we assess whether people who perceive crime to be disproportionately committed by blacks and Hispanics are more willing to support harsh punitive measures. To do this we use OLS regression with controls for other factors that have been shown to predict punitiveness and we disaggregate the analysis for respondents with different demographic characteristics.
Racialized Identities and the Formation of Black Street Gangs in Los Angeles
This paper traces the history of black gangs in Los Angeles, California and identifies the major factors that were most significant in the formation of these gangs during two waves of gang formation in the post WWII period. Beginning in the late 1940s when the first major black gangs formed, an empirical investigation will examine how and why black gangs initially took form and what was the social setting that allowed gangs to flourish. Although black gangs began to fade in the late 1960s, by the beginning of the 1970s black gangs were established again by a new generation of youths. The results of this analysis suggest that the racialization of black youths played a major factor in both waves of gang formation. Intense racial conflict and prejudice were the precursors that caused youths to band together and to form gangs. The more popular explanations based on economic and community deficiencies are considered in this analysis a by-product of racialization, and are more relevant to understanding gang maintenance and proliferation than to gang formation. [Key words: gangs, Los Angeles, race.]
Rape Victims’ Decision Making: Multilevel Analyses Using Cricis Center Data
Research on victim’s decision making demonstrates that there are norms (i.e., commonly held dictates of behavior; Bates, 1956) regarding whether or not a victim should seek help and report the crime to the police. Further, a social ecology perspective indicates that individual behavior is likely affected by the different social system in which the individual is nested. Using hierarchical linear modeling, this study examines 1,230 rape victims who contacted a rape crisis center in one of 48 participating counties, to determine whether victims’ normative decisions to seek help and contact the police are affected by the individual’s history or the social systems in which they are nested. Specifically, it examines three questions: (1) whether individual-level factors affect victims’ decision to seek help and contact the police controlling for county-level factors, (2) whether county-level factors affect victims’ decision to seek help or contact the police controlling for individual-level factors, and (3) whether, as proposed by a social ecological perspective, county-level factors moderate and/or mediate victims’ decision to seek help or contact the police.
Re-Entry Success, Social Support and Social Networks Among Ex-Prisoners
Past research suggests that most adult offenders will be rearrested subsequent to release from prison. Some suggest a social systems perspective to be useful in accommodating the content and structure of traditional and often conflicting theories of criminal behavior. Social systems involving social support and social networks are evident in a number of studies concerning offenders, and especially those re-entering society after serving sentences of imprisonment. Although seldom measure or controlled, researchers have recognized the relationship of these social systems variables and the problems of criminal behavior and recidivism. Social support and social network surveys were administered to 60 inmates recently transferred from prison to a minimum security community residential center in preparation for parole. Multiple regression analyses explore the relationship of aspects of social support, social networks and return to prison. Survey results appear to support theory involving social systems and recidivism.
Re-Examining the Relationship Between Unemployment Rates and Crime Rates From 1966 to 2000 in Taiwan
There are few studies that address the effect of unemployment on crime rate in Taiwan. Deng at al (1994) argued that the government not providing benefits to low-income unemployed families related to the failure of support for the routine activity theory. The unemployment rate has a positive effect on the crime rate in Taiwan. However, Taiwan’s government provided unemployment insurance and benefit for unwilling employees. Since the unemployed people have the short-term financial support, the researcher argues that the relationship between unemployment and crime is negative, and consistent with opportunity theory. It is necessary to re-evaluate the theory in the recent circumstances. This study also takes Chinese culture into account. Applying to routine activities theory, the unemployment may not have significant impact on crime rates due to cultural factors.
Re-Inventing Information Security and Law at the University of North Texas
in keeping with the 2002 ASC ConferenceTheme, “Re-Inventing Justice,” the proposed ROUND TABLE focuses on recent re-visiting and re-invention of “Information Security & Law” issues, such as new and existing cybercrime statutes, digital forensics, and policies and procedures of information security such as wire-tapping and internet tracking after the 2001 Patriot Act. The ROUND TABLE panelists are all FELLOWS or ASSOCIATE FELLOWS in the Texas Center for Digital Knowledge at the University of North Texas, as well as FACULTY within the “Information Security & Law” Concentration of the Information Science Ph.D. program.
Re-Inventing Justice: A Case Study of Elite Crime in Higher Education
This paper will attempt a case study of the criminal elite in the intellectual tradition of Coleman (1985, 1989) and others. It will be an examination of criminal actions and behaviors in higher educational administration at a public university that continue to persist unabated and unpunished. Faculty action and reviews do not seem to have serious consequences or serve as deterrents in an academic setting that perpetuates a management vs. labor union environment. Ironically, “whistle-blowing” that has brought down or deterred many politicians and also impacted on corporate white collar crime to some extent does not seem to provide lessons to academic administrators and managers in a teaching and learning environment.
Re-Inventing The Civil Rights Perspective On Hate Crime and Diversity Issues
A MULTICULTURAL perspective has dominated the growing literature on diversity issues in contemporary criminal justice. While multiculturalism has greatly enriched our discourse on hate crime and diversity issues, it has come under some recent criticism for failure to propose pragmatic reforms of institutions and practices in criminal justice. What can you “do” with all the rich descriptions of multicultural realities? The paper develops a normative theory, grounded with examples in the literature of civil rights and liberties, for the CIVIL RIGHTS perspective on hate crime and diversity issues in criminal justice. The paper also discusses the implication of the re-invention of the civil rights perspective for the education, analysis, and reform of criminal justice.
Reaching Out to Stop DUI: A Prevention Program Aimed at Spanish Speaking Migrants
Analysis of probation caseloads in a rural California Co. show an unusual preponderance of male, Spanish-speaking, Mexican-Americans convicted of misdemeanor and felony DUI. Hospital records indicate that this population is also overrepresented among patients admitted with alcohol related diseases. Other surveys show that the origins of this problem are based in both a deficiency of information about DUI laws and alcohol effects and in culturally related aspects of alcohol consumption. A project was developed through funding from the Office of Traffic Safety of the Business, Transportation, and Housing Agency that takes a three pronged approach to this problem. (1) Working through local community based organization the program formulates an outreach educational program to promote DUI awareness,; (2) Surveying misdemeanor DUI offenders in order to develop more comprehensive information about the nature of this offense in the Spanish speaking community; (3) Developing client specific intervention programs tailored to the needs of felony offenders. Preliminary results are discussed.
Real-Time Automated Parole Risk Assessment: Confirming the Importance of Dynamic Predictors of Risk
The authors present their third-year results of recidivism research conducted with over 15,000 offenders who completed parole supervision in Georgia between 1999 and 2001. Existing comprehensive state-operated prison classification and parole operations databases were linked to develop two assessment instruments to aid parole officers in making supervision-level assignment decisions. These unique instruments are computer-generated – staff time devoted to completing “pencil and paper” assessments is eliminated. Computer programs executed by the Parole Board utilize real-time operations data to compute a probability score for each parolee on the first day of supervision and at regular intervals thereafter. The “estimated risk level” is currently made available to parole officers through the existing automated case management system in a statewide pilot test phase. The project is the first in Georgia to demonstrate empirically the important role dynamic risk factors play in determining parole supervision success. The authors will discuss how changes in parole activity (employment and program participation) directly influence risk for re-offending.
Reassessing the Notion of Officer Discretion: The Impact of the Citizen
Previous research on officer decision-making has focused on discretion and racial profiling. The current study examines the decision-making processes based on public responses to enforcement. Using the adult seatbelt law in Texas, this study examines the correlates of officers’ willingness and reluctance to enforce the seatbelt law and issue citations. Anticipated citizen response does effect enforcement. Qualitative and quantitative methods are used to analyze the impact of the citizen on officer discretion. The implications of these findings are discussed.
Recent Findings in Neurophysiology: Implications for Forensic Evaluations
Many victims and offenders in the mental health and criminal justice systems are trauma survivors. Some have been victimized from early childhood, often by neglect and abuse by caretakers. Many sequelae of childhood maltreatment have been documented including substance abuse, difficulty relating to other people, and high risk for continued victimization. Recent research findings link psychological with long term neurophysiological changes involving the brain and endocrine system. These changes affect cognitive, physiological and affective function leading to a constellation of problems referred to as complex Post-traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD). When confronted with stressful situations, individuals with complex PTSD have difficulty accessing higher cortical centers, areas of the brain essential for formulating appropriate decisions. Instead, their responses are driven by limbic and brain stem activity, often resulting in socially inappropriate behavior. This primitive response mode results in a variety of problems including difficulty in regulation of affective impulses and inappropriate expression of anger. The authors review these findings and propose that in the process of “Re-inventing Justice,” consideration should be given to those individuals who suffer from complex PTSD. The authors discuss implications for forensic evaluations, including competency evaluations, mental status at the time of the offense, and factors in mitigation.
Recent Innovations in Multiple Regression Studies of Federal Sentencing Decisions
Empirical investigation of disparity in sentencing has a long history. It was recognized early on that simple comparisons among racial or ethnic groups (either in the proportion of each group receiving prison, or in their average sentence lengths) might not reveal discrimination but instead reflect differences in the types of crimes committed or the extent of group members= criminal history. This led to the use of multivariate techniques, particularly multiple regression analysis, to control for the variation in sentences that might be attributed to legally-relevant factors (Hagan 1974). Multiple regression models of this type have been used for decades to study discrimination in federal sentencing, including at least 13 studies conducted following the introduction of federal sentencing guidelines in 1987 (Hofer & Blackwell, 1999). Four of these studies have appeared in peer-reviewed journals (Albonetti, 1997; Herbert, 1997; Steffensmeier & Demuth, 2000; Mustard, 2001) and several appeared in the popular press (Frank, 1995; Flaherty & Casey,1996). These studies have reported that offenders= race and ethnicity continue to have a significant effect on sentences, even after controlling for the most important legally relevant factors. Hofer and Blackwell (1997) argued that methodological problems with the multiple regression analyses used in these studies made it likely that the racial discrimination they reported was exaggerated. The prevailing modelsCwhich used direct measures of legally-relevant factors such as use of a gun, or used the guidelines= own offense level or criminal history scores as global measures of the legally relevant factorsCfailed to specify properly the known relationships among the control variables and sentences. For example, mandatory minimum penalty statutes linked to certain facts can Atrump@ the guidelines and force judges to impose specific penalties above the minimum of the guideline range. Under 18 U.S.C. ‘924(c), offenders who possess a gun during a drug or violent crime must receive a five-year consecutive sentence in addition to the guideline sentence for the underlying crime. Simply adding a control variable for a conviction under ‘924(c) does not guarantee that the model will properly specify this effect. Further, because these mandatory minimums disproportionately affect minority offenders, failure to correctly specify them leads to exaggerated race and ethnic effects. Similarly, judges may legitimately depart from the guidelines if they identity, on the record, an aggravating or mitigating factor present in the case that was not adequately taken into account by the guidelines. Given the known disproportionate rates of departure among different racial and ethnic groups (Kramer and Maxfield, 1998; Adams, 1998) failure to include departure status as a control variable leads to race and ethnic effects that may be due to legally important differences among the groups. Indeed, much of the Adisparity@ that has been reported in the literature (Steffensmeier & Demuth, 2000; Mustard 2001) is due to differences in departures. Other researchers noted additional problems with the standard multiple regression approach. Mustard (2001) described one problem—a lack of linearity between offense level, criminal history score, and sentence lengthCand avoided it by using dummy variables representing each cell of the sentencing table rather than offense level and criminal history as linear control variables. Engen and Gainey (2001), in a study of sentencing under the Washington State guideline system, refined this approach further by representing all legally relevant factors with a single independent variable, the Apresumptive sentence,@ which was defined as the mid-point of the range of imprisonment recommended by the guidelines applicable to each case. As predicted, this approach reduced the effects for race, ethnicity, and gender and in some cases eliminated the effects altogether. Hofer and Blackwell (2001) showed how use of the presumptive sentence as a control variable might also avoid one of the problems with previous studies of federal guideline system—the trumping of the guideline range by mandatory minimum penalties. By defining the presumptive sentence as the minimum sentence required by the applicable guidelines or by any applicable statutory penalty the presumptive sentence provides a precise method for specifying the legally-defined relationships among the statutes and the guidelines. By adding variables for the various types of departures, researchers could specify more precisely both the legally relevant factors on which we have data and the known legal effects of these factors on each other and on the final sentence. In a comment on Engen and Gainey=s article, Ulmer (2001) pointed out a circumstance in which models that include particular legal factors—such as offense level, prior record, or use of a gun—-might outperform the presumptive sentence model in terms of variance explained. This could happen if the guidelines are Aloose@Cif they afford judges significant discretion within the guideline rangeCand if the weight judges attach to the particular factors differ from the weight given them by the guidelines themselves. If judges think that the presence of a firearm is more important than its effect on the presumptive sentence, a regression model including firearm as a separate factor could represent judges= reasoning better than the presumptive sentence. Thus, it is necessary to carefully consider the particular guideline system being studied, and to compare the fit of the presumptive sentence model with that of reasonable alternatives. Bushway and Piehl (2001), in a study of sentencing under the Maryland guidelines, pointed to possible confusion surrounding interpretation of the presumptive sentence model proposed by Engen and Gainey. If the presumptive sentence is included as a normal predictor variable in a multiple regression analysis, it will receive a coefficient conditioning its effect on predicted sentences. (The magnitude and direction of this coefficient is determined by the analysis=s model-fitting procedures. Ordinarily, predictor variables are assigned the coefficients that minimize the squared errors of prediction of the outcome variable.) Once this coefficient is included in the model, the presumptive sentence no longer represents how the legal system itself (i.e. the guidelines and statutory rules) says that the considerations reflected in the presumptive sentence should affect sentences, but instead how those factors are actually used by judges. A coefficient different than 1 indicates that judges weight the considerations represented by the presumptive sentences somewhat differently than the rules themselves, in ways that the analysis leaves obscure.
Recent Trends in Female-to-Male Illegal Drug and Alcohol Use, 1979-1999
The view that female alcohol/illegal drug use is rising and increasing faster or catching up with levels of male alcohol/illegal drug use is frequently asserted in both the media-popular press and social science writings. In order to determine whether or not this claim is true, we need careful empirical assessments. The principle goal of this study is to explore between- and within-sex trends in illegal drug and alcohol use by age and ethnicity over the past two decades. The analysis compares the results based on arrest data (eg. Uniform Crime Report) and self-report survey (eg. National Household Survey on Drug Abuse). Other sources of evidence are also examined, such as deaths due to alcohol and illicit drug use from National Vital Statistics Report. One main objective will be to present the factual material (eg. rates, female share of drug use, profile percentages) in a straightforward and easily understandable fashion so that the reader can draw his/her own conclusions about the extent of constancy or change in female alcohol and illegal drug use.
Recidivism Among Juveniles Released From the Texas Youth Commission in 1997 and 1998
The study of post-release behavior among prisoners has been an important area of inquiry for researchers since the mid-nineteenth century. Understanding why and how some released offender’s return to correctional settings as a result of new contacts with the criminal justice system has immense practical and theoretical value. This is especially the case concerning juvenile offenders. The objective of this study is to determine the level of recidivism among juveniles released from the Texas Youth Commission in 1997 and 1998. The primary focus of this analysis is on the time to recidivism within thirty-six months of release from TYC and the factors associated with that. A recidivist is defined as any individual who has been convicted for a prior offense, confined to a Texas Youth Commission facility, and who was rearrested during the follow-up period. In other words we are interested in the time lapse between release and a proven re-arrest. A series of related dimensions are also explored in the paper, including the nature and characteristics of recidivism, degree to which selected case variables like gang membership and child abuse predict failure, and the timing of new offenses following release.
RECIDIVISM Methods to Measure the Judicial Career After Release
Debates on “recidivism” in France are often filled with figures, referring to the famous but highly questionable “reincarceration rate”. Figures of 40%, 50%, 70%, 90% have been cited, usually with no indication of the nature of the population involved, no definition of what is meant by recidivism and no mention of the duration of the period for which these rates found may vary considerably with these three parameters. This paper will present the methods and the results of the researches in France.
Recidivism of Violent and Non-Violent Offenders
The increase in the use of incarceration as a form of crime control is supported by the theories of deterrence and incapacitation. There is limited research, however, on how individual level characteristics impact the likelihood of recidivism of the violent offender as compared to that of the non-violent offender. Who is deterred from future crime through incarceration? Who is simply incapacitated? This study looks at recidivism among a cohort of prisoners from 15 states released in 1994 and tracked for three years by the Bureau of Justice Statistics. Characteristics between violent and non-violent offenders are compared, as well as characteristics between those who reoffended and those who did not, focusing specifically on offense type and the time to reoffense. Using multiple regression, the relative importance of different factors that increase and decrease likelihood of recidivism are measured. Based on these results, the theory of either deterrence or incapacitation may apply to different types of offenders, and policymakers should consider these differences when making or changing policy.
Reconceptualizing International Organized Crime
Massive increases in international trade, travel, and finance, along with improvements in communications technologies appear to have drastically altered the form, scope, and structure of organized crime as we enter the 21st century. The key questions are whether these changes have fundamentally changed the nature of organized crime or the nature of the social threat emanating from organized crime. In order to address these issues organized crime must be reconceptualized and redefined within the context of international capitalist expansion. It is the contention of this paper that organized crime has changed very little. It is still composed of reasonably small, localized, highly adaptable organizations. But the massive expansion of capitalism in the late 20th century has brought with it attendant opportunities for new markets, increased economic and political corruption, and new technologies which can be easily exploited by criminal capitalists.
Reconsidering the Relationship Between Race and Self-Reported Crime
One of the most studied issues in recent criminology has been the relationship between race and crime, particularly comparing whites and African-Americans. Many studies have focused on the high crime rates of African-Americans, seeking to explain these rates as resulting from either more frequent criminal behavior by African-Americans, differential responses by the criminal justice system, methodological artifacts, or some combination of the above. This paper, however, takes a different approach in conceptualizing the issue of race and crime in that it explores causal mechanisms through which being African-American actually decreases criminal behavior. Specifically, I identify a handful of social-psychological variables that negatively mediate the relationship between race and crime such that they result in African-Americans committing less crime. For example, African-Americans have high levels of religious participation and strong family ties, relative to whites, both of which reduce criminal behavior. Using data from the National Youth Survey, I find empirical support for the existence of these mediating variables that decrease crime among African-Americans. I also find mediating variables that increase crime among African-Americans. Conceptually, then, these finding move us away from asking why (or if) African-Americans have higher rates of crime, and they steer us to a more general, and probably more fruitful, question of the multifaceted causal relationship between race and crime.
Reconstructing Geographic Areas for Analysis of Homicide Rates in Small Populations
The rate estimates for rare events like homicide in small populations are suspectible to data reporting and other errors, thus compromise the validity of inferences. This research uses two Geographic Information Systems (GIS) methods to construct geographic areas with comparable population sizes from which more reliable homicide rates can be obtained. Using the data aggregated to the redefined analysis areas, the Nisbett-Reaves test of the herding-culture-of-honor hypothesis is replicated. The discrepancies between the results yielded from the original area units and the reconstructed units are evaluated. Analysis of other crime rates may also be subject to the problem of rate estimates in small populations, and thus may benefit from this research.
Reconstructing Justice: Rape in Jordan and Palestine
The criminalization of sexual abuses in colonized and occupied countries was affected by various socio-political factors. In both Jordan and Palestine, legislative councils did not have the chance or the willilngness to look closely and re-examine such abuses, and reconstruct them in a more humane context. The presentation examines the criminalization fo sexual abuses in two Middle Eastern countries. The data consists of ten years of court decisions in relation to child rape in Jordan, and six years of rape in the West Bank. Court decisions in both locations suggest that female sexual abuse was and is still treated in a gender biased manner. not only that the child’s voice was not heard in court decisions, but also that criminal justice personnel used “cultural” and patriarchal justifications to further silence victims. The implications of such findings for sexually abused children are drawn and discussed.
Reconstructing Justice: Rape in Jordan and Palestine
The criminalization of sexual abuses in colonized and occupied countries was affected by various socio-political factors. In both Jordan and Palestine, legislative councils did not have the chance or the willingness to look closely and re-examine such abuses, and reconstruct them in a more humane context. The presentation examines the criminalization of sexual abuses in two Middle Eastern countries. The data consists of ten years of court decisions in relation to child rape in Jordan, and six years of rape in the West Bank. Court decisions in both locations suggest that female sexual abuse was and is still treated in a gender biased manner. Not only that the child’s voice was not heard in court decisions, but also that criminal justice personnel used “cultural” and patriarchal justifications to further silence victims. The implications of such findings for sexually abused children are drawn and discussed.
Recovering From Structural Violence: The Case of September 11th
Recovering from structural violence involves the modification, reconstruction, and/or transformation of the conditions of violence/violence production and of the various systems of injustice– economic, political, and social. Structural forms of recovery are also inclusive of interpersonal and institutional forms. On a continuum, the responses by the USA have ranged from ones of rage, anger, and retaliation to ones of peace, forgiveness, and reconciliation. Ultimately, recovering from structural violence requires the systemic movement– across interpersonal, institutional, and international relations– away from adversarial tribalism and toward mutualistic globalism.
Recruiting, Selecting, and Retaining Female Law Enforcement Officers
The present research is a study on the recruitment, selection, and retention of female law enforcement officers. The foundation for this research is grounded in both empirical research and anecdotal evidence that suggests that women still face many obstacles in the field of policing. An earlier study conducted by the IACP will be replicated using police agencies within the state of Maryland. Questions are designed to elicit information on the difficulty police departments have in recruiting, selecting, and retaining female officers.
Reducing Firearm Related Violence: Police Practices in Containing Illicit Firearms in Asia
This paper deals with police practices regarding the possession of illicit firearms as well as their efforts to reduce criminal misuse of firearms and improve public safety. Drawing data from a survey of Asian countries and results of a workshop conducted by the United Nations on firearm related issues which was attended by representatives of member states, we identify numerous outcomes. These include police organizations’ efforts in which firearm misuse can be limited by strengthening the conditions of eligibility, conditions of use, training in firearm use, safe storage, removal of excess firearms, and also by public awareness programs. The paper also focuses on major international initiatives for reducing illicit trafficking in firearms.
Reentry and Social Networks: Examining the Role of Mentoring in Increasing Social Capital
With the number of criminal offenders being released back into communities continuing to climb, current research has mainly focused on how reentry is related to recidivism. However, due to the concentration of incarceration and reentry in certain communities it is important to consider how reentry impacts the neighborhoods to which released offenders return. A growing body of literature has examined how reentry impacts ex-offenders, their families and their communities and how the process of incarceration and reentry can affect social capital. Based on qualitative interviews with 12 ex-inmates, this paper explores the role of mentoring for ex-prisoners transitioning back to the neighborhood. We then illustrate the contribution mentoring makes to increasing social capital. Findings suggest mentoring can be an important asset for decreasing problems associated with reentry and for shoring up community stability. We conclude with a series of policy recommendations.
Reforming Parole: New Thinking About This Important Component of the Criminal Justice System
The panelists will present recent research findings about the institution of parole and will suggest new ways of thinking about and reforming this aspect of the criminal justice system. Jeremy Travis’s presentation, titled “Let’s End Parole As We Know It,” will talk critically about the two functions of parole, namely discretionary release from prison and community supervision of released prisoners. Mr. Travis will suggest new ways of thinking about these criminal justice functions and will draw on lessons learned from welfare reform movement in terms of governmental support of the transition from dependence to independence. Joan Petersilia will present findings from her on-going research and writings about parole, including her 2002 publication “Reforming Probation and Parole in the 21st Century,” and a forthcoming book about prisoner reentry. Professor Jacobson’s presentation is entitled “Driving Down the Prison Population through Parole Reform.” He will offer what is essentially a policy proposal to completely revamp the technical parole violation process that most state parole agencies use. To ground this new thinking in empirical data, Sarah Lawrence will present findings from a forthcoming report, “Variations in Parole Practices Across the United States.” She will present parole-related data on the significant variations across states, focussing on parole violators returning to prison.
Regulating Coercion in Restorative Justice
A maximalist view of restorative justice, includes the imposition of coercive ‘restorative sanctions’, if voluntary processes appear not to be possible or to be unsufficient. Such sanctions can only be imposed by a judicial authority, according to legal rules. Crucial differences exist between traditional criminal punishments and sanctions in view of restoration. It is believed that such sanctions are generally more effective and socio-ethically more justifiable. Reorienting the justice system in a restorative direction, provokes questions in relation to legal safeguards. Based on the republican theory of criminal justice, a sketch is proposed for developing a fully fledged restorative justice system, which combines maximal room for informal voluntary processes with due legal safeguards for all parties involved.
Regulatory Violations in Nursing Homes: A State-Level Analysis
Research on crimes in nursing homes have centered on explaining individual abuses committed by employees. Past research in this area suggests three factors lead to crimes against nursing home residents: characteristics of the nursing home, interactions between staff and residents, and characteristics of victims and offenders. In contrast, this study examines license violations of nursing homes across the United States to see what factors contribute to institutional abuses. The focus of the analysis is on state level characteristics (percent elderly, region, political climate) and their relationship with the extent and severity of violations. Implications for state-level policy and future research are discussed.
Reincarceration in Japan: A Major Effect — Now Surfacing — of the U.S. Faith for Imprisonment
Returnees among earlier prison inmates are assuming a major and increasing share of admissions to American prisons at a time when the pace of an increasing imprisonment rate is slowing. New interest in restorative justice as an alternative policy suggests a revival of community-based corrections that was popular in the 1970s. Reincarceration assumes greater possibilities for well-directed research supplementing what has been done. This paper focuses on Japanese data especially relevant to that possible partnership of academic and applied wings of one criminological enterprise.
Reintegrating High Risk Youth Into Educational Settings: A Proposed Model
The search continues for promising interventions that show positive effects with high risk, high need juvenile offenders who have experienced extended periods of incarceration, especially those chronic, exhibiting aggressive and violent patterns of misconduct. This broadly defined population of serious delinquents have repeatedly shown resistance to reintegration and normalization in their home communities. Reintegration is a daunting task regardless of whether successful linkage with family, workplace or school is the goal. Retention of youth in school settings once they have returned to their home communities from confinement has been particularly problematic. This paper will discuss both program development and evaluation findings from the recently completed OJJDP-funded Intensive Aftercare Program (IAP) demonstration project for high risk youth paroled by the states of Nevada, Colorado and Virginia, as well as for a population of youth returning to communities in California on probation supervision following confinement in county probation camps and ranches as part of the SB1095 Program. The authors will discuss some of the difficulties that have arisen in trying to mainstream these students and describe a promising model for school reentry and retention
Reintegration Program Dropout Rates: A Process and Outcome Evaluation of a Community Program
There is a severe shortage of program space for the thousands of adult offenders released from prisons in the United States, who need support, guidance and training to enter the job market, manage income, re-establish family relationships and find suitable housing. This study examines a community reintegration program which experiences a high rate of program dropouts to understand why clients leave. All former participant are included in the study (N=500 cases). Case records, a mail survey and telephone interviews are conducted to test hypotheses drawn from strain, social learning and social bonding theories. Findings are then analyzed in relation to theoretical explanations, and recommendations are made modifications to reduce dropout rates.
Reinventing Justice: Research on Police Applicant Background Investigations
This paper will summarize a research study on a national sample of police department procedures related to background investigations for new police applicants. Data is currently being gathered on investigator training, department resources and procedures, the presence of identity fraud, and changes which have occurred following the Sept. 11th terrorist attack, etc.
Reinventing the Justice Paradigm: Drug Court Programs and the Integration of the Rehabilitation Model
The tough rhetoric on crime control has enabled political forces to assert a strong justice model approach toward dealing with crime and punishment. The legacy of a failed national drug policy leaves us with overcrowded prisons and little hope for rehabilitating offenders with serious drug problems. The nationwide application of drug court programs has the potential for stemming this trend and producing more hopeful results. Judges and social workers cooperate in monitoring drug offenders in a community-based corrections type program monitored within the courts system. This paper examines the problems produced by a “get tough on crime” ideology and some hopeful solutions to recidivism through the examination of: 1) conflicts between the crime control and rehabilitation models; 2) the nature of drug court programs; 3) utilization of drug courts in various parts of the country; and 4) specific utilization and impact of a drug court within a local community.
Reinvention or Replication of Juvenile Justice? Youth and Adult Perceptions of Teen Court
Teen court is one of the fastest-growing sentencing alternatives to juvenile court (Butts & Buck, 2000; National Youth Court Center, 2002). As the dismantling of juvenile court begun in the 1990s continues, teen court is likely to become increasingly critical to the U.S. juvenile justice system (Butts & Harrell, 1998). While teen court has received some scholarly attention, most of this has been limited to recidivism studies (Harrison, Maupin, & Mays, 2001; Hissong, 1991; Minor, Wells, Soderstrom, Bingham, & Williamson, 1999; Seyfrit, Reichel, & Stutts, 1987). Few studies have described the experiences of defendant youth as they are referred to and participate in the program. The author will present findings from current survey and interview research chronicling youths’ journeys through an Illinois teen court (from referral to sentence completion), and will compare defendant youths’ perceptions of the program to those held by adult juvenile justice workers. Offense severity, procedural justice, and sentence appropriateness will receive particular attention. Implications will be drawn for teen court outcome research.
Relation Between Developmental Maturity and Measures of Psychopathy: Intial Findings From a Cross-Sequential Study
The advent of “waiver” statutes and the burgeoning number of adolescents in the juvenile justice system have increased research and public policy interest in the construct of “juvenile psychopathy.” Because adolescence is a time of enormous developmental change, it is imperative that we learn more about the stability, nature, and manifestations of psychopathy during the adolescent years before embracing the use of this construct as a valid component in the evaluation of juvenile offenders. A compelling place to begin this investigation is with psychopathy as operationalized by the Psychopathy Checklist (PCL) measures: high scores on these measures have become virtually equated with psychopathy in clinical practice, and the measures have been recommended explicitly for use with juveniles. In this presentation, we describe the relation between the PCL measures of psychopathy and measures of developmental maturity by comparing samples of 100 adolescent offenders and 100 adult offenders. The goal of this presentation is to describe the extent to which psychopathy, as assessed by the PCL measures, is a valid, stable, and useful personality construct when applied to adolescent offenders. Because wavier decisions can affect a youth’s development and have long-term, serious consequences, it is imperative that the assessments be based on accurate and valid indicators.
Relational Decision Making in Female Delinquents: Implications for Restorative Justice
In recent years, the principles of restorative justice have increasingly influenced the nature of juvenile justice program development in the United States. This relational model of crime intervention reflects similar ideals as those found in recent movements to provide gender appropriate programming to adolescent female delinquents. This paper examines the overlap between the restorative justice principle of moral decisions as relational and the feminist work asserting relational decision making in young women. Results from interviews with young women incarcerated in a juvenile institution in a western state are used to reaffirm elements of relational morality found in other studies and to assert that the voices of female delinquents also reflect a morality influenced by traditional law and order expectations of juvenile justice, thus offering a new dialect in the literature on women’s distinctive moral voice. It is this emerging inflection that provides important implications for the use of restorative justice practices with young women in the juvenile justice system.
Relationship Between Age and Offending: Evidence From Federal Prisoners
Most sociological theories of crime explain the decrease in offending with age as resulting from socially prescribed age-graded role transitions – particularly those associated with the institutions of work and marriage. Gottfredson and Hirschi have challenged these sociological explanations of the relationship between age and crime with their claim that desistence is biologically driven, is invariant across demographic group and type of offense, and occurs regardless of any role changes (Gottfredson and Hirschi 1990). One method of testing these differing explanations for the relationship between age and crime is to study offending among prisoners. Unlike free persons, prisoners are not more likely to marry or to find stable employment as they age. It is therefore possible to determine whether or not desistence occurs when these factors are absent or constant. Results of analyses of misconduct by more than 250,000 federal prisoners are largely consistent with Gottfredson and Hirschi’s predictions. Results show that the age-misconduct curve resembles the age-crime curve. Age-misconduct curves are also found to be similar across demographic group (comparing males, females, blacks, whites, and Hispanics) and type of offense (comparing trivial, illegal, violent, property, drug, and alcohol-related
Relationship Between Race, Ethnicity, and Sentencing Outcomes: A Meta-Analysis of Sentencing Research
Numerous studies have addressed the question: are racial/ethnic minorities treated more harshly in comparison to similarly situated whites? Several authors have attempted to review this voluminous and diverse body of research using traditional qualitative narrative literature review techniques. These narrative reviews are of limited utility to current debates either because these reviews are dated (i.e., largely concerning research conducted prior to the advent of structured sentencing) or because of shortcomings inherent in qualitative literature reviews. Hence, little is actually known regarding the cumulative findings from this body of research. To fill this gap, a quantitative synthesis (meta-analysis) of all available research examining the relationship between race/ethnicity and sentencing outcomes in non-capital offenses is conducted. The objectives of this study are to determine whether minorities are more likely to receive harsher court outcomes than whites, the magnitude of any such bias, whether structured sentencing (e.g., sentencing guidelines) is associated with less inequalities in sentencing decisions, and in which contexts, if any, is bias most likely to occur. Furthermore, the relationship between methodological rigor and study findings is examined.
Relationship of Household Gun Ownership to Firearm and Non-Firearm Suicide Rates in Wisconsin Communities
Objective: To examine the relationship between household firearm ownership and the rate of firearm and non-firearm suicide in Wisconsin communities. Methods: The percentage of households owning gun(s) in central and outlying Milwaukee and in six suburban Milwaukee County communities was obtained from surveys conducted in 1990 and 1996 by the Planning Council. Information on suicide was from the Wisconsin Violent Injury Reporting System and Milwaukee County medical examiner database. The residence address of the victim was used to determine community. Results: The total suicide rate varied from 5.7 to 13.0 per 100,000, and the proportion of suicides by firearm varied from 36% to 70%. Household gun ownership ranged from 9.9% in central Milwaukee to 35.7% in a suburban community. The correlation coefficients between gun ownership and 1) firearm suicide, 2)non-firearm suicide, and 3)total suicide were 0.84 (p=.009), .002 (p=ns), 0.54 (p=ns) respectively. Results were similar after adjustment for percentage of community residents with incomes under the poverty level, 0.83 (p=.022), 0.24 (p=ns), and 0.66 (p=ns). Conclusions: Community rates of firearm suicide, but not non-firearm suicide, are significantly positively associated with the percentage of households owning gun(s). This supports evidence from case-control studies that firearm suicide is related to access to firearms.
Relative Degree of Male and Female Conformity to Delinquent Peer Influence Revisited
This project examines the relative conformity of female and male adolescents to delinquent peer pressure. While prior researchers, especially those using experimental strategies, have discussed this topic previously, the current research goes beyond prior strategies by examining not only which gender conforms more, but also whether same-gender or cross-gender peer influences are stronger.
Remand in Custody — A Systemic Analysis of a Growing Problem
Bail and remand in custody issues have attracted the attention of a wide range of observers of, and participants in, the criminal justice system. While many of the unsatisfactory aspects of the law relating to bail were recognised by the middle of the twentieth century, it is only in the last forty years that there has been a concerted effort both to study and to alter the law. In both the United States and the United Kingdom significant bail law reform occurred in the 1960s and 1970s. Australia followed with major bail law reform in the 1970s and 1980s, with inquiries into the state of the law of bail in almost every jurisdiction leading to legislative reform. In the last decade there has been increasing recognition that legislative and administrative reforms have not achieved the desired results. While prison populations are continuing grow at an increasing rate, the segment of the prison population growing fastest is remandees awaiting trial. Some 20% of the over 21,000 prisoners in Australia are currently on remand awaiting disposition of their case . The growth in prison population awaiting trial has become an increasing concern for both criminological and social policy analysts and for governments faced with the budgetary implications. This has led to a number of government-sponsored studies aimed at investigating custodial remand processes. One aspect of the remand in custody picture, the different rates of remand in custody across Australian jurisdictions despite apparently similar legislation, attracted the attention of the Australian Criminology Research Council (the ‘CRC’). In 1998 the CRC engaged the authors of this paper to conduct the first stage of a multi-jurisdictional study in which the factors affecting rates of remand in custody were to be identified. As a result of the findings of that study, which are reported in Bamford, King and Sarre , the CRC has engaged the authors to carry out a multi-disciplinary and multi-jurisdictional quantitative and qualitative research project on the remand in custody process which is due to be completed in mid-2003. This paper describes the theoretical perspective adopted for the remand study with its emphasis on the systemic analysis of the remand in custody process. It describes the remand in custody process and identifies factors affecting outcomes at each stage of the process and suggests a new tool for identifying performance of the remand in custody systems.
Repeat Domestic Violence in the City of Newarl: Prevalence and Policy Opportunities
While the study of repeat victimization has lead to better undeerstanding and prevention of crimes such as burglary, robbery, small business crime, and vehicle theft, repeat victimization as it relates to domestic violence has received less empirical attention. The present study further explores the phenomenon of repeat victimization by assessing the nature and extent of repeat domestic violence in the city of Newakr, New Jersey. The study uses official police data (calls for service and incident reports to identify repeat victims of domestic violence, assess the situational factors associated with repeat victimization, and determine the extent to which repeat fictimization contributes to the city’s rate of eomestic violence. Preliminary data analysis shows support for previously evidenced elements of the repeat victimization model.
Repeatable and Emergent Forms: Searching for Crime Spaces and Crime Places
We can approach the analysis of crime mapping by examining the aplication of pattern analysis to criminological analysis. In the discussion of these patterns, we recognize that there have been two trends of analysis that have been pursued. One has been to look at the clustering of crime using density models, identifying hot spots as spaces in which opportunity for crime coincides with the actions of motivated offenders The second examines how areas change to become places where crime is more likely to occur. These changes are iterative and emergent. In the identification of crime places, we account for not only the crime behavior but also the change in social context that occurs both to stimulate and encourage crime.
Report on the Special Needs of Incarcerated Girls
Studies suggest that female juvenile delinquents and offenders are exposed to gender specific risk factors, including early victimization, sexual abuse, substance abuse and academic problems. Yet, there appears to be a lack of well-designed empirical studies that examine risk factors considered relevant for girls held in youth facilities. Furthermore, evidence suggests that institutional youth programs are being developed and implemented without taking risk factors, specific to the female gender into consideration. This report presents an overview of a three year study, conducted by NYS-DCJS that will follow a cohort of juvenile delinquents from entry to OCFS residential facilities through their residential stays, releases to aftercare, and during periods of varying lengths following release. The study will determine whether risk factors that are hypothesized to be especially relevant to the design of interventions for delinquent girls do, in fact, influence case outcomes to a greater extent for girls than for boys. A primary emphasis in this preliminary paper will be to discuss the development and administrative protocols designed to elicit information about early childhood trauma.
Reporting Rape: Have Things Really Changed?
In the past thirty years, significant changes in rape laws have been enacted in virtually every U.S. jurisdiction. While the scope of these changes varies, the general legal climate for rape victims is more favorable now than at any time in recent history. Also, rape crisis centers, schools and other community groups have been actively engaged in rape awareness campaigns since the advent of rape reform. Guiven the changes in rape laws, as well as the increased attention given to the issue, one might expect differences in rates of reporting pre- and post-reform. One might also expect that the assault characteristics that once prevented many rape victims from reporting, such as use of intoxicants and relationship with the assailant, would now have a less significant impact on the reporting decision. In this paper, we examine these issues using data from the National Violence Against Women Survey. We construct logistic regression models to predict likelihood of victim reporting, wuith time period and assault characteristics as independent variables. We also examine interactions between time period and assult characteristics as independent variables. We also examine interactions between time period and assault characteristics to determine whether the characteristics of the assault that once impeded reporting are as influential today as they were prior to the reforms.
Rescuing Retributivism
Immanuel Kant is often referred to as a retribituvist which means he believes the purpose of punishment is to give a wrongdoer her just deserts. The purpose of my paper is to show why retributivism sets forth a fair system of punishment, that is not, in theory at least, cruel or in violation of individual rights. First, I set forth Kant’s theory of punishment. Next, I explain using some examples I have come across in my employment as a federal defender, as well as using some examples Kant gives, why I believe retributivism is a just way of looking at the criminal law. Mostly, I’ll discuss how retributivism places limits on the amount and kind of punishment an individual can be subject to-limits that do not exist in other theories of punishment, such as rehabilitation or deterrence. As a prima facia matter, if I force a person into a prison cell or kill a person, I have violated that person’s freedom. In the Doctrine of Right, Kant explains why the state may treat a citizen in such a manner if the citizen is being punished for a wrong. We punish citizens because, in certain instances, it is the duty of the state to see that an offender is given her just desert for an immoral act. In his Lectures on Ethics at Albertina University during the 1793-94 school year, Kant explains that “We think it quite contrary to the order of things that a morally bad action should by its nature be coupled with impunity_the judicial office, by virtue of its lawgiving power, is called upon by reason to repay, to visit a proportionate evil upon the transgression of moral laws.” Similarly, in the Doctrine of Right, Kant states that punishment can be inflicted on an individual “only because he has committed a crime.” Kant goes on to state how a murderer is punished so that the state is assured that it has punished the murderer “as his deeds deserve.” Thus, in the interest of achieving retributive justice, the state must be sure that each offender is sentenced “in proportion to his inner wickedness.” Kant is clear that retributive justice, or the attainment of just deserts, is the sole goal and justification of punishment as opposed to being only one of many goals pursued when the state chooses to punish its citizens. All other positive benefits of punishment can only be secondary side effects. Kant warns in the Doctrine of Right that individuals can only be punished because they have committed a crime, and punishment can never be inflicted “merely as a means to promote some other good for the criminal himself or for civil society.” Further, a criminal must be found “punishable, before any thought could be given to drawing from his punishment something of use for the criminal himself or for civil society.” It seems, for example, that one could not decide to make an act punishable in hopes of deterring wrongdoing. In such a case, the purpose of the threatened and executed punishment would be the “good of society” as opposed to retribution for a crime. And if we punish citizens with some other end in mind, we will be treating the offender “merely as a means to promote some other good.” This would be impermissible because the offender’s “innate personality protects him from this, even though he can be condemned to lose his civil personality.” In sum, the state may punish only with the purpose of serving retributive justice, because such a system makes punishment of an individual an end in itself. There is value in the mere fact of punishment. If the state punishes for some other reason, such as deterrence, then the offender suffers as a means to achieve some other end, as opposed to the suffering serving as the purpose of the state action. The mot powerful thing about Kant’s theory is the limit he places on the amount of punishment an individual may face. Because punishment is based on moral desert, Kant notes that an individual cannot be punished more than he morally deserves for his bad act. My paper goes through the example of a client of mine who continued to violate supervised release (the federal version of probation) by using methamphetamines and failing his court-mandated drug tests. Each time, the judge sentenced him to jail, followed by a drug rehabilitation program and more supervised release. Eventually, the client felt that is whole life had been taken over by the penal system. He had spent three years in and out of both jail and forced rehabilitation and there was no end in sight. I conclude that a retributive system would not allow a continued impingement on liberty that was out of proportion with the wrong the individual committed, whereas having a system of rehabilitation allows the penal system to indefinitely imprison an individuals like my client who will not refrain from using drugs. My paper also recounts the harsh sentences many of my clients face for illegally returning to the country. I note that these harsh penalties definitely deter many of my clients, some of whom tell me how the amount of punishment they were facing figured into their calculus when deciding to return. Nonetheless, I conclude that sentencing an individual to a hundred months for illegally entering the country, as often happens, is an unjust practice because the time the individual serves is disproportionate to his wrong.
Research Project on Fraud Prevention Training for Senior Citizens in the Town of Mamaroneck/Village of Larchmont
This quasi-experimental design and survey methods study will examine the effects of a fraud prevention-training program on persons over the age of 65 who are members of the Town of Mamaroneck senior citizens center. While crime rates are at their lowest in decades, seniors citizens today are more likely to lose their financial assets to smooth-talking swindlers then street hoodlums. Many seniors who once locked themselves in their homes for protection now find themselves victimized by fraudsters. Deceptive mailings and telemarketers are increasingly targeting older Americans in an attempt to win their confidence and steal their money. Despite of major law enforcement efforts, fraud is becoming a national epidemic. Extensive research has been conducted on consumer vulnerability to fraudulent business practices. However, very little research has been targeted at assessing the value of fraud awareness programs that may be implemented to educate seniors about fraudulent schemes. This lack of research has raised serious questions that deserve further investigation. The primary focus of this study is to determine the usefulness of a community-based fraud prevention program for seniors. The specific goal of this study is to measure the effectiveness of a fraud awareness program on the local level.
Residential Burglary and Residential Robbery: A Patterns in Crime Comparative Analysis
The phenomenon commonly referred to ‘home invasion,’ is a classic representation of burglary at common law. However, in 1892, a shift in the definition of burglary occurred, and it went from being so narrowly defined as solely a nocturnal offence, to one that significantly broadened what encompassed the crime of burglary. By broadening the definition of break-and-enter, the revised version of the offence does not consider a distinct charge for a person breaking into an individual’s dwelling when it is occupied. This type of criminal intrusion is a unique type of crime because in most instances, breaking into a dwelling when occupied turns into a violent altercation, where either violence or the threat of violence ensues, and the confiscation of a person’s property transpires in conjunction with the original crime. Thus, this type of home invasion described is a residential robbery, which is an entirely different crime from a typical residential burglary, since the latter consists of an offender ‘breaking’ into an uninhabited residence. The purpose of this paper is to present the patterns in crime, both temporal and spatial, as well as some theoretical considerations, for residential burglary and robbery, in order to emphasize their distinguishing nature.
Residential Networks Among Adult Male Gang Members
This study’s objective was to identify the social and economic factors influencing adult male gang member residential mobility. Three research questions were proposed: which variables best describe residential mobility? are there discernible patterns in gang members’ residential mobility? and, what social contextual factors influence gang members’ residential mobility? A two-phase panel design gathered semi-structured interview data from adolescent and adult males (n=59) who reported affiliation with gangs, such as the Vice Lords, Gangster Disciples, and Black P-Stones. A criteria-based sampling design ensured a representation of male gang members who would most likely be highly mobile. Semi-structured interviews were also conducted with a woman (wife, girlfriend, relative) nominated by each gang member as a person who would most likely know his residential location. Research findings show that residential mobility has a clear aggregate pattern among men who are active street criminals. Data show that young (teenage to mid-twenties) male and adult and middle-age gang members have measurably different residential mobility patterns. Women, most often with gang affiliations, have a key instrument role in male residential mobility. As women achieve social and economic independence from their mother’s household, which usually happens in their middle to late teens, these women feel entitled to control their households as their mothers did.
Residential Substance Abuse Treatment for Women in Prison: One-year Post-Release Outcomes
Designed specifically for women, the Forever Free Substance Abuse Treatment Program at the California Institution for Women (CIW) consists of an intensive six-month program provided to volunteering women inmates during the end of their imprisonment. The program uses a psychoeducational model combined with a strong 12-step emphasis. Upon release, women may also volunteer for an additional six months of residential treatment in the community. Clients in the Forever Free program who agreed to participate in the study (n=119) were administered an intake instrument at one month into treatment and a pre-release instrument just prior to paroling to the community. Comparison group women (N=96), drawn from those who had volunteered for a short-duration drug and alcohol education program, completed an intake instrument only. Both groups were also interviewed one year post-release. The women who attended Forever Free were significantly less likely to be incarcerated at the time of the interview (29% vs. 54% of the comparison group), significantly less likely to have been arrested during parole (50% vs. 75%), and significantly less likely to have used drugs (51% vs. 77%) or alcohol (50% vs. 68%) during parole. In addition, Forever Free women were significantly more likely to be employed at the time of the interview (65% vs. 45% of the comparison group). The paper will also address background, psychological, and motivational factors related to outcomes.
Residual Tensions of Empire: The Judicial Construction of Contemporary Metis Identities
Since 1982, when the M‚tis were recognized as one of three distinct Aboriginal peoples in the Constitution Act, 1982, the M‚tis have increasingly turned to the courts for clarification of the rights recognized in this Act. In these efforts, many M‚tis communities have specifically shaped their political discourse in a nationhood form; for indigenous communities, the nation form is a distinctly anti-colonial form and is (supposedly) supplanting earlier indigenous political forms in contemporary Canadian society. Through the use of the intervener factums and court transcripts of a recent M‚tis court case (R. v. Powley) this paper examines the role of M‚tis national discourses in the construction of M‚tis identity. In doing so, it explores the tensions between M‚tis communities, the nation state and the law – the latter two of which were historically responsible for the cultural and political destruction of the M‚tis – in determining the proper position of the state in the construction of M‚tis citizenship codes. The paper reveals observations both about the utter lack of impact of the nation form in judicial discourse (at least for the M‚tis), and the specific tensions between M‚tis organizations, `national’ and otherwise, about the proper role of the state in this construction.
Responding to School Violence: An Analysis of Legal Remedies
Recent events, such as the tragedy at Columbine, have focused much attention on the problem of school violence and various ways society is responding to that violence. Both the federal and state governments have responded by introducing a variety of legislation and funding programs aimed at increasing security, improving school climates, and providing prevention programs. In addition, various legal remedies have been sought against schools and school personnel, perpetrators, parents and law enforcement. After providing a brief overview of the state of the problem and various programs and initiatives in operation by 2001, the history of school civil liability will be reviewed. In addition, the extent of school-related violence will be examined in general and specific, selected shootings will be analyzed in more detail. Finally, the status of current litigation related to 14 selected shooting cases will be detailed. The research conducted here indicates that while school violence may be on the rise, litigation against school personnel has been negligible and lawsuits against peripheral agencies, such as law enforcement, are non-existent.
Restorative Community Justice: The Potential to Resolve Feminist Dilemmas and Advanced Feminist Goals
In this paper, I discuss the interconnections between restorative community justice and feminist views of justice. I raise some of the contradictions and dilemmas that have continued to plague feminist theory and activism, particularly in terms of engaging criminal justice state institutions to respond to offending and victimization. I conclude that the restorative community justice ideal corresponds with a feminist vision of justice and, importantly, has the potential to resolve some troubling contradictions facing feminists. Feminism, on the other hand, has a vital role to play in the unfolding of the restorative ideal, particularly in terms of critical insights surrounding gender, race, class, and other structural inequalities that arise when we move from vision to reality.
Restorative Justice: A New Mission for Probation
This paper will examine the utility of placing probation’s community protection mission within a restorative justice framework. Using data from the New York State Probation Outcomes Project, which surveyed directors, supervisors, and line officers in 58 New York counties, we will first examine the extent to which community protection is the primary goal of probation. Following this, the means by which probation attempts to achieve community protection will be investigated. It is hypothesized that not only is community protection clearly the primary goal of probation, but that offender accountability is the most favored route towards achieving this end. It is further hypothesized that offender accountability, as currently conceived, has a distinct focus on the individual, and does not involve the community. However, it will be argued restorative justice provides a moral and philosophical framework for offender accountability that involves both the individual and the community. It allows for a focus on restoration of offenders, victims, and the broader community, including reintegration of offenders into the community, within broader parameters of community safety. As a result, it will be argued that relying on restorative justice ideals would enable probation to redirect its focus to include both the offender and the community, while not abandoning what is currently perceived as its primary mission of community protection.
Restorative Justice, Restitution, and the Crime of Genocide: Implications for the 1915 Armenian Massacres
The nexus between genocidal behavior and the discipline of criminology remains virtually unexplored. This omission has prevented an understanding of the ultimate violation of international criminal law – genocide – and the discipline under which its study should naturally fall. To address this limitation, the link between restorative justice, restitution, and the crime of genocide is explored. Utilizing the Armenian Massacres of 1915, the current essay illustrates how concepts embodied in mainstream criminology can be applied to non-traditional criminal behavior. The conclusions drawn in the current study should not only advance the discipline of criminology, but should also improve the relationship between Armenia and Turkey.
Restorative Justice Conferencing With Youthful Offenders: Effect of Group Assignment on Time Until Failure
Youthful offenders were randomly assigned to either a restorative justice (RJ) conference or to an existing diversion program and followed for one year to evaluate the effect of sample assignment on time to failure. RJ sample members were significantly less likely to be rearrested during the follow-up period, and had a significantly longer time until failure than control sample members. In addition to assignment to the RJ conference, being arrested by a police officer, rather than an officer in the school, significantly decreased the risk of failure. These relationships were confounded by whether or not the participant completed his/her diversion program, however. The effect of the RJ conference was most pronounced in the second quarter of the yearlong follow-up period. Future research should examine the effect of specific conference characteristics on the time until failure, such as the time between initial arrest and the RJ conference, which may explain the delayed effect of the experimental program on the survival curves of this sample.
Restorative Youth Justice, Civil Society and the State
This paper examines the relationship between the state and civil society in restorative youth justice. More specifically, the influence of both neo-liberal and neo-conservative political rationalities on a recently implemented restorative youth justice program in Ontario, Canada is examined. Such a program exhibits several characteristics of a neo-liberal style of governance, specifically a distancing of the state and mobilization of individuals, families and communities in crime control, an increased emphasis on the victim and community as stakeholders in crime control, and a view of the offender as responsible to both the victim and his / her community. Based on observations and interviews with key participants in this program, which operates as an alternative to the formal court system, this paper addresses the following questions. How does such a program figure in the crime control repertoire of a Conservative Ontario government with a strong law and order mandate to get tough on crime and criminals? How does such a program that relies on a strong sense of community function in a densely populated, urban and multicultural context? Does such a program exhibit the principles of restorative justice?
Restorative Youth Justice: Insights From Evaluation of the Referral Orders and Youth Offender Panel Pilots in England and Wales
This paper examines recent attempts to introduce elements of restorative justice into the heart of the youth justice system in England and Wales through the implementation of referral orders and youth offender panels under the Youth Justice and Criminal Evidence Act 1999. The paper will draw upon the findings of an 18 months (Home Office funded) study of the eleven pilot schemes established prior to the national roll out of the initiative in April 2002. Referral orders are a new primary sentencing disposal for 1017 year olds pleading guilty and convicted for the first time by the courts. The disposal involves referral to a youth offender panel, which brings together at least two lay members of the local community and a member of the youth offending team to facilitate a (community conference( style discussion of the harm caused and the appropriate response to it. The panel aims to agree a (contract( with the young offender to address his/her offending behaviour and to make reparation. The contract lasts for the length of the initial referral order made (between 3 and 12 months) during which time further panel meetings are held to review progress. The intentions is that the work of youth offender panels are to be governed by the principles underlying the concept of restorative justice. To encourage the restorative nature of the process a variety of other people including parents, supporters, victims and their supporters are invited to attend a panel meeting. The paper will draw upon diverse (documentary, survey, interview and observational) data collected during the fieldwork. In examining the early experiences of these new ways of working, this paper will highlight a series of questions that arise out of the tension between the participatory character of restorative justice and the managerialist nature of much contemporary youth justice in England and Wales. It will also consider the role of victims within the process and the nature of community participation and representation.
Restoring Justice for Juveniles: A Critical Analysis of the E.P.P.I.C. Initiative
In a recent article, Arrigo and Schehr (1998) argue that the integration of psychoanalytic semiotics and chaos theory provide fertile ground for more humanely and empathically re-configuring victim offender mediation (VOM) as applied to adolescent offenders than present practices suggest. In this paper, the interpretive tools of psychoanalytic semiotics and chaos theory are applied to the E.P.P.I.C. (Enforcement, Prosecution, Prevention, Intervention, and Counseling) initiative in Fresno, CA. At issue is how VOM discourse and the language of restoration were constituted such that they uniquely attended to the voice of various offenders, victims, and the community of which both were a part. This paper concludes by re-thinking the aims of restoration and reconciliation in the context of victim offender mediation, mindful of how language powerfully and meaningfully shapes action in VOM sessions, potentially promoting transformative and empowering experiences for all parties concerned.
Restructuring Child Welfare Services: An Analysis of Four Child Welfare Models in Florida
The rapid growth of the child protective services (CPS) over the last 30 years has limited the child welfare system’s ability to focus on prevention and service provision. Consequently, state legislatures continually try to reform both investigations and service delivery. In May 1998, the Florida legislature mandated the transfer of responsibility for child protective investigations in Manatee, Pinellas, and Pasco Counties from the Department of Children and Families (DCF) to the Sheriff’s Offices in those counties. The same piece of legislation mandated statewide privatization of foster care and related services by 2003. These reforms resulted in the implementation of different child welfare models in small and contiguous geographic areas. The models were mediated by changes in family court judgeships in each county. This study used administrative data provided by the Florida Department of Children and Families to evaluate both process and outcomes for the four child welfare models operating from 1995 through 2000 in Manatee, Lee and Sarasota counties in the state of Florida. In Model 1, DCF conducts investigations and delivers services. In Model 2, DCF conducts investigations and a private agency delivers services. In Model 3, the Sheriff’s Office conducts investigations and DCF delivers services. In Model 4, the Sheriff’s Office conducts investigations and a private agency delivers services. Process variables included model structure, case flow, and stakeholder perceptions. Outcome variables included child safety, investigative findings, dependency dispositions, and length of time to permanency. The relative success of each model was determined by the average effect size of changes in investigation, services delivery, and changes in judgeship on outcome variables. Results indicate that all changes had a negative impact and that Model 1 was most successful. Findings from the study will be important to the national child welfare community, as well as to anyone interested in systems analysis and the impact of systems reform. The study will also contribute to the literature on privatization of social services and criminalization of child abuse.
Retaliatory Conflict Among Drug Sellers: Crime as a Self-Perpetruating Process
Various research streams within criminology have focused on exploring the developmental nature of individual criminal behavior. The usual direction of such research has been to examine the influence of external factors, both formal (e.g., law enforcement activity) and informal (e.g., marriage) on decisions to continue or desist involvement in crime. What has been less examined is the effect of criminality itself on these processes. That is, involvement in a given criminal act may in itself serve to enhance or diminish likelihood of future criminal involvement. For example, conflict which results in violence is often retaliatory in nature, that is, it serves as punishment in response to previous criminal activity, whether violent or otherwise. This issue will be examined by analyzing conflict events related by a small group of drug sellers in New York City. The analysis will explore whether there are systematic differences in the types of conflicts that either result in or are likely to result in retaliatory violence versus those that do not. The findings of this study should help to illuminate the self-perpetuating nature of criminal activity.
Rethinking Community Reintegration: From Pie in the Sky to Coherent Strategy?
During the past five years there has been a significant and largely unexplained rise in the numbers of women being sent to prison and this paper is concerned with consequences of such sentencing decisions. The effective management of offenders before, during and after a prison sentence is an imperative of criminal justice policy makers. The overall aim of this strategy is the employment of sentencing policy and interventions based upon clear evidence of their effectiveness in reducing offending and protecting the public. There are four essential criteria to this strategy; assessment of risk and harm, the planning of supervision, case management and community re-integration. This paper is concerned with the latter of these policy imperatives. In considering community reintegration this paper will explore the following key issues: the support systems and friendship networks that may contribute to women’s social exclusion after release from prison. the support systems and friendship networks that may contribute to women’s reintegration into the community after release. the effects of support systems and friendship networks on re-offending. the extent to which reintegration, social exclusion and re-offending are affected by issues of diversity. The relevance and implications of these issues to the `What Works’ initiative are discussed.
Rethinking CPTED: Through Medical Anthropology in the Twenty-First Century
This study is concerned with the implementation of medical anthropology on Crime Prevention Through Environmental Design (CPTED) techniques with the purpose of expanding the contemporary theoretical principles of CPTED. A review of the literature of both medical anthropology and CPTED is presented through the evolutions of history and theory, while discussing areas of commonalty between these two concepts. Further, contemporary applications of both principles are made while discussing the utility of this “new” method of thinking and writing, regarding CPTED through the macro/micro model. The study also provides a practical use of CPTED in different situations including, but not limited to, acts of terrorism.
Rethinking Criminal Jury Instructions: Technology, Learning Styles, and Juror Comprehension
Jury instructions constitute a bridge between the law and its application by jurors. Research has shown, however, that jurors do not understand jury instructions and their uninformed verdicts may pose a threat to due process and compromise our faith in juries to weigh the credibility of testimony and evidence. Due largely to concerns over appeals, the legal accuracy of instructions has consistently been stressed to the detriment of juror understanding, deliberations, and verdicts. Studies report that juror comprehension and accuracy have been improved by rewriting instructions according to psycholinguistic principles, presenting instructions at the beginning and end of the trial, and providing jurors with written copies of the instructions. This paper will explore whether applying concepts of educational psychology may increase jurors’ comprehension of instructions. Research points to the role of jurors’ prior knowledge in their understanding and application of instructions. Studies of juror metacognition have suggested that a discrepancy may exist between jurors’ confidence in their comprehension of instructions and their performance in comprehension assessments. Based on existing studies, incorporating learning styles into a technology-based multi-modal presentation of jury instructions may add visual organization to the judge’s auditory presentation and may provide an additional technique to increase juror comprehension.
Rethinking Penal Policy: Towards a Systems Approach
The main explanations which have been presented to account for the recent changes in penal policy and the growth of the prison population in recent years include: 1) an increased punitiveness amongst both politicians and the general public, 2 one consequence of this punitive turn has been the increasing bifurcation of polarisation of the penal system, 3) the inability of alternatives to custody such as intermediate sanctions to take the pressure off the prison system, 4) the emergence of the ‘New Penology’ which by focusing on aggregate populations has shifted attention away from inidividual reform to the management of the ‘underclass’ and has thereby broadened the scope of regulation, 5) the formation of prison-industrial complex in which the prison has become increasingly an object of investment, a provider of employment and vehicle for the exploitation of prison labour. These explanations, it is argued are at best partial and at worst misleading. the paper argues that there are other important, but largely neglected processes which have fuelled the expansion of the prison system and shaped developments in penal policy in recent years which have been less conscious and less deliberate (and consequently more difficult to counter) than many of these explanations suggest.
Rethinking the IQ-Delinquency Relationship: A Longitudinal Analysis of Competing Theoretical Explanations
Criminological research has consistently demonstrated a relationship between IQ and delinquency. nevertheless, scholars continue to debate the precise mechanisms by which IQ should have an effect on delinquent behavior. Although researchers typically view the IA-delinquency relationship as a function of “school performance,” competing explanations exist that have yet to be formally tested against one another within the same analysis. Using data from the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth (NLSY) we extend existng research by assessing both the direct effect of IQ on delinquency and the potential indirect effects of three intervening processes: school performance, peer associations, and parenting effects.
Returning Home: Family Support and Prisoner Reentry
This paper will present the results of preliminary analyses of data collected from individual prisoners and their family members during the pilot study (conducted in Maryland) of Returning Home: Understanding the Challenges of Prisoner Reentry. Returning Home seeks to understand the process of prisoner reintegration, including what factors contribute to a successful or unsuccessful reentry experience and how those factors can inform policy. The full study examines the challenges prisoners face upon release from prison and the transition home along five dimensions: 1) the individual trajectory of post-prison adjustment; 2) the family context both before and after prisoners return; 3) the individual’s relationships with peers both in prison and post release; 4) the community context to which prisoners return; and 5) the state-level context of reentry regulations and policies and other social and economic influences. This paper focuses on the family context of prisoner reintegration, comparing pre-release expectations of both inmates and their family members with post-release circumstances using data collected from surveys of inmates administered 30-45 days before release, interviews with family members 30 days prior to the inmate’s release, and interviews with released prisoners conducted 30-45 days after their release.
Returning Home: Individual Factors in Prisoner Reintegration
This paper will present the results of preliminary analyses of data collected from individual prisoners during the pilot study (conducted in Baltimore, Maryland) of Returning Home: Understanding the Challenges of Prisoner Reentry. Returning Home seeks to understand the process of reintegration, including what factors contribute to a successful or unsuccessful reentry experience and how those factors can inform policy. The full study examines the challenges prisoners face upon release from prison and the transition home along five dimensions: 1) the individual trajectory of post-prison adjustment; 2) the family context both before and after prisoners return; 3) the individual’s relationships with peers both in prison and post-release; 4) the community context to which prisoners return; and 5) the state-level context of reentry regulations and policies and other social and economic influences. This paper compares pre-release expectations with post-release circumstances using data collected during surveys administered 30-45 days before release and interviews conducted 30-45 days after release.
Returning Home: Understanding the Challenges of Prisoner Reentry
This poster presentation will highlight the research design and conceptual framework for a longitudinal study of the multiple and often complex challenges prisoners face upon release and as they reintegrate into society, with a focus on informing reentry policies at the national, state, and local levels. Returning Home is basic research on the process of reintegration, drawing upon multiple measures of the phenomenon over time, and spanning a wide array of potential factors that may influence this process. It includes measures of both successful reintegration and recidivism, including outcomes such as securing and paying for adequate housing, maintaining stable employment, and remaining substance-abuse free. Returning Home is being implemented in two phases. Phase I is a pilot study in Maryland, which began in December, 2001 (with data collection commencing in February, 2002). The pilot study will aid in the refinement of our research design for Phase II and will also inform Maryland state policymakers about the nature of offender reintegration and ways to reduce recidivism. Phase II will involve implementation of the full research strategy in four additional states; the first two sites are Illinois and Ohio.
Review of Recent Innovations in Hate Crime Prevention
n recent years, the interest in hate crimes has moved from being a scholarly issue to being an issue now discussed by mainstream America. Hate crimes have sparked debates on issues ranging from the number of offenses that occur to the necessity of hate crime legislation. Some current hate crime prevention programs target youth and college students, as these are the individuals most likely to engage in hate crime activity. This paper reviews current hate crime prevention programs to determine the use of theory and research in their design and implementation.
Review of the Relationship Between Broken Family and Delinquency: A Meta Analysis
My paper is a literature review about the relationship between family structure and delinquency. It covers 15 articles and uses meta-analysis method. The hypothesis is that family structure (single-parent) has an effect on the adolescent delinquency. Some of the findings show statistically significant relationship and the others conclude there is no significant relationship. In general, studies that used good data analysis method find there is a indirect relationship between family structure and delinquency. And parent supervision or family attachment plays a role of a moderator (intervening variable). There are also many confounding variables which need to be controlled for. Meta-analysis indicates there is no significant direct relationship. It would be efficient to focus on lack of family attachment, peer relations, and socioeconomic status of the broken family in politic consideration.
Revisiting and Reassessing Conventional Wisdom: Attitudes About Domestic Violence in Rural and Urban Communities
Researchers on domestic violence have only begun to examine the broader social contexts in which violence takes place, and in particular, have yet to systematically examine the role of public attitudes and beliefs in both formal and informal social control. The research presented in this paper explores conventional wisdom about the attitudes of rural and urban community members. Residents of rural areas are often characterized as patriarchal, tolerant of violence, uninformed about causes of violence and about law, and distrustful of official interventions in personal problems, including family violence. However, there is little empirical data to support these assumptions. This study, which is based on a survey of residents in six diverse communities, tests these conventional wisdom propositions, taking into account alternative explanations for variability in attitudes and beliefs.
Revisiting the Moral Domain
Building on Magnuson’s (1999, 2002) analysis of MacIntyre’s (1984) ethical theory and the goals of social experience described in social interdependence theory, this article examines the moral stance of girls who use violence and suggests that, rather than decribing these girls as delayed in their moral development or deviant from the expected stance for females, they may be anchored in a competitive rather than a cooperative or individualistic stance and therefore acting in a morally coherent though not socially conventional way.
Revisiting the Rise of the New Female Offender: Examining the Relationship Between Gender, Drugs, and Violent Crime
For several decades there has been an on-going debate in the literature on crime and in the popular culture about the nature and extent of female criminality. This debate has centered on the question of changing patterns of female crime. On the one side of the debate is the view that female involvement in crime has increased significantly, but particularly for violent crime. Proponents of this perspective suggest the emergence of a new female offender. On the other side of the debate is the view that despite fluctuations in the crime rae, female involvement in violent crime has remained fairly stable over time. Involvement in today’s drug market has been implicated with increased violent female criminality (Inciardi, 1990; Baskin and Sommers, 1993, 1999; Johnson, 1990; and Fagan, 1994), thus the focus of the analysis in this paper is on the relationship between drug use and violent crime. Based on data collected on a sample of 67 female arrestees (drawn from Pennsylvania’s SANTA study), we examine the following four hypotheses: 1) the greater the degree of drug use, the greater the degree of violent crime; 2) the greater the degree of drug dependency, the greate rthe degree of violent crime; 3) the greater the degree of drug dependence on cocaine/crack, the greater the degree of violent crime; and 4) the earlier the age onset for drug use, the greater the involvement in violent crime. Generally, our findings suggest there is little evidence to support the contention of a “new” female offender.
Risk Differentiation and Intensive Supervision: A Meaningful Union?
Much attention has been focused on the relationship between risk level and correctional service delivery. The risk principle purports that intensive services should be reserved for higher risk offenders. Prior research has found that appropriate services (those based on the principles of risk, need and responsivity) have been able to reduce recidivism by 30 percent. This study presents findings from a secondary data analysis, examining whether the risk principle holds for supervision service delivery, specifically intensive supervision. This data set contains information from fourteen sites in different parts of the United States and utilizes random assignment. Logistic and linear regressions are used. Implications for future research and policy implications are discussed.
Risk-Factor-Profile Instrument: Identifying Children on the Path to Violent Delinquency
Delinquency during childhood is currently the strongest predictor of who will become a chronic, serious and/or violent juvenile delinquent. Among children under age 10 who have been arrested for a delinquent act, up to 60% will be arrested for multiple offenses, a serious non-violent offense or a serious violent offense by age 18. However, at least 40% will not. The next step in the research agenda is to determine what distinguishes child delinquents who will escalate into serious delinquency from those who will not. This study presents evidence that a screening instrument based on the number and severity of risk factors for delinquency in the child, family, school and neighborhood can identify a continuum of risk for delinquency in general, and violent delinquency in particular. A key feature of the instrument is a score that takes the interaction between temperament and contextual risks into account. Evidence of the psychometric validity, construct validity, and criterion-related validity of the Risk Factor Profile instrument will be presented using screening data for 163 children between the ages of 5 and 10 who were referred to a community intervention program for committing a chargeable offense.
Risking Incorporation by the State: Reforming the Federal Prisons for Women in Canada
The new Canadian federal prisons for women, which replaced the old Prison for Women, have been open for six years and may now be assessed by what they have achieved – and failed to achieve – for federally sentenced women. This paper asks whether the voluntary sector groups which joined the Correctional Service of Canada in 1989, as partners in the Task Force on Federally Sentenced Women, were right to participate. Has their involvement legitimated a venture which, in many respects, has left a significant proportion of federally sentenced women more disadvantaged than before? This paper examines the unanticipated consequences of the groups’ engagement with the state, such as the large numbers of women now labelled as being in need of ‘intensive intervention’ on the basis of their security and mental health needs. It particularly focuses on the Aboriginals’ involvement in the planning of the new Healing Lodge and raises the possibility that this might have led to unacceptable compromises of culture and spirituality and the Aboriginals’ own incorporation into the state penal system.
Risks of Intimate Partner Homicide According to Relationship Status and State
Domestic violence studies that differentiate between current and past partners find that violence committed in the aftermath of separation is more serious on average, more frequent and more likely to result in injury, hospitalization and homicide. Women more often than men are assaulted, threatened, hunted down and killed by extremely jealous and possessive partners. Rates of intimate female partner homicide in Canada are higher for women in common-law relationships than for those in legal marriages, and highest for women who have recently separated. Dawson and Gartner (1998) conceptualize intimate partner homicides according to relationship state (intact or estranged) and relationship status (legal, cohabitating or dating) and found important differences related to employment, age and criminal record of perpetrators and the circumstances of the event. Following from Dawson and Gartner’s work, this study will assess differences in the context and circumstances surrounding homicides committed by intimate partners in Canada, according to relationship status and state, in the ten-year period 1991-2000. Data are drawn from Statistics Canada’s annual Homicide Survey.
Risky Lifestyles: Emergency Department Utilization Among a Cohort of Homicide Arrestees and Victims
Criminologists tend to focus their attention on the dynamics of offending and treat victimization as theoretically and empirically distinct from offending (Esbensen and Huizinga, 1991). However, there is a growing body of empirical evidence to suggest that offending and victimization are intricately linked. This empirical work stems from lifestyle/routine activities theory (Hindelang et al., 1978), which argues that variations in lifestyle (particularly vocational and leisure activities), which are largely determined by demographic and structural characteristics, shape an individual’s exposure to risk and ultimately, that individual’s likelihood of victimization. We examine the linkage between offending and victimization by measuring emergency department utilization among a cohort of homicide arrestees and their victims before and after the offense. This study aims to document the nature of the victimization risks associated with a violent lifestyle, and to identify a set of patient (demographics), patient visit (day, time, method of arrival), and clinical (disease process, social history) characteristics that might be used to prospectively identify potential offenders and victims for targeted intervention.
Role of Family and Community Prevention Programs in Delinquency Prevention
This study examined the effect of family and community violence prevention efforts on youth at-risk behavior. Using a quasi-experiment design two groups of youths (ages 12-14) were selected. Groups were matched on race, age, gender, and socioeconomic status. One group was enrolled in Family and Community Violence Prevention programs and the other group was not. The youth in both groups were compared on school behavior, academic achievement, and mediation skills. The preliminary results show that community violence prevention programs make some positive impact. These effects also varied by race and types of delinquency. The implications of the study findings are discussed.
Ronin: A Police Officer’s Fall Into the Federal Correctional System
ABSTRACT One’s view of the United States’ criminal justice system is shaped by the conflict between conventional wisdom and one’s own personal experience. Very often, the only way someone can learn how they individually contribute to the problems of our justice system is to be exposed and immersed into the system itself. This paper is the first in a series in which the “story” of a former law enforcement officer, recent recipient of a graduate degree, and relatively new “resident” of the federal prison system is shared with the “free” world. While practitioners and academics debate the management of individuals who might, administratively, be defined as “protective custody” material, the voices of those who “live federal time” are heard throughout this narrative.
Routine Activities, Social Bonds and Campus Crime
Macro-level, official statistics indicate that college campuses with large residential populations are likely to experience higher rates of campus crime than less residential or “commuter” campuses. At the micro level of analysis, routine activities theorists (Cohen and Felson, 1979) or opportunity theorists (Cohen, Luegel and Land, 1981) would argue that this is due to the increased time spent on campus by students and the resulting greater number of opportunities for victims and offenders to intersect with one another given the close residential, spatial context. Alternately, from a social control perspective (Hirschi 1969), it could be argued that residential campuses have higher rates of crime and victimization because of reduced direct and indirect controls (attachments) exercised by the students’ respective families. Self-reported data (N = 800) on offending, victimization, living situations, and measures of social bonds were collected from a random sample of students at a medium-sized regional Midwestern college with substantial populations of both commuter and residential students. Logistic regression models of both offending and victimization with demographic controls provide more support for the social control explanation of campus crime than the routine activities model. The implications of this finding for campus crime policy and prevention strategies are discussed.
Routine Activities and Sexual Assault: An Analysis of Prevention Techniques Utilized by Colleges and Universities in the United States
Direct contact predatory crimes are illegal acts in which an individual definitely and deliberately takes or damages the person or property of another. The structural changes in routine activity patterns can have an effect on the three minimal elements of direct contact predatory crimes: a motivated offender, a suitable target, and the absence of capable guardians. According to Henson & Stone (1999), the college campus is the most typical environment for the convergence of these three elements. Thus it is hypothesized that techniques and programs that reduce the number of suitable targets and motivated offenders as well as increase the appearance of capable guardians will create lower sexual assault rates on campus. This study analyses data from 12 four-year post secondary institutions in the United States with a total enrollment of over 1,000. Using stratified random sampling, 3472 students were interviewed regarding victimization. Additionally, mail-back surveys were sent to campus officials addressing aspects of campus security and crime prevention programs / services available. Hierarchical linear models are utilized to show how school-level routine activity patterns affect individual-level victimization.
Rural-Urban Differences in Arrestees’ Perceived Needs for Substance-Specific Treatment
An interview study among a group of arrestees in seven county jails was conducted in Ohio between June 1999 and September 2001, examining the prevalence of alcohol and drug dependence within the group and assessing the need for substance abuse treatment. Four of the county jails at which interviews were conducted are in urban areas, and three are in rural areas. The present study looked at demographic variables, situation-related factors, current drug dependence diagnoses, past treatment experience, and jail location-rural or urban. It sought to assess whether these factors predicted arrestees’ perceived needs for substance-specific treatment (for alcohol, marijuana, cocaine, or opiate use); and, further, whether any predictors of a perceived need for treatment would be identical for arrestees housed in rural jails and those housed in urban jails. The results show that some of the factors assessed do exert differential effects on rural and urban arrestees’ perceived needs for substance-specific treatment. Future treatment policy within the criminal justice system should perhaps take into account inmates’ individual characteristics and the rural or urban location of the jail initiating their processing. It may be possible, by paying attention to these variables, to enhance inmates’ motivation to enter treatment programs.
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Safe Schools/Healthy Students Initiative National Evaluation Wave 1 Findings: Being Bullied ad Other Outcomes and Behaviors
This paper will examine the relationships between self-reported experiences of being bullied and other outcomes and behaviors, including mental health symptomatology and services received, perceptions of school safety and support, and other experiences of violence-both as perpetrator and victim. Gender, grade, region, and urbanicity effects will also be examined. Specifically, this presentation will compare students who report being bullied with those who do not report being bullied on key characteristics including being more depressed, more anxious, more likely to act out, and more likely to exhibit mood disorders or acting-out disorders; suicidal ideation; perceived need for and use of mental health services; perceived support from teachers; other violent experiences such as being threatened with a weapon, hit, or robbed; fighting, weapon carrying, and delinquency; using alcohol, tobacco, and other drugs; perceptions of school safety; and school avoidance. This paper will be based on results of the SS/HS National Evaluation Wave 1 student survey, which was conducted in 12 sentinel sites and included 18,270 7th, 9th, and 11th grade students.
Safe/Schools/Healthy Students Initiative National Evaluation Wave 1 Findings: Characteristics Related to Violence Perpetration, Victimization and Exposure
This paper will examine the relationships between self-reported violence perpetration, victimization and exposure and student, school, family and community characteristics. Gender, grade, region, and urbanicity effects will also be examined. Specifically, this presentation will assess the relationship between specific aspects of violence perpetration, victimization or exposure and key characteristics of the student (substance use; school attitude, involvement and attendance; perceived support; mental health status; and perceptions of school safety), the school (enrollment; policies and sanctions; climate; and services), the family (living arrangements, perceived support from parents), and the community (region; urbanicity). This paper will be based on results of the SS/HS National Evaluation Wave 1 student survey, which was conducted in 12 sentinel sites in Spring 2001 and included 18,270 7th, 9th, and 11th grade students.
Safe Schools/Healthy Students Initiative National Evaluation Wave 1 Findings: School Safety and Law Enforcement
This paper will examine the relationships between self-reported perceptions of safety on school grounds, reports of violent, property and other crimes on school property, and the presence and roles of school resource officers. School characteristics, including level of school, region, and urbanicity, will also be examined. This paper will be based on results of the SS/HS National Evaluation Wave 1 surveys of teachers and principals, which were conducted in 77 sites and included results from more than 1000 schools. Results from the surveys of the school and law enforcement partners in the local SS/HS initiatives also will be examined.
Sage Schools or Safe Society: Issues in School Violence, School Bullying, and School Discipline
At what point does society’s concern for safe schools interfere with student’s rights under the U.S. Constitution? In the wake of the notorious school killings at Columbine as well as the horrific terrorists attacks on the World Trade Center and Pentagon, there is an increased concern about safety and security in our society in general and our schools in particular. This hyper-vigilance has resulted in many schools adopting a zero-tolerance for weapons, more defined school discipline policies, and strategies for creating safe schools. This paper examines a) social/behavioral research relating to school violence and school bullying behavior and b) an overview of key Supreme Court cases related to corporal punishment, student suspensions and expulsions, student searches and seizures, random drug testing, and disruptive special education students. The paper also examines the relationship between Supreme Court rulings, student discipline policies, and the balancing of individual constitutional rights and safe schools.
Sample Characteristics
The sample for this investigation was drawn from adolescents adjudicated for serious offenses in Phoenix and Philadelphia. The initial question for this investigation, therefore, is how the adolescents in the sample compare to other adolescents seen in the juvenile justice system in each locale and in other locales. Preliminary findings based on overall comparisons of offending histories and self reported delinquency will be provided. in addition, site comparisons will be done to see how the two systems involved in the study filter cases for particular types of processing or dispositions.
School-Based Protection of Youth At-Risk for Joining Gangs
This presentation presents findings from a three-year study funded by the U.s. Department of Education to investigate school-based protection of youth at-risk for joining gangs and other delinquent peer groups. We examine how middle school aged boys that are involved in delinquent groups, or are at risk of joining them, experience schooling in Los Angeles, california, and how their experiences either increase their risk for delinquent group joining, or interact with risk to reduce the odds of joining. Personal interviews with about 450 7th and 8th grade boys provide data on risk and potential protective factors. A predictive model for joining delinquent groups is tested on 250 boys reinterviewed arter one year. We conclude with a discussion of the study’s implications for educators, school-based prevention programs and scholars of resilience.
School-Based Violence: A Practical Approach to Social Problems
When guns and shooting deaths entered the white suburban school system in the explosive violence of Littleton, interest in violence in the schools in the United States skyrocketed. With subsequent school violence and deaths in the schools caused by students, violence in all schools became a “social problem”– a problem that was no longer limited to the inner city school. The emergence of a serious new social problem had the predictable media response: blame the family; blame the parents; blame the mother. This approach of “blaming the family” has obscured research approaches, which might examine specific variables, which could be critical in both understanding social problems among youth and in alleviating such problems. Another approach to the social problem of school violence has been broad general social theories such as the strain theory of negative peer relations put forth by Agnew (2000). In this case the approach to the social problems would be to fix the peer relationships. But defining situations and conditions of strain leading to school violence are often so broad as to be merged into the general stresses in the everyday life of youth. One temptation of typologies is, as in this case, to label everything as strain. This approach is similarly weak when it comes to developing theories of social problems, which can be effective in implementing prevention policies. The problem with vague, abstract notions of the broad social theories is that they leave little possibility of exacting the changes needed to reduce school-based violence. By implying that we should “fix the family” or create more positive peer relations, we set unrealistic and potentially politically explosive responses (e.g. require mothers to stay at home with their adolescents) to the problem or require improbable cultural transformation (e.g. change the nature of teen peer relations). In addition these theories can lead to the indiscriminate labeling of youth that are under strain, or are from female-headed families as youth prone to violence. A potential solution to is to look inside the environment of school and the variables that can help identify very specific school-based influences that can have more aptly identify potential victims and offenders and develop the appropriate interventions. The variable to be investigated in this paper is relocation and its relationship to thoughts of bringing a weapon to school. Relocation is noted in the literature as having an important impact on the school experience . Students who are new to a school district may experience many problems related to the loss of social capital, particular in terms of peers relationships (Furstenberg 2000). Since peers relationships seem to be a catalyst for school violence, and relocation has a major impact on peer relationships, relocation may be an important variable for understanding school violence. While schools can not control relocation in and out of the district, they can recognize that the new kid at school is facing particular challenges and create interventions to help them.
School-Based Youth Courts: Early Interventions for Delinquency Prevention
School administrators have been grappling with ways to effectively address student misconduct. In many cases, traditional sanctions of detention, suspension, and expulsion are not effective because they do not provide individualized responses geared to address the needs and problems of students. This paper will describe a program, called “youth court” which may offer a more meaningful response to misconduct. Youth courts originated by law enforcement as a diversion from juvenile court, but recently schools have begun using them to handle school rule violations, not crimes. While the limited research that has been done on youth courts has been favorable, no studies have focused solely on school-based youth courts. Therefore, this paper recognizes that further research needs to be completed in order to determine its effectiveness. Youth courts, also referred to as teen courts or peer juries, allow sentencing to be determined by other youth. Initial misconduct of youth, often occurs at school and those students who commit school infractions are more likely to become delinquent. Therefore, programs such as youth courts, have the potential to prevent youth involvement in criminal activity. At the least, youth courts allow those students who would be removed from school through suspension and expulsion, to remain in school while holding them accountable for their actions.
School Climate Predictors of School Disorder: Results From the National Study of Delinquency Prevention in Schools
America experienced what has been described as an epidemic of youth violence in the decade between 1985 and 1994 (Cook and Laub, 1998). Although the rate of violent youth crime has been declining since then, it continues at a rate that is elevated compared to the years prior to the epidemic. Fortunately, serious violent crime in schools is now and has always been rare. Only 220 events of school-associated violent deaths occurred in the nation between 1994 and 1999 (Anderson et. al., 2001). Young people continue to be the victims of serious violent crime less often in school than away from school. In the 1999 National Crime Victimization Survey (NCVS), twenty-eight percent (28%) of all serious, violent crimes against 12-18 year-olds (e.g., those including rape, sexual assault, robbery, or aggravated assault) occurred during school or on the way to and from school. Violent victimizations (defined as those crimes included in serious violent victimization plus simple assault) are also somewhat more likely to occur out of school than in school. Nevertheless, public concern about school safety has increased, especially in the wake of several highly publicized school shootings that contributed to a significant increase in homicide rates for students killed in multiple-victim incidents on school grounds between 1992 and 1999 (Anderson et al., 2001). Gallup polls showed the percentage of parents fearing for their children’s safety in school increased from 24% in 1977 to 53% in 1999 (Gallop Poll, 1999). Less serious forms of crime have been relatively common in and around schools for at least the past thirty years. Considering all forms of crime measured in the NCVS, more crime victimization occurs in school than out of school. In all, 54% of crimes against students aged 12 to 18 occurred at school or on the way to and from school despite their spending only about 18% of their waking hours in school. The proportion is highest for theft (61%), but also substantial for violent crimes (46%). These findings mirror earlier findings from a 1976 national study of victimization in schools (Gottfredson and Gottfredson, 1985) that found that although serious victimization in schools was exceedingly rare, minor victimizations and indignities (such as swearing and obscene gestures) were common in schools. Clearly, although serious violent crimes are not common in schools, schools are by no means safe havens against crimes. In fact, youths are at elevated risk for criminal victimization when they are in school or on the way to and from school. Recent attempts to prevent serious violent victimization in schools have focused on the characteristics of the perpetrators of these offenses in an attempt to build screening tools that might successfully identify potential shooters before they act. These attempts have noted certain similarities among the perpetrators of the school shootings that occurred between 1992 and 1999. An investigation into targeted violence in schools (U.S. Secret Service, 2000), however, noted that no accurate profile of the school shooter exists. The age range of perpetrators is broad (11 to 21); they come from a variety of racial and ethnic backgrounds and family situations; their academic performance range from excellent to failing, and their prior behaviors range from having no observed behavioral problems to a clear history of violence and weapon use. Any attempt to identify these individuals before the fact would be futile because the extreme rarity of the events make them difficult to predict, and because the events are generally embedded in a social and transactional sequence of events that would not be captured by a static screening activity (Mulvey and Cauffman, 2001). This fact squares with a long tradition in Psychology showing the futility of predicting rare events. It may, however, be possible to identify characteristics of schools that make them more susceptible to crime and violence. A number of characteristics of the way schools are managed have been shown to independently increase or decrease the level of crime experienced in the school. Not surprisingly, schools that establish and maintain rules, effectively communicate clear expectations for behavior, consistently enforce rules, and provide rewards for rule compliance and punishments for rule infractions experience lower levels of crime. Life in these schools is more predictable, and students can generally count on adults to maintain order. Schools experiencing less crime are also administered more effectively in general. General management functions such as coordination and resource allocation and communication are working well, and goals for the organization are in place. Finally, schools that experience lower levels of crime are also characterized by a sense of community in which an extended network of caring adults interact regularly with the students and share norms and expectations about their students. In these environments, students are more likely to trust adults and adults are more likely to be in tune with what is going on in the lives of the children. The general social climate in these schools is an important restraining influence that can be considered a protective factor against crime (Gottfredson, 2001). The research on school characteristics related to school crime (to be reviewed shortly) implies that while much of the serious violence experienced in schools has little to do with the school setting, some of the violence experienced in schools appears to be a function of the way schools are organized and managed. If this is true, interventions aimed at creating stronger schools are therefore likely to reduce school crime somewhat.
School Location and Toxic Waste: Race, Class, or Collective Efficacy?
Environmental justice advocates have argued that discrimination in toxic waste siting has resulted in greater exposure to environmental risks for minorities and the poor than for other groups. However, results from anecdotal and methodologically flawed studies are far from conclusive and it remains unclear whether race and class bias occurs in hazardous waste siting decisions. Using the concept of collective efficacy (Sampson et al., 1997) as the mediating link between race, class, and environmental siting, this study will expand on previous research by examining hazardous waste siting in relation to school location, as well as the surrounding community. Information on schools, such as location, opening date, student body characteristics, surrounding neighborhood characteristics, and collective efficacy, will be obtained from the National Study of Delinquency Prevention in Schools. Toxic hazard data from the Environmental Protection Agency’s Toxic Release Inventory and Superfund database will be matched to school geocode areas. Analysis will be conducted to examine race, class, and collective efficacy as competing hypotheses for toxic waste siting.
School Networks, (Best) Friends, and Youth Groups: Who Contributes to Peer Similarity in Delinquent Behavior?
It is widely accepted that delinquent youth have relationships with each other: this is referred to as peer similarity in delinquent behavior. However, there are many forms of peer relationships: classmates, friends, best friends, youth groups/gangs, and all of these peers may differ in their level of delinquency. Although not explicit, control/bonding theories predict most similarity with intimate friends, while social learning theories predict most possibilities for learning and reinforcement in larger peer groups. Additionally, Moffitt’s dual taxonomy theory predict that ‘life-time persistent’ delinquents attract a circle of youngsters who become ‘adolescent-limited’ offenders themselves. In this paper, we answer the question which peers contribute to similarity in delinquent behavior by analyzing school and friendship networks of adolescents. We are conducting a longitudinal survey in which we map the school networks of about 1500 respondents in the age of 12-15. We also establish pre-school delinquency of respondents and ask about the behavior of friends, best friends and members of youth groups. Untill now, information about these different types of relationships has never been combined in one study. In the paper, we will present results of the first survey wave.
Schools as a Source for Delinquent Behavior: The Development of Negative Affective States and the Presence of Coping Strategies
Over the past decade, general strain theory (GST) has accumulated a considerable amount of empirical support. Many of these experiments have typical centered on testing the direct relationship that strain has on crime and delinquency. This test attempts to incorporate a more complete model by paying particular attention to the negative affective state and coping strategies that might play an intervening role as predicted by Agnew (1992). Particular attention will be directed at the contribution that school settings have in developing the negative affective state and providing both illegitimate and legitimate coping strategies for juveniles.
Schools as Communities: The Relationships Among Communal School Organization, Student Bonding, and School Disorder
Research has illustrated the importance of school social organization as a predictor of school disorder (Gottfredson, 2001). This study focuses on a specific perspective of school social organization: communal school organization, which views the school as a community (Bryk and Driscoll, 1988). Communal school organization includes supportive and collaborative relationships among school members and a common set of goals and norms. Research has shown that schools which are communally organized have more positive student attitudes, better teacher morale, and less student problem behavior (Bryk and Driscoll, 1988; Battistich, Solomon, Kim, Watson, and Schaps, 1995; Battistich and Hom, 1997). Prior research, however, has not examined the process leading from communal school organization to these positive outcomes, although it does suggest that members of communally organized schools become more bonded to other school members, more committed to the school’s mission and goals, and are more likely to internalize and abide by the school’s norms and rules. These ideas naturally lead to student bonding, another important predictor of delinquency. As described by Hirschi (1969), the student bond is the link between the student and the school which restrains the student from delinquency because he or she values the bond and does not want to damage it. The importance of student bonding and its effect on problem behavior is supported by research (Krohn and Massey, 1980; Cernkovich and Giordano, 1992; Jenkins, 1997; Welsh et al., 1999; Gottfredson, et al., 2000). This study explores the school-level relationships between communal school organization, student bonding, and school disorder using structural equation modeling. The hypotheses of this study are: Hypothesis One: Schools with higher levels of communal school organization will have lower levels of school disorder. Hypothesis Two: Schools with higher levels of communal school organization will have higher levels of student bonding. Hypothesis Three: The effect of levels of communal school organization on levels of school disorder will be mediated by levels of student bonding. The data used for this study are from the National Study of Delinquency Prevention in Schools (NSDPS; G. Gottfredson et al., 2000). The final sample used in this study consists of the 307 secondary schools that have data from both teachers and students.
Science to Art: The Jump to New Ideas
Gallery: a. Facial features reconstruction. Anthropologist/artist works with coroner’s office to identify the missing. Artwork consists of one bust and photographs of the process. b. Crime Scenes. A more painterly presentation of forensic methods, crime scenes, and victimology. Framed art. c. Creative Commercial Art. Photographic restorations, manuals, jacket covers, book illustrations, and other practical needs. *Amount of artwork available for show will be limited, due to available space and cost of shipping. However, CDs, flyers, and photocopies of presented art will be provided for audience. Note: this table may be useful for those interested in combining innovative, exploratory research with quantitative methods. Graduate table: “Finding and using creative ideas.” 1. Exploratory stage of research: identifying and observing a. Collecting data, intuitive and total body choices. b. Creative writing: active research and social experience. c. Producing the paper “Building a drawing” explains how the Berlin Wall meets the standards for a drawing, how it is art and art history. Validity. 2. Artist’s on-site research: photographs as historical documents. Recorded interviews, independent corroboration, standards and purposes. Critical writing. Photographs include: a. Personal, international communications via wall messages between Berliners and artist: description of East German border security methods; Soviet towers and propaganda methods that employ music; Tapes describing La Bell Disco bombing, photographs of the ‘Funeral March’ and the wall art for murdered US soldiers. b. Personal photographs: ‘escapee’ tunnels, Berlin wall shrines for the dead escapees, personal wall paintings, and world-famous artist’s wall painting. 3. Research-then-theory concept for cycling through the above steps. Description and analysis. Biases.
Scotland’s Pilot Drug Court: The First Six Months
Drug Courts aim to reduce drug misuse and associated offending by offering treatment based options outwith the traditional court setting. Following the apparent success of Drug Courts in other jurisdictions and of Drug Treatment and Testing Orders in Scotland, the Scottish parliament agreed to establish a pilot Drug Court in Glasgow. Scotland’s (and the UK’s) first Drug Court began dealing with cases in November 2001, based within the existing Sheriff Court and operating within existing legislative provision. The Drug Court is targeted primarily on offenders aged over 20 years who have a history of drug misuse and related offending and who are considered to have the motivation to change. Potential cases are identified initially by the police from among those offenders detained in police custody following their arrest. The key objectives of the new Drug Court are to reduce the level of drug-related offending behaviour; to reduce or eliminate offenders’ dependence on or propensity to use drugs; and to examine the viability and usefulness of a Drug Court in Scotland using existing legislation. A multi-disciplinary team of researchers at the University of Stirling, Scotland has been commissioned to evaluate the Drug Court over a period of two years. This paper will focus on the first six months’ operation of the pilot Drug Court, highlighting issues that have promoted or impeded its successful implementation.
Screening Arrestees for Pretrial Release Eligibility
The pretrial release decision has been shown to play a large role in driving the criminal justice system. This decision affects personal liberty, case outcomes, and jail overcrowding. A rational and equitable pretrial release process is one in which only those defendants who pose a serious risk of flight or danger to the community are detained to trial. Currently, the pretrial release process is far from this ideal. Decisions are made without a systematic understanding of the likely outcomes of those decisions, resulting in extensive unnecessary pretrial incarceration. The Vera Institute’s Manhattan Bail Project pioneered the use of risk assessment instruments to guide pretrial release decisions. Based on data collected in Baltimore City, Maryland, the researchers tested the ability of traditional static variables, such as those used in the Vera instrument, as well as more advanced dynamic variables to predict which arrestees are the best candidates for pretrial release. From this, a risk assessment instrument was developed, taking into account the most significant factors affecting successful pretrial release results. A random experiment was used to test the instrument. This paper will discuss the development of the new instrument and the results of the validation experiment designed to test it.
Searching for a Demon: The Media Construction of the Militia Movement
This poster will examine the ways in which the media constructed the militia movement following the bombing of the Alfred F. Murrah building in Oklahoma City. Its focus will be on providing an overview of Chermak’s book that will be released in October 2002 (Northeastern University Press). This poster will show how this celebrated case transformed the public’s consciousness about a largely overlooked movement, socially constructing it into a significant domestic terrorism threat. It will describe how the media (news, films, editorial cartoons, television) presented the militia movement in the 1990s. Quantitative media data will be presented to show how the coverage of the movement changed over time, the key sources used to describe the problem, the dominant images used to describe the movement, and considers why the movement was framed in certain ways. These media accounts of the militia movement are contrasted with first-hand accounts of the strategies, ideologies, and activities of militia members gleaned from extensive interview data.
Seasonal and Temporal Variation in School Victimizations
It is an accepted tenet of criminal justice practitioners and researchers that crime has temporal characteristics. Extending this logic, one would expect that there are “hot times” for victimization to occur during the school day and across the school year. This analysis examines students’ reports of victimization across the time of day and by month of year. Additional analyses explore the types of victimization occurring over time as well as specific locations of school crime. Data from the National Crime Victimization Survey will be used. Implications of this analysis and directions for future research are discussed.
Securities Offences in Post-Communist China: Socialist Market Economy and the Control of White-Collar Crime
paper examines rampant securities offences and enforcement mechanisms in China. The research material consists of all reported cases and other documents of the Chinese Securities Regulatory Commission from 1993 to 2000. The purpose of this paper is to explore the cultural and systematic roots of these offences, the social, political, economic and legal origins of securities regulation and how securities offences are dealt with by the Chinese Securities Regulatory Commission, in the context of so-called Âøsocialist market economyÂñ of the post-communist China. Although the pragmatic desire for market confidence of both domestic and foreign investors has forced the Chinese government to commit itself to improve the law against securities offences, the systematic dilemma of mixed economy and politics in the country makes the enforcement of securities offences even more difficult.
‘Security’ Sexual Abuse of Flight Attendants Since 9/11: Terror Upon Terror
Since 9/11, commercial airlines have increased airport security measures in the forms of additional armed guards, luggage searches, and bodily searches by screening staff. One might expect that the screening staff would be better trained and more professionally-oriented than those prior to 9/11, given that the tragedy which occurred could likely have been prevented with better screening techniques. This has not proven to be the case, as evidenced by the number and type of security breaches that have happened since 9/11, such as passengers boarding the aircraft with loaded guns. The presenting problem for this analysis is sexual assaults perpetrated by the airport screeners against female flight attendants. Male crew are also targeted but not with the regularity of the female flight attendants, according to flight attendant reports. Relying largely on Association of Flight Attendant accounts, the assaults, and equally importantly, the non-reactions of the U.S. Department of Transportation (whose job it is to assure not only airline safety but also crew safety) will be described. Female flight attendants have complained that they have been singled out for searches and that those searches entail feeling up the employee under her clothes and with inactive screening wands, the latter clearly indicating that a search for weapons is not the purpose of the “search.” When flight attendants refuse to be invasively searched, they have been subject to escalated abuse in the form of strip searches, verbal abuse, and visual inspections from passersby and airport employees. Also discussed, among other points, will be issues such as: privately-contracted screening companies who are not subject to government regulations, illegal discrimination against airline crews as compared to passengers, and the overall hostile work environment. None of these assaultive actions improve airport and airline security; they are simply abuse. As with sexual assaults in other populations, these behaviors are about power and control – nothing more.
Security Threat Groups: The Threat Posed by White Supremacist Organizations
Threats against society come from both internal and external sources. Analyzing organizational characteristics shows many of the inherent charcteristics of terrorist groups and white supremacist groups are interchangeable. Both Osama Bin Laden’s terrorist organization Al Quaeda and white supremacist groups make terrorist attacis against governments and individuals for historical, religious and political reasons. Both have also set up training camps to teach military techniques. Both also believe armed conflict between them and society is inevitable and necessary. Other commonalities between gangs, security threat groups and terrorist organizations are analyzed in this paper.
Seductive Punishment and Relinquished Rights
The “Truth Police” and “Iron Heel” operatives have been resurrected in the aftermath of terrorist attacks on America. Stars and Stripes flow in the wind high above automobile dealerships and can be seen flying 70 MPH on the interstate highways. Two soldiers at Ft. Bragg North Carolina, are shot by a deputh sheriff. National Guard troops occupy Americas’ airports. Many citizens are selected for “special treatment” en route to their assigned airline gates. The president encourages single moms to remarry, or to get married. The 4th Amendment is dismantled. Ones right to privacy is quickly passing away. This paper explores the seductive nature of 21th Century punishment and peculiar manner in which citizens seem to be seeking more punishment.
See No Evil, Hear No Evil: Exploring Research on Missing Children
Since the abduction of Adam Walsh on July 27, 1981, the phenomenon of missing children has been an increasing area of concern in society. This paper analyzes literature that has been written in regards to missing children, specifically focusing on typologies of parental abductions, non-parental abductions, runaways and throwaways. An analysis of research provides an emphasis on deficient areas such as accurate profiles of victims, abductors and voluntary runaways. Finally, rates of abduction from 1992 to 1999 are analyzed to illustrate the current trends in Canada. The analysis of trends combined with the review of literature in this study, provides further direction for future research objectives focusing on missing children.
Self-Defense Training, Women’s Abuse History, and Psychological Characteristics
Self-defense classes aim to prevent violence against women by strengthening women’s capacity to defend themselves. After completing self-defense classes, improvements in the following domains have been found in women: assertiveness, personal control over lives, self-efficacy, confidence, perceptions of physical strength, bravery, and independence. This is the first national study to compare females who have taken self-defense to those who have not on relevant background characteristics (e.g., child physical abuse, child sexual abuse), social-psychological characteristics (e.g., rape myth acceptance, masculinity/feminity), and psychological symptoms (e.g., depression, anxiety). Discriminant function analyses will be conducted to determine which variables distinguish between women who took self-defense training and women who have not. Suggestions for future research evaluating self-defense programs are presented.
Self-Defense Training, Women’s Abuse History, and Psychological Characteristics
Self-defense classes aim to prevent violence against women by strengthening women’s capacity to defend themselves. After completing self-defense classes, improvements in the following domains have been found in women: assertiveness, personal control over lives, self-efficacy, confidence, perceptions of physical strength, bravery, and independence. This is the first national study to compare females who have taken self-defense to those who have not on relevant background characteristics (e.g., child physical abuse, child sexual abuse), social-psychological characteristics (e.g., rape myth acceptance, masculinity/femininity), and psychological symptoms (e.g., depression, anxiety). Discriminant function analyses will be conducted to determine which variables distinguish between women who took self-defense training and women who have not. Suggestions for future research evaluating self-defense programs are presented.
Self-Report and Police Arrest Data in Gang Program Evaluation: Methodological and Policy Implications
Almost all gang program research has used either self-report offenses/arrests or police arrest histories to evaluate program outcomes. In preliminary evaluations of an OJJDP comprehensive, community- or area-wide gang crime reduction programs in three cities, we separately analyze self-report and police arrest histories of gang members and highly at-risk delinquent youth and young adults in Bloomington-Normal (101 program) and Champaign-Urbana (79 comparison), Illinois; Mesa, Arizona (107 program and 98 comparison); and San Antonio, Texas (101 program and 120 comparison). Early findings indicate that self-report and arrest data may or may not produce congruent results. Issues of sampling, matching of program and comparison groups, as well as community interests and concerns, and distinctive police policies and practices have to be considered. Self-reports may or may not be superior to police data in determining what the gang problem is in a particular community or area. Complementary use of both sources of data better explains the nature and scope of the gang problem than use of one type of data alone, particularly in measuring possible program effects.
Self-Reported Delinquency in Rural France: Studying an Unstudied Population
Basic findings from a self-reported delinquency survey conducted among rural high-school aged youths at several localities in rural france are summarized and the problems and prospects of criminological inquiry by outsiders in France are discussed.
Sentences Given to Convicted Drug Offenders: An Examination of the Race Effect, By Specific Drug Offenses
Given criticism stemming from possible discrimination in court processing, structured sentencing is now a reality in many courtrooms across the country. Under such a sentencing scheme, one may assume that offenders, with similar criminal histories, convicted of similar offenses will be given similar penalties. Despite this change in sentencing policy, however, the debate over racial disparity in court processing continues. To test the possibility that felony drug offenders may be differentially sentenced on the basis of their race, I construct offense-specific equations of the sentencing outcome-one for those convicted of possession, another for those with a top conviction charge for intent to sell or deliver drugs, and third for offenders convicted of drug sale or delivery. I use a random sample of defendants whose felony drug cases were disposed, during calendar year 2000, in the administrative drug court in Charlotte, North Carolina.
Sentencing Decisions for White and American-Indian DUI and Robbery Offenders in Alaska
This study examined gender-specific models of DUI and robbery sentences that White and American-Indian offenders received in Alaska in 1998. We first considered whether the sentencing decision must be modeled as a two-step process consisting of two separate decisions. While several investigators have modeled the in/out and term-length decisions as separate processes, none have statistically examined the necessity to do so. By using models developed by Cragg (1971), our results unequivocally showed that the factors associated with the in/out decision were significantly different than those associated with the term-length decision. We then examined each decision separately using probit and truncated regression models and simultaneously using models developed by Heckman (1979). In addition, we examined Heckman models developed with and without exclusion restrictions and compared our results. Results indicated that both race and gender affected the imposition of sentences and fines for DUI offenders. Our results for robbery sentences will also be presented.
Sentencing Decisions of Individual Judges: Does the Sentence an Offender Receives Depend on the Juge Who Imposes It?
In 1972, Marvin Frankel, United States District Judge for the Southern District of New York, issued an influential call for reform of the sentencing process. Frankel decried the degree of discretion given to judges, which he maintained led to Alawlessness@ in sentencing, and called for legislative reforms designed to regulate Athe unchecked powers of the untutored judge.@ Frankel=s call for reform did not go unheeded. Reformers from both sides of the political spectrum joined in the attack on indeterminate sentencing and pushed for reforms designed to curtail judicial discretion and eliminate unwarranted disparity in sentencing. The purpose of this paper is to test the assumption that structuring discretion produces uniformity in sentencing. Using data on offenders convicted of felonies in a jurisdiction with determinate sentencing (Cook County, Illinois), we test three inter-related hypotheses: first, that sentence outcomes will vary among Cook County Circuit Court judges; second, that the predictors of sentence outcomes will vary by judge; and, third, that sentence outcomes will be conditioned by the judge=s race, gender, prior professional experience, and number of years on the bench. The results of our analyses reveal that the sentencing decisions of individual judges are not invariant.
Sentencing Disparity and Departures as a Mediational Process
The role of sentencing guideline departures in producing unwarranted disparities is a critical issue in research on sentencing guidelines. However, most studies do not directly estimate the extent to which departures, in fact, explain sentencing disparities related to status characteristics such as race-ethnicity or gender. Consequently, the overall importance of departures in producing disparity remains largely unknown. This paper addresses some limitations of existing research on the role of departures in producing disparity, and proposes an alternative, causal modeling, approach that treats departure decisions as a mediating process. We find that departures from guidelines contribute significantly to disparity in imprisonment because minority defendants and males are less likely to receive downward departures than whites and females. However, the effects of race-ethnicity and gender on sentencing outcomes are largely independent of the use of departures.
Sentencing of Federal Drug Trafficking/Manufacturing Offenders: The Importance of Legal Environment
Under the Sentencing Reform Act of 1984, Congress established the United States Sentencing Commission and charged it with the task of designing a sentencing structure that would avoid “unwarranted sentencing disparity among defendants with similar records who had been found guilty of similar criminal conduct.” In November 1987 the Federal Sentencing Guidelines were enacted. During the last fourteen years research has addressed the net effect of defendant’s ethnicity and gender on sentence outcomes. In addition, some research has sought to examine the effect of sources of discretion, guidelines departures and guilty pleas, on sentence severity. Findings from most of this empirical research have revealed direct and conditioning effect of defendant’s ethnicity and gender on length of imprisonment. These studies have focused on the effect of the net effect of defendant characteristics, guidelines-defined legally relevant variables, and sources of discretion on sentence outcomes, controlling for the direct effect of federal circuit differences. These studies have estimated regression models of sentencing with dummy variable circuit and/or district contrasts. Because of the potential importance of federal district differences in guidelines departures and guilty plea negotiations, and circuit differences in interpretation of the Federal Sentencing Guidelines, we examine district and circuit level variables using hierarchical linear modeling procedures. These procedures permit an estimation of within district, across district, and across circuit effects on length of imprisonment. Our research focuses on federal drug trafficking offenders who were sentenced under the Federal Sentencing Guidelines during the fiscal year 1995-1996.
Seriousness of White-Collar Crime Revisited, 2002
The issue of the seriousness of crime has important ramifications for criminal justice policy. In addition, public perceptions of crime can have significant influence on those policies. Though the crime rate has been steadily moving downward over the past nine years, stories alleging serious and costly white-collar-crime have not abated. This study is a replication of the seriousness of crime studies conducted by Rossi, Waite, and Bose (1974) and Cullen, Link and Polanzi (1982). Residents of a medium-sized Midwest City were surveyed to learn more about their opinions concerning the relative seriousness of white-collar crime.
Serving the Law in Mayberry, R.F.D. Attitudes, Perceptions, and Practices of Small Town Prosecutors
Much of the limited knowledge we have of prosecutors and of prosecutorial behavior is based on studies of District Attorneys’ Offices in large, central cities. While this is a very important part of our criminal justice system, it is not the only part. A large number of the District Attorneys’ Offices found in this country exist in relatively small communities, and Nardulli, et al., in their book, Contours of Justice, show that size does some to matter, at least in “court communities.” Using primarily the survey method, this paper will examine attitudes, backgrounds, and professional perspecties of small office district attorneys.
Serving Under the Influence
The present study supports past research showing that aggression in barrooms is highly predictable on the basis of situational variables found in these establishments. Direct observations of 25 barrooms in Hoboken, New Jersey identified alcohol consumption among bartenders and other servers of alcohol as a major predictor of aggression. The consumption of alcohol among servers was linked to confrontations with patrons and other bar staff, as well as increased service of alcohol to obviously intoxicated customers. Service of alcohol to intoxicated customers resulted in increased levels of intoxication in barrooms, and was also a significant predictor of aggression in the present study. Prevention strategies should include strict enforcement of legislation prohibiting both the sale of alcoholic beverages to intoxicated customers and the consumption of alcoholic beverages by bar staff. Responsible beverage service programs, which attempt to prevent intoxication and aggression by training bar staff to serve responsibly, are likely to be ineffective in those barrooms that permit servers to consume alcohol while working.
Setting Them Up to Fail
One of the principal aims of the Crime and Disorder Act 1998 England and Wales, is for the youth justice system and those working with young offenders to prevent offending by children and young people (s.37) Intervention at a very early age is assumed to be the most effective, but much can be achieved with deprived teenagers, too, if they are given enough help of an appropriate nature. Part of the government strategy of preventing the young getting involved in a career of crime is to resource community projects within the youth services. The projects have the principle aim of preventing offending and methods to achieve this vary greatly. Those considered to be at risk are targeted and included in various programmes. Success is measured through targets based on employment, reintroduction to school or return to study, participation in group activities and a general pro-social attitude. This paper will discuss the practical difficulties of engaging disaffected young people, and expecting them to achieve unrealistic goals in demanding programmes; failure to achieve these goals could have potentially significant consequences.
Settling Down and Aging Out: Desistance From Crime as a Turning Point in the Life Course
The transition to adulthood has generally become more individualized in the past fifty years, with fewer young people attaining the classic markers of adult status in an orderly progression (Buchman, 1989; Rindfuss, Swicegood, and Rosenfeld, 1987). The average age of first marriage or age of entry into full-time employment has also increased dramatically in recent decades (Shanahan, 2000). Despite such changes, however, the notion that adults eventually “settle down” and desist from delinquent and deviant behaviors persists across shifting familial and economic arrangements. As they become full-fledged adults, people generally cease or at least moderate many forms of criminal behavior, substance use, and other anti-social activities. In this paper, we examine the relationship between desistance from crime and delinquency and life course transitions, exploring the extent to which such desistance constitutes a separate dimension of the multifaceted transition to adulthood.
Sex and the Prison: Custodial Sexual Abuse in Women’s Prisons and Civil Liability: An Analysis of Legal Issues Under 42 U.S.C. Section 1983
Historically, female inmates have constituted a small minority of the total incarcerated population, and they have not been a major consideration or force in prison reform or inmate litigation. In comparison to their male counterparts, female prisoners have consistently filed fewer lawsuits addressing the conditions of their confinement, including sexual abuse perpetrated by correctional staff. Even with the decline of the “hands off” era in the 1960s and the subsequent rise in judicial oversight of prisons and jails, custodial sexual misconduct did not become a reform issue, largely due to the fact that female inmates were reluctant to file litigation addressing this type of abuse. However, that trend has changed within the past decade, as women prisoners have been more willing to engage in legal action. Although the overall number of cases filed by inmates has declined in recent years, the number filed by women prisoners had risen steadily and will most likely continue to rise in the coming years. Unfortunately, the number of female inmates is also rising in conjunction with the amount of litigation initiated by them. At the present time, there are more than 122,000 women incarcerated in America’s jails and prisons (Bureau of Justice Statistics, 1999). Currently, women comprise over 6.4% percent of the state and federal inmate population, and they are the fastest growing segment of the incarcerated populace (Bureau of Justice Statistics, 1999). Given these figures, it is surprising that very little research has been conducted into the prison experience of female inmates, particularly in the area of custodial sexual abuse. Although reports of sexual misconduct and assault in the nation’s prisons have been made, the government, the media, and the public have largely ignored the plight of female inmates subjected to this treatment. Though the existing research is limited, current statistics indicate that sexual violence is a reality in the daily lives of many imprisoned women (Amnesty International, 1999; General Accounting Office, 1999, Human Rights Watch, 1996). In addition, a growing body of case law also indicates that custodial sexual abuse is a very real problem within American correctional facilities for women. However, despite this growing trend towards litigation among female inmates, cases alleging custodial sexual abuse in violation of the Eighth Amendment protections against cruel and unusual punishment are difficult to win, particularly when filed by individual plaintiffs. Even more difficult to win are cases alleging employer liability for the acts of sexual abuse perpetrated against female inmates by correctional staff.
Sex Differences in Violent Behavior: Same Predictors, Different Levels?
It is well known that female juveniles commit significantly less violent acts than their male counterparts. However, extant research is inconclusive on whether the predictors of violent delinquency are similar or different for both sexes. Answering this question has important implications as regards a sex-neutral or a sex-specific theory of violent behavior. This paper examines a series of important correlates and determinants of violent behavior among male and female juveniles. The study is based on a representative sample of 2700 Swiss students at ages 15-16. We include measurements of five important theoretical constructs: 1) parental support and education during childhood, 2) self-control, 3) routine activities, 4) delinquent peers, and 5) conventional bonds to parents and teachers. Using a logistic regression framework, we first examine bivariate effect sizes including tests for sex-specific effects. In a next step, we estimate multivariate models both including interaction terms to account for possible sex-specific effects. First results suggest that subdimensions of self-control, routine activities, and association with delinquent peers have similar effects on both male and female violent behavior. However, we find some evidence for systematic sex-specific patterns in respect of family related variables. Harsh parental discipline seems to be more strongly associated with female violence, while inconsistent parenting may be a stronger predictor of male violent behavior.
Sex Exchange Among Crack Users
Crack use and sex exchange have been identified as co-factors for the risk of HIV (CDC, 1995; Coyle, 1998). Research suggests that there is a subgroup of crack users who do not engage in sex exchange practices (Logan et al., 1999; 2000). The purpose of this paper is to report differences in HIV risk behavior among male and female crack users who do and do not exchange sex along with self-reported reasons and sex exchange practices among female crack users who are paid for sex and male crack users who report paying for sex. Also for the subgroups of crack users who do not engage in sex exchange-their reasons for not engaging in sex exchange practices.
Sex Offenders Returning Home: Variation in Services and Parole Practices on Sex Offender Caseloads
Parole agents face the daunting task of balancing a two-pronged approach of community safety and successful reintegration. This reentry process becomes even more difficult for agents assigned to supervise sex offender parolees. Sex offenders evoke more media attention and public concern than any other criminal offender. Although the Federal Bureau of Investigations reported in 1998 that sexual offense arrests were decreasing, the number of sex offenders held in state prisons has risen sharply in the past several years in the United States; it rose from 20,500 in 1980, then more than quadrupled to 88,100 in 1994. Most of these sex offenders will eventually return to our neighborhoods with only a small minority escaping some type of parole or community supervision. As of September 30, 2000, California Department of Correction’s Parole and Community Services Division was supervising 8,872 sex offender parolees in the community. This paper will describe the variation in services provided to sex offenders returning home, and it will describe the variation in parole supervision practices. Data were obtained from interviews conducted in 2001 and 2002 with parole agents, treatment personnel and sex offender parolees in California. Some additional discussion will address policies in other states and countries.
Sex Offenders With Learning Disabilities: An Evaluation
Researching sex offenders (SO) is a relatively recent development where scientists try to understand reasons for sexual deviance. Research this far has indicated that there are different parameters (like age, sex, age of victim, type of the offence etc.) that define the diversity of sex offenders. This research investigates sex offenders with learning disabilities (SOLD) that are currently located in English prisons. Sex offenders with learning disabilities are underrepresented in social scientific research. This research aims to look at the similarities and differences between sex offenders in general and sex offenders with learning disabilities. Identifying the nature of sex offenders with learning disabilities can have policy implications regarding the way to police and treat them. In other countries research in the area has introduced policy changes that can be proved to be cost effective and rewarding for the offenders as well as the staff working with them.
Sexist Terrorism on the Plains: “Re-Inventing” Justice Through the Examination of Judicial Issuance of Protection Orders
Nationwide the problem of domestic violence has been well documented and research attention to the issue has grown. One useful response to domestic violence has been the issuance of protection orders. However, the usefulness of protection orders often hinges on judicial discretion. The use of restraining orders in combating domestic violence has garnered increased research attention but there has been little research focusing on judicial responses toward the issuance and enforcement of these protection orders. The research conducted thus far on judicial discretion in relation to protection orders points out that the more willing judges are to issue protection orders and to also use the law to enforce them, the better served are the victims of domestic violence. The main theoretical premise that guided this research was that the biases and stereotypes embedded in the social structure and cultural dynamics of mainstream society cause problematic systemic reactions to victims of crime. To explore the relationship between the biases of dominant society and systemic reactions, the research focused on judicial self-reported actions and reactions in the granting and enforcement of protection orders for the predominantly female victims of domestic violence.
Sexual Arousal Reconditioning and Evaluating ‘Success’ in Prison Sex OffenderTreatment Programs
This study examines the effectiveness of sexual arousal reconditioning in prison sex offender treatment programs. We begin by examining varying concepts of success in evaluating such programs, focusing on the ways in which success (and failure) can and should be measured. This study proposes to examine both re-incarceration trends and changes in phallometric data of sex offenders released from Tennessee Department of Correction (TDOC) jurisdiction between 1998 and the present. We compare recidivism for inmates convicted of sex offenses who have enrolled in the sex offender treatment program to those who have not. Our analysis includes 180 offenders who have enrolled in treatment and a matched sample of offenders who have not. Preliminary analyses suggest a small, but significant, decrease in the rate of re-incarceration over time for offenders who have some exposure to the treatment program. Phallometric measures for those in the program, however, show marked decreases in aberrant arousal, suggesting that ‘success’ may need to be redefined to include more than just re-incarceration.
Sexual Assault During and After Separation/Divorce
A growing body of research shows that many North American women who leave their husbands through legal separation, divorce, or other means are at great risk of being beaten or killed, especially if they lived with violent male spouses or cohabiting partners. Still, to date, there is a shortage of empirical work on male-to-female sexual assaults during the process of terminating a marital/cohabiting relationship and after separation/divorce. Using data derived from face-to-face interviews with women living in a rural community, a key objective of this exploratory study is to generate qualitative data about a form of sexual assault that we know little about.
Sexual Assault Victimization and Suicidal Behavior in Women: A Review of Empirical Studies
This talk reviews empirical studies examining the relationship of sexual victimization to women’s suicidal behavior. Studies examining the association of sexual assault in childhood and/or adulthood in relation to suicidal ideation, planning of suicide, and suicide attempts are reviewed. Correlates of suicidal behavior in women are reviewed in addition to sexual assault. It is argued that the disproportionate sexual victimization of girls and women may give rise to the greater likelihood of suicide attempts, through a variety of pathways, including psychiatric sequelae such as depression and PTSD, psychosocial factors such as life events and problematic substance use/abuse, and risky lifestyles and behaviors (e.g., association with delinquent peers). An agenda for future research is proposed focusing on the role of sexual assault in the context of other factors to explain the suicidal behavior of women.
Sexual Attitudes, Behaviors and Reproductive Practices and of African-American Adolescent Males in Severely-Distressed Inner-City Households
We found the submission categories very limiting and were very pleased to have seen your name on the program committee. We know well of your interest in sexual assault and victims. It would have been useful to have had a category to that effect given the amount of important work in that area that should be incorporated together into panels. Anyway, this paper has to do with the context in which rape and victimization take place. However, these are legalistic words. It is important to understand people’s attitudes, their inter-relationships, and their sexuality in high-risk populations where rape and violence are commonplace. This paper speaks to that growing literature. We trust you will find a good home for it in the 2002 session.
Sexual Harassment in Criminal Justice Organizations: A Legal Analysis
This paper will focus on sexual harassment in criminal justice agencies from a legal perspective. The paper will consist of four basic parts. First, the paper will point out the problem of sexual harassment in criminal justice agencies, surveying the criminal justice/social science literature. Second, the paper will briefly describe the sexual harassment cases from the United States Supreme Court, discussing the standards of liability as articulated by the Court. The third part of the paper will flush out the standards of liability by looking at lower federal (U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals and the U.S. District Courts) court decisions on sexual harassment that specifically focus on criminal justice agencies (police, corrections, probation, juvenile). Here, trends in the law will be identified, and the case law will be categorized according to major topical areas. In the fourth part, the conclusion, the paper will point out how lower court interpretation of U.S. Supreme Court principles give meaning to the law. Polich implications flowing from U.S. Supreme Court and lower court decisions in criminal justice agencies and will be specified.
Sexual Harassment in the Transition to Adulthood: Content and Context
This study of sexual harassment and discrimination over the life cycle takes up three fundamental questions. First, how do the victimization experiences of adolescents differ from those of young adults? Second, who is likely to become a victim of sexual harassment or discrimination at these life stages? Third, why do some victims come forward to notify others while other victims remain silent? We begin with a conceptual model of sexual harassment and legal consciousness based on the power people hold in work, family, and community life. We analyze data from both surveys and intensive interviews. Survey data come from the Youth Development Study, a longitudinal investigation of 1000 respondents who began the study as 9th graders in Minnesota public schools in 1988. Analysis of the survey data suggests that women and men both experience certain harassing behaviors but that men are unlikely to identify these behaviors as sexual harassment. Intensive interview data reveal the context of these experiences, the meaning that participants ascribe to their experiences and actions, and how harassing events take place and elicit mobilization. Survey and interview data are analyzed together to provide a more comprehensive view of sexual harassment victimization and mobilization.
Shanghai 1927 and La Paz 1980: Organized Crime and Ideology
This presentation focuses on two events that represent archtypes of organized crime — elite collaboration and aims to demonstrate that the relationship between organized crime and elites can be ideological. The 1927 Shanghai coup resulted from the alliance beteen the Kuomintang under Nationalist Chinese leader Chiang Kai-shek and the country’s most powerful organized crime group, the Green Gang, and took place as the country’s elites were under pressure from the organized and revolutionary left during the early days of the Chinese revolution. In Bolivia, left-wing insurgencies had not been a threat to the elites since the late 1960s. however, the 1980 Cocaine coup was generated by corrupt military officer sand the country’s leading drug traffickers. It was the goal to prevent the return to democratic rule which would have resulted in greater influence for Bolivia’s powerful left-wing parties and unions, as well as inquiries into the rimes committed under military rule.
Sharing of Terrorism Related Intelligence Information Within the National Law Enforcement Community
This paper addresses the shifts in information technology and how they alter the functioning of police agencies. of special importance are the tensions between the need for secure information systems and the desire to make more information about crime and criminals available to the public. Recent work with the Illinois State Police will be used to illustrate this tension and to discuss how technology can help address these tensions. The implications for other criminal justice components are discussed.
She’s Still Bad: Contrasting Judicial Discourse on Mothers From 1980-2001
This paper is based upon an assertion put forward by feminist legal scholars: that judicial decision-making is gendered in its practice and its outcome (Smart 1992), and that this is particularly true for decisions regarding mothers (Hanisberg & Ruddick 1999). Hence, I have concluded (Miller 1997) that imbedded in judicial discourse are definitions of “good mothers” and “good mothering.” Further, I contend that these definitions of “goodness” are built upon idealized conceptions of motherhood constructed within the larger social context of the ideology of motherhood. At the core of this ideology are three myths: maternal self-sacrifice, maternal instinct, and maternal fulfillment (Schwartz 1993). Women have been (and still are) expected to become mothers, to realize satisfaction in their mothering, and to sacrifice their selfhood for their children’s needs.
Shifting Paradigms: Policing in Northern Ireland
The Good Friday Agreement of 1998 was the explicit base for the politically shared, though fragile, internal government of Northern Ireland. This governmental shift towards contemporary, democratic government has highlighted the centrality of the national police force. To clarify, the police force, which was previously an instrument of control, must now become an organization that strives for the consent and support of the publi. Using Mawby’s (1990, 1999) models of poliing as an organizational framework, this articl places attention on the policing paradigms of Northern Ireland over the course of its social history. It puts forth the argument that, despite some strategic changes, it is only upon the heels of the Good Friday Agreement and the consequent governmental change that the police force has begun to shift its operational paradigm away from the colonial model toward an Anglo-Saxon odel.
Silver Bullets
While there have been frequent remarks about the importance of popular concepts and images for understanding the public’s conception of crime and justice, academic criminology has largely ignored the importance of those same concepts and images for understanding its own work. Discussion will be offered (and invited) on the effect of the proverbial Lone Ranger’s silver bullets as a mode of entree into the practice and ongoing development of criminological theory.
Situational Affects of Gender Inequality on Girls Participation in Violence
This paper suggests that girls’ use of violence cannot be understood fully unless it is examined in the context of the situational enactment of gender inequality. The approach is to examine girls’ gendered violence: the contexts and qualities of their use of violence, and the social organization of these actions. We highlight three theoretical issues necessary to understand girls’ violence: (1) cultural definitions of masculinity and femininity and their impact on girls’ behavior; (2) power differentials between males and females and how these regulate and constrain girls’ use of violence; and (3) the impact of group and situational gender composition in shaping violence.
Situational Clustering in Homicide
Using narrative accounts of homicides in St. Louis, the present study examines the extent and nature of situational clustering in homicides. We explore the nature of internal consistency in the major themes and sequencing of events that underlie several major types of homicide situations (e.g., instrumental homicides involving strangers, intimate partner homicides, expressive assaults of non-family members). The methods of analytic induction and qualitative comparative analysis are used to identify the amount of commonality in these themes and sequences within each homicide subtype. The results of this study are then discussed in terms of their implications for understanding homicide situations and the utility of current typologies of homicide situations.
Situational Crime Prevention Tecxhniques and Occupational Crime: Do Targeting Hardening Strategies Reduce Rates of Employee Theft and Shoplifting?
Within the retail industry, companies and their loss prevention departments are constantly implementing mechanisms to prevent financial loss including employee theft and shoplifting. A common strategy employed by companies is the use of “target hardening” security systems and procedures intended to prevent the occurrence of financial crimes. For instance, companies will use electronic controls, alarms, closed circuit television (CCTV), and so forth to deter the occurrence of criminal acts. In large part, such practices are based on situational crime prevention strategies that seek to reduce opportunities for engaging in crime (See Clarke, 1983;1995). Based primarily on rational choice assertions, situational prevention techniques attempt to: a) increase the effort associated with a specific crime, b) increase the risks associated with engaging in a particular crime, and/or c) reduce the rewards linked to specific crimes. When potential risks or obstacles such as target hardening devices outweigh the benefits, it is assumed a rational person will refrain from engaging in crime. Relying on data collected from the 2001 National Retail Security Survey (NRSS), this research attempts to examine the extent to which deterrence mechanisms are correlated with the incidence or rate of employee theft and shoplifting.
Situational Determinants in Intimate Violence
The purpose of this paper is to piece together the literature on specific situational variables, discuss the available data on violent events among intimates, and identify the gaps in our current knowledge. We will begin our discussion by focusing on how the nature of the relationship between the actors shapes violent events. Next, we will describe the circumstances or sparks of violent events, the interactional exchange between intimates including decision-making processes, the role of physical and social space, the role of third parties, weapon type and use, alcohol and drug use, the role of law enforcement, the event outcomes, and the aftermaths of violent events. With existing data on violent events among intimates we can speculate on commonalities and differences between those events and other violent events, however the appropriate event level data is currently not available to adequately explore these questions. We present a broad and preliminary search of the literature on intimate violence with an event- or situational perspective lens. Our review raises more questions than it answers and leads us to conclude our discussion by making recommendations for future research.
Smoke ’em If You Got ’em–But Not in Prison: A Study of Behavioral Changes After a State-Sanctioned Smoking Ban
It has been fairly well established that cessation of use of tobacco products has been related to behavioral and personality changes in humans. This study uses interrupted time-series analysis to examine changing monthly disciplinary rates in a Midwestern maximum security prison following the state-sanctioned ban on use of all tobacco-related products on September 1, 1997. Control variables in the study include offender race, serious verses order maintenance disciplinary violations, and offender population. The initial findings show an abrupt permanent increase in the disciplinary rate following the tobacco ban. The paper concludes with a discussion of the policy implications of this study for corrections management.
Social Architecture and Employee Deviance
Although enterprises are beginning to recognize the business need to address human agency as the root source of information systems use and misuse, few possess a frame of reference from which to begin managing such opportunities and threats. This paper introduces a social control systems perspective to the discipline of organizational design. Two complimentary goals orient the design of social control systems: (1) increase the probability of detection and/or correction of deviant behavior, and (2) increase the probability of user optimization and performance. The core design challenge is to arrange organizations in order to economize on social control costs. The discipline of architecture is one way to organize the sociological properties of a system. The term, social architecture is an architectural view whose purpose is to help designers enable the management of social control. Unified Modeling Language (UML) helps document the assessment, design and management of social architectures.
Social Capital in Context: Utilizing GIS in the Consideration of Community Resources
Much of the literature on social disorganization, fear of crime, routine activities, and other macro-level theories of crime emphasizes the importance of social capital as a feature of community circumstance (particularly when social capital is lacking or absent). However, despite many advances in the geographic consideration of criminal behavior, the geographical realities of social capital have been largely ignored. This paper will explore the areal and temporal characteristics of third-party social capital providers in Philadelphia, PA, using data from the ongoing Healthcare Connection Youth Study.
Social Capital Revisited: An Extended Examination of Family Social Capital and Outcomes Later in the Life-Course
Family capital has emerged as a salient theoretical construct in research on the effects parents have on their children. Prior research by Wright, Cullen, and Miller (2001), for example, shows that family capital early in life has potent effects on adolescent attainment later in life. Our research extends Wright, Cullen, and Miller’s (2001) work, to include the final wave of the National Youth Survey (NYS). Following their research, we explore 1) whether early family capital continues to influence adjustment into the adult years and 2) whether early capital buffers against the deleterious effects of delinquent involvement.
Social Change, Anomie, and Violent Crime in Russia
In the wake of the dissolution of the former Soviet Union, Russia has experienced great social and economic change, resulting in anomic conditions. Further, as the country moves toward capitalism, it is likely that Russians are beginning to adopt a capitalist ideology and an emphasis on individual economic success that (as Merton and other anomie theorists have noted) may go unchecked in the accompanying anomic environment. The American dream may now be the Russian dream. This post-Soviet Russian environment provides a unique opportunity to test the efficacy of Durkheimian theories and their intellectual heirs, such as Messner and Rosenfeld’s institutional anomie theory. This study does just that by employing official socioeconomic and mortality data from Russia’s 89 regions in order to test the hypothesis that the degree of the capacity of non-economic institutions (such as family, education, and polity) is negatively related to regional homicide rates, while the levels of economic indicators of the transition to capitalism (such as privitization and foreign capital investment) are positively related to regional homicide rates.
Social Construction of Injustice: The Press and the Failure of the Death Penalty
Since 1973, 99 individuals from 22 states have been exonerated of crimes for which they had received the death penalty. The cases of exoneration reveal that wrongful convictions have occurred for a variety of reasons, including mistaken identification, police and prosecutorial misconduct, defective or fraudulent science, perjured testimony, and false confessions. These cases present a serious challenge to the legitimacy of the United States criminal justice system in that they suggest that the system’s most severe form of punishment, which is supposed to be reserved for only the most egregious cases for which there is absolute certainty of guilt, is handed out to some who are wrongfully convicted of crimes. The purpose of our paper is to explore how this potential crisis for the national public sphere of civil society is articulated in newspaper accounts. More specifically, we use narrative methods to analyze the cultural construction of the 34 exoneration cases which have occurred since 1980. Our data consists of newspaper accounts for each case from the point of the discovery of the crime to present, thereby capturing the unfolding dramas that include investigations, trials, exonerations, and the aftermath of the exoneration decisions. Our analysis suggests that the narrative concepts of plot, character, and genre can be used to understand how each phase of these cases are constructed as “normal” social problems, rather than delegitimations of capital punishment in civil society.
Social Context, Strain, and Delinquency: An Examination of Conditioning Effects Within
This paper addresses a central theoretical issue for strain theories: Under what conditions do strained individuals resort to delinquency or crime? Within the framework of general strain theory, Agnew (2002) suggests that a number of factors condition the effect of strain on delinquency. This theory suggests that higher levels of strain in one’s social context, such as experiencing poverty, should exacerbate the criminogenic influence of more immediate sources of strain such as experiencing child abusive parenting or the death of a family member. In contrast, research on children’s exposure to violence provides evidence that a stressful environment might actually produce a resilience within children and adolescents that “shields” or even “numbs” them to the effect of more immediate stressful events (see Greer Litton Fox, 2000). The current research addresses these contradictory perspectives through an examination of the conditioning effect of parental income and levels of violence in one’s community on the relationship between strain (in the form of abusive parenting and other life stressors) and delinquency within a nationally representative sample of adolescents. Parental income is found to have the most substantial conditioning effect on the strain-delinquency relationship, and the “resilience” hypothesis receives the greatest amount of empirical support.
Social Control of Mental Illness: The Effect of Mental Health Evaluations on Sentencing
This paper explores two competing hypotheses with respect to case outcomes for criminal defendants who are evaluated for a possible defense of mental illness or mental disorder. The first perspective uses Black’s theory of law, which states that law varies inversely with other forms of social control. One such type of social control is psychiatric treatment for mental illness. Following this perspective, a criminal defendant receiving psychiatric treatment prior to sentencing should be subject to less law than a criminal defendant who is not similarly evaluated. Therefore, we would expect that defendants who are subject to psychiatric controls and evaluated for a mental illness defense would be punished less severely than those not evaluated. The competing hypothesis is that just as defendants who do not accept a plea bargain and insist on a trial tend to be punished more severely, defendants who pursue a mental illness defense will also be punished more severely than those who do not appear to waste the court’s time. These competing hypotheses are tested using all felony defendants referred for a psychiatric evaluation in Hennepin County, Minnesota, between 1993 and 2001, along with a random sample of felony defendants for the same years. I control for familial, demographic, criminal and mental health history variables when assessing the effect of a mental health evaluation on (1) the decision of whether to incarcerate (the in/out decision) and (2) the length of sentence. I conclude by exploring the relationship between the mental health and criminal justice systems and how this relationship alters case outcome for criminal defendants.
Social Networks in Criminal Violence
Much serious violence occurs in a group context. Researchers interested in peer influences and youth gangs have extensively investigated the group context of youth violence. However, the role of social networks in criminal violence has not received significant attention. The present research uses criminal history information to reveal the interrelationships among individuals directly or indirectly involved in criminal violence in St. Louis. Those interrelationships are formally modeled as social networks, and the models are used to examine the relationship between network position and the frequency and seriousness of criminal offending and victimization.
Social Perceptions and Attitudes to Punishment
Public attitudes to punishment are heavily influenced by demographic, social, psychological, and political factors. Not only the development of the crime rate within a region, or public attitudes toward punishment, but also the perception of social change, of personal safety, the belief in personal advancement, or the perception of one’s place in society have a strong impact on punitivity. Based on different large-scale surveys in Germany, the influence of such variables on punitivity will be examined and discussed. A model, weighing the different influential variables will be presented. The data show that unlike a first hypothesis demographic factors play only a minor role on attitudes to punishment while perceptions of personal safety and the experience of social changes have a much stronger impact.
Social-Political Forces Driving Sentencing Policies in the United States and the Republic of South Africa
Even though there continue to be significant cultural, political, and legal divides between the United States and the Republic of South Africa, both countries’ liberal use of prison is remarkably-and disturbingly-similar. In 1999, for every 100,000 people, 615 were in American prisons or jails; in South Africa, for every 100,000 people, 390 were in the custody of prison officials (including pre-trial detainees). This paper sets out to explore four, intertwined reasons for this parallel process: 1) public opinion that the courts are too lenient when punishing offenders; 2) fear of crime among citizens in both countries; 3) a willingness among American and South African politicians to use-and shape-public opinion in order to win elections, and once elected, 4) enact harsh, mandatory prison sentences (e.g. mandatory minimums) for particular classes of crime. This paper then concludes with the argument that while South Africa officially retains the correctional philosophy of rehabilitation, the reality is that, like the United States, it has rejected it.
Social Support, Gender, and Inmate Misconduct
The average rate of growth for incarcerated female inmates (7.6%)in the United States surpassed that of male (5.9%) from 1990 to 2000. By yearend 2000, 91,612 women were in state or federal prisons. In spite of the above statistics, studies exploring female inmate misconduct have not garnered enough attention. This study focuses on social support, gender, and inmate misconduct. The specific question is whether the effect of social support on inmate misconduct is gender-based. The limited previous studies of female offenders on the street and female prisoners in prison appear to suggest that the effect of social support on prisoner behavior may be varied by gender. However, the previous studies of female prisoners are primarily qualitative and have a narrow scope of sample. Using a nationwide data set from the 1997 Survey of Inmates of States and Federal Correctional Facilities in the United States, the study is to test the relationship among social support, gender, and inmate misconduct.
Social Support and Delinquency: The Significance of Race, Class, and Gender
Although studies show that social support is negatively correlated with delinquency, extant research has not fully examined the impact of structural location and cultural contexts on the availability of support provisions and the effects of different sources of social support on different types of delinquency. Drawing data from Waves 1 and 2 of the in-home interviews of the National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent Health (AddHealth), this study examines the association between social support, personality, environmental, demographic, and delinquency variables for African American, Mexican American and White youths. Using a series of bivariate and multivariate analyses, three issues are explored: (1) The nature of adolescents’ social support. What are the sources of social support for African American, Mexican American, and White youths? What factors influence the availability of social support? And, how do the sources and determinants of social support compare and differ across race, class, and gender contexts? (2) The effects of social support on delinquency. What effects (protective and buffering) does social support have on the prevalence and incidence of delinquency? Do these effects vary by source and type of delinquency, and within and across race, class and gender contexts? (3) Implications for research and delinquency prevention. How do the study findings inform research and delinquency prevention policies.
Socioeconomic Status and Criminal Sentencing: An Interpretive Review of the Field
This paper summarizes the research literature on the relationship between the socioeconomic status and criminal sentences since 1980. It integrates two separate research tradition on this subject. The researches on traditional crimes mostly indicate that the poor are more likely than the rich to receive harsher sentences. It observed, however, the studies on the white-collar crime report the reverse conclusion; defendants of the higher status tend to receive severer punishment than those of lower status. This article examines legal contexts and extra legal aspects of each study. It concludes that the socioeconomic status exerts minor effects on the criminal sentencing and the mixture of finding is mostly the result of research methods.
Solution-Oriented Policing: New Tactics for Training
In an attempt to realize the potential benefits of Solution-Oriented Policing, a comprehensive training program was identified that captured important concepts from many diverse areas. Elements from several different programs were used to create a 24-hour in-service training curriculum that included topics such as critical thinking, considering alternative actions, curses of groupthink, communication, criticism management, and the social psychology of policing. An advisory panel of area and content experts refined the curriculum that was then introduced into several area police agencies. Those experiencing the training reported a strong likelihood of utilizing the principles offered. Longitudinal and archival data will be assessed to determine if a more departmentally systemic effect can be appreciated.
Some Lessons From the Home Office Burglary Reduction Initiative in England and Wales: What Worked and Why?
This presentation considers what worked and why regarding the implementation of twenty burglary reduction projects across southern England and Wales. These projects adopted a wide variety of strategies aimed at reducing domestic burglary, including situational, offender-based, victim-related and community-oriented interventions. We discuss the suitability of these interventions in relation to local project proposals, structure and management. Key issues include the types of interventions employed by practitioners, the added effectiveness of combining interventions into ‘packages’ and the robustness of underlying theory. The creation of appropriate bids is then explored. This focuses on how closely the initial proposals were informed by such factors as official government guidance and awareness of the local burglary problem. We follow this by examining the importance of recruiiting a project team with sufficient ‘knowledge, commitment and capacity’ to ensure successful implementation. We conclude by suggesting some of the conditions under which this may be achieved.
Southern Hospitality: Historical Overview of Texas Female Prisons: 1900-2000
As of December 31, 2001, the overall Texas prison population (148,636 inmates) was the second largest in the United States. In addition, during this same year the Texas female prison population was the largest in the United States with approximately 13,867 inmates housed in eleven female only units and four units housing both males and female inmates. The following paper will examine the history of women incarcerated in Texas prisons during the 20th century, reviewing the conditions in which this often small population lived and worked as well as the substantial increase in both the female inmate population and the increase in the number of facilities utilized to house this every growing group.
Spams and Scams, the ‘White Noise of Cysberspace’: The Problem of Small Impact Multiple Victimisation Deceptions on the Internet
There is a common agreement that cybercrimes exist, but little overall agreement as to what they are other than they involve the use of the internet in some way. The term is most frequently used to describe either traditional or familiar forms of offending which utilise the Internet, else to illustrate the more dramaticx forms of offending via technological derring-do It will be argued in this paper that there currently exist large knowledge gaps in our general understanding of crime and the Internet. In order to fill those knowledge gaps we should be exploring the various transformative impacts of the Internet upon criminalised behaviour. One of these transformative impacts is the growth in small impact multiple victimisation deceptions. Drawing upon research into minor impact economic deceptions, this paper will explore spams and scams. Frequently dismissed a the ‘white noise’ of the Internet, these deceptions constitute interesting and quite new forms of offending behaviour in terms of the industries which support them and also their engagement with the victims. Furthermore, they pose particularly difficult problems for criminal justice agencies because of their relatively minor impact upon individual victioms and thei trans-jurisdictionality.
Spatial and Social Processes of Homicide: Bringing Offenders and Victims Together in Watts (1980-2000)
The purpose of this research is to demonstrate the usefulness of the spatial typology in interpreting changes in the social organization of homicides over the last two decades in the LAPD’s Southeast Policing area – an area that includes the neighborhood of Watts and an area that often leads the city in total homicides and incorporates well established drug markets, dense public housing and urban street gangs. Borrowing from the development of Mobility Triangles – a truly spatial variable based upon the place of residence of the offender, place of residence of the victim and the location of the event – we employ the spatial typology of homicide conceptualized by Tita and Cohen (2001) to a richer, more diverse set of data. As noted by Rand (1986), “One of the deficiencies in criminological literature has been the practice of ignoring the spatial elements of illegal behavior. Traditional criminological research has utilized geographical locations only as proxies for the social characteristics of an area, overlooking the value of spatial variables. The omission has created a serious gap in our understanding of crime and victimization.” By categorizing homicides using this typology, it is expected that important patterns will emerge that will permit the examination of three important questions. First, do the characteristics of homicide (especially participant attributes and motive) differ significantly across the various categories of the spatial typology? Second, do the characteristics of place (demographic characteristics and land use) influence the relative distribution of spatial homicide types across neighborhoods? And finally, how are these proportions influenced by both demographic changes in communities like racial succession, and social policy changes in communities like those promoting the racial desegregation of public schools and public housing over time?
Spatial Diffusion of Residential Burglaries in Tokyo
This study examined the spatial pattern of residential burglaries in Tokyo through Exploratory Spatial Data Analysis (EDSA). We used the official crime records of residential burglaries (n=41,551) from 1998 to 2000 and national census data. Burglary rate per 1,000 households was calculated for each census tract (n=2,779) and type of housing (detached, low- and high-rise collective house). In high-rise collective houses, burglary rate for the whole study area tripled during this period, whereas it decreased in detached houses. We then examined the global Moran’s for the spatial patterns of burglary rates by housing type using SpaceStat ver1.91. The positive spatial autocorrelation was most significant in low-rise collective houses. Also, yearly-calculated local Moran (LM) revealed that burglaries in high-rise collective houses diffused from CBD to suburban areas as the number of burglaries increased. Other findings will be reported and discussed.
Spatial Diffusion of the Crime Mapping Innovation in the United States
This paper concerns the nature of the spatial diffusion of crime mapping in American police departments. Did this innovation diffuse in accordance with the “neighborhood effect,” which suggests innovations spread most quickly among those who are close to each other (e.g., Hagerstrand)? Or was propinquity less important than the reputations and connections of early adopters?
Spatial Linkages Between Unemployment and Crime Rates: Spatial Extensions to the Cantor-Land Framework
We implement exploratory and confirmatory spatial methods to study the linkages between unemployment and crime rates. Our approach integrates both routine activity and social disorganization theories of crimes. From a social disorganization perspective, we focus on defining spatial regimes at the county-level to operationalize notions of community networks. Spatial panel data methods are implemented to operationalize the opportunity and motivational effects of unemployment on crime. Our approach utilizes the linkages between Geographic Information Systems software and methods of spatial econometrics, as well as implementation of spatial multilevel models. Our approach will integrate work in spatial econometrics (Anselin, 2000) with multilevel models that incorporate Spatial terms (Langford, et al, 1999)
Spatial Patterns of Re-Offending in the Indianapolis Restorative Justice Experiment
Research has shown that neighborhood characteristics have a relationship with delinquency. Yet little research has examined the relationship between neighborhood characteristics and recidivism rates of youths involved in delinquency interventions. Data for this paper come from the Indianapolis Restorative Justice Experiment. This paper will examine the spatial characteristics of the neighborhoods in which youths that attended a restorative justice conference lived at the time of their offense. While looking at those youths that recidivated compared to those that did not, we will attempt to determine if there is a difference in the neighborhood spatial composition that may help explain recidivism. This paper will involve using GIS mapping to aid in the spatial evaluation. The following layers will be used: ú Census data for Marion County (Indianapolis, IN) ú Examples: ú Racial composition ú SES composition ú School layer ú Park layer ú Parcel (building) layer ú Police station locations ú Centerline (Streets) layer Several analyses of the spatial distribution of re-offending including the location quotient will be conducted.
Speaking for the Victims: The Role of the Sexual Assault/Rape Victim Avocate
Incidents of sexual assault and forcible rape remain among the least reported forms of interpersonal violence, according to the National Crime Victimizations (NCVS) survey and the Uniform Crime Reporting (UCR) National Incident-Based Reporting System (NIBRS) data. For example, 1995 Bureau of Justice figures indicate that of more than an estimated 355,000 rape and sexual assault victimizations, only approximately 110,000 were reported to law enforcement. A significant majority of the research into the causes, conditions and characteristics of sexual offenses, offenders and victims examines the sexualized nature of these crimes. This essay considers rape and sexual assault in a deeper context as an act of war, a gender-based, hate-motivated form of violence and how it is supported by societal organizations such as the media, criminal justice system and other cultural institutions. Rather than limiting the exploration of rape as an isolated single-perpetrator or gang-related street crime, sexual assault must be considered from a global perspective and the ways in which entire populations offend examined at the institutional and systemic levels. Despite the so-called “sexual revolution” of the 1970’s, discussing the topic of sex remains bound by taboo. By expanding the categorization of rape and sexual assault beyond the sexual realm, forthright dialogue is greatly facilitated and effective educational programs enable prevention, treatment and victim services to be created and made more accessible to the public.
Specifying “Space” in a Model of Crime in the Presence of Gangs: Geography or Social Networks?
Abstract This research builds upon existing models of crime that incorporate spatial effects by specifying dependency of events not simply as a function of geographic space, but also as a function of social space. I explore the spatial distribution of both violent and non-violent crime using techniques developed in spatial econometrics to identify whether the distribution of crime is a function of omitted explanatory variables (a spatial lag model) or due to a direct causal relationship among geographic units of analysis (census tracts.) The former is the conventional approach in the existing literature and is addressed by including a spatially lagged version of the dependent variable as an explanatory variable in the model. The latter requires one to specify a direct known relationship that links the units of analysis in some causal way. In this case, the relationship is specified as the social ties that define rivalries among gang contained within the census tracts. Thus, census tracts are “neighbors” when they contain the social space of rival gangs. In essence, a second lagged version of the dependent variable (a social lag variable) is created and also included in the model of crime. It is expected that the socially lagged variable will provide a more robust explanation of the spatial distribution of violent crime while the spatially lagged variable will better fit a model of property crime.
Sports and Deviance Among College Athletes: Specifying the Relationship
Participation in sports has been proposed as both a preventive easure and as a cause of deviance. The former is rooted in the “involvement” bond of Hirschi’s control theory, while learning and eutralization have provided the framework for predicting deviant outcomes. This paper tests these competing hypotheses through examination of self-report data collected from a group of college athletes and nonathletes. Hypotheses regarding variations across types of sports are also tested, comparing reported deviance rates for contact versus noncontact sports.
Spouse Assault: The Ethnic Dimension in an Immigration Country
Domestic violence has become a prominent issue throughout Europe over the last years. During the summer of 2002 and following the model of the International Crime Victimization Surveys, a major coordinated survey on violence against women has been conducted in several Western countries. Switzerland, which is among the participating countries, has the longest history of immigration within Europe, and an unusually high proportion of immigrants in its population (beyond 20 percent). Given the relatively large Swiss sample (of 2,000 interviewed women), this situation allows us to analyse more in detail the ethnic dimension in connection with spouse assault. So far, this subject has hardly been addressed in research and policy.
Staff Sexual Misconduct Against Female Prison Inmates as Extra-Legal Punishment
American law stipulates that punishments must be set forth in the designation of any crime, and that the punishments which are applied against a convicted person may not exceed those set forth in the law. However, a variety of situations have arisen in modern corrections which may test those legal assertions such as, for example, the attempted detention of sx offenders beyond the expiration of their sentences. Another of these potential test areas is the re-introduction within the past two decades of cross-sex supervision in female prisons. male staff in women’s prisons now often exceed female staff by a ratio of two to one, or more. Interestingly, over this same two-decade period, there has been a dramatic increase in staff sexual miscondut charges by female inmates. There has also been growing concern about the impact of forced contact with even a few abusive staff on a population of already highly victimized female offenders. This paper examines staff sexual misconduct as a form of extra-legal punishment applied to female offenders, and discusses some of the legal and feminist controversies this dilemma has engendered.
States’ Progress in Implementing the Federal Juvenile Accountability Incentive Block Grants (JAIBG) Program
The Federal Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention (OJJDP), administers the Juvenile Accountability Incentive Block Grants (JAIBG) program, the largest block grant program of its kind. Created 4 years ago to promote greater accountability in the juvenile justice system, JAIBG funds are used by states and localities to develop and administer accountability-based sanctions for juvenile offenders, including aftercare programs, drug and youth courts, gender-specific programming, training detention workers, and developing immediate and intermediate sanctions. Though the implementation process varies widely state-by-state, trends on the types of programs funded, regional and city/county collaborations, and other information show the direction that the overall movement towards accountability has taken as a result of this Federal initiative. This paper reports on findings after four years of implementation, selected best practices, and reviews aspects of the implementation process as it is articulated between Federal, state and local levels.
Status Offender Programs: Policy Analysis and Recommendations for One Local Community in Central Pennsylvania
The history of the treatment of status offenders in the juvenile justice system is examined with particular attention paid to such programming in Pennsylvania communities. Efforts at addressing the special needs of the status offender are reviewed through an examination of evaluations of these programs. The outcome of this review culminates with a policy recommendation to key stakeholders in the local community through which the author hopes to play a critical role in launching a status offender program.
Statutory Rape: Victim, Incident, and Offender Characteristics
: A commonly held image of offenders and victims of statutory rape is that adult males prey upon adolescent females. This study broadens the perspective by identifying additional offender and victim factors along with incident characteristics of this crime. The 1997 through 1999 National Incident-Based Reporting System (NIBRS) data are the bases for this research. The analysis includes detailed information on 4,786 victims, their offenders, and related incident characteristics. Key elements examined include: victim age profiles relative to crime prevalence, relationships to offender, and incident hour; similarities and differences between juvenile and adult offenders; and offense circumstances such as location and weapon use. Preliminary analyses indicate that over one half of the victims were between twelve and fourteen years old and about one-third of victims were in the fifteen to seventeen age-range. The younger category is the largest proportion of victims for all offender groups–juveniles, adults, and juveniles and adults acting together, however, older teens are more likely the victims of adult offenders. Acquaintances were the largest proportion of victims for all offender groups, though siblings are largely the victims of juvenile offenders.
Staying Free: Learned Helplessness or a Rational Choice?
Domestic violence is a complex area of study, with research that ranges from how an individual becomes a batterer to how to break the cycle of violence. One pertinent question is: once a woman becomes a victim of domestic violence, how can she escape the abuse? Simply reaching out for help is a dangerous and courageous act and millions of state, federal and private dollars are spent each year to provide services to these women. Unfortunately, these services are rarely evaluated to determine their efficacy. This can mean that valuable resources are being misdirected or not utilized to their fullest potential. In my thesis research, I have evaluated the services available to victims of domestic violence within Athens-Clarke County, Georgia. I have examined the available services to determine how these enhance a woman’s ability to leave an abusive relationship. The realm of domestic violence research needs more comprehensive quantitative data that portray the victim’s struggle as accurately as possible. These data would allow for an evaluation of services available to victims, including how these services are utilized and which services provide victims with the necessary tools to escape their abusive situations. Little is known about the long-term effectiveness of services, for most domestic violence intervention programs do not track their clients’ situation after the client has left their abuser. In addition, the majority of state data collection systems for domestic violence use summary and incident-based data from police reports. This is problematic, given that domestic violence is known to be under-reported to the police and many women never utilize police services when seeking help. Therefore, I have created a comprehensive data collection system that captures domestic violence services offered through shelters, police and other service organizations (i.e.: public housing, TANF, TPOs and DFACS). My research focuses on the services given to domestic violence victims and how these services affect their ability to recover from their experiences and create a violence-free lifestyle. From observation and research, I believe that most women who seek help for domestic violence struggle with the following obstacles more than any other (usually in this order): employment, housing, financial resources, child care, addictions and their peers or family’s acceptance of violence. These six items are usually the stumbling blocks that prevent women from being able to live independently and violence-free. Although we believe that domestic violence affects people of every race, ethnicity and class, the women who seek help from service organizations generally have similar characteristics. Many women who seek help for domestic violence have little job experience, education, or financial resources. Some do not speak English very well, or are illegal immigrants afraid of being deported. Many help seekers come from lower SES groups and suffer from addictions. All are homeless. A majority of these women have at least one child young enough to require constant supervision, and often these women cannot afford to hire childcare while they seek employment. In addition, most of these children have witnessed abuse or have been abused directly and are in need of special services. More than anything else, the vast majority of these women live in fear of their abusers, who seem to have all the power and control over the situation. It is a well-established fact that when a woman leaves her abuser, her chances of being killed by that abuser increase over 100%. Women rarely learn to be “helpless” and more often learn to survive. These types of obstacles – those that would prevent anyone from living independently – most often cause a victim to return to their batterer. Many women would rather attempt to survive in a violent and controlling situation if they believe their children will be safe and both they and their children will have food, clothing, and a place to live. There is a belief among members of the justice system that women return to their batterers because they are helpless victims who do not mind being abused, or do not know any better. However, I contest that women who return to their abusers more often do so for practical and safety reasons. If they were able to overcome the aforementioned barriers, their immediate dependence on their abuser would end. By providing help-seeking victims of domestic violence with comprehensive services, both the justice system and the service providers will see a larger return on their investment.
Stereotypes, Class, and “Dangerousness”: Latinos in Prison
Stereotypes have always haunted ethnic immigrant/resident bodies in the US. For Latinos, these have included broad characterizations of “always arriving late,” and of “lacking ambition.” In this paper I argue that the Latino presence in the US has been unlike any other ethnic immigrant/resident body because of the high incarceration rate it experiences. In this paper I outline a brief class analysis of the Latino experience within a discussion of class structures in US society (Perrucci and Wysong 1999) and in an overview delineate the class consequences of racial inequality in the US (Oliver and Shapiro1997). In my paper it is my goal to look more closely at the economic displacement of Latinos in modern US society, and to examine their high incarceration rate as a consequence. The theme of this paper is the analysis of how the economic marginilization of Latinos and the construction of Latinos as “dangerous” result in the high incarceration rate for Latinos. Ultimately this paper explores the use of incarceration as a Latino “class control” device and an expression of a racially divisive society.
Still Excluded? An Update on the Status of African American Scholars in the Discipline of Criminology and Criminal Justice
This paper updates the work of Young and Sulton (1991). In their important article, Young and Sulton examine the integration of African American scholars in various aspects of the field of criminology and criminal justice (C/CJ). Specifically they note the exclusion of African American perspectives in C/CJ literature, the minimal use of African American criminologists by policymakers, the sparse number of grants being awarded to African American criminologists, and the exclusion of African American scholars as contacts for media stories. Our paper examines whether there have been any noticeable breakthroughs in these areas within the last decade.
Stranger Rape and Geo-Demographics
This research, funded by the British Home Office, seeks to extend our understanding on the geography of stranger rape by studying geo-demographic coding systems and their influence on spatial patterns of rape offences. The existence of robust relationships between crime, offender, and victim locations, and offence geo-demography will be useful for crime analysis and sexual offence investigation. Crime locations are the product of two primary processes: (1) the offender’s hunting method; and (2) the target backcloth. Each of these influences the journey-to-crime distance from the offender’s residence. Hunting method describes how an offender finds, and then attacks a victim, a process that might involve more than one location. Target backcloth refers to how targets or victims are arranged in space. There is also the question of what exactly is being searched for in some rape incidents; in a case of burglar-rape it may actually be the house or building structure that is being targeted. The size, homogeneity, and temporal consistency of geo-demographic areas are important factors in terms of their utility and the mitigation of the problem of ecological fallacy. Perhaps more powerful methods can be built using a combination of demographic data and land use information. The available theory and research suggest that geo-demography could play a valuable role in the fields of geographic and offender profiling and crime linkage analysis. But a critical part of the understanding of the relationship between geo-demography and crime location patterns will be the specification of the circumstances under which geo-demography is most useful.
Strategic Planning in Applied Criminologic Research: A Case Study of Reentry in Baltimore, Maryland
Increasingly, funders and designers of innovative social programming are turning to the evaluation community for assistance in both the design and evolution of interventions. Whereas the traditional role of evaluators in outcome or impact evaluations requires a clear delineation of responsibilities, the development of practitioner-evaluator partnerships demands more collaborative relationships. Such partnerships, if properly designed and executed, can yield programs that are rigorously evidence-based and well positioned for serious study. However, the evaluators’ role in the development and operation of a program may not only confound evaluation outcomes, but potentially also may have adverse impacts on the program once the researchers conclude their work. The optimal response, we believe, lies in the development of strategic planning models as the initial evaluative foray in research-practitioner collaborations.
Strategies for Enhancing the Adoption of School-Based Prevention Programs: Lessons Learned From the Life Skills Training Replication Project
Widespread implementation of effective programs is unlikely to affect the incidence of violent crime unless there is careful attention given to the quality of implementation, including identification of the problems associated with the process of implementation and strategies for overcoming these obstacles. This paper describes the results of a process evaluation focused on discovering common implementation obstacles faced by schools implementing the Life Skills Training (LST) drug prevention program. The evaluation was conducted by the Center for the Study and Prevention of Violence (CSPV), in conjunction with the designer of the LST program, Dr. Gilbert Botvin, and his dissemination agency, National Health Promotion Associates, and was funded by the Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention. While the seventy sites involved in the project faced many obstacles when implementing this science-based program in the “real” classroom setting, they were nonetheless very successful in delivering the program in its entirety and with a high level of fidelity to the program model. We argue that much of the schools’ success may be due to the high level of independent monitoring provided by CSPV, as well as our ongoing efforts to work with schools to identify and overcome problems associated with implementation.
Stratified Labor Markets and Disaggregated Violence: A Look at the Intersection Between Race and Gender in the Urban Context
The industrial shift, which led to the removal of manufacturing jobs from urban communities, was felt differently along race and gender lines (see Wilson and Wu 1993; Smith and Tienda 1987). For instance, although there have been gains in service oriented jobs in many urban areas, the substantial decrease in jobs at the manufacturing level directly impacted blacks, particularly black females, who were among those primarily employed by this sector (Tienda et. al 1987). Yet the consequences associated with this industrial shift on race- and gender-specific groups have yet to be explored. That is, while studies reveal that the level of urban disadvantage is felt differently along race lines, which contributes to the disparities in race-specific homicide rates, researchers have neglected to consider existing gender inequalities in combination with racial arguments to explore disaggregated homicide rates. After generating detailed race and gender-specific measures of labor market stratification and industrial restructuring, we estimate the impact of labor market stratification on disaggregated rates of urban homicide. We propose a dynamic model that suggests the differences in homicides rates for race- and gender-specific groups are due to the stratification faced in local labor markets opportunities and resulting disadvantages (including gender inequalities) in the urban context.
Street Crime vs. White Collared Crime: A Closer Examination of the Impact on Society
Much of the research conducted in criminology that measures crime as a variable usually some form of “street” crime. However, there is a different type of crime that often does not get researched: white collared crime. Though a negative financial impact may occur as the result of street crime, the financial impact of white collared crime is much stronger. This paper will examine the differences between street crime and white collared crime. In addition, suggestions will be made on how to begin integrating white collared crime into criminological research.
Street Youth, Strain, and Crime: Testing Agnew’s Revised Theory
: General Strain Theory posits that adversive circumstances experienced by youths increase the likelihood of criminal behavior. Agnew outlines how the failure to achieve positively valued goals, the presentation of negative stimuli and the removal of positively valued stimuli can all lead to criminal behavior. Much of the work surrounding the perspective has used conventional samples of youths to test the theory. The present research tests aspect’s of General Strain Theory utilizing a “high risk” sample of 400 homeless street youths. The paper examines how negative life circumstances including homelessness, unemployment and victimization on the street are linked to criminal behavior. As well it explores the role that the failure to achieve positively valued goals in terms of dissatisfaction with finances and feelings of deprivation might lead to crime. The different types of strain are expected to be conditioned by deviant attitudes, deviant peers, self efficacy, and self esteem.
Streets of Hope: Corrections Treatment Models and the Viability of Intervention Through Community-Based Corrections Approaches
This is a study of changing corrections program agendas, violent and serious criminal offenders, and the effectiveness of particular crime prevention strategies in community settings. This is the first of several papers on treatment programs and their effectiveness in respect to crime and justice within particular social settings.
Strength, Spirit, and Healing: Perspectives on Wilderness-Based Programming for Girls
This paper considers the theoretical perspectives and practical outcomes involving wilderness-based programs for girls. It reflects on three years of personal experience as a counselor for adolescent girls in a wilderness-based correctional program. I discuss various components of wilderness programming, including adventure-based expeditions and solo experiences, and their effect on self-esteem, spiritual growth, body image, and healing from sexual/physical abuse. I also consider how gender, race, and culture influence outdoor/nature experiences. I conclude by outlining the importance of an ecological perspective in social/criminal justice, and suggest that ecofeminist perspectives communicate important connections between the oppression of women and the oppression of nature. More specifically, they may help us understand and interpret the therapeutic value of wilderness experiences for girls.
Strengths-Based Gender Specific Programming for Female Juvenile Offenders
This paper explores the theoretical and practical basis of mentor-based intervention programs for adolescent girls. The focus is on the implications for gender specific intervention programs. However, issues of race and class will be explored as integral elements of the offending and intervention equations. This paper is driven by its policy implications for intervention programs for adolescent girls. This will be done particularly through an exploration of the ways in which different programs do or do not approach both the public-sphere and private-sphere needs of female juvenile offenders. The paper is careful to take the strcuture-agency debate into account. The paper also addresses the role of the researcher in any project examining mentoring.
Stress Among Rural and Small-Town Police Officers
This study examines the extent to which rural and small-town police officers stress experiences are similar, in level and function, to that discovered among samples of urban and suburban officers. A growing body of police stress literature suggests that line/supervisory interactions, self-efficacy, and subjective interpretations of the work environment are important determinants of stress, particularly among patrol officers. however, a direct investigation of rural and small-town police stress is absent in the literature. Perhaps assumptions about the unviersality of the nature of the work and police culture contribute to the lack of scientific attention afforded these officers. If regional and concomitant stress differences between officers exist, the practice of absolute homogeneity makes it difficult to develop strategies aimed at reducing identified stressors among rural and small-town law enforcement. Using a sample of rural and small-town officers from Western Pennsylvania, this study investigates possible linkages between stress and officers’ subjective experiences with and expectations of administration, immediate supervisors, and the public. The results of this study along with recommendations for social policy will be discussed.
Stressful Response: Sources and Outcomes of Police Stress in Responses to Calls of Partner Violence
This is a theoretical paper of occupational stress sources and outcomes. The theory presented herein brings to fore sociological factors identifying the ways in which social, institutional, and psychological factors may interact and affect one another in certain occupational settings. The public service component of many occupations brings workers in contact with social institutions, and their participants that may serve as social sources of stress that interact with, and intervene between, other known stressors to contribute to negative individual and societal outcomes. The theory may help to identify sources and outcomes of stress that are specific to public service work, specifically policing, by focusing on stress as it affects and is affected by responses to calls of partner violence by police officers. The theory provides a structural basis for empirical researchers to identify sources and outcomes of stress that may affect employees in all types of public service-oriented occupations. The theory culls existing knowledge from social psychological stress theories, and is further instructed by informal interviews with police officers from the New England area.
Structural and Organizational Determinants of Police Brutality Civil Rights Criminal Complaints: A Test of Conflict Theory
Relying on the conflict theory of law, researchers have argued that perceptions of minority threat enhance crime control efforts by the police, including the employment of police brutality. Although research in this tradition documents minority disadvantage at the hands of the police, important issues of theory and policy are not addressed in existing studies of police brutality. Notably, the organizational characteristics of police departments, which are a staple of policy recommendations to ameliorate the problem, have yet to be examined systematically. Proponents of the conflict theory of law minimize the possibility that organizational factors could meaningfully reduce the incidence of police brutality. They maintain that the structural divisions producing differential treatment are unaffected by organizational changes that do not alter the root cause, the segregation and deprivation of America’s minorities. Empirical validation of this premise has not been forthcoming. Here we test this assumption of conflict theory in a study that extends the set of predictor variables specified by the structural-level threat hypothesis to include seven organizational predictors of police brutality civil rights criminal complaints. The study includes cities of 150,000+ population (n = 113). The findings revealed large positive effects for the measures of threatening people-i.e., percent black, percent Hispanic (in the Southwest), and majority/minority income inequality. Of the seven organizational variables, only two had effects, which were relatively small. The findings clearly support the conflict argument regarding crime control strategies by the police.
Structural Change in Large Police Organizations in the 1990s
According to community policing advocates, police agencies experienced significant changes during the 1990s. These changes are thought to have occurred in a number of different substantive domains, including the culture, behavior, and structure of police organizations. This poster session examines the evidence for change in just one of these domains: organizational structure. Using data from six different data sets, we explore whether the structures of police organizations changed during the 1990s. Findings are presented using both statistics and graphics depicting structural change. Overall, we find mixed evidence. Some changes have occurred in the direction encouraged by community policing reformers, some changes have occurred in the opposite direction, and some changes have not occurred at all.
Structural Components and Recidivism: An Examination of Juvenile Offending Among Serious and Status Offenders
A growing body of literature has identified the important role that structural variables have on criminal activity. This study attempts to examine the effect of individual, case, and contextual variables on juvenile offending. By using 1996 through 2000 data on youth referred to the Maricopa County Juvenile Courts, legal, extralegal, and contextual variables are used to explain recidivism rates among felony and status offenders. Findings reveal that contextual components, specifically, racial heterogeneity has a significant impact on subsequent juvenile offending. Findings also show that youth residing in low-income areas are more likely to recidivate than youth residing in middle-income neighborhoods. Implications for future research are presented and discussed.
Structural Limits on State Power to Police Corporate Crime
With the recent wave of corporate crime amounting to billions of dollars of loss to investors, workers, and consumers, there is a parallel erosion of faith in the government’s willingness or its ability to control criminal corporate exeutives. president Bush’s response, thus far, is based on a traditional understanding of the causes and nature of corporate crime, that is, the policies adopted reflect a belief that corporate crime, like street crime, is an individual, psychological activity which can best be controlled by arresting, prosecuting and sentencing individual violators which, in turn, is supposed to have a general deterrent effect on others. A Challenge to this view is offered by critical criminologist Chambliss’s model of the state which focuses on the structural connections between government and corporations, and Calavita’s work on the use of “symbolic law” documents the state’s attempt to placate public demands that “something must be done”, but not to actually effect any significant change in social relations or social power. Based on this model, an analysis of major corporate crime such as that alleged against Enroin, WorldCom, and Arthur Anderson is provided and suggests that due to the many levels and types of partnerships between the U.S. government and big business, policing corporate misconduct is an impossible task.
Structured Decision Making in Juvenile Courts
Structured decision making (SDM) has been promoted as a procedure for systematizing decision making in the juvenile justice system for risk and needs assessment in various stages of processing youth. SDM is a formal and standardized procedures intended to guide decision makers by defining the criteria they must use in their decisions. It is thought that the use of structured decision making would aid in assuring fairness, equity and accountability in court processing and disposition. Several factors have led to increased use of standardized decision making: large caseloads and time limits on processing, increased alternative options for dispositions, pressure to achieve individual accountability, need to delegate decision making to specially trained staff, and complex decision making in cases of mental illness, substance abuse and developmental disability. This paper reports on a study of the use of SDM in twelve courts in four states where there has been substantial recent change in the statutes that influence the decision options available to the court. Because of greater statutory specification in disposition options, in the discretion of prosecutors and in funding restrictions, there are increasingly fewer opportunities for objective assessment of risks and needs. As a result SDM is often limited to decision making regarding the type of probation supervision, detention decision making and for monitoring and evaluation of decision making. It also was used in a more heuristic manner rather that as a systematic device in decision making.
Student Response to Failures in School-Level Control Mechanisms
Social disorganization and organizational climate theories are used to argue that schools exert formal control over student behavior to curb violence and victimization on school grounds. These formal control mechanisms include physical elements such as metal detectors, hallway monitors, and security cameras. Other social mechanisms of control include consistency and clarity of school rules and regular enforcement and punishment for violation of school rules. However, often schools fail to provide adequate levels of formal control resulting in disrupted and potentially dangerous environments. Individuals (i.e., students) may then feel the need to use informal measures of control in response to these conditions. The purpose of this paper is to examine the relationship between students’ behavior in schools with low levels of formal control. We hypothesize that students respond to deficiencies in their school’s formal controls by engaging in student “defensive” behaviors. Specifically, weapon carrying, avoidance behavior and truancy are more likely to be reported by victimized students who report that the formal control mechanisms at their school are weak or not existent.
Students’ and Parents’ Views of School Violence: Understanding the Problem and Implications for Prevention
The quality of the parent-child relationship is important in reducing youths’ involvement in delinquent behavior. Parental support of prosocial behavior and school achievement are equally important. This paper reports on findings of a survey administered to a sample of junior high school students and their parents regarding school achievement, delinquent involvement, and school crime and violence. Parents tend to greatly under-estimate their children’s involvement in problem behaviors. The paper concludes with implications for violence prevention policies and some recommendations.
Students Re-Inventing Justice: Perspectives on Theories, Innovations and Research
Beginning Fall 1999, we only meant to team teach our sociology and criminal justice classes across a few thousand miles (between California State University, Dominguez Hills and the University of Wisconsin, Parkside). Three years later, our students are working together “long distance” focusing on issues of peace and justice. The purpose of this panel discussion is: 1) to bring our students together in a face-to-face discussion of the interrelationship between social justice and criminal justice, and 2) to connect with other criminal justice students and scholars on these important issues. Since January 1998, we have used Dear Habermas, an electronic journal of postmodern and critical thought for undergraduates by undergraduates with a focus on peace and justice (http://www.csudh.edu/dearhabermas) as a way to bridge the distances between our two universities.
Studying Female Resistance to Male Violence
Most women have heard or have their ow3n stories about effective strategies to prevent or end male violence directed toward them. This research uses a sample of battered women in shelter to determine what types of strategies they used to resist violence from their batterers. It specifically concentrates on non-violent forms of behavior that empowered women without exposing them to further retaliation from the batterer. We also explore how these stragegies related to their plans to leave the batterer.
Studying the Impact of Sentencing Commissions on Racial Disparity: Evidence From Maryland
Recent theoretical developments in research on sentencing have focused on the motivations of the individual actors who make up the courtroom context. There is also growing concern that standard empirical techniques do not adequately distinguish between these actors. In this paper, we build on our recent work on judicial discretion by identifying and explaining the discretion due to the legal environment itself. We develop the implications of this work for the study of disparity in sentencing, particularly racial disparity.
Subcultural Influences on Deviant Behavior: Oppositional and Suberranean Values
Cultural deviance theories once held a promising place in the criminological enterprise. The empirical validity of cultural deviance theories, however, was undermined by a paucity of evidence. While many observational studies posited a direct connection between membership in a deviant subculture and deviant behavior, no quantitative evidence could be mustered. Statistical and methodological advances now allow researchers to measure cultural effects with more precision. Values, the criteria people use in making evaluations, is one cultural input that is said to direct behavior. Modern advances in measuring values now give researchers a sharper tool for tackling the presumed associations between values and deviant behavior. This paper employs two recent methodological advances in the measurement of values-the Schwartz Values Survey and the factorial survey method-and relates these measures to self-report measures of delinquency. The general hypothesis is that among college students there exist subcultures, identified by their values, which influence deviant behavior. A random sample of undergraduate students provides the data for this analysis.
Subcultural Values and Violent Delinquency: A Multi-Level Analysis in Middle Schools
One classic explanation of violent crime and delinquency stemming from The Chicago School tradition of the early 1900s suggests that individual differences in proclivity for violence qare due, in part, to differences in the extent to which individual’s have internalized values that support such activity. Specifically, individuals whose social contexts lead to higher levels of exposure to social groups that espouse pro-crime norms, values and behaviors are believed to have a much greater probability of adopting these norms and values and acting in accordance with them. Empirical support for the deviant subculture models is mixed, but overall, research suggests that individuals who hold values and attitudes that support violence are more likely to commit assaultive offenses. A limitation of this literature, however, is that studies generally have not simultaneously examined how macro- and micro-indicators of deviant subcultures affect violent crime. Moreover, these studies have not considered whether the often reported individual-level association between pro-violence values/attitudes and violent behavior varies as a function of the pervasiveness of subcultural values in the aggregate context in wqhich individuals are embedded. Using schools as social contexts that vary in the degree to which subcultures of violence exist, we addressw the limitations outlined above and examine the multi-level connection between subcultural values and violent behavior.
Substance Abuse and Criminal Specialization in an Arrestee Sample
This study sought to characterize the relationship between drug use and criminal careers in an arrestee sample; to explore the relationships between drug use career and participation in predatory, victimless, and nonspecialized criminal behaviors; and to model diversity in the types of crimes committed by adult arrestees. Arrestees who had begun their drug use careers before their criminal careers were more likely to engage exclusively in victimless crimes. Moreover, the onset of drug use before criminal behavior was associated with greater criminal diversity. The significance of these findings for efforts to rehabilitate drug offenders is discussed.
Substance Abuse and Dependency Disorders in the Criminal Justice System: A Test of the Simple Screening Instrument’s (SSI) Reliability and Validity in Screening Recent Arrestees and Incoming Prison Populations
Beginning in the middle of the twentieth century, social scientists began to actively develop, refine and utilize mental health survey instrumentation, replacing more expensive and often less objective clinical assessment procedures. As a result of such efforts, multitudes of screening instruments have been produced over the years, each typically articulating its own intended audiences and diagnostic goals. However, the mental health disorders of central concern in this study will be drug abuse and dependency disorders. The literature review in this subject area indicates that early large-scale studies revealed that various U.S. populations indicated differing levels of drug use prevalence, with some of the most significant levels of use having been reported by institutionalized populations housed within the criminal justice system. While this research will review past criminal justice legislation and policy to curb drug misuse, along with research attempts to assess both general and criminal justice populations for drug use prevalence and dependency disorders, its specific goal is to assess the reliability and validity of the Simple Screening Instrument (SSI) as applied within multiple institutionalized criminal justice venues. Beginning in the middle of the twentieth century, social scientists began to actively develop, refine and utilize mental health survey instrumentation, replacing more expensive and often less objective clinical assessment procedures. As a result of such efforts, multitudes of screening instruments have been produced over the years, each typically articulating its own intended audiences and diagnostic goals. However, the mental health disorders of central concern in this study will be drug abuse and dependency disorders. The literature review in this subject area indicates that early large-scale studies revealed that various U.S. populations indicated differing levels of drug use prevalence, with some of the most significant levels of use having been reported by institutionalized populations housed within the criminal justice system. While this research will review past criminal justice legislation and policy to curb drug misuse, along with research attempts to assess both general and criminal justice populations for drug use prevalence and dependency disorders, its specific goal is to assess the reliability and validity of the Simple Screening Instrument (SSI) as applied within multiple institutionalized criminal justice venues. All data for this project was collected during formal processing of recent arrestees and incoming prison inmates in the criminal justice system in the state of Nebraska throughout the calendar year 2001. Each case included the administration of the SSI and at least one other diagnostic instrument and/or a corresponding clinical psychological assessment. In order to assess the validity of the SSI, convergent relationships with other indexes of substance misuse will be demonstrated, to include clinical assessment histories of substance abuse, pharmacological information, self-reported use of illicit drugs, illegal use of prescription drugs, previous treatment histories, and other instruments designed to screen for substance misuse. In addition, logistic regression analyses will be utilized to assess differences in the overall accuracy of the SSI as a function of respondents’ demographic characteristics and setting. Results of the analyses and recommendations for policy and future research will be discussed in the light of these findings.
Substance Abuse Treatment Experience Over Five Years for Treated and Untreated Prisoners: Impact on Relapse and Recidivism
Previous research has found that substance-abusing offenders who participate in prison-based treatment (usually therapeutic community treatment) are less likely to relapse to drug use or return to prison at one-year post release than those who do not participate in treatment while in prison. In addition, graduates of prison-based treatment who enter community-based treatment following release to parole have lower relapse and recidivism rates than those who do not. By three years post release, most studies have found that differences in relapse and recidivism rates between treatment and comparison subjects disappear. For both treatment and comparison subjects, long-term success (however defined and measured) may be related to continuing or episodic participation in treatment. Using the full sample from the evaluation of the Amity prison-based treatment program, this paper examines the pattern of treatment participation over five years with respect to number of treatment episodes, type of treatment, length of treatment participation, legal pressure to enter treatment, reasons for entering and leaving treatment, and client perceptions of treatment. The study also examined the impact of differential treatment experience, for both Amity treatment and comparison subjects, on drug use and criminal justice status at five years following release from prison.
Substance Use, Mental Health, and Partner-Violence Among Young Adults
Numerous studies in criminology have focused on the etiology of violent delinquency and adult criminal behavior. Fewer studies have systematically examined the root causes and correlates of partner violence and victimization. In this study, we will examine proximal and co-occurring predictors of these two outcomes, as well as a measure of general violence at age 24. Of particular interest is the degree of overlap between partner violence, victimization and current and past substance use, as well as mental health problems that may increase risk for violence. We intend here a comprehensive investigation into a range of substance use indicators and measures of mental health functioning in early adulthood while controlling for childhood risk factors that may themselves increase the likelihood of violence in adulthood. Analyses of possible gender differences are planned. Data in the study are from the Seattle Social Development Project (SSDP). SSDP is a longitudinal study of youth development and behavior that has followed prospectively a panel of Seattle public school students from age 10 to 24. Implications for the development of intervention programs will be addressed.
Substance Use Among Rural Adolescents
There was a time when research on rural adolescent substance use was sparse. Those days are over. During the 1990’s, about 120 peer reviewed articles were published about substance use among adolescents in the U.S. alone were published. The purpose of this paper is two-fold. First, it provides a comprehensive review of the literature on rural adolescent substance use since 1990. Second, it examines trends in rural adolescent substance use, based on data from the Monitoring the Future study conducted by the U. of Michigan, Institute for Social Research.
Suicides in Texas Jails
Suicide is the leading cause of death for individuals in county jails. Understanding the characteristics of the individuals and events surrounding the suicide is important for the development of a theoretical perspective to explain when this event is most likely to occur. Additionally, the role that architectural design may play is explored.
Supermax Prisons: Myths, Realities, and the Politics of Punishment in American Society
In recent years a number of new approaches in corrections have developed- one of which is the super-maximum, or “supermax,” prison. Supermax prisons are characterized as one of, if not the most, punitive forms of punishment in American society. The extant empirical research on supermax facilities suggests that these institutions have the potential to damage inmates’ mental health while failing to meet their purported goals, resulting in added problems for correctional administrators and increased economic costs to public budgets without apparent benefits. As a result one has to ask why supermax prisons are so popular. This paper explores the roots of these controversial institutions to better understand the reasons of their increased popularity in recent years. Existing research suggests that supermax prisons are a prime example of the shift in the cultural sensibilities of society towards greater punitiveness.
Support for Alternative Sanctions: The Effect of Age on Attitudes Toward Sentencing
Data from a statewide survey are analyzed to examine the effects of age on support for imprisonment and alternative sanctions. Other respondent characteristics, such as gender, education, and victimization history, are also examined. Survey respondents were presented with two randomized crime scenarios and asked to indicate approval or disapproval for each of a series of possible criminal justice responses. Previous analyses of these data found that support for prison terms was surprisingly low, given the recurrent assertion that public attitudes toward criminals have grown increasingly punitive. The present analysis focuses on whether punitive attitudes are uniformly distributed across the age structure, and the significance of age effects.
Support for Regulation and the Construction of Corporate Crimes
This paper examines academic and popular texts on white-collar crime to study the rhetoric of claimsmakers who seek to mobilize public opposition to harmful or dangerous actions taken by businesses and to generate support for government regulation of business. Such claimsmakers often construct harmful business actions as crimes, emphasizing deliberate intent to violate laws, actual injuries to innocents, and attempts to conceal guilt. Yet many regulatory agencies focus on none of these factors: in the terminology of Reiss, they are compliance systems that seek to prevent behavior which puts people at risk of being harmed, rather than deterrence agencies that seek to punish behavior which has actually caused injury to innocents. To manage this discrepancy, supporters of regulation construct regulation in ways that highlight their similarity to deterrence systems, such as police agencies _ a rhetorical strategy that dovetails with the construction of corporate crimes. This suggests that for their supporters, regulatory agencies perform tasks of stigmatizing and punishing businesses. It is suggested that advocates of regulatory reform need to recognize these functions of regulation as well as the overt regulatory goals of reducing risk, in order to mobilize political support for regulatory flexibility.
Supra National Public Policymaking in Criminal Justice: The Potential Role of Academics in Criminology and Criminal Justice
Supranational public policymaking in criminal justice has been taking place for approximately half a century at such inter-governmental organizations as the United Nations and Council of Europe. During this time the role and degree of participation of academics in the field has changed. At this juncture, with the entrance of the American Society of Criminology into United Nations Non-Governmental Organization Consultative Status with the Economic and Security Council, with the revitalization of the Academy of Criminal Justice Sciences’ status, and the potential of the European Society of Criminology, and other similar academically based societies in criminology to acquire Status, it would be prudent to pause and review history, take cognizance of current arrangements, and consider potential avenues by which academics could proceed. This paper will provide a brief historical overview, describe the current scene, and elaborate the numerous, diverse potential means for contribution to supranational public policymaking in criminal justice.
Survey of Community Service Sentencing in Texas
Community service is one criminal sanction that involves both offenders in communities and communities in criminal justice. These themes have become popularized in recent years, yet much is still unknown about how community service works in practice and the offenders involved. Despite potential benefits to offenders, communities, and criminal justice systems this lack of information may be contributing to the limited use of community service as an intermediate sanction. This paper presents survey research of community service in Texas, one of the largest criminal justice systems in the nation. It documents such information as the function, operation, and structures of programs, characteristics of offenders ordered to community service, the amount and nature of community service work, measures of program effectiveness, and problems associated with the sanction. The findings will enhance a limited literature and should assist in the study of community service sentencing.
Survey Research and the Internet
The internet provides a cost effective means of administering surveys to a large number of respondents. Early surveys relied on e-mail for survey delivery and response. This initial method of internet-survey offered advantages over traditional methods but had many limitations. Web-based surveys offer an attractive alternative to e-mail surveys while providing advantages over traditional survey methodology. Using several online surveys as examples, this paper discusses the process of developing and administering a web-based survey. Problems and potentials of this data collection method are discussed as internet-based surveys are compared to more traditional methods. —
Survivor-Oriented Response Design: Planning Domestic Violence and Sexual Trauma Response Services Based on Survivors’ Needs
Though increased attention has been given to domestic violence and sexual assault crimes, the best strategy for organizing community response services remains unclear. The special needs of these crime victims is widely acknowledged, but attempts to organize assistance for the survivors can be marked by turf-battles and disagreement over best practices and desired outcomes. Following the lead of psychiatrists and mental health professionals familiar with the history of traumatic stress disorder/syndrome and its treatment, we propose a new model to guide community integration: Survivor-Oriented Response Design (“SORD”). SORD places the well-documented recovery needs of trauma victims at the center of response service design. This approach efficiently parses the recovery process into manageable responsibilities for particular agencies and reveals the best appropriate role for community stakeholders to fill.
Systemic Social Disorganization Theory — An Empirical Test
Working in the neighborhoods and block groups of the city of St. Louis, this paper inspects for empirical evidence supporting the tenets of systemic social disorganization theory. Specifically, this paper employs hierarchical modeling techniques to explore the effects of traditional social disorganization precursors and systemic-based predictors on homicide counts in St. Louis from 1985 through 1995. At the block group-level, the predictors include traditional measures of social disorganization contributors – socioeconomic disadvantage, residential instability, and population heterogeneity. The model also includes systemic predictors, indicative of the block group’s relationship with the larger neighborhood, such as school funding and voter turnout.
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Tackling Britain’s Street Crime Problem: A National Problem Solving Approach?
Against a background of overall reductions in recorded crime in recent years in England and Wales, annual increases in robberies stand out as a disturbing counter trend. Most of these robberies are personal robberies committed by groups of young males against other male victims, most often for small amounts of money, but increasingly for their mobile cell phones. They form the bulk of what the public and media commentators alike refer to in short hand has the ‘street crime problem’. In March 2002 the British Prime Minister announced a concerted cross government initiative bringing together not only the police and criminal justice agencies, but also departments of government with responsibilities for a range of social issues, including employment, education, sport, transport and heatlth. The Government’s aim to bring the problem of street crime under control by September 2002 and deal with offenders quickly and effectively marked a radical step-change in problem solving crime reduction approaches. This paper outlines the initiative and considers its impact during the first six months of its operation, as well as its potential application to other crime-related problems.
Tackling the Virtual Vandal: Designing Out Crime Within Virtual Reality Communities
The current study examines instances of vandalism within one Virtual Reality (VR) online community named CyberWorlds. Unlike the majority of online criminal or deviant activities that have been rationalized in legal and criminological discourses, virtual vandalism, a deviant activity unique to VR Worlds, holds different challenges for online crime prevention. Within VR environments individuals build homes and structures so that they can be remembered by others while they are not online. This link to online life, which for some is as meaningful as life offline, leads individuals to engrave themselves, their personalities into the landscape. Yet the permanence of these artefacts is under constant threat. Virtual vandalism features as a constant concern for those who wish to maintain the integrity of their artefacts, both semantically and aesthetically. This paper discusses the effectiveness of a range of online crime prevention methods aimed at reducing online vandalism and presents narratives and extracts from community members that illustrate the growing concern over the effects virtual vandalism has on online community cohesion.
Taking a Long Time to Die: A Study of Time Between Homicide Injury and Death
Approximately 20% of homicide victims in California die of their injuries one day or more after the attack. The purpose of this study is to compare the characteristics of those that are victims of homicide attacks, but take one or more days to die from the attack, with those that die immediately. Data for this study are taken from California Linked Homicide file which contains case-by-case linkage of law enforcement and vital statistics for 32,163 homicides in California from 1990-1999. Victims who die immediately, within two days, or longer will be compared on the following variables: weapon, location, age, gender, victim/offender relationship, marital status, and education.
Targeting Violent Crime in Small Communities: Balancing the Competing Demands of Intervention and Investment for Long-term Change
Based on the Federal crime intervention model of Strategic Approaches for Community Safety Initiative (SACSI), the community of Wilmington, NC addressed the problem of serious violent crime and drug distribution in and around five public housing communities. In this crime reduction strategy the local U.S. Attorney forms a partnership with Federal, State and local criminal justice agencies, community organizations and a research partner to address a crime problem identified within the community. SACSI crime intervention programs are intended to follow a specific model beginning with the use of data to identify and describe the problem and ending with evaluation to access the various impacts of the program. This investigation explores the changes overtime in the spatial distribution of violent crime within Wilmington and around the five identified public housing areas. The research specifically analyzes the distribution of violent and drug crimes in small areas after the arrest of identified serious high rate offenders. The relationship between the immediate crime reduction achieved by arrest and deterrence and the potential from community social control (collective efficacy) is explored. Finally, critical issues in the federalization of crime control are discussed within the context of the SACSI model and this specific partnership.
TBA
A great deal of the extant literature examining the organizational transformation of American courts in the 20th century has often depicted the phenomenon in terms of a “natural” progression whereby “primitive” forms of legal organization have been replaced by more “advanced” organizational structures. In particular, courts manned by judges without formal legal training, “lay courts,” have been largely conceptualized and depicted as “backward” or “inefficient” while more complex organizational models of courts witnessed in many contemporary jurisdictions are described as “modern” and “efficient” (or at least “innovative”). Underlying this theoretical vision is an understanding of social organization as directly related to function. To many, this relation of function to form seems obvious; consequently, it is an assumption that has gone largely unexamined in the organizational literature relating to criminal justice organization. However, the very taken-for-granted character of court criminal justice organization in general, and the professionalization of trial courts in particular, indicates a an institutional process. Studies of court organization have been largely descriptive in character, yet lacking much in the way of a theory explaining the underlying institutional dynamics. This paper is a study of American trial courts designed to test some of recent insights and assertions of institutional theory within the sociology of organizations. In particular, this paper seeks to explain the widespread organizational “death” of that particular form of court organization broadly understood as “lay courts” in the post WWII era. Data gathered from the US census, as well as other archival sources is used to document the precipitous decline in “justice of the peace” courts in the US and relate these declines to macro-institutional factors. An attempt is made to also examine the effects of other factors believed to influence patterns of organization.
Teacher Opinion Leaders and Services for Students With ADHD in Low-Income Urban Schools
Prevalence rates for children’s disruptive behavior in low-income communities are more than four times national estimates. Although we are not aware of accurate prevalence data for ADHD in urban, low-income communities, the challenge of educating students with ADHD is clearly a major concern for urban educators. In this presentation we will describe a federally funded service model that pairs peer-nominated teacher opinion leaders with community-based mental health service providers to provide services for students with ADHD in low-income urban schools. In this model, teacher opinion leaders and clinicians are enrolled together in a web-based university course, developed and taught by the project team, on effective educational and mental health strategies for students with ADHD. These teacher-clinician pairs then collaborate on the implementation of interventions and the sharing of methods and materials with teachers in their buildings, thus providing the necessary support for teachers to adopt more favorable attitudes toward interventions and ultimately more effective classroom strategies for students with ADHD. Current project findings also will be presented.
Teaching and Research on the Internet
The internet provides a wealth of information for educators and students. Efforts to organize this material can result in large websites with organizational problems of their own. The cjstudents.com website is a non-commercial site that is being developed with the assistance of criminal justice students. The “everything but the kitchen sink” model of website development has been abandoned in favor of a carefully edited site that includes web links as well as full text articles. The site is topically organized to parallel courses typically offered in a criminology curriculum. The ongoing development of this site is presented in this poster session.
Teaching Ethics to Prisoners
At three prisons in New York State, I taught a course, Ethics and Human Services, to prisoners pursuing their college degree. Drawing on the work of Paulo Freire, I describe an approach to the development of critical consciousness of prisoner-students using both instructor and student reflexivity. I consider how “making problematic” one’s social and cultural reality and engaging in open, reflexive dialogue can result in benefits for the instructor as well as students. I describe these benefits in terms of classroom dialogue that developed between prisoner-students and the instructor.
Technology and the Criminal Justice Classroom: Using S.P.S.S. and Online Court Dockets to Demonstrate Evaluation Research
In Stark County Ohio, the Court of Common Pleas and area municipal courts have successfully posted their dockets to an online website. The names and docket numbers of all felony cases from 1999-2001 were obtained and used as the basis for evaluating disparity in sentencing patterns. Specifically, legal and extra-legal factors were used to predict sentences and consequent disparity. A course was designed around this project which included: identification of variables, setting S.P.S.S. program parameters, coding off an online source, entering data, and the presentation of results as some objectives and consequent assignments. A qualitative analysis consisting of intensive interviews of the students and classroom observation produced several concepts, patterns of interaction, and related themes within this educational context.
Telemarketing Fraud: Illegitimate Offspring of the American Market Economy
This paper examines the individual, organizational and cultural aspects of telemarketing fraud. It begins with a description of the current exchange system in the U.S. economic model and the concomitant opportunity for criminal enterprise, more specifically fraud. After a statement of the problem, to wit, the proliferation of fraudulent telemarketing operations, the qualitative methods utilized to investigate the phenomenon is discussed. A detailed expose on the criminal backgrounds and careers of those that participate in telemarketing fraud follows. Next, an analysis of the organizational components and the reaction of the criminal justice apparatus at the individual and organizational levels is provided. The failings of the government to appropriately investigate and respond to the cultural components are revealed. The paper concludes with suggestions for the development of policy and implementation toward a more effective societal response.
Terrorism and State Crime: A Review of Acts and Perpetrators Within the Jurisdiction of the International Criminal Court
This paper reviews the text of the treaty proposing an International Criminal Court and related commentaries on jurisdictional issues. Types of acts and types of perpetrators which fall under the proposed court’s jurisdiction are reviewed. Likely or worthwhile extensions of jurisdiction are proposed.
Terrorism in Africa and Issues on African Security
The papers on this roundtable will investigate the various types of terrorist attacks in various countries of Africa, and identify the proximate causes of the terrorst attacks. The international and inter-continental character of the terrorist attacks will be explored, and identify the characteristics of African terrorists. The papers will recommend control mechanisms and ways to maintain African national security.
‘Testing…Testing’: Racial Profiling and In Car Camera Usage in Two Suburban Police Departments
Legislatures are increasingly proposing the use of in car cameras to reduce racial profiling. However, there is little systematic research on the viability of this “solution” let alone what camera car archives maintained by departments actually contain. This paper examines how two departments deploy in car cameras, and maintain and strategically use their video archives. We examine how officer discretion impacts on videotaping police citizen encounters and measure the extent of unrecorded stops by comparing videotaped data with patrol logs. The implications for research on racial profiling are discussed.
Testing the Impact of Drug Treatment on Reoffending: An Evaluation of the Breaking the Cycle Program in Jacksonville, Florida
Drug treatment programs are a major feature of the American criminal justice system. This study examines the effectiveness of one particular drug treatment program (Breaking the Cycle-BTC) operating in Jacksonville, Florida. The study compares re-arrest rates among participants assigned to BTC as compared to comparable felony drug defendants receiving no drug treatment. Results indicate that BTC participants were significantly less likely to be rearrested.
The ‘Invinsible Hand of the Market’: Illegal Drug Trade in Germany, Italy, and Russia
Drug trafficking and dealing are often assumed to be carried out by large-scale criminal organizations, which then presented as a scapegoat by law enforcement officials, drug treatment providers and drug users alike. Relying on fieldwork in Italy, Germany and Russia, the paper aims to demonstrate that this assumption has no empirical backing. By analyzing interviews with drug users and distributors, law enforcement officials and drug treatment providers and a wide sample of criminal cases in Italy, Germany and Russia, the author shows that in all the three countries the ‘invisible hand of the market’ is at work: In Milan as in Frankfurt, in Moscow as in Vladivostok, the great majority of drug deals, even those involving large quantities of drugs, are carried out by numerous, relatively small, and often ephemeral enterprises.
The ‘Other’ John Smith: Understanding Identity Theft Victimization Through Individual Experiences
Defining the societal impact of identity theft is difficult, in part because the victimization extends beyond an unauthorized credit card charge or forged check. Additional financial and emotional strain is incurred while the victim deals with creditors, debt collection agencies, and law enforcement groups in order to restore negative credit and criminal histories left in the wake of the offense. The difficult recovery is a function of the complex nature of the identity theft problem. However, the likelihood that an individual can restore normality to their lives rests on the abilities of law enforcement, consumer organizations, and private sector industries in providing assistance to identity theft victims. Using qualitative data from a series of six focus groups of identity theft victims, this presentation will explore the nature of this particular type of crime, and the subsequent recovery effort as victims navigate the criminal justice system in hopes of successful resolution.
The “Victims of Trafficking and Violence Act of 2000”: How the Human Trafficking Problem Became a U.S. Public Policy Issue
Although not a recent problem, during the 1990s, the recognition of human trafficking for purposes of forced labor and prostitution as one of the fastest growing areas of international criminal activity affecting most countries of the world raised concerns within the U.S. executive and legislative branches and in the international community. In 2000, Congress passed and President Clinton signed into law the “Victims of Trafficking and Violence Act” (P.L. 106-386). Using the case method to reconstruct the policy-making process that led to the enactment of the act, this presentation will examine the various political factors that help to explain the process and the resulting policy. Specifically, did international considerations or efforts to reassure certain audiences within the U.S. lead the Clinton administration to promote legislative action? What role did interest groups – feminist organizations and human rights organizations from the left and the Religious right – play in the shaping and ultimate enactment of the 2000 act? Were there other factors, still to be determined, that affected the process and final legislation? In so doing, this presentation will contribute to our understanding of how international criminal justice problems become public policy issues and matters of governmental concern in the United States.
The 1935 Philaelphia Magistrates’ Scandal
In 1935, all the magistrates of the city of Philadelphia were investigated for corrupt practices and law violations. City reformers had been trying to change the lower court system for years an finally succeeded in bringing all lower court judges up on charges. This paper will analyze the situation as a struggle between conflicting world views, those of machine politicians and those of reformers. It will begin with a short overview of the history of the magsitrate, and the court structure of Phialdelphia at that time, focusing on the magistrates’ courts. It will then discuss the positio of magistrate, and his responsibilities, both stated and unstated, from the points of view of the machine politician and the reformer. Finally, it will analyze the cases and the results historically, with theoretical perspectives from Samuel P. Hays, Robert H. Weibe,and David P. Thelen.
The Abuse of Cognitively Impaired Victims in Homes
Research suggests that individuals with Alzheimer’s disease and related cognitive impairments are at a higher risk of abuse than are those who do not suffer from any impairment. The majority of research in this area has centered on abuse occurring in community-based dwellings. Using data obtained from the Medicaid Fraud Report, the current study examines the characteristics and risk factors for patient abuse involving cognitively impaired nursing home residents. Attention is also given to the criminal justice system’s response to these cases, as well as obstacles that make it difficult to resolve the cases. Implications are provided.
The Administrative Approach to Organized Crime in Amsterdam
For years, the Dutch police and justice department have been fighting a loosing battle. Mid nineties, the fight against organized crime even led to a political crisis. In the parliamentary inquiry that followed, the city of Amsterdam was described as a focus point of criminal activities. Especially in the ‘Red Light District’, criminal networks were controlling real estate and economic activities. Organized crime was in charge, not the local authorities. These findings led to the realization that combating organized crime is not solely a responsibility of the police or the justice department. Also the local authorities have a role to play. The city of Amsterdam turned its attention to the city of New York, which was liberated from the grip of organized crime in several branches of industry by a combination of administrative and judicial measures. Inspired by this innovative approach, the city of Amsterdam started a special project in which administrative law is used alongside criminal law. This paper will look at the efforts and the results of this crusade against organized crime in Amsterdam. The central aim of the underlying research project is to answer the question: Is this an effective way to fight organized crime?
‘The Adult Connection’ – Bill Sykes and the Fagin Factor: Adults and the Criminalisation of Youth
In the first six months of 2002 there was yet again an unrelenting wave of public and political anguish over the ‘new’ crimes and lawlessness discovered by young people that was leading the United Kingdom, deeper and deeper into the abyss of lawlessness, crime, and immorality. Young people it seems had suddenly discovered new street crimes such as mobile phone theft and car jacking along with the up market theft of Rolex watches. Yet little thought was given to the adult connection in the motivation for such crimes and the coninuing secure and hidden position of adults, directing, organising and managing the criminal market place. This paper discusses the continuing international political pre-occupation with the blaming of young people for the crimes of adults alongside the lack of confidence in and understanding of the cultural lives of the young in contemporary post modern society, whilst considering whether the notion of a “Moral Panic’ can continue to convey the intensity of the hatred and fear of youth that now exists.
The Aesthetics of Crime and Crime Control
Attempts to understand the nature of crime and crime control have often relied on the old dualism of form versus content, and on the associated hierarchy of investigation whereby form must be stripped away so as to reveal the meaningful core of content. Emerging perspectives in the areas of social theory, cultural studies, sociology, and criminology over the past half century–and specifically in the field of cultural criminology over the past decade or so–have proposed a radically different ontology and etiology of crime and crime control. From this alternative view, form is content; dimensions of symbolism, style, aesthetics, and perception in fact define the dynamics of crime and crime control. Those adopting this alternative perspective investigate criminal subcultures as aesthetic or stylistic communities; explore the aesthetic foundations of crime control and legal authority; define style as the medium through which criminals and crime control agents interact; and consider the essential role of stylized media dynamics in constructing the contemporary reality of crime and crime control.
The Age Distributions of Homicide Offenders and Victims: What Do We Know About Their Accuracy and Relationships to One Other?
Data on age distribution of homicide victims in the United States are available from two different sources since 1961: Uniform Crime Reports and Vital Statistics. One source is based on “crimes known to the police” and the other on death certificates. We examine how closely these two series correspond and shifts in their degree of correspondence over time. More recently (beginning in 1991), Crime in the United States has broken down the age of offenders and the age of victims for the total population and for race and sex groups. It has also supplied arrest statistics broken down by age for males and females. We compare these distributions. We attempt to evaluate how representative the age distribution of those arrested for homicide is of those who commit this crime. We do not produce a definitive evaluation but we address the problems of incomplete arrest reporting by agencies, incomplete information on the ages of those who commit crimes known to the police, the absence of UCR imputation for data used to calculate the age distribution of homicide arrests, and similarities and differences in the distributions of those committing, and those who are the victims of, homicide.
The Application of GIS Technology to the Study of Fear of Crime
Fear of crime among neighborhood residents has attracted much attention among criminologists, policymakers, and the public. However, surprisingly little is known about how particular characteristics of residential areas condition feelings of fear or safety. In many samples, respondents do not identify the distinctive elements of their neighborhood that may provoke fear, but rather indicate whether they are afraid to walk in “some area” of their neighborhood. This research applies the strategies and technologies associated with modern spatial data analysis, currently used with some success to investigate criminal activity, to a study of fear of crime. A sample of residents in an urban neighborhood completed a short questionnaire that includes demographic and personal information, prior victimization experiences, residential history, and general perceptions about crime. Participants also toured their neighborhood by foot, periodically stopping to assess neighborhood characteristics and their perceived risk of victimization. A handheld GPS receiver recorded the path followed by each respondent, and the locations at which assessments were made. The presentation considers the geographical distribution of variables that contribute to perceptions of safety and crime victimization risk.
The Attractions to Suicide Missions: Toward an Understanding of September
Immediately after the terrorist attacks on New York and Washington, D.C., on September 11, 2001, common talk on television and the streets explained the hijacking suicide bombers as “crazy” and “insane.” This paper utilizes Jack Katz’s phenomenological criminology and draws on contemporary sociology of religion in order to make sense of the September 11 attacks and asks the question, “How and why is one morally and sensually attracted to carrying out a suicide mission?” Looking at suicide missions and other terrorist activites from the inside, while noting the lack of information in news media coverage, different conclusions regarding how to prevent and combat religiously inspired terrorism are reached from those persued thus far by the U.S. agenices. More specifically, the paper argues that the role of religious institutions must be expanded, political avenues for conflict resolution should be pursued, and military responses may create more terror.
The Barking Dog? Partnership and Effective Practice in Offender Rehabilitation
This paper explores the area of multi-agency collaboration in light of the drive towards effective practice in offender supervision programmes. There has been an explosion of interest in multi-agency collaboration across many areas of criminal justice, crime prevention and allied fields of social provision. Enthusiasm for such initiatives, and optimism in their promise of enhanced effectiveness, contrasts with research revealing multiple problems in designing and implementing partnership projects. Nevertheless, in the drive towards standardisation of programmes, the `What Works’ principles of effective practice neglect multi-agency issues. The paper explores how far the principles of effective multi-agency partnership are compatible with the prescriptions for effective supervision programmes contained within the `What Works’ project. It concludes with a broader discussion, which explores the `barking dog’ of the effective practice movement in offender supervision: neglect of multi-agency partnership leading to an impoverishment of opportunities for offender rehabilitation.
The Benefits and Consequences of Transferring Juveniles to Adult Court in Wisconsin?
The objective of the proposed study is to conduct an extensive study on a matter that is often talked about and polemic, but often poorly understood: the benefits and ramifications of transferring juveniles to adult court in Wisconsin. Specifically, in the hope of providing a balance to the existing literature and research on waiver decisions, the proposed study will provide professional practitioners (i.e., defense attorneys, prosecutors, and judges) who wish to participate an opportunity to voice their concerns via questionnaire (or face-to-face interview). The goal is to provide a unique presentation of the views and experiences of those who work on a day-to-day basis with juvenile cases-and thus obtain first-hand knowledge. The objective is not to provide a partial or distorted description of waiver decisions, but to offer an inclusive and extensive analysis of the most meaningful aspects of transferring juveniles to criminal court-those things which are most meaningful to the juveniles and professionals themselves. The ultimate goal is to obtain a better understanding of the many complex issues and challenges of transferring juveniles to criminal court, and, above all, gain information that will guide us in making necessary policy modifications that will reduce consequences and increase benefits.
The Best of Both Worlds: Integrating Psychology and Law Enforcement Approaches to the Evaluation of Nonverbal Behavior in the Interview/Interrogation Setting
A number of academic disciplines conduct research on the interpretation of nonverbal behaviors, but unfortunately they not only do not communicate with each other, they also fail to communicate with ‘real world’ organizations, such as law enforcement, who could make practical use of their findings. A review of the research in social and clinical psychology and of the teaching materials for law enforcement indicates that there are several areas where cross-communication may be essential. For example, the commonly employed textbook on the ‘Reid technique’ of interview and interrogation includes less than one full page discussing cross-cultural differences while psychology has identified numerous such differences. Failure to consider such differences may result in a high probability of ‘false positives’ — individuals who are truthful but are considered to be liars (e.g., numerous cultures consider direct eye-contact to be disrespectful while the Reid technique labels such behavior deceptive). In this paper a law-enforcement professional and a social psychologist collaborate to identify areas where enhancing communication between the disciplines can potentially enrich both and aid in the reinventing of justice.
The Black Market in Endangered Animals
Criminologists have long been interested in the study of transnational crime — the illicit procurement, transportation and distribution of commodities across international borders. By and large, the majority of the research has focused on the illegal narcotics trade with limited, though growing interest in nuclear and conventional arms dealing, money laundering, art and antiquities trafficking, and the smuggling of humans. However, one area of transnational crime — the black market in endangered animals and animal parts that generates an estimated $6 billion per year — has been all but ignored by criminologists. Employing field research methods, the authors explored the nature of this illegal market in Namibia and South Africa, two major source countries for illegal wildlife trafficking. The authors present their results via multi-media format using images and audio clips to supplement and compliment their major findings.
The Black Market in Endangered Animals in Southern Africa
Criminologists have long been interested in the study of transnational crime — the illicit procurement, transportation and distribution of commodities across international borders. By and large, the majority of the research has focused on the illegal narcotics trade with limited, though growing interest in nuclear and conventional arms dealing, money laundering, art and antiquities trafficking, and the smuggling of humans. However, one area of transnational crime — the black market in endangered animals and animal parts that generates an estimated $6 billion per year — has been all but ignored by criminologists. Employing field research methods, the authors explored the nature of this illegal market in Namibia and South Africa, two major source countries for wildlife trafficking. The authors present their results via multi-media format using images and audio clips to supplement and compliment their major findings.
The Black Wall of Silence?: Examining the Attitudes and Experiences of African-American Police Officers
One of the enduring and perennial characterstics of police organizations is the closed and clannish nature of the police culture — what is often colloquially referred to as the “Blue Wall of Silence”. There has been a great deal of research on the experiences, attitudes, and beliefs of police officers more generally, however, there has been virtually no research on African-American officers specifically. Is the lived experience of African-American officers qualitatively different than that of white officers? Do black officers hold different attitudes and beliefs than white offiers? To what extend do attitudes, beliefs, and experiences affect the behavioral choices black officers make? Do black officers believe their voices are silenced in an effort to retain the impression of a united and uniform police experience? This paper will begin with a brief overview of the history of blacks in policing, and will argue that discrimination against black police officers within police organizations has deep historical roots in the U.S. The, drawing on qualitatibe data sources, the discussion will turn to examining the lived experiences of African American officers and assess the interaction between attitudes, beliefs, experiences and behavior.
The Business of Immigrant Smuggling: Race, Law and Criminal Opportunity During the Exclusion Era
One of the unintended consequences of legislation forbidding many Chinese from immigrating to the U.S. was the opportunity for criminal entrepreneurs to make a hefty profit by smuggling Chinese into the U.S. To accomplish this goal, many of these entrepreneurs formed syndicates that operated within the numerous social systems of organized crime existing throughout the United States. Using numerous documents found in the records of the U.S. Immigration Service and the U.S. Customs Service, newspaper reports, and other primary source material, one is able to reconstruct a number of these syndicates. In the face of an overwhelmingly hostile racial climate, these syndicates transcended ethnic boundaries, aligning Chinese smugglers and their Chinese patrons with upperworld and underworld members of the non-Chinese community. These syndicates operated on an international scale, readily adapted to changes in the law and its application (or lack thereof), and were quite sophisticated in their methods of operation. Many of these syndicates also created institutions and practices that victimized illegal Chinese immigrants upon their entry into the U.S. This paper argues that the nature and actions of these syndicates leads us to reconsider basic scholarly assumptions about the criminology of organized crime and the role of the underworld in shaping current historical discourse about Chinese Exclusion and the larger Chinese-American experience.
The Business of Watching Crime: Crime Commissions and Community Partnerships Against Crime
Crime Commissions have a long history of independent oversight of criminal justice agencies, planning to prevent crime, and more recently proactive involvement in community partnerships. This paper provides an historical overview of the role of American Crime Commissions in Urban Areas. A survey of executives from US Crime Commissions is used to assess historical and current managerial philosophies.
The California Prison Treatment Expansion Initiative: Participant Characteristics, Recidivism, and Predictors of Outcome
Based on the early Amity prison therapeutic community (TC) positive outcomes, the California Department of Corrections has implemented approximately 9,000 beds devoted to TC substance abuse treatment, which are spread over 35 programs in 19 prisons. The UCLA Integrated Substance Abuse Programs is conducting 5-year process and outcome evaluations on 15 of these programs at 10 prisons, totaling 3,300 beds for men and women at all custody levels. Using client-level, treatment participation, and return to custody (RTC) data, this paper will (1) present descriptive statistics relating to client characteristics and treatment participation in both prison- and community-based treatment (i.e., aftercare), (2) explore factors that may be predictors of participation in aftercare following release from prison, (3) examine RTC rates among parolees from prison-based TC programs who entered aftercare compared with those who did not, and (4) explore other client-level factors that may act predict RTC rates among parolees from prison-based TC programs (e.g., mental illness, sex offender status, substance abuse/dependence diagnosis).
The Case Against Coed Corrections
As the numbers of women in prison continue to grow, there are a number of issues to consider in regard to custody, care, and control of women inmates. One solution to the growing numbers of women inmates is the coed prison. This paper draws upon the literature and personal experiences to illustrate why this is not a good solution. Problems, issues, and possible solutions are discussed.
The Case for Racial Diversification in Juvenile Justice Administration: An Empirical Study of Race and Professional Orientations
Despite considerable research and policy attention over the past twenty-five years, racial disparity in juvenile justice remains a pressing social problem. This suggests a need for new perspective on the nature of racial inequality in juvenile justice, and greater scrutiny of current policy responses. This article focuses on the later challenge, testing the assertion that diversifying the ranks of juvenile justice practitioners can reduce levels of racial disparity in juvenile justice administration. Diversification has been proposed as a viable remedy for disproportionate minority confinement, yet virtually no theoretical or empirical work on the relationship between race and professional orientation has been developed to support and/or challenge this approach. Data from a recent survey of juvenile court judges, prosecutors, defense attorneys, and probation officers in four states (N= 665) are used to test OLS and Logistical regression models estimating relationships between racial background and orientations toward juvenile justice decision making, focusing specifically on attitudes toward the problem of disproportionate minority confinement (DMC) and the general concept of “accountability”. Findings suggest that black professionals are far more concerned about issues of system fairness in general, and racial justice in particular, than are their white counterparts, and that professional diversification may therefore be a useful strategy in addressing racial disparity in juvenile justice. However, additional research is required to clarify the relationship between race and professional orientation, and to determine the extent to which variation in orientation is related to actual outcomes in case processing. It is further recommended that DMC research and policy initiatives more aggressively engage minorities as agents/providers of justice administration, to counter a long research and policy tradition of viewing narrowly minorities as “problem populations” and passive subjects/victims of punishment and social control.
The Causes and Consequences of Child Psychopathology: An Assessment by Race/Ethnicity
This study examines risk factors for child psychopathology and assesses the influence of child mental health on juvenile delinquency. Specifically, risk factors and outcomes are examined by ethnicity in an attempt to determine whether the etiology and behavioral consequences of child psychopathology are consistent across Whites, African Americans, and Latinos. Data from the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth are utilized to examine early childhood risk factors, child psychopathology, and adolescent outcomes. Mental problems in childhood have been linked with later violent and serious juvenile delinquency, however, little is known about the consistency of relationships by ethnicity. This study examines key relationships as they unfold over the life course among a multiethnic sample of youth. Analyses will be conducted separately by ethnicity to determine whether the causes and consequences of childhood psychopathology are similar for racial/ethnic groups.
The Challenge of Terrorism and Violence to the Free Societies in the Global Village
Criminology is an important discipline for helping to make sense of Sept. 11 and contributing to the discussion about what to do next. Criminology has a great deal to learn, coupled with an opportunity to reflect on the discipline’s relevance to the problems not just within the U.S., but matters of violence in an increasingly small and interconnected global village. This paper suggests a new paradigm that returns to – and updates – the notion about `the challenge of crime in a free society.’ The current challenge is not just crime, but terrorism and violence (both domestic and international); the challenge is to respond in ways consistent with democratic values and increased awareness of international issues (including how the US is seen by a variety of other countries).
The Changing Face of Organized Crime: Four Pioneer Researchers Examine Its Past, Present and Future
This panel will consist of four criminologists who were instrumental in conducting original research concerning the structure and nature of organized crime groups around the world. The discussion will draw upon the insights and experiences of these researchers as they evaluate the nature of organized crime groups in the past and compare the radical changes taking place which seem to indicate that organized crime is moving toward developing an international agenda of cooperation in enterprises on a world -wide scale.
The Changing Nature of Murder in Russia
The homicide victimization rate in Russia doubled during the early 1990s and is now among the highest in the world. Beyond the rapid rate increase, the characteristics of homicide events and offenders are also changing. This paper describes the changing nature of homicide during the 1990s in Russia as a whole and, in more detail, in the Russian region of Udmurtia. The study employs data from three sources: Annual mortality data (1970-1999) and data on criminal investigations and convictions (1990 and 1997) in all of Russia, and an in-depth study of homicide trial records in the Udmurt Republic (1989-91 and 1998). Results reveal that murder in Russia changed considerably during the 1990s. For example, a higher percentage of homicides now involve aggravating circumstances, such as murder (1) in association with another felony, (2) to conceal another crime, or (3) by a group of people. The characteristics of convicted murderers also appear to be changing. At the end of the 1990s, offenders were younger, less likely to have previous convictions, and had a more diverse range of educational attainment than at the beginning of the decade. Finally, the rural-urban gap, with higher levels in rural areas, has also narrowed.
The Changing Role of the Prison Officer — Innovations and Tensions
Prison officers and the way they do their work are pivotal to the life of prisons, but have received very little direct attention in discussions of innovations in justice either in academic circles or in wider public debates about safe communities, crime, punishment and imprisonment. This paper explores the link between changed expectation of prisons and the changing role of prison officers. Expectations of prison and its role as a response to crime change over time. This paper explores the changes that have occurred in Australian prison policy in the twentieth century and draws out the changed roles of prison officers that accompany that these changes. Penal philosophy emerging in the middle of the 20th Century pointed to the possibility of prisons with radically different focii to the para-military detention and punishment centres of the preceding decades. But are the prisons that have developed from this philosophical shift truly innovative? Are prison officers doing a job that is markedly different from that of their antecedent wardens?
The Changing Structural Characteristics and Conditions of U.S. Prisons, 1974-2000
While scholars have been particularly concerned with recent incarceration trends that have resulted in record numbers of individuals been imprisoned, much less attention has been given to understanding how prisons and their inmates are being affected by these trends. Speifically, we lack a comprehensive account of how prisons themselves have changed along with rising rates of imprisonment. The current paper provides such an account. Employing data from six surveys conducted by the U.S. Justice Department for the years of 1974, 1979, 1984, 1990, 1995 and 2000, I detail how the structural characteristics an conditions within state prisons have changed over the last quarter century. Particular attention is given to the level of interpersonal and collective social unrest in prison, whicn includes inmate-on-inmate assaults and inmate-on-staff assaults, fires, disturbances and riots. Major findings include a decline in interpersonal unrest but an increase in collective unrest. In addition, prisons are becoming more heterogeneous due to the influx of minority and young inmates. At the same time, the opportunities for the diverse inmate population to interact in formal settings are becoming scarce as there is a decline in the number of inmates participating in prison education, work and drug programs. Also, there is some indication that managing prisons is becoming more challenging as evidenced by the rise in the number of prisons under court orders and decrees for violations, such as overcrowding, inadequate medical serices and unresolved problems with staff. Finally, the findings indicate that characteristics of prisons vary considerably from one another from state-to-state in their structural characteristics and conditions. Although the central objective of this paper is to provide an important overview of how the population of prisons have changed in the past 25 years, it is also a preliminary step in a forthcoming analysis explaining unrest in prisons as a function of their changing characteristcs and conditions.
The Characteristics of Truancy in Mississippi
This paper examines truancy problem in Mississippi public schools. To collect demographic data of problem students, the questionnaire survey is conducted to students who are referred to school attendance officers. Information regarding referred cases is collected from school attendance officers. This study tries to find out characteristics of truancy and problem students so that the findings may provide the outline and direction of truancy prevention/ control program in Mississippi. This study also attempts to evaluate truancy problems in different geographic settings using annual report from the Office of Compulsory School Attendance Enforcement which contains statistics of truancy cases in Mississippi counties.
The Chicago Police and the Nineteenth Century Terrorist Attacks, 1875-1895
Twenty years after its creation the Chicago police was confronted with terrorism. A group of anarchists, largely of German origin, made Chicago send only to New York City as the center of radicalism desiring to disrupt and destroy the capitalist system and the government structure. Specific to their attacks were the police. The staffing of the police in the previous twenty years tried to cater to two large demographic groups: the Irish to the south and southwest, and the Germans to the north. Theoretically Irish officers policed the Irish. Germans, and to some extent other ethnic groups, lived and policed among their ethnic groups northward. However, there was a transition zone in central working class Chicago. This zone was one of rapidly changing populations. While some of these changes were ethnic most had to do with class. Officers living in these precints were seeing the populations and ideologies changing right from under them. Considerable hostility resulted and culminated in the Haymarket incident of 1886. This paper will document the general demographic nature of the police but more specifically the makeup of the precints in the transition zones of the city as one explanation for the bomb throwing in 1886.
The Civil Asset Forfeiture Reform Act of 2000: A Sheep in Wolf’s Clothing?
I argue that, contrary to expectations, the Civil Asset Forfeiture Reform Act of 2000 (CAFRA) will not be responsible for significant change in the practice of civil asset forfeiture, that the Act is a sheep in wolf’s clothing. While it has ushered in some important procedural changes, CAFRA does not address the core of what many critics perceive to be the biggest problem with civil asset forfeiture: equitable sharing.
The Climate of Violence, Women, and Work
As our understanding of domestic violence grows in complexity and depth, feminist scholars continue to highlight the myriad of ways in which battering affects all aspects of women’s lives and livelihoods. Included in this paper is an analysis of how battering impacts women’s work and employability. Data were obtained from nineteen shelter, thirteen (68%) of whom described instances in which domestic violence had impeded their ability to find work, retain employment, and use their wages to establish greater economic independence and safety. Policy implications with regard to protection, women’s help-seeking, and workplace safety are highlighted.
‘The Columbine Effect:’ The Social Construction of a News Media Narrative
This article explores the news media term “the Columbine Effect,” which was coined in the December 6, 1999 issue of Time magazine. The media use “Columbine Effect” to refer to what they described as the increased creation of zero tolerance policies and other punitive measures for dealing with school violence that followed the 1999 Columbine shootings. Drawing on content analysis of mainstream national news media sources (New York Times, CNN, and Time magazine), I examine three issues: First, I describe the emergence and meaning of the term “The Columbine Effect.” Second, I trace the evolution of the term over time. Third, I compare the media’s usage of the term, and compare that usage to criminological studies, to assess the veracity of the media’s claim that a “Columbine Effect” has in fact occurred.
The Combined Effect of Drug Treatment and Supervision on Florida Drug-Involved Probationers (1996-2000)
This study represents the first preliminary analysis in a NIDA-funded drug court study on the efficacy of drug courts and traditional, probation-based programs in Florida. The research will seek to gain an improved understanding for the combined effects of supervision levels and specific treatment modalities on criminal recidivism over a five-year period for all probationers in the State. The study develops additional data sources that will allow for a more comprehensive evaluation of the effectiveness of these programs over an extended period of time. This builds on prior research that has estimated the effects of Florida’s residential and non-residential drug treatment programs on “drug-involved” probationers (Lattimore et al., 1998; Lattimore and Linster, 1998). We will extend past research by examining the relationship of conditions of supervision (regular probation vs. drug offender probation) and type of treatment (residential, non-residential, no treatment) and the impact these factors have on re-arrest, re-incarceration, and time until first arrest. Findings indicate that residential treatment was estimated to reduce the number of failures (i.e., arrests for new offenses) by about 14% over what would have been expected with no treatment. Non-residential treatment was estimated to have reduced the expected number of failures by about 3% over what would have been expected with no treatment. Survival analysis will be used to evaluate the combined effect of supervision type and treatment modality on time until failure.
The Community Context of Family Structure and Delinquency
Numerous studies support the notion that living with fewer than two biological parents increases the risks of delinquency. A number of conceptual models have been proposed to explain these relationships, including several linking family structure to parent-child interaction patterns, family income, and residential mobility. However, few studies have explored whether the different types of communities within which families reside explain the impact of family structure on delinquency. This community context hypothesis also suggests that the relationship between family structure and delinquency is conditioned by community characteristics. The results of a multilevel model that uses data from the National Educational Longitudinal Study (NELS) and the 1990 decennial census suggest that community-level variables such as racial segregation, percent female headed households, percent unemployed and out-of-workforce males, and poverty do not attenuate the effects of family structure on delinquency. Adolescents residing in stepparent families are especially likely to be involved in delinquency. Adolescents in communities with high unemployment also tend to be more involved in delinquency. Moreover, involvement in delinquency among adolescents from mother only and father only families is higher in racially segregated communities.
The Consequences of False Confessions Revisited in the DNA Age
In recent years, numerous individuals who confessed to and were convicted of serious felony crimes have been released from prison and declared factually innocent, often (but not exclusively) as a result of DNA tests that were not possible at the time of arrest, prosecution and conviction. DNA testing has also exonerated numerous individuals who confessed to and were charged with serious crimes before their cases went to trial. In this paper, we analyze more than 100 recent cases of proven police-induced false confessions and how these cases were treated by the criminal justice system. In particular, we are interested in how criminal justice officials and triers of fact respond to confession evidence, whether it biases their evaluations and overwhelms other case evidence (particularly evidence of innocence), and how likely police-induced false confessions are to lead to the wrongful prosecution, conviction and/or incarceration of the innocent. Our analysis suggests that the problem of police-induced false confession in the American criminal justice system is significant and deeply troubling, that the problem may be far more significant than ever thought before, and that it has profound implications for the study of miscarriages of justice as well as the proper administration of justice.
The Constitutionality of Crack Cocaine Sentencing: Past Challenges and Directions for Future Research
With the implementation of the Anti-Drug Abuse Acts of 1986 and 1988, Congress differentiated between two forms of the same drug for the first time in history. The new laws created stiff mandatory minimum sentences for crack and powder cocaine cases, with a 100:1 ratio in sentencing between the two forms of the drug. In other words one need possess 100 times the amount of powder cocaine as crack cocaine to receive the same mandatory minimum sentence. This legislation has resulted in unprecedented racial disparities in enforcement, sentencing and incarceration rates. Several defendants have challenged their sentences based on equal protection/due process arguments, but to no avail. This paper aims to provide a brief overview of the creation of these laws and the social contexts surrounding that process. It will also provide background on cases that have unsuccessfully challenged these laws, and provide suggestions for how social science, and criminology in particular, may contribute to cases challenging these laws in the future.
The Construction of Criminality: False Accusations, Constructed Victims, and Necessary Scapegoats
The issue of what is a crime and who is a criminal is a part of the “common sense” of a society, accepted, understood without justification, resistant to critical examination. Both are social constructs and as such are mutable and variable. British criminologist Doreen McBarnet recognized many years ago that a criminal conviction is a social construct, just as others have recognized that targeting particular communities for intense policing distorts both the reality and the perception of crime rates and risk. The phenomenon of the wrongful conviction has the potential to test that “common sense” in important ways as a growing body of literature – both legal and sociological – has begun to identify causes and remedies for these errors within the institutions of criminal justice per se. This paper relies on that literature (and the broader literature) to inform a case study approach to a related phenomenon that is less studied, the wrongful accusation that leads to an acquittal. The Innocence Project at Osgoode Hall Law School has become involved in a number of these cases and the difficult issue of what remedies might be available for the “acquitted innocent”. The cases provide the material to broaden the inquiry into the construction of criminality by examining what role, if any, assumptions about victimhood and community expectations play when prosecutions are brought against innocent persons. Preliminary conclusions reinforce the thesis that criminal prosecutions are not about community safety and the reliable detection of criminals, but rather serve as an almost Goffman-like dramaturgy of constructed roles for accuser/victim and innocent scapegoat alike. This proposition is supported by the continued stigmatisation of those who are acquitted (or have charges dropped) in cases of sexual immorality, or heinous murder for example. It is similarly supported by cases where police fail to investigate, such as occurs when prostitutes or other marginalised people are victimised.
The Construction of Security Through the Use of Terror
Far from the end of history, the 1990s are remembered as a decade of intense inter-ethnic conflict. The passing of the Cold War unleashed latent civil conflicts in numerous states resulting in the deaths of millions of people. The question this paper asks is, “How did ethnic leaders and elites frame their constitutents’ worldviews in such a way that ethnic cleansing and genocide seemed like appropriate policy alternatives?: The hypothesis asserts that leaders and elites instrumentally constructed the perception that multiethnic regions represented “zones of danger” to their groups and that the only way to create “zones of safety” was to rid them of the potentially dangerous elements. Thus, terror was a primary tool used by leaders and elites to mobilize their constitutents in order to achieve their political objectives. Three sections comprise this paper. The first section develops the theoretical framework of the paper, drawing upon leadership theory, social learning theory, and construtivism. The second section discusses why leaders and elites employ terror int he construction of security. Finally, the paper concludes with a case study of this framework, using the case of Bosnia-Herzegovina from 1990 to 1994. By understanding the link between terror and security, conflict resolution efforts can be better designed to treat the causes of violence instead of just its symptoms.
The Contexts of Risk
Despite the public fascination with both risk and crime, few North American studies address the relationship between and among the contexts of crime and other social contexts. How do individuals assess threat (or, for some, opportunity) in crime contexts in comparison to threats or opportunities found in other contexts? Our study makes a unique contribution to the study of risk and crime, and whether individuals’ consideration of hazard and opportunity transfers from context to context. Not only do we examine the criminal context, but we also consider the areas of health/well-being, work/finances, sport/leisure, and nature/technology. By viewing risk as a process, we examine the relationship between the past (individual’s previous experiences and behaviors in various contexts), the present (individual’s current behaviors and attitudes), and the future (what individuals expect to happen). We examine how the risk process varies between and among individuals, as well as between and among social contexts. Data for this study was gathered through a survey of 1200 Western Canadian respondents interviewed by telephone in early 2002. We expect our findings will contribute to ongoing policy debates surrounding crime prevention and the preventative movement more generally, and the strategic interventions currently in place to deal with hazard.
The Contributions of Dragan Milovanovic to the Understanding and Explanation of “Jack the Ripper”
Unsolved crimes are always filled with theory, opinion, and speculation. Jack the Ripper case is no stranger to these things. Theorists have spent much time and resources in attempt to explain the reasoning behind such horrific acts. Since the yet solved murders were well thought out crimes that involved much preparation we truly will never know the reasoning. The only way to go about explaining Jack the Ripper is by examining the way in which a person could come to such acts. Through using the postmodern way of thinking as developed by Dragan Milovanovic, Bruce Arrigo, and Staurt Henry I will illustrate the thought process of serial killers such as Jack the Ripper.
The Cop Crunch: Identifying Strategies to Deal with the Recruiting and Hiring Crisis in Law Enforcement
The inability to recruit and hire quality personnel has emerged as a critical problem facing law enforcement nationwide. It threatens to undermine the ability of law enforcement to protect our nation’s citizens and threatens to reverse important gains in our efforts to increase the representation on our forces of racial/ethnic minorities and women. With funding from NIJ, the Police Executive Research Forum (PERF) conducted a national survey of 1500 law enforcement agencies to examine the nature and extent of the “cop crunch” and identify department level policies and practices that facilitate, generally, the recruiting and hiring of quality personnel, and that facilitate, in particular, the recruiting and hiring of quality women and racial/ethnic minorities. Results from that survey will be reported.
The Cost of Being Female: Gender, Violent Crime, and the Privatization of Risk
Over the past year, insurance policies have become available to some women who fear being victimized by specific violent crimes. In Japan, such insurance is offered to women who believe they may be stalked; the insurance pays for a detective to gather evidence which is then turned over to police, and also covers bodily injury and property damage. In South Africa, insurance has been developed as one response to the problem of rape of women and children, which has reached epidemic levels over the past few years; among other things, this insurance pays for anti-retroviral drugs for rape survivors to try to reduce the risk of AIDS for those exposed to HIV through sexual assault. This paper evaluates this move toward insurance as a response to the risk of violent crime, addressing how the availability of such insurance may affect social attitudes toward crime, criminals, and victims, including the possibility that crimes against women may become “normalized”; the extent to which it is appropriate to shift responsibility for law, order, and justice to private, for-profit parties; and the possibility that such policies reinforce stereotyped images of women (as weak and vulnerable) and of men (as predators and offenders).
The Costs and Benefits of Washington State’s Replication of Proven Intervention Models for Juvenile Ofenders: 12 Month Results
This paper describes how, in the late 1990s, the State of Washington implemented “research proven” programs in Washington’s juvenile courts. Early evaluation results of actual implementation are also presented. The legislatively-driven initiative involves four different programs, including Functional Family Therapy, MultiSystemic Therapy, and Aggression Replacement Training. The paper discusses the development of a cost-benefit model that was used initially to select the programs. The paper also presents recidivism outcomes at 12 months. Washington’s effort is statewide and large in scale, with a substantial number of youth randomly assigned to intervention and control groups. Based on these early implementation results, the paper discusses how the cost-benefit model is used to assess the expected long-term value of costs and benefits of actual program outcomes, and how this information is being used by the legislature to improve the allocation of scarce juvenile justice resources.
The Costs of State-Corporate Crime: The Case of Enron and Arthur Anderson
This paper examines the nature and extent of the costs of state-corporate crime, with the recent Enron/Arthur Anderson debacle as a case study. The extent of the financial harm created by the Enron/Arthur Anderson crimes is examined at various levels, ranging from the impact on the U.S. stock market, to state retirement systems, to harms suffered by individual employees of Enron and Arthur Anderson who either lost jobs or significant life-savings. Interviews with current and former employees will beused to help better understand the specific ways in which citizens and employees alike were harmed by the actions of Enron, Arthur Anderson, and regulatory agencies like the SEC, which failed to protect them.
The Criminal Event Perspective: Utilizing Multiple Theoretical Tracks to Understand Crime
Traditionally, criminology has relied on individual theories of the offender, victim, or society to explain crime. Despite their instructive power, these theories have struggled to adequately reduce the number or severity of criminal events. The Criminal Event Perspective investigates crime allowing a multi-theoretical approach and is based upon the theoretical principles of Environmental Criminology. The Criminal Event Perspective highlights various factors that are necessary for criminal activity to occur and allows analysis of the crime or crimes from diverse perspectives. As the Criminal Event Perspective is rooted in Environmental Criminology, place and situation are identified as key features of a crime, and there is an appeal for research on transportation systems and their impact on crime. Unfortunately, very few studies have documented the relationship between transit systems and crime; however, the few studies conducted have indicated a relationship between the commission of an offence and the proximity to mass transit stations. By using the Criminal Event Perspective, transit systems and criminal activity can be studied from multiple approaches to gain a more holistic understanding of this relationship.
The Dark Side of Gemeinschaft: Criminality Within Rural Communities
Small rural communities, particularly farming communities, are typically characterised by high levels of social cohesion, strong social ties between community members and low crime rates. The strength of unity between neighbours is revered in rural Australia particularly in times of flood, bushfires and droughts. However, this paper reports on the findings of studies of crime in rural Australia, which revealed that within some highly cohesive rural communities, certain types of crime were allowed to persist and the reporting of such crimes to police was proscribed. Many victims of crime suffer in silence. Some are placed under pressure to conform, keep the peace, and not accuse someone in the community of theft under threat of exclusion from the community. Some victims are judged by the community of deserving of their victimisation. The extent to which these attitudes and behaviours prevail in rural communities was investigated through mail surveys and interviews with farmers in several regions in Australia. While the studies focused upon agricultural crimes, it is suggested that these same cultural practices and social judgements are likely to be extended to other crimes within rural communities, such as sexual assault.
The Death Penalty and Juveniles: A Socio-Historical Analysis, 1642-2001
This paper will examine juvenile executions in the United States throughout its history, especially looking at socio-historical trends. Historic era, geographic region, race of offender, sex of offender, and reason for execution were hypothesized to influence the rate of juvenile executions. In addition, significant interactive effects between race of offender and several other variables were predicted. Various juvenile justice reforms were hypothesized to influence the rate of white juvenile executions, but not African-American juvenile executions. Multiple sources of data were utilized in looking at juvenile executions through American history. Significant results were found for crosstabulations between race of offender and the following variables: decade of execution, region of execution, and reason for execution. Specifically, African-American juveniles witnessed extremely disparate rates of execution compared to white juveniles between 1890 and 1959, in the South, and for the crime of rape. With the exception of the Progressive juvenile justice reform movement (c. 1880-1920), juvenile justice reforms have had little impact on white juvnile execution rates.
The Death Penalty in the Movies
Law and justice issues are often presented in Hollywood movies. This paper examines cinematic presentation of various law and justice themes. Much of the discussion focuses on a content analysis of films that depict the death penalty. Although these movies are typically thought to provide arguments in opposition to the death penalty, evidence suggests otherwise. In reality, these movies often reinforce “pro-death penalty” views of criminals, crime, and justice.
The Decision to Arrest: The Impact of Contextual Effects on the Officer’s Decision to Arrest in Domestic Violence Incidents
This paper proposes to examine the usefulness of contextual variables in understanding the decision of the police officer to make an arrest during the course of a domestic violence incident. While previous research has focused on individual and situational characteristics of these incidents, there have been few opportunities to understand the interaction from a contextual perspective. The purpose of the research is to determine if the context of the police citizen interaction has any bearing on the officer’s decision whether or not to arrest either, or both, of the parties. The data for these analyses cover all domestic violence incidents within the state of Rhode Island over a two-year period (1999-2000).
The Deterrent Capacities of Marriage: Gender, Assortative Mating, and Crime in Early Adulthood
The wide spread use of longitudinal data has redrawn attention to the impact of social relations in adulthood on the likelihood of involvement in crime. The age-structure of criminal offending indicates that offending increases sharply through adolescence, peaks in late adolescence or early adulthood, and then declines rapidly with advancing years (Hirschi and Gottfredson 1983). Criminologists have thus focused on aspects of the transition to adulthood, particularly the acquisition of work and family, as the mechanism that appears to deter crime in later years. Sampson and Laub (1993) in perhaps the most important statement on the issue, suggest that the acquisition of work and family constitutes social capital which can facilitate turning points in deviant life courses. While they also emphasize cumulative continuity, that adolescents with histories of antisocial and delinquent behavior will be less likely to acquire stable, committed work or form strong attachments to spouses, they nonetheless argue that prior delinquents can and do acquire attachments to work and family and when they do they are likely to not engage in crime (see also Horney, Marshall and Osgood 1995). Theoretically, such work emphasizes the deterrent capacities of social bonds and hence builds upon the extensive tradition of social control theory in criminology (Hirschi 1969).
The Development and Evaluation of a Juvenile Day Reporting Center
Studies of arrest discretion have highlighted arrest’s distinctive sociological, psychological, and organizational dimensions, while ignoring the mundane effects of arrest-processing itself. Yet it is this process of arrest-making, and its impact on the personal lives of officers, that may be the most critical arrest determinant of all. Consider the 40,000-uniform member New York City Police Department, where the applicant, a police lieutenant, observed fellow officers for twenty years. In the NYPD, post-arrest procedures often involve prolonged paperwork and contact with prisoners, and officers must extend their tour in proportion to the lateness of their arrests. This situation generates powerful private motives to make or avoid arrest at any given time. The most common benefit afforded by arrest is overtime, calculated at time-and-a-half rates, taken in cash or compensatory time. Arrest also offers an escape to the station house from an unpleasant assignment. The major personal costs of arrest processing are also two-fold. It is an intrusion upon officer’s lives as private individuals, and it poses inherent risks and discomforts. Controlling the timing and type of arrests is thus a way officers can control their income, personal schedule, and working conditions. New York City patrol officers seem to absorb the skills and rationales of arrest-control from their first station house roll call. There, many officers speak freely of their need for arrest overtime to pay for a car, a vacation, or their children’s braces. Some officers mention how they were up all night with a heavy date or a sick baby and are thus in no condition to stay late with an arrest. Others talk about a class, a second job, or a party after work that would preclude their making an arrest. One officer, itching from contact with a lice-infested prisoner, declares that he will never again arrest a derelict. Those in car-pools coordinate their arrest plans to accommodate their transportation needs going home. Officers poll one another as to who that day would offer or take an unwanted arrest. When these arrest-sharing arrangements fall neatly into place, they have little impact on the arrest decisions. But sometimes officers who have arranged to pass off their arrest find the “catchers” tied up with other patrol incidents. Occasionally, those officers most willing to take arrests are “capped out,” discouraged by management from making any more cash overtime. On Super Bowl Sunday or on holidays, officers may not find a single volunteer to take their arrest. At other periods, like the pre-Christmas shopping season, nearly every officer is out scrambling for arrest overtime. Thus peer cooperation cannot guarantee that on a given day an officer will be able to make or avoid an arrest. Some officers therefore feel a need to modify their patrol style to enhance their “arrest control.” On a no-arrest day they may keep themselves busy with summonses and service calls, drive slowly and noisily to crimes in progress, avoid blocks where arrests “fall into your lap,” and forego proactive measures like license plate checks and stop-and-frisks. They may avoid the types of people and the kinds of arguments that get them “pissed off.” They may construe incidents as non-crimes, or ignore them entirely. And on an arrest day, they may do exactly the opposite – rush to incidents, initiate interventions, provoke disputants, and pat down “known criminals” – particularly late in the tour, when arrests mean overtime.
The Development of a National Census of Juvenile Probation: Results From Pretesting
Record keeping on juveniles on probation is a function of the local or state government, which vary greatly in terms of whether and how records are kept, the types of information available, the unit at which the information is collected, and their ability to synthesize information regarding the population of juveniles on probation. Given the great discrepancies at the state and local levels, it is no surprise that there is no nation-wide format allowing for descriptions and analysis of the juvenile probation population in terms of their demographics, offense histories, and type of probation arrangements. Moreover, there are no available data on case-loads for probation officers, types of services probationers receive, nor are the any data on the other important functions offered by probation agencies. To address this gap in juvenile justice statistics, the Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention (OJJDP) has sponsored a survey development project and data collection effort aimed at addressing these gaps in national juvenile justice data. This paper describes results from the pretesting process, presents the resulting data elements slated for inclusion, and outlines the methods and time-line for quantitative field testing, initial appearance, and data dissemination to the public and research community.
The Development of a School Bond: Differences and Similarities for Early Aggressive Children Compared to Other Children
Research has consistently identified school as a risk factor for later delinquency. That is, children who are not committed to, or interested in school are generally at higher risk for engaging in delinquency. What is less well researched is how a school bond develops and whether there are differences in this development between children displaying high levels of early aggressive behaviours and those who are not. Therefore, using two cycles of data from the Canadian National Longitudinal Survey of Children and Youth, this study investigates factors that are important for developing a strong school bond among children displaying early aggression and those who are not. The outcome measure – school bond – is assessed at cycle two using self-report information from the oldest children (age 12 and 13). The predictors – gathered at cycle one when the children were age 10 and 11 – include individual factors (e.g. school achievement, learning disabilities, hyperactivity, etc), school factors (e.g. school climate, discipline and vandalism problems, individual programming, etc) and environmental risks (e.g. neighbourhood problems, parenting styles, etc). Multiple regression analyses are preformed for both samples of children (early aggression and no early aggression) to explore differences in the factors most predictive of a strong school bond.
The Devil’s in the Details: Implementing Initiative Mandated Drug Sentencing Reform in California
Proposition 36, California’s Substance Abuse and Crime Prevention Act 2000, went into effect on July 1, 2001, and will be completing its first year of statewide implementation in 2002. Taken as a baseline for program evaluations and future outcome studies of client success or failure, the implementation of this complicated initiative as its own distinct entity is the focus of this study. Using indicators from stakeholders at both the state and county level, as well as in-depth case study data from three counties, procedural implementation efforts are examined. The thesis of this study centers on system-wide rejection and incorporation of outsider-generated change to criminal justice practices that are regarded as legitimate and well functioning at the outset. As a citizen mandated initiative that alters sentencing schemes for drug offenders, the meanings and interpretations conferred by officials in the daily procedural interpretation of this statute are of tremendous importance. Preliminary data from Los Angeles, Santa Barbara and Imperial counties as representatives from aggregate categories of large, medium and small sized counties, will be evaluated and discussed within this context.
The Difficulty of Leaving Work Inside the Prison Walls: An Exploratory Analysis of Female Correctional Officer Identity
This exploratory study examines the self-identity of female correctional officers. Early literature focused on the resistance of inmates and criminal justice professionals to women entering the field of corrections. More recent studies have identified the female officer’s perspective by analyzing job stress and conflict among female correctional officers. Although these concepts give insight into the ways women cope with token positions, understanding why concepts such as job stress and conflict occur must also be considered. This change in perspective requires a new question, “how does being a female correctional officer make female officers feel about themselves and others both in and outside the prison walls?” In answering this question, using a grounded theory approach, a better understanding of the effects of the token position for females working in the often dangerous and patriarchal correctional system is gained. For this study, in-depth interviews are conducted in a midwestern state in which female correctional officers are asked how their occupation choice affects their perceptions of who they are, how they believe others feel about them, and how they feel about others in the workplace and outside the workplace. Emerging themes are presented and implications are discussed.
The Disappearance of the Fraud Victim Report
The study uses a foundation of a fraud survey and focus groups coordinated by one of us, Kuykendall in 1999. These studies, two of the very few on this topic, uncovered two general causes of low consumer fraud reporting: (1) Consumers do not know where to go for help, and (2) consumers believe law enforcement agents do not care about their financial victimization. Only one of these problems exists in identity theft and credit card fraud, because consumers generally do know where to go in these instances – their financial institutions. While it seems that the removal of one problem is a positive step, research will demonstrate that the problem remaining contains two sub-issues that create an even more damaging cycle that may lead to the disappearance of the fraud victim’s report. The research seeks statistical support for problems believed to be creating the negative reporting trend and relationship between low victim reporting and limited law enforcement action. This relationship contains a “chicken and egg” riddle: Which came first, the non-reporting to law enforcement which leads to lack of enforcement action; or lack of action which leads to consumers’ cynical attitudes and lack of reporting. While it is unclear which is the genesis of the other, the proven correlation will verify a trend that could lead to the disappearance of the fraud complaint and an attack of the entire criminal justice system.
The Drug-Violence Nexus Among School Dropouts and Detained Youth in Philadelphia and Toronto
This paper investigates the relationship between violence and alcohol and other drug use among youth. To examine the associations among the relatively rare events of violence and alcohol and other drug use, we use information gathered from 800 youth between the ages 14 to 17. Half were detained at the time of the interview, and the other half were school dropouts. Half of each sample is drawn from the Philadelphia and Toronto metropolitan areas, respectively. Results show that 28.5% of the Toronto youth and 35.4% of the Philadelphia youth report drug-related violence in the past year. Using Goldstein’s tripartite classification scheme, we find that most drug related violence is psycho-pharmacological in nature, followed by economic compulsive, and then, systemic. These findings contradict Goldstein’s findings with respect to drug-related murders in New York in 1988, in which systemic violence was most common. However, the drugs most related to violence among youth were alcohol and marijuana-which are also the drugs they are most likely to use. The primary drug in Goldstein’s research on homicides was crack cocaine. The relationship between violence and alcohol or other drug use, drug selling, and other delinquent behaviors, is explored using logistic regression to further examine Goldstein’s tripartite framework with youth.
The Dynamics of Desistance and Prisoner Reentry: Findings From a 10-Year Follow-Up of the Oxford University ‘Dynamics of Recidivism’ Study
In the early 1990s, researchers at the University of Oxford Centre for Criminological Research designed a two-year longitudinal study that concentrated on the detailed accounts of 130 male property offenders (with between 3 and 14 prior convictions) as they progressed from imprisonment to reentry in the community. The current research will utilize the first two waves of this study that took place in prison shortly before their discharge date and then four to six months later (where 99 of the men were re-interviewed) to examine how returning prisoners’ self-perceptions of their needs, risks, and strengths can help to predict recidivism over a ten-year follow-up period. In addition to questions about their social situations (jobs, housing, relationships), participants were asked about their aspirations and expectations and perceived stumbling blocks to desistance from further offending. Specific questions were aimed at yielding information about their criminal intentions, what issues they saw as relevant to their offending or non-offending, and what problems and prospects they faced. Variables corresponding to a variety of theoretical perspectives (e.g. agentic themes and attachment/commitment to conventional society) will be utilized to predict recidivism and desistance from crime using several statistical techniques (e.g. logistic regression, survival analysis, and an analysis of changing rates of offending over time).
The Effect of “Desire for Control” on Intentions to Engage in Corporate Offending
Researchers have identified several perceptual and emotional characteristics that are associated with white-collar and corporate forms of criminal activity. This study examines the effect of another personality characteristic-the “Desire for Control”-on illegal corporate activities. Desire for Control (DC) is the general wish to be in control over everyday life events, and prior research suggests that high DC levels encourage some forms of risky behavior (e.g., gambling). Data for the current study come from corporate executives and MBA students who read vignettes describing various forms of illegal corporate behavior. Participants indicated their likelihood of engaging in a similar act, and also completed a 20-item scale measuring their DC. Consistent with prior research, those with a high desire for control were more likely to endorse corporate offending. We interpret this DC effect on corporate crime as an attempt to exert some control over what is ordinarily a volatile environment-the business market. Implications for theory and future research are addressed.
The Effect of Criminal History and Status on Substance Abuse Treatment Outcomes
Many studies have shown that substance abuse treatment has an effect not only on substance use but on criminal activities that are especially correlated with substance use, such as drug trafficking, driving while intoxicated, burglary, larceny, theft, and fraud. Other studies have indicated that treatment of individuals who are in various stages of criminal justice processing can be beneficial (Hubbard et al., 1989; Simpson & Sells, 1990, Gerstein & Harwood, 1990; Gerstein et al., 1994, 1997; Simpson & Curry, 1997). Some kinds of drug treatment in correctional institutions show promising effects on recidivism rates ( Pearson & Lipton, 1999). A number of studies have reported that clients enrolled in treatment while under pressure or directives from criminal justice processes (sometimes referred to as “coerced” into treatment) stay in treatment for longer periods than others, suggesting that strengthening or expanding these approaches would be good policy. However, other studies, including previous reports from the National Treatment Improvement Evaluation Study (NTIES), have suggested that pressure to enter treatment from criminal justice sources yields slightly worse or neither better nor worse outcomes than pressure from social, personal, or health-related sources (Center for Substance Abuse Treatment, 1995; Gerstein et al., 1997; Sechrest and Sichor, 2001). In the present study, we classify all NTIES clients by criminal justice history and status at the time treatment started, describe the characteristics of these status groups, and determine the relationship between criminal justice status and treatment outcome.
The Effect of Culturally-Focused Batterer Counseling on the Retention of African American Men Arrested for Domestic Violence
Clinicians and researchers have recommend culturally-focused counseling for African Americans as a way to increase retention and improve outcomes for counseling in general. Research on the effect of culturally-focused counseling is, however, very limited and inconclusive. Racial identification may influence the impact of such specialized counseling. In a multi-site evaluation of conventional domestic violence counseling, African American men dropped out at a slightly higher rate and were more twice as likely to be re-arrested. However, there has been only one small exploratory study of culturally-focused counseling applied to African American men arrested for domestic violence (n=49). A clinical trial of culturally-focused domestic violence counseling was conducted to test the effect of this approach on retention of African-American men as a first step in a more extensive outcome evaluation. Six-hundred men referred by the courts to a domestic violence counseling program in Pittsburgh were randomly assigned to one of three options: a racially-mixed conventional batterer counseling group, a conventional counseling group with only African-American men, and a culturally-focused counseling group with only African-American men. The conventional counseling employs a highly structured cognitive-behavioral approach, and the culturally-focused counseling follows a curriculum of cultural topics (i.e., what it means to be an African American man and African Americans’ opinions of the criminal justice system) in a discussion or process-oriented approach. Counseling retention is based on the number of required group sessions the men have attended according to standardized program records. The minimum required number of weekly sessions for all the options is 16 over a four-month duration. The analysis compares the retention rates for the three options, and also examines the influence of racial identity on the option outcome. Racial identity is measured using the Racial Identity Scale administered at program intake.
The Effect of Internet on the Issue of “Who Defines Deviant”: The Examination of Korean Yupgi Culture
Yupgi, meaning something bizarre, has been one of the most popular words in the Internet searches recently in Republic Of Korea, where Internet is very available to broad social strata. This paper examines the Korean Yupgi culture and the effect of Internet on it. The alternative thought, fringe subculture, and so-called radical behaviors as we knew them have actually become the mainstreams. As the new type of media that has some specific characteristics such as interactiveness, how Internet can influence on the boundary of deviance and the change of the power group who defines deviant will be discussed on the base of the conflict perspective.
The Effect of Ministering on Death Row: An Examination of the Work Experiences of Prison Chaplains
Aside from a handful of autobiographies, little information exists about the experiences of religious workers who minister to death row inmates. This paper considers whether death row chaplains differ from other chaplains and examines the effect that working on death row has chaplains’ experiences of work stress and job satisfaction. Based on a national probability sample of 74 chaplains who work on death row and 158 chaplains who minister to regular inmate populations, preliminary results reveal few differences between the two groups. It was discovered, however, that death row chaplains experiences higher levels of role conflict and view prison as more unjust than other chaplains. The implications of these findings for our understanding of death row and prison chaplaincy are discussed. More broadly, the authors consider the implications of the findings for our understanding of the role that religion and religious workers play in the administration of the death penalty.
The Effect of Oppositional Values on Community Levels of Crime and Informal Social Control
Social science research on the urban underclass, such as Wilson’s (1987, 1996) and Anderson’s (1991, 1994, 1999, has led several sociologists and criminologists to argue that neighborhoods characterized by concentrations of poverty and social isolation may develop values or norms counter to those of the lqarger society (see e.g., Sampson and Wilson; 1995; Krivo and Peterson 1997; Massey and Denton 1993; Warner and Pierce 1993; Warner and Wilcox Rountree 1997). This has led some scholars to suggest that sub-cultural values, particularly ones related to an “oppositional” culture or a subculture of violence, may be an important aspect to add to contemporary community level crime models (Anderson 1990, 1991, 1994; Fischer 1995; Markowitz et al. 2001; Patillo 1998; Simpson and Wilson 1995). Much of the literaure examining sub-cultural values in relation to criminal behavior has focused on value differences across individuals with certain characteristics, e.g., now attitudes vary by race or ethnicity. This approach is more appropriately referred to as an “attitude mediation thesis” Markowitz and Felson 1998). As Fischer (1995) points out, sub-cultural theory is about differences across places. While there has been some recent attention to the role of sub-cultural values on crime within neighborhoods or communities, there has been very little quantitative examination of sub-cultural values at this level. Further, sub-cultural values may be an important aspect of community level crime models not only in terms of their direct effect on community crime rates, but also through their effect on informal social control. The presence of non-conventional or “street” values, existing along side of conventional values, may create uncertainty with regard to appropriate behavior within the neighborhood, and therefore inhibit informal social control, leading indirectly to higher crime rates.
The Effectiveness of Prison- and Jail-Based Drug Treatment in Reducing Recidivism
Recent efforts to reduce the availability of drugs via deterrence and incapitation have led to the U.S. prison population being inundated with substance abusers (Lipton 1995). The most recent figures indicate that 57% of prisoners in state facilities indicated that they had used drugs in the month prior to their offense (Mumola 1999). Furthermore, while rates of drug use among the general population has been steady or declining, drug use among incarcerated offenders has increased in recent years (Harrison and Gfroerer 1992; Mumola 1999:3-4). While no single causal relationship has been found relating drug use and crime (Chaiken and Chaiken 1990; White and Gorman 2000), the positive correlation between drug use and crime is indisputable. Offenders have considerably higher rates of substance abuse than the general population. Moreover, among offenders, increases in illegal drug use are associated with increases in income-generating criminal behavior. Conversely, the opposite is also true, decreases in drug use are associated with reduced frequencies of offending (Chaiken and Chaiken 1990; Lurigio and Swartz 1999). Without effective substance abuse treatment, a high-proportion of these incarcerated offenders will resume their patterns of illicit drug use, and in all likelihood their pattern of criminal offending, once released from prison. Thus, the period of time in which an offender is incarcerated offers a special opportunity to intervene in this cycle of substance abuse and offending. Several notable aspects of the prison environment make in-prison substance abuse treatment attractive. For example, the reduced availability of illicit substances facilitates detoxification; many prison-based substance abuse treatment programs are isolated from the larger prison environment allowing program participants to focus on their substance abuse problems in a, usually, safe and clean environment. Perhaps most importantly, prison-based programs engage many offenders who would not otherwise initiate treatment. While the potential of prison-based drug treatment programs is clear, their effectiveness is less so. Several authors after reviewing the literature on prison-based therapeutic communities have concluded that these programs are effective in reducing recidivism (Lipton 1995; Lurigio 2000). However, these prior reviews have relied on non-systematic, narrative reviews, which when combined with the significant methodological shortcomings evident in most evaluations of therapeutic communities, such as a lack of comparable comparison groups (selection bias) and high rates of attrition (MacKenzie 1997), make such conclusions suspect. Furthermore, the effectiveness of other types of prison-based drug treatment remains largely unaddressed. This paper is an attempt to fill these gaps in the literature by applying meta-analysis to this body of research.
The Effectiveness of Victim Services for Victims of Sexual Crimes
In the last decades many western countries, e.g. Germany, built up a comprehensive system of victim services. Some of the services are based on governmental grants and compensations while others are provided by private institutions. Beside these services, many counselors, therapists, and self-help associations offer aid to victims of crimes. Despite the multitude of offers, not much is known about their effectiveness. The research project presented in this paper deals with the question of the effectiveness of victim services for victims of severe sexual crimes. Hundreds of victims who seeked help at the Weisse Ring, the largest private German victim service, and at a local information centre for rape victims were asked about their experiences with victim services, therapists, or self-help associations. The victims rated the effectiveness of these services on their psychological recovery process. These data are presented and analysed with regard to differential experiences with the police, with the judicial process, and with reactions of the social network.
The Effects of a Firework Explosion on the Extent and Nature of Crimes in the City of Enschede
On May 13th of 2000 a firework depot exploded in the center of Enschede, a middle-sized town in the Eastern part of the Netherlands. Twenty people were killed and a thousand injured by the explosion. A whole mixed low class neighborhood was wiped off the face of the earth. More than 5.000 people lost their houses and all their properties. In this paper we analyze the effects of this explosion on the extent and nature of crime in this city. Are there changes in the distribution and nature of the crimes committed afterwards? Based on several criminological theories a number of propositions on possible outcomes are tested. Can displacement effects be observed between neighborhoods? Based on all available police data time series analyses are executed in order to assess the effects. The results will be interpreted in the context of well known criminological theories.
The Effects of Adolescent Delinquency and Drug Use on Adult Employment: An Analysis of Developmental Trajectories
This study will investigate the effects of different developmental patterns of adolescent delinquency and drug use on employment patterns of adolescent delinquency and drug use on employment during early adulthood. Data from the Rochester Youth Development Study, a panel study that followed a sample of at-risk urban youth from early adolescence to adulthood, will be used to conduct the analyses. Based on the life-course perspective in general, and more specifically on interactional theory, it is hypothesized that the development of delinquency and drug use will have negative consequences for early adult employment, both directly and indirectly. Taking a process-oriented approach, trajectories of adolescent delinquency and drug use will be identified in this sample using the semi parametric mixture model procedure developed by Nagin and Land. Following this, the relationship between trajectory group membership and percent time unemployed will be examined. The extent to which this relationship is mediated by social capital, human capital, and criminal embeddedness will be estimated as well. Factors that could independently cause both delinquency and unemployment (e.g., social structure, temperament problems) will be controlled.
The Effects of Alternatives to Imprisonment Compared to Imprisonment
What do we know about the effects of alternatives such as conditional sentence, probation, community service and electronic surveillance compared to the effects of imprisonment? Real experiments cannot be carried out in the criminal policy area within Scandinavia but some quasi-experiments have been performed in Sweden. There will be a presentation and discussion of such results. A global systematic review of the same topic is being undertaken in the Campbell Crime and Justice Group by Martin Killias.
The Effects of Chronic Poverty on Adolescent Developmental Outcomes
Developmental literature posits that position in social structure has implications, both direct and indirect, for various developmental processes and outcomes. This paper will examine the effects of experiencing persistent family poverty on various developmental outcomes in adolescence. These outcomes will include depression, school dropout, unemployment, teen parenthood, and crime (e.g., serious delinquency, drug sales, and number of arrests), and will be measured when the subjects were 16-17«. Chronic poverty will be measured as the amount of time a family experienced at least two of the following indicators: welfare dependence, income below the poverty line, or unemployment. It is hypothesized that persistent family poverty will have severe negative consequences for adolescent outcomes. Data from the Rochester Youth Development Study (RYDS) will be used. The RYDS is a longitudinal study designed to enhance our understanding of the development of delinquency, violence, and drug use among urban youth.
The Effects of Domestic Violence and Community Context on Children’s Development
The study draws upon research from several disciplines to investigate whether neighborhood contexts are a source of risk and protective factors that can mediate and moderate the harmful effects of interparental violence on children’s development. Using data from waves 1 and 2 of the National Survey of Families and Households and from the 1990 U.S. Census, we create measures of family and community risk and protective factors. We then examine how interparental violence affects children from low and balanced versus high-risk families who are embeded in quasi-communities of differing levels of risk.
The Effects of Drug Enforcement on the Rise and Fall of Homicides in New York City, 1985-1995
2. Background 1. Drugs and Violence in NYC – historically since 1960 (2 previous epidemics) 1. Concurrent and mutually reinforcing “epidemics” 2. Concentrated risk in neighborhoods that were most susceptible, or whose informal social control was most compromised by social structure 2. Drugs and Violence – Crack epidemic 1985-1995 – unprecedented homicide rates, mostly guns, evolution of street-level organizations, strength of drug markets 3. Drug Enforcement Policy 1. Shifts over time from demand-side reduction to supply-side reductions (from tx to buy-and-bust) 2. Emphasis on sentencing and incarceration 3. Concurrent policy initiatives (from Pressure Point to Safe Streets to COMPSTAT) 3. Research Issues – what questions arise when policy is heavily tipped toward street-level enforcement as the primary mechanism to calm violent drug markets 1. Implementation of policy – how, what density or saturation, where, proximity of enforcement to drug problems 2. Neighborhood risk – susceptibility and risk within neighborhoods that moderate effects of drug markets on violence 3. Suppression Effects – relationship of enforcement to drug problems and violence 4. Displacement Effects 1. Within neighborhoods — substitution of different (income generating types of crime) or movement of selling activities indoors 2. Across neighborhoods – relocation of markets (and accompanying violence) to other neighborhoods 5. Hypotheses (general) – the competing hypotheses for this study involve suppression versus displacement. We raise the possibility that there may be iatrogenic effects of drug enforcement on violence via “churning” effects on drug markets 1. within neighborhoods (increased violence in successive periods of time) 2. across neighborhoods (displacement) 3. Both types of effects are acute, not chronic, so analyses will need to be sensitive to short-term effects and spikes 4. Roadmap of This Report
The Effects of Drug Treatment in Massachusetts Prisons on Released Offenders’ Substance Use and Criminality
The paper would present the findings of a six year study to follow released prisoners and to estimate the impact of an in-prison drug treatment program on (a) post-release criminality and (b) post-release drug use. The program has been operating in most Massachusetts prisons for several years and is among the most ambitious in the country. Although the initial design was experimental, objections to random assignment scuttled it, and we used a quasi-experimental analytic method instead.
The Effects of Gang Membership on Inmate Misconduct
The growing prevalence of street gang members within state prisons and of inmates who belong to prison gangs are widely believed to contribute disproportionately to the level of disciplinary infractions. This study examines the nature and frequency of disciplinary infractions for the first 36 months following commitment from court among a sample of 2,188 male inmates who were confined for at least three years in the Arizona Department of Corrections. Multiple regression analyses indicate that the effects of gang membership on disciplinary reports for both violent and non-violent offenses are independent of the effects of age, ethnicity, prior commitments, offense type, sentence length or institutional risk score. These findings are discussed in terms of the extant research and current management policies regarding prison gangs.
The Effects of Gun Ownership Levels and Gun Control Laws on Urban Crime Rates
We assessed the effects of 29 major types of gun control regulations on rates of violent crime using a cross-sectional city-level analysis of crime rates as of 1990. The analysis was based on data for 1,033 cities with 25,000 or more residents, the largest number of jurisdictions ever examined in a gun control study. We evaluated every major category of gun law that prevailed in 1990, including both local ordinances and state laws. The effects of gun ownership levels on violence rates were estimated using a validated measure of gun ownership levels. Two dozen potential confounding variables were controlled to help isolate the effects of gun laws. Simultaneous equations models were estimated using two-stage least-squares procedures, to model possible two-way relationships between crime rates and gun levels. We estimated both direct effects of gun laws on crime rates and their indirect effects on crime rates through gun ownership levels. Findings and policy implications are presented.
The Effects of In-Prison Substance Abuse Treatment on Post-Release Drug Use and Criminality: Massachusetts’ Cognitive/Behavioral Treatment Program
This paper would present the findings of a six year study to follow released prisoners and to estimate the impact of an in-prison drug treatment program on (a post-release criminality and (b) post-release drug use. The program has been operating in most Massachusetts prisons for several years and is among the most ambitious in the country. Although the initial design was experimental, objections to random assignment scuttled it, and we used a quasi-experimental analytic method instead.
The Effects of Incarceration on Recidivism
The penal industry’s paradox of recidivism raises the issue of whether or not institutionalized rehabilitation is successful in correcting deviant behaviors. This paper combines information from first-hand interviews, the data analysis of collective survey responses from two chosen populations, and pre-existing research materials to understand the effects an extended experience behind bars can have upon future conduct. By identifying factors, circumstances, and influences that play a major role in the mental state and overall status of the individual upon release, it became apparent why many feel compelled to recidivate. In contrast, the research shares the value of utilizing existing “Life after Prison” organizations/programs, and presents innovative suggestions to help increase the level of rehabilitated behavior by the individual upon return to the community.
The Effects of Interviewer Perception on Lines of Inquiry in Investigative Interviewing
It has been widely accepted that lines of inquiry particularly question types, can determine the information that is gathered and the way in which people respond to investigative inquiries. Interviewing strategies are more frequently being called into question in courtrooms, investigative training and scientific research. Attempting to understand the foundations for those chosen lines of inquiry, necessary in order to facilitate any changes in the future, appears less often in current investigative research. This discussion will focus on the perceptions held about suspects’ guilt or innocence, and how those perceptions may be correlated with the questioning techniques. Seventy-one U.S. law enforcement and military investigators completed questionnaires eliciting lines of inquiry surrounding high profile murder scenarios. The results to be discussed involve differences found between investigators, County, Military, Federal and gender; as well as examine correlations of perceptions and question types; open, closed, accusatory, multiple, leading, action, emotion, fact, and reinstatement of context. This research has policy and training implications for investigative interviewing
The Effects of Law Enforcement Policing on Urban Drug Markets: Comparative Analysis Using ADAM Data
Numerous authors have argued for local police targeting of street-level versus upper or mid-level drug retailers (Moore 1977; Chaiken, 1988; Hayeslip, 1989; Moore and Kleiman, 1989; Sherman, 1990; Murji, 1998; Nagin, 1998; Johnson, Dunlap & Tourigny, 2000). Though past case studies and quasi-experimental designs have yielded arguable conclusions about the effects of this policy on drug markets, comparative large-scale assessments have been lacking. Using concatenated Arrestee Drug Abuse Monitoring (ADAM) data on adult male arrestees in 30 major urban areas, this study examines the role of police presence in obstructing illicit drug market transaction. This analysis will address the following research questions: (1) Are certain drug type purchasers (e,g., crack, heroin, marijuana) or drug dependent versus nondependent buyers less likely to complete drug acquisition due to police presence? (2) Are there inter-urban or intra-urban variations in these results? (3) Are violent offenses more or less likely to occur where market-suppressing law enforcement activities are observed most commonly? (4) Are there signs of displacement to out-of-neighborhood purchasing? (5) Are drug prices higher in high police presence areas? We will discuss analytic results that may inform policy and police practices regarding transactions among offender populations.
The Effects of Mortality Salience and Awareness of Outgroup Victimization on Perceptions of Hate Crimes
Previous Terror Management Theory (TMT) research has indicated that mortality salience creates a need for individuals to develop, maintain and defend subjective cultural worldviews. As a result, mortality salient (MS) participants typically react negatively to individuals who espouse alternative worldview beliefs (worldview violators), and may exhibit behaviors toward those targets ranging from verbal derogation to physical aggression. In addition, MS has been shown to produce more punitive reactions to law breakers. Recent research has applied TMT to the topic of hate crimes and found that MS produces a desire for stronger punishment of hate crime offenders when hate crimes are described in abstract terms and targeted groups are not specified. However, MS has also been shown to lead to more lenient treatment of hate crime offenders when they attack victims who threaten a perceiver’s worldview. This study extends those findings by examining the effects of awareness of prior hate crime group victimization on reactions to hate crime offenders. The results indicate that, under control conditions, awareness of outgroup victimization leads participants to recommend harsher punishment for hate crime offenders. However, when individuals have been made MS, knowledge of prior oppression leads to more lenient treatement of hate crime offenders.
The Effects of Neighborhood Characteristics on Arrest Decisions in Domestic Violence Cases
This paper examines the effects of neighborhood characteristics on officer decision-making in domestic violence cases. The data was collected as part of a NIJ grant to study the community policing activities of a large mid-western police department. The data was gathered through observation over a twelve-month period in 1997 on randomly selected shifts with officers. The authors focus on a secondary analysis of 163 “domestic-type” incidents including domestic disturbances, domestic assaults, child abuse, and child neglect cases occurring during the random observations. Analysis includes the independent variables of poverty, nonwhite, renter, and single-family home percentages and the dependent variables of arrest, citation, and order maintenance (non-official) decisions at the neighborhood level. The authors discuss the results of their analysis and their recommendations for future research.
The Effects of Sentencing Juveniles to Long-Term Imprisonment
This paper reviews the consequences of long-term imprisonment on juveniles. It critically reviews the literature on the effects of imprisonment, and considers the life-course implications of long-term imprisonment for juveniles sentenced as adults. Based on a subcultural theory of imprisonment, I expect that long-term imprisonment increases the chances of juveniles becoming chronic adult offenders. I examine this hypothesis with data on the sentences of a cohort of juveniles sentenced as adults in criminal court for homicides they committed prior to the age of 16. This population is compared with a larger group of juvenile offenders who killed between the ages of 16 and 21. I expect that long-term incarceration has a greater effect on younger juveniles than older juveniles.
The Effects of Victimization and Previous Traumatic Experiences on Prisoner Distress
Prisoner’s accounts of their experiences and the effects of imprisonment on their well-being vary. Victimization plays a significant part in how prisoners experience their incarceration. however, many prisoners have had difficult lives and significant troubles before incarceration, and this complicates understanding of the effects of prison victization on distress. This study addresses released prisoners’ distress as an outcome of prison victimization, earlier experiences, and social support. Data are drawn from surveys administered to 208 men recently released from prison in a midwestern state. Using path analysis, we examine the effects of victimization on current distress (depression and PTS symptoms). We control for the effects of previous stressors, outside social support, street life, and low self control. We investigate potential direct effects of pre-prison variables and indirect effects via victimization and support on current distress. Findings reveal that victimization in prison significantly predicts post-release levels of distress. Social support does not buffer this effect. Both street life and previous stressors predict prison victimization, although street life reduces the chances of it occurring. In fact, victimization mediates the effects of street life on current distress.
The Enron/Andersen Cases: Paradigmatic Cases of White Collar Crime?
The Enron/Andersen case is the first large-scale American white collar crime case of the new century. In this paper an attempt is made to delineate dimensions of this case which it has in common with past corporate white collar crime cases, as well as relatively novel elements in an emerging postmodern, globalized world. Some likely effects of this case on public perceptions of white collar crime and governmental responses to white collar crime are identified.
The Ethics of Crime: Subjectivity, Freedom, and Boundary Dissolution
As questions of ethics in criminological discourse have historically been relegated to the sphere of law and justice, the value of ethics as a conceptual instrument for understanding crime and deviance remains largely neglected. Rather than focusing on rules, laws, or principles, however, addressing the ethical foundations of crime and deviance requires exploration of the interrelationship between human nature, human freedom, and human experience. Of particular concern is the notion of positive freedom, understood as the experiential possibility of liberation from social, cultural, psychological, and/or moral forces that are perceived as impeding full self-realization, self-actualization, and self- determination. In the absence of an affirmative social organization, one experiences freedom only through personal, expressive acts. Many instances of crime and deviance can be understood as expressive acts of trangression, offering momentary dissolution of experienced boundaries and thereby affirming a subjectivity of freedom. Crime and deviance, then, can be understood as expressions of an ethic of affirmation; that is, as affirmations of essential human freedom through the transgressive dissolution of boundaries experienced as impeding constraints.
The Etiology of Government Sanctioned Victimization: Looking at the Virus and Subsequent Strains of the 1950’s Red Scare
Not all victims of crime fit within the confines of standard definitions; individuals against individuals, and/or individuals against society at large. There are also victims who become such through the actions or in actions of the government. Proceedings under the auspices of the government create situations that seemingly stamp null and void across the citizenry’s guaranteed Constitutional rights.
The Etiology of Serial Murder
The crime of serial murder is characterized by rigorous etiological research and a preponderance of journalistic theorizing. While it has engaged public concern and interest, it has failed to secure a much needed multi-disciplinary research program. Many studies of serial murderers consist of post-hoc case studies, often based on psychoanalysis and clinical experience. Other studies have relied upon data which has been collected from second hand sources. Neither of these types of studies is easily submitted for detailed analysis. Furthermore, studies of serial murder tend to occur within academic isolation. Academic research provides no alternative methodology for the extensive study which is needed to provide an accurate account and theory for why serial murder exists. The aim of this paper is to gather multidisciplinary research into a coherent etiological model of serial murder. The paper presents a model for researching serial murder which incorporates the disciplines of psychiatry, economics, biology, criminology and socio-cultural research. It is hoped that, through this paper, that such a model will provide a springboard for a multi-disciplinary research effort by making available a suitable research agenda.
The Eurogang Program: Progress and Research Protocol
At the fifth annual workshop of the Eurogang Program, inal decisions were reached about the research format for multi-method, multi-site comparative gang research. This round table will review and discuss instruments for gang-related youth interviews, experts’ surveys, systematic ethnographies, and compilations of city descriptors. The chair will report on the definitional issues, while other participants will discuss the instruments.
The Evolution From a Prevention Policy to a Security Policy in Western Europe in the Nineties
In this contribution the security policy of the nineties in different countries of Western Europe is compared. The eighties were characterised by two different models of crime prevention : a techno- and situational prevention model in northern Europe and a more social prevention model in France and Barcelona (Spain). Since the nineties the techno- and situational prevention policy became a part of a broader security policy in northern Europe. This prevention policy is now oriented towards an actuarial management of crime risks. A second component of the security policies in the 90’s is an urban and social policy, often with communautarian characteristics. A more populist police policy (‘zero tolerance’) and penal system policy (‘prison works’) is a third component. This new security policy as it was developed in northern Europe becomes also more and more prominent in southern Europe. The first component of this security policy is more stressed by neo-liberals, the second by social democrats and the third by conservatives and the extreme-right.
The Evolution of Women’s Gangs in an Impoverished African American Community in Champaign, Illinois
This paper argues that in the socio-cultural context of an African American community defined by long-term persistent poverty, women’s gangs are a cultural mechanism to structurally block social ties that link males and females to survival resources. Social network data show that women’s gangs are distributed (v. hierarchical) networks comprised of intersecting structurally equivalent ego networks containing local-level resources necessary to network members (housing, food, protection, social and emotional support). A distributed network is less likely to be destabilized (and therefore threaten gang members’ access to resources) by the removal of a “leader” or “central” figure than a hierarchical network. Redundant ego networks provide a safety net of food, housing, protection, and social and emotional support, and ensure that if an individual/s are removed, other members will not suffer significant resource losses. Strong ties in ego-gang distributed networks rely on trusted prior contacts among gang members developed in school, the neighborhood, and/or natal and extended family. Such social contact is likely to be established well before women report an affiliation to a gang group. Women gain primary access to gang networks and network resources through family ties (father, uncles, aunts, elder brothers or sisters, sister’s boyfriends, stepparent/s). Women’s ego-gang network ties are more covert than men’s and may appear weak or dormant until being activated by need. This paper offers an analysis of multidimensional sociological data and a social network analysis gathered in a field study in Champaign, Illinois, funded by the Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention.
The Experience of How a Mega-Prison is Governed: A Taiwanese Case on the Management of Tainan Prison
Imprisonment in Taiwan is conducted by a system of mega-prisons in which the incarcerated populations are extremely large. This paper, based on empirical research to investigate one Taiwanese prison institution_Tainan Prison, aims to explore how a high density of prison population is managed without causing any obvious disturbances or riots. The nature of regime and authority will be examined. Tainan prison holds a large number of inmates up to 3,852 according to prison statistics report provided by the Governing Broad of Tainan Prison and is famous for its long history, having been in existence since the earliest emergence of imprisonment as a penal sanction in 1895 in Taiwan. The sources consulted in the analysis include documentary materials, interview data and observation. Tainan Prison will be taken as an explicit example to show how the techniques of disciplinary power and governing strategies are combined to shape structural relationships in which a multiplicity of forces is coordinated into physical, architectural and organizational features. The experience will be very valuable to the practitioners and wardens of American corrections in which the prison population is escalated and also be useful to American readers to extend the penal knowledge in prison management.
The Fight Against Terror in the U.S. and Its Clampdown on Immigrants: Implications to Civil Liberties, Human Rights, and Social Justice
In 1996, at the height of public hostility toward immigrants, Congress passed some of the most sweeping legislation of its kind, resulting in numerous crackdowns on illegal as well as legal immigrants. Similar to other moral panics, anxiety over immigrants eventually waned. Following the events of September 11, 2001, however, there has emerged a renewed suspicion of immigrants. Not only is the 1996 immigration reform and anti-terrorism statute being enforced with unprecedented fervor but government officials also have at their disposal the newly enacted USA Patriot Act and Office of Homeland Security. This paper examines critically recent developments in the government’s domestic fight against terrorism, particularly those that have produced egregious violations of civil liberties, human rights, and social justice. Central to the discussion is the controversy over racial profiling and mass detention, a practice that remains shrouded in secrecy.
The Freedom of Information Act as a Methodological Tool: Suing the Government for Data
The enactment of the U.S. Freedom of Information Act in 1966, and the corresponding Access to Information Act in Canada circa 1983, were designed to make Government more open and accountable to the general public. Of course, neither Act has functioned that way, with most requests being made by lawyers, information professionals, corporations, and political parties, among others. Academic researchers, particularly criminal justice types, have used the Act to access a variety of information from government files. For instance, Alan Block (1980, 1994) used old FBI files for his study of Jewish gangsters in New York City. Ward Churchill and Jim Vander Wall (1990) have used the act to illustrate government law breaking in the FBI COINTELPRO program against Native Americans, the Black Panthers, and other progressive groups . Only rarely, however, have academics elected to take the Government to court and file for judicial review of the Government’s disclosure decisions. The focus of this paper is to describe two lawsuits filed by the author under both Acts, and to illustrate both the potential of the Acts to obtain data from the Government, as well as the pitfalls a potential plaintiff faces when prosecuting the State for a violation of the Freedom of Information Act. These two lawsuits are Yeager v. Drug Enforcement Administration (1982) and Yeager v. Correctional Service of Canada (2001). As well, this methodological approach undoubtedly falls under more critical theories of criminology, such as conflict, radical, or critical perspectives, since mainstream researchers rarely resort to this technique.
The Fruits of Good Work: Job Quality and Adolescent Deviance
Some theories of crime suggest that adult-like work conditions will diminish adolescent delinquency, whereas others suggest that a precocious entry into adult work roles will increase youth problem behaviors. We examine the relationship between early work quality and delinquency behavior by asking: (1) Does the quality of work affect adolescent deviance net of work hours and self-selection processes? (2) If so, are adult-like jobs harmful or beneficial for adolescents? And, (3) which employment dimensions are the most important for theory and research on crime and delinquency? We consider several adolescent employment characteristics, including learning opportunities, freedom and autonomy, status, demands and stress, wages, and the compatibility between work and school. The lowest rates of school misconduct, alcohol use, and arrest are observed among adolescents whose jobs supported rather than displaced academic roles and provided opportunities for them to learn new things. In contrast, many qualities of work considered desirable for adults (autonomy, social status, and wages) increase delinquency in adolescence. We conclude that the effects of work quality on delinquency are likely to be contingent on the life course stage of the worker.
The Future of the Peacemaking Perspective
Peacemaking represents one recent development in criminology. This paper is an effort to assess the current status of peacemaking and make some judgments about the directions it will take in the next decade. One area of concern is the relationship of peacemaking to radical criminology. Specifically, the paper will look at the writings of Richard Quinney and Erich Fromm in an effort to understand the relationship between peacemaking and radical criminology and capitalism. Also attention will be given to the peacemaking critique of consumerism (ala Bo Lozoff) to determine how far that critique extends to capitalism as an economic system. This will be compared with other theorists who appear to extol capitalism or some its facets. (For example, Pope Leo XIII condemned socialism and Messner and Rosenfeld point out a number of positive features of the American Dream.) Additional topics covered will be concerns about the religious tradition roots of peacemaking such as possible contradictions in those traditions, the possibility of finding nonreligious roots (e.g., Rawls), how the breakdown or fragility of community affects peacemaking theory which appears to assume vibrant communities, and whether peacemaking theorists need to offer specific guidelines for criminal justice in particular and for ethics and social justice in general.
The Gender Division of Labor in Policing
The paper submission is one piece of a larger project examining the gender division of labor in policing. Previous research argued a gender division of labor exists in policing and identified gendered patterns in the verticle and horizontal assignment of women in policing. Interestingly, the results of my research confirm a gendered pattern in the division of labor but not necessarily involving the same assignments as described by previous research. Reasons accounting for differences between the current study and previous research are suggested. Implications for future research are discussed.
The Greatest Generation?” Wartime Rape in England, France and German, WW II
Based on 10 years of research, this paper summarizes trends in rapes committed by American soldiers on friendly and enemy females during the European Theater of Operations. Unlike the popular image of World War Two soldiers as the “best generation ever,” the rapists were usually non-infantrymen who committed their crimes with “buddies,” often at night. Official military trial and court records indicate that rapes occurred often, sometimes several times per day. Their victims came from different walks of life, but most were poor. Age was no barrier to victimization. Sentences were either death or life imprisonment. Most of the rapes occurred in Germany.
The History of Parole Legislation in Canada: From Rehabilitation to Risk Management
In the forty years since the federal Parole Act was first enacted in Canada, there have been numerous changes to the underlying principles of parole that have yet to be grounded in the theoretical discourse. A review will be made of the changes in federal legislation and their accompanying reports to reveal the shift in mentalities from a focus on the rehabilitation of the offender to the prioritization of public safety through the ‘risk management’ of offenders. The evolution of parole, as expressed in the legal amendments of parole policies, provides a forum for discussing the proposed shifts in objectives experienced by the criminal justice system towards a risk society.
The How and Why of Collaborative Research: Lessons From the Chicago Women’s Health Risk Project
Collaborative research has become a buzz-word, but collaborative methods are still in their infancy. Although research partnerships exist, true collaborations between researchers and practitioners are rare. Such a collaboration begins with research design, and permeates every stage of the research project through the analysis and dissemination of results. It exists in an environment that values inclusion and spends the time and resources necessary to support it. Though a true collaboration can be extremely difficult to build and maintain, the benefits are great, especially for the quality and applicability of the research results. This Workshop brings together key participants of two such collaborations. Each group will briefly outline the role collaboration played in their research project. Then Beth Richie will lead a discussion intended to help those in the audiences benefit from what these two projects learned from the collaboration process — the specific challenges faced and how they were overcome, unanticipated benefits of collaboration, and practical ideas and hints.
The Humanization of Police Officers: An Exploration of Faith, Life and Death
The paper addresses adaptations made by police officers regarding issues and perceptions of faith, life and death. Empirical and anecdotal evidence is presented from surveys and interviews with officers, police chaplains and mental health experts. A comparative analysis examines adaptations made during varying periods of service; new recruits, 2 years, 5 years and 10 years. The paper illustrates the cumulative effects on officer’s perceptions and coping mechanisms after being exposed to the influences of situational factors in law enforcement which affect public and personal relationships, faith and feelings toward death.
The Impact of Immigration on Ethnic-Specific Violence: Identifying Individual and Community Characteristics in Miami
While much research has been conducted on the nature and extent of the relationship between race (e.g. White and Black) and violent behavior, few studies have explored the nature and extent of this relationship among Latinos and even fewer have done so in an Afro-Caribbean population. Therefore, this paper seeks to address one gap in the literature by investigating violence among Latino and Haitian populations. The importance of this study is further magnified because it will also examine possible disparate effects at the level of analysis, such as between individuals or in communities, on violence. The failure to correct for this latter issue is important since the relationship between ethnicity and violence may vary greatly when we examine individual level incidents versus exposure to violence at the community level. To address these issues I examine the nature and extent of violence victimization (e.g. aggravated assault and armed robbery) within a multiethnic population (White, Latino, African American and Haitian) in the city of Miami, Florida. The focus is on what dimensions of community context, including levels of immigration, help to limit the extent of assaultive and instrumental violence? Does ethnicity similarly influence various types of non-lethal violence (e.g. acquaintance, family, stranger and intimate)? In sum, does ethnicity matter?
The Impact of New Immigration Patterns on the Provision of Police Services in Midwestern Communities
The face of America is changing. Immigration patterns have brought to the United States an increased number of new residents and people from a wide variety of countries and cultures. A large number of immigrants from Latin America, Balkan and Asian countries, in particular, have moved to states like Missouri and Nebraska in search of job opportunities, due in part to the relocation of large meat and poultry processing companies. As a result of the large influx of immigrants, law enforcement agencies are now faced with new challenges in addressing the needs of immigrant communities. These challenges include acknowledging language and cultural barriers and creating effective police-community relations with immigrant communities, while maintaining current relationships with the majority communities. The purpose of this study is to investigate the impact of new immigration patterns on police-community relations in the Midwest. Much of the research on police and community relations in the United States has focused on large police agencies located in metropolitan areas. This research suggests that demographic change and new industrialization waves have a significant influence on police-community relations and police agency operation. Little research, however, has addressed the relationship between demographic change and police response in small communities, particularly in the Midwestern region of this country.
The Impact of Ohio’s Determinate Sentencing Scheme on Case Processing in Trial Courts of General Jurisdiction
Disparities in sentencing based on the extra-legal characteristics of defendants (race, sex, economic status, etc.) violate the premise of due process and hinder the goal of proportionality in punishment (Crew, 1991). One goal of recent truth in sentencing policies has been to reduce such disparities through the use of fairly rigid determinate sentencing schemes, which appear to have been effective in Florida and Minnesota (Bales, 1997; Stolzenberg and D’Allessio, 1994). However, Ohio’s reforms through Senate Bill 2 (SB2) involved the implementation of a set of guidelines that are less rigid than typical determinate sentencing schemes such as those used in Florida and Minnesota. This paper presents the results of a study designed to examine whether extra-legal disparities in sentencing have been reduced significantly under Ohio’s less rigid scheme. Findings reveal a significant reduction in the likelihood of imprisonment under SB2 for convicted felons in general. Minor reductions in racial disparities in imprisonment and the length of imprisonment have occurred under Senate Bill 2, but this appears to be due only to a re-classification of some drug crimes (disproportionately over-represented by African-Americans) to Felony 5’s. Moreover, significant disparities in case processing remain under SB2, such as harsher outcomes for (a) convicted defendants with court appointed attorneys, (b) convicted non-white defendants accused of victimizing whites, and (c) convicted defendants with substance abuse histories. Although Ohio’s less rigid sentencing reforms may be viewed more favorably by court participants, their influences on case processing have been modest (at best).
The Impact of Opening a Supermaximum Prison on Levels of Institutional Violence: The Evidence From Illinois
Supermaximum security prisons have opened in many states within the U.S. in recent years. They are designed primarily for the purpose of incapacitating and deterring would-be dangerous inmates, with supporters claiming they result in reduced levels of prison violence. The proliferation of supermaximum prisons, however, has not been based on any credible social scientific research. This study attempts to partially fill this research void by examining the impact of the opening of a supermaximum prison in Illinois on aggregate levels of prison violence within the Illinois state prison system. An interrupted time series analysis using ARIMA modeling is conducted. The findings reveal no evidence to suggest the opening of Tamms had the desired impact on levels of inmate-on-inmate assaults. There is evidence, however, that the opening of Tamms resulted in a slight decrease in inmate-on-staff assaults. These findings are discussed in context of 1) other contemporaneous events occurring in the Illinois prison system that may have impacted prison violence levels – possible history effects and 2) a variety of measurement issues. Research and policy implications are highlighted.
The Impact of Perceived Offense Seriousness and Perceived Risk of Victimization on Fear of Gang Crime
Fear of crime was a major factor for the public and for policymakers during the 1990s, especially fear prompted by gangs. This was true, even though relatively few people are victimized by gang crime. Fear of crime researchers have developed different ideas to explain differences in fear across people and across crimes. Warr and Stafford (1983) and Warr (1984, 1985, 2000) have argued that fear differences across crimes is a function of the perceived seriousness of the crime and the perceived risk of victimization by that crime. Using data from a 1997 random digit dial survey conducted in Orange County, California, we examine the impacts of perceived risk and perceived seriousness on fear of gang crime using latent variable structural equation models. We treat perceived seriousness, perceived risk, and fear as latent constructs, using individual variables as indicators of these constructs. We find that perceived seriousness and perceived risk both have direct effects on fear of crime and that they have indirect effects through each other.
The Impact of Religion on Homicides in Urban Neighborhoods
According to Sampson, Raudenbush, and Earls (1997), ” the linkage of mutual trust and the willingness to intervene for the common good is what defines the neighborhood context of collective efficacy…it follows that collective efficacy of residents is a critical means by which urban neighborhoods inhibit the occurence of personal violence, without regard to the demographic composition of the population.” It is interesting to note that these authors, like so many others who investigate informal social control and its relation to crime, do not look at churches and their influence on the collective efficacy of the neighborhood. One study that does investigate such a relationship is Rose (2000) who states “residential mobility and ethnic heterogeneity are negatively related to the prevalence of religious institutions.” The author also found a curvilinear relationship is present between poverty and religious institutions and the prevalence of multi-issue organizations established. Peterson (2000) found that communities may reduce violence somewhat by developing a larger base for certain types of local institutions and the prevention of others. The author concedes that institutional mechanisms still do not explain why low economic status and residential instability are strongly linked to violent crime. The paucity of such studies in the literature justifies further research. Goal and Purpose: This study will examine the impact of churches in the city tracts on the level and typeof homicide. Specifically, to examine the hypothesis that if more churches are present in a neighborhood, then the number of homicides will be fewer. Research Design and Methodology: The data is city-level and represents 10,665 homicides over 15 years in Philadelphia, St. Louis, and Phoenix. For the purpose of this study, we will focus on the homicides that occured in 1980 and 1990 in Philadelphia and Phoenix. The location of each homicide was geocoded by street and situated within its specific tract. It was then matched with various tract-level demographic and industrial measures. For the purpose of this study, the addresses of the churches in these two cities will be obtained, geocoded, and integrated into the present data with the hopes of gaining a better understanding of the relationship between the number of churches and the level of homicides controlling for residential mobility and heterogeneity. It is our goal to determine the correlates of change in the level and type of homicide, with special attention to the impact of the churches in these city tracts.
The Impact of School Risk Factors on Self-Reported Crime, Delinquency and Vicitimisation
School, after the family, is probably the second most important context for socialisation (Scherer, 1978). It is therefore likely that school context will affect juvenile delinquency. Using data from the Cardiff School Study, which is a survey of 3500 14-15 year old school pupils in all the 20 state secondary schools located in the Welsh capital city, the impact of school risk factors on self reported crime, delinquency and victimisation will be investigated. School risk factors will be based on the literature regarding school climate and ethos. School climate has been seen by a number of researchers (for example, Rutter et al. 1979, Anderson, 1982, Gottfredson and Gottfredson, 1985, Welsh et al. 2000) as being very important in explaining variations in crime and delinquency rates between schools. School climate includes such factors as communication patterns, norms about what is appropriate behaviour and how rewards and sanctions should be applied, role relationships and role perceptions, and patterns of influence and accommodation (Fox et al. 1979). It is from this literature, regarding school climate and ethos, that school risk factors have been identified and tested in relation to their effects on both general and school based self-reported crime, delinquency and victimisatio
The Impact of Situational Officer, and Neighborhood Characteristics on Police Behavior: A Multilevel Analysis
This study examines the relationships between situational characteristics and police law enforcement, order-maintenance and service behavior within officers as well as the impact of officer and neighborhood characteristics on the variability in the relationships between situational characteristics and police behavior. Observational and survey data from the Project on Policing Neighborhoods (POPN) and the 1990 census data were used and a set of hierarchical linear models were estimated. Findings show variation exists among officers regarding their preference for law enforcement, order maintenance, and service behaviors and situational characteristics play a strong role in determining law enforcement and order maintenance behavior, but not service activities. Also, socially disadvantaged neighborhoods are more prone to receive law enforcement activities than other neighborhoods are. Implications for policy and future research are discussed.
The Impact of the California Substance Abuse Treatment Facility on Post-Release Drug Use and Recidivism
In 1997, the California Department of Corrections established the California Substance Abuse Treatment Facility (CSATF) in Corcoran, California. With a treatment capacity of 1,478, the CSATF is currently the largest in-prison therapeutic community in the state, and one of the largest in the country. The programs follow the therapeutic community model, modified for a prison environment. Unlike many prison-based treatment programs, the majority of inmates admitted to the program do so involuntarily. The present study reports on at recidivism and other outcomes for CSATF participants (n=404) and a matched non-treatment comparison group (n=404). Outcomes are based on both official records and self-report data. Where possible both types of data were combined to maximize detection of drug use and criminal behaviors during the 12-month follow-up period.
The Impact of the Swiss Heroin Prescription Program on Delinquent Involvement and Social Situation of the Persons Treated
Facing the growing open hard-drug scenes in the last two decades, Switzerland has implemented a diversified drug policy which included heroin prescription. One of its main goals was to reduce collateral damages of illegal opiate use (i.e., infectious diseases, homelessness, unemployment, acquisitive crime). Overall, the program proved to be very efficient in all target areas. However, to date mechanisms of desistance from crime underlying this process have not been elucidated satisfactorily. Consequently, the aim of the present project is to find out to what extent desistance has been achieved by mere disappearance of acquisitive pressures, by withdrawal from drug scenes, and by a comprehensive lifestyle reorientation. For this purpose self-reports on delinquent involvement will be merged with data on the social situation of the participants (e.g., job and housing situation, contacts with drug scenes). This should allow us to identify causes and correlates of desistance and grant for an improvement of this type of treatment.
The Impact of Transitional Services Programming on Offender Reintegration
The Vera Institute of Justice is evaluating a three-year transitional services demonstration program in a New York State correctional facility. The eight to ten-week program delivers an array of services and programming immediately before release and connects offenders to parole officers, community services, and their own families in an effort to ease their transition back into the community-and ultimately prevent reoffending. Participants are randomly assigned to participate in the transitional services program or to a comparison pre-release program at the same facility. Data is collected on program and comparison group participants from official records and from surveying participants from both groups at one and seven months after release. Recidivism is the most commonly used outcome measure, and we will examine participants’ arrests and technical parole violations from official records. The central focus at this point in the evaluation, however, is on differences in intermediate outcomes in the first month after release, which are expected to have an impact on recidivism-outcomes such as whether participants find housing and employment, whether they develop family and other social relationships, their use of community services, and other difficulties encountered in returning to the community.
The Impact of Truth-in-Sentencing on Prison Violence and Misconduct The New Nersey Experience
New Jersey’s legislature passed its version of “truth-in-sentencing” legislation in 1997. The “No Early Release Act” (NERA) required offenders sentenced under its provisions serve a minimum term of incarceration of 85% of the imposed sentenced. In effect, offenders would not be eligible for good time credits, raising the operational question concerning the effect on inmate behavior. Would inmates with no-hope of parole have higher incidences of misconduct than inmates sentenced under previous laws? Routine delays in the implementation of the law due to lag time in court processes set up a natural experimental design between violent offenders sentenced pre and post NERA. The study examines the number of infractions as well as the presence or absence of rule infractions for violent offenders during the first year of their incarceration (1998). Inmates’ disciplinary records were tracked for the first year of each offender’s incarceration. The disciplinary infractions of a second control group, non-violent offenders, sentenced during 1998 are also reported. The results of this study are important to the increasing body of knowledge concerning effective and efficient use of prison security levels to control inmate conduct and to the question concerning the effect of good time on prisoner behavior.
The Impact of United States v. Lopez on Federal Criminal Jurisdiction in the Lower Federal Courts
When it invalidated the federal Gun-Free School Zones Act in the 1995 case of United States v. Lopez, the United States Supreme Court for the first time in sixty years found an act of Congress to be beyond the interstate commerce power. At that time some commentators raised a concern that the Court may be undertaking a new and much more restrictive interpretation of the commerce power, one that could significantly restrict federal criminal jurisdiction based on the commerce power. In the years since Lopez there have been hundreds of federal criminal cases in which defendants argue that the statutes under which they are being prosecuted (e.g. Felon in Possession) are, like the statute in Lopez, insufficiently connected to interstate commerce. This paper will assess the impact of United States v. Lopez on federal criminal law, looking at how the lower federal courts are responding to these ALopez@ challenges. The paper will show that up to this point the lower federal courts generally are adhering to an expansive interpretation of the commerce power and rejecting these challenges. The paper will conclude with some remarks about this development and the future of federal criminal jurisdiction.
The Impact of Violence on Neighborhood Business Activity
This paper investigates the impact of violent crime on neighborhood business activity. We treat homicide incidents as a disamenity for business location decisions as we more broadly investigate the impact of violence on non-victims. Urban violence imposes a cost on non-victims by causing them to alter their routine activities. The patterns of where people live, work and shop reveal their utility-maximizing choices given the transportation costs they face. If a localized increase in violent crime causes them to alter the location of these activities, this implies a cost to both the individual and the affected businesses. As businesses react to the changing location preferences of their workers and customers, the businesses undergo adjustment costs to change their locations. The paper looks for evidence of these costs by examining the impact of homicide increases on local business district activity. We combine geo-coded homicide data from five cities over ten years with a longitudinal data set containing all business establishments in these cities to determine whether localized surges in homicide activity have an impact on neighborhood business districts. If people tend to shop near where they live, then changes in these types of business activities will reflect household migration decisions. Abandonment of residential areas following violence outbreaks will also make it more difficult for these businesses to recruit employees since many jobs in this sector do not pay enough to compensate workers for a long commute.
The Impact on Recidivism of Three New York City Drug Courts: Results From Quasi-Experimental Designs Analyzing Post-Intake and Post-Program Recidivism
Results will be presented from a multi-site impact evaluation of the three largest drug courts in New York City – the Brooklyn, Bronx, and Queens Treatment Courts. All three include several common drug court components: a dedicated drug court judge, regular court appearances, intermediate rewards and sanctions, and jail or prison in the event of failure. Also, all three serve participants arrested on drug felony charges, although only Brooklyn also serves those with a prior felony conviction. Brooklyn serves the oldest and most addicted group, whereas Queens serves the youngest and least addicted. Bronx employs a model involving close institutionalized ties between the court and a core group of community-based treatment agencies. Those agencies serve the case management function served by onsite case managers at Brooklyn and Queens. All three evaluations will employ quasi-experimental designs that match comparison group defendants on charges and criminal history. The Brooklyn comparison group will be contemporaneous, drawing on comparable defendants never screened by the drug court, usually due to an arrest in an ineligible geographic arrest zone. The Bronx and Queens comparison groups will be “pre-post,” drawing on defendants arrested in the year before the programs’ start-up. Recidivism rates will be compared for post-intake and post-program recidivism. For both types of recidivism, results for one-year and two-year time periods will be reported. Also, results will be presented for a survival analysis extending over the two-year post-intake period.
The Implementation and Evaluation of a Freshman Experience Course for Criminology Majors
This paper reports the findings of an evaluation of a newly designed, discipline-specific freshman experience course on student satisfaction and retention. The course was evaluated using a quasi-experimental design. We used existing instruments as the pre- and post-test measures. These instruments allowed for both an evaluation of the course and provide a detailed picture of the incoming criminology students at a large, Northeastern University. Initial findings indicate that both intellectual ability (as measured by SAT scores) and non-intellectual factors (e.g. level of effort) have independent and positive effects on the academic success of undergraduates (as measured by GPA).
The Importance of Drug Courts: Lessons From Measuring Impact
Drug courts have now been in existence long enough to have critical questions about their impact addressed with some degree of certainty. As evaluation has focused mostly on logical, but narrow measures of “outcomes,” there is a need not only to build and focus a solid research base regarding their impact, but also for a somewhat broader discussion of the impact and implications of drug court phenomenon for criminal justice in the new century. Drawing on findings from a recent “longitudinal” study of the Portland and Las Vegas drug courts (Goldkamp et. al., 2000, 2001), this paper discusses the importance of the drug court movement to American criminal justice from several perspectives: evidence relating to whether they “work,” a theoretical understanding of how they work, if and when they do, and the implications of the drug court innovation as a catalyst for fundamental change in the institution of criminal courts.
The Importance of Program Fidelity in Explaining Research Outcomes: An Examination of Parents Participating in the Strengthening Washington, D.C. Families Project
Few evaluations of large-scale family-based interventions have examined the extent to which program fidelity influences outcomes. Information gained on how well the program is implemented and on participants understanding of the program material are likely to be two key aspects of program fidelity that relate to research outcomes. This paper examines the extent to which program fidelity is related to differences in parenting outcomes from pre- to post-test. Measures of program fidelity are obtained through observations of parent trainers conducted by research staff and from session reviews completed by parents at the end of the training sessions. Forty-two observations have been conducted and 470 parent sessions reviews have been completed. The research answers the following questions: 1) Is the level of program implementation related to participants= comprehension of the program material? 2) Does the fidelity of the program influence parenting outcomes from pre- to post-test? The overarching goal of the research is to increase the field=s understanding of the importance of implementation quality in the assessment of program outcomes.
The Importance of Quality of Life on Perceived Risk Among the Elderly
Fear of crime, and more recently issues of perceived risk, have received much attention by Criminologists, Sociologist, Gerontologists and other social scientists. While no clear consensus exists regarding what the best measures of these phenomenons are, research has demonstrated that an individual’s perceived vulnerability is highly associated with fear of crime. Nowhere is the vulnerability/fear relationship more important than in the study of the fear of crime among the elderly. The authors of this paper borrowed from both the criminological and gerontological fields to develop a model that includes objective and subjective neighborhood indicators, demographic and individual characteristics, and quality of life measures (e.g., health status and overall satisfaction with life) to predict vulnerability and ultimately, perceived risk of the aged.
The Importance of Social Biography and Oral History in Qualitative Methods
In this paper, I argue that aspects of a researcher’s biography or ‘oral history’ are of central importance in research using qualitative methods such as interviews and observations. I suggest that within the history of qualitative research there exists a personal connection between researcher and researched, and that from this connection a researcher is afforded deeper insight, intially, into social phenomena. I further suggest that due to this personal connection, measuring validity and reliability in some qualitative studies becomes difficult. Overall, I relate the concepts of oral history and access to ‘rare and deviant’ populations, as well as how a researcher’s oral history is important to consider when studying subjects from varying ethnicities. The points made in this paper are supported by my qualitiative research experience.
The Importance of the Interaction of Developmental Factors and Social Context in Serious Adolescent Offenders
There is very limited information available on the process of adolescent development in serious adolescent offenders. In general, research on this group of adolescents has focused on arrest histories, antisocial peers, and markers of continued criminal involvement. There is substantial reason to believe, however, that many of the factors that predict success and positive adjustment in “normal” adolescents are also related to positive outcomes in offending adolescents. The period of late adolescence, for example, is typically marked by a shift in psychosocial maturity as well as an adjustment of social networks and family relationships. This presentation will present the rationale for examining develo9pmental variables such as these and considering changes in social context in particular as relevant considerations for mapping out the likely pathways to desistance for serious adolescent offenders.
The Increasing the Economic Consequences of Prison Privatization
Over the past twenty years the number of private prisons across the United States has increased tremendously. Many states have turned to privatization as a “cost-saving” means for handling both new prison construction and the custody of an increasing inmate population. This paper first provides a brief history of prison privatization by documenting the growth of this phenomenon in various states across the country. This examination includes a quick look at reasons for increased inmate populations and the related demand for private prisons. Next, we consider the economic consequences of private prisons by first looking at the profitability of these facilities for those who own/operate them and then assessing the costs to state-level taxpayers. Economic and social consequences of these expenses are discussed within the context of contemporary “budget crises” in numerous states. This paper frames the presentation of these findings as both an application of and a contribution to theory in critical criminology.
The Inductive Content Analysis Research Method
This paper introduces the inductive content analysis research method. Many content analyses in criminology use theory to govern the process of conceptualization and operationalization. They generally seek to quantify extracted data and perform various statistical analyses. Recovery of qualitative data can be accomplished using open coding and a filing system. However, this often maintains a deductive reasoning approach. Drawing from a technique used by military intelligence analysts, this paper develops an inductive approach for the extrusion and interpretation of qualitative in formation. Units of analysis, criteria of selection and the use of theory will be discussed. An example will be reviewed (i.e., an inductive content analysis of twentieth century texts on U.S. gangs) to demonstrate use of this research method.
The Ineffectiveness of Current Criminological Theories in Explaining Terrorism
This paper seeks to explore the reasons for the contemporary rise in terrorism for religious motives and to identify mechanisms that trigger violence out of religious belief in both established and newly formed terrorist groups
The Influence of Child Discipline on Vietnamese American Youths: An Ethnographic Case Study of Vietnamese Gangs
This paper seeks to qualitatively examine some recent research on factors influencing Southeast Asian youth gang involvement, with a particular concentration on Vietnamese youths. As researchers are beginning to see the importance and the urgency of examining Southeast Asian youths and their association with gang crime, they have began to look at some major contributing factors to gang entry, but there are some questions and factors which need more attention. For instance, the level of exposure to violence within the home and its influence on youths to join gangs should be looked at to better understand the mentality of this particular group of youths and their association with gang life. In addition, in order to provide an ethnographic perspective of this complex subject, a case study of Vietnamese subjects from the Chicago area who were affiliated with gang life or were gang members will be interviewed one-on-one. This intimate and personal methodology will probe into the home lives and childhood environments of these subjects. The chosen subjects will have been exposed to extreme violence both in the home and surrounding environments. Half of the subjects are presently successful professionals or have successfully deviated from such violent atmospheres; the other half are still exposed to the same environment. The results of these individual interviews will also provide data for quantitative analysis, which will be woven into the qualitative part of this paper in hopes of providing insightful impact on similar research; or inspiring in depth focus on the subject of child discipline and its impact on gang entry within the Southeast Asian culture.
The Influence of Community Characteristics on the Sentencing of Felony Defendants
The present research uses data on a sample of felony defendants processed in a nationally representative sample of large urban counties, in conjunction with data on the characteristics of the jurisdictions in which their cases were adjudicated, to examine the influence of community characteristics at the sentencing stage of the criminal justice process. Drawing on prior theory and research, hierarchical linear and generalized linear models are estimated to determine whether various characteristics of counties (e.g., racial composition, age structure, educational attainment, unemployment, sex ratio, median income, political conservatism, religious composition, crime rates, and sentencing guidelines) affect the likelihood that felony defendants are sentenced to longer periods of imprisonment, net of other factors associated with these outcomes. In addition, this research explores whether county characteristics condition the effects of defendant and case characteristics on legal decision making, including whether any observed race disparities in legal outcomes vary in magnitude across jurisdictions and, if so, whether features such as community racial composition or sentencing structure help to explain that variation. This research broadens our understanding of the influence of defendant characteristics on criminal justice processing, especially the contextual nature of those effects, and expands our knowledge of how community characteristics affect legal decision making.
The Influence of Geographic Differences on Drug Use and Dependency Among Urban Arrestees
A number of data systems of national scale provide systematic information about drug use and dependency patterns. Inferences may be drawn from some of these systems about economic, cultural, sociological, and organizational influences on drug use. In this paper we examine variations in characteristics of urban areas as these relate to measures of drug use prevalence, frequency, and consequences of use, such as drug dependence, among arrestees. Against a backdrop of geocoded among household and clinical population data since the early 1990s, we focus on 2000-2001 data from the Arrestee Drug Abuse Monitoring (ADAM) Program. During this period, ADAM drew random probability samples of very recent arrestees, summing to approximately 40,000 cases, from booking facilities in 34 U.S. metropolitan areas of diverse sizes. Interview and urinalysis testing data were obtained along with arrest information on the interview sample and on censuses of arrestees in these locations, permitting data to be systematically weighted to the catchment areas. Using exploratory analysis and multilevel OLS and logistic modeling approaches, we will report on the influence of areal characteristics at the site and regional level, controlling for individual arrestee characteristics, to explain differences in types of drugs used and in patterns of use.
The Influence of Perceived Crime Seriousness on Punishment Policy: A Comparative Investigation
Perceptions concerning the seriousness of crime influence the decisions of policy makers when creating legal sanctions. The literature primarily contains scholarly discussions concerning the relationship between victims’ perceptions and how they should influence public policy. Evidence suggests that some consensus exists about perceptions of seriousness among victims of crime within and across nations. However, little empirical research investigates this relationship within nations and almost none examines this relationship across nations. This study attempts to fill this research gap by exploring cross-national differences in how victims evaluate the seriousness of crime. Using the International Crime Victimization Survey (ICVS), this paper proposes to apply the model of seriousness scaling developed by American researchers cross-nationally. An ordered probit analysis is conducted to determine if nation affects how the seriousness of offenses is assessed across developed nations. Nation effects are then analyzed to determine to what extent they correlate with national punishment policies.
The Influence of Prosecutorial Style on Case Outcome in Two Rural Indiana Counties
This paper will compare going rates established for plea agreements in two demographically similar rural counties in Indiana. The study will be concerned with two circuit courts of general jurisdiction, both under authority of judges that have occupied the bench in excess of twenty years. In addition, the prosecutor of each county has approximately the same number of deputies and has been elected to at least two terms, thereby giving them ample time to shape going rates. In order to evaluate the going rates for each county, a sample of criminal cases from each jurisdiction will be analyzed. Relevant control data, such as seriousness of the offense, prior record, and demographics will be collected on each case. This study will focus on how prosecutorial styles affect going rates and outcomes.
The Influence of Returning Gang Member Inmates on Local Gang Problemss
Since 1996, the National Youth Gang Center (NYGC) has conducted annual surveys of a nationally representative sample of more than 3,000 law enforcement agencies. The 2001 National Youth Gang Survey asked a series of questions concerning the affect of gang members who return from confinement on local gang problems. This paper contains an analysis of survey respondents’ estimation of the number and age of returning gang members; the effect of returning gang inmates on specific aspects of local gang problems such as drug trafficking, illegal gun access, and violence; and the availability of re-entry programs for such inmates.
The International Criminal Court and the Control of State Crime: Problems and Prospects
The recently established International Criminal Court (ICC) has been touted as a major breakthrough in the potential control of genocide, terrorism, and war crimes. While a promising development, we find several problems with the design and proposed implementation of the ICC, especially when viewed through the corpus of criminological work on the causes and control of state crime. After a review of the basic structure and function of the Court, we critique procedural, conceptual, and practical elements of the ICC through the lens of state crime theory and research. We show howthe Court is but a small step forward in the control of crimes by states and state leaders because of its limited scope, myopic conception of crime, jurisdictional anomie, and minimal compulsory power.
The Interrelationships of Self-efficacy, Parental Monitoring, and Child’s Delinquency – A Longitudinal Study
Past research has found that parental monitoring is one of the most effective ways deterring child’s delinquency, and child’s self-efficacy is negatively associated with delinquency. Literature also suggested that parents who have higher self-efficacy are more likely to learn new skills to strengthen their interaction with children and thus to prevent children’s delinquency. However, past studies have not addressed interrelationships of parental self-efficacy, child’s self-efficacy, parental monitoring and child’s delinquency. What is the role of parental self-efficacy among these variables is also unclear. By using a longitudinal data consisting of 2,419 parent-child pairs (children lived with both biological parents), we adopted structural equation models to demonstrate that parental self-efficacy is an important variable, directly and indirectly (through child’s self-efficacy and parental monitoring), which can deter children delinquency (violence, stealing, and substance use). Results suggests that parental self-efficacy can deter child’s delinquency mainly through parental monitoring and child’s self-efficacy. Parental monitoring had the strongest negative association with child’s delinquency (r=-.47, p
The Intersection of Honor and Status in Conflict-Related Intimate Partner Homicide
This paper presents a discussion of the roles of status and cultural considerations of honor in partner homicide using a modification of Donald Black’s self-help conceptual framework. These conclusions are based on the analysis of data from 228 intimate partner homicides committed in St. Louis, Missouri between 1980 and 1995. Quantitative and qualitative techniques were used to examine differences in homicide motivations by sex, race, and marital status. Results suggest that honor is the intervening mechanism by which status influences propensity to resort to lethal violence as a form of social control, at least in the case of intimate partners. Implications for policy, theoretical development, and methodological issues in measuring self-help criminality are discussed
The Juror’s Burden: Emotional Reactions of Jurors on Death Eligible Cases
This paper covers two points, that of the emotional reactions of jurors’ as observed by graduate students during interviews, and the graduate students’ responses to the jurors’ releases. Information was collected from graduate students at a midwestern university participating in the Capital Jury Project Phase II, headed by Boston’s Northeastern University College of Criminal Justice William Bowers. CJP, supported by funds from the National Science Foundation, is studying the extent to which jurors make arbitrary decisions in death penalty cases, including the impact of race and court instructions. First, this article discusses the reactions and responses of those who have been given this opportunity to talk about, in detail, their role as jurors. Many jurors saw the interview as an opportunity to rid themselves of the stresses associated with capital murder cases. As a second point, the graduate students’ experiences during the interview process are examined. Although not the original intent of the Capital Jury Project, this body of information is still valuable from a social standpoint.
The Killing of Children: Situations and Contexts
This paper examines the phenomenon of child killing in Britain and draws on data collected for an ESRC funded, national study of homicide. The aims of the wider study are to develop a multi-dimensional typology of homicide; to investigate the motivational, interactional and situational contexts associated with different types of lethal violence and the respective risk factors. Data was collected from three sources: the Scottish and British national homicide indices; examination of the casefiles of 860 perpetrators of murder; and in-depth interviews with 200 such perpetrators currently serving sentences in Scottish and English prisons. Using quantitative data, the paper will identify the social contexts within which the killing of children occurs, particular consideration being given to the social interactions leading up the lethal event. A number of other themes will be explored including the motives and intentions of the perpetrators; their offending history; and childhood experiences. A particular focus will be on the nature of the relationship between victims and perpetrators including a consideration of the impact of age, gender and relational distance. The paper aims more broadly to develop a typology of child killing.
The Limits of U.S. Citzenship: INS Deportation Policy for Caribbean Offenders
Despuite the fact that the naturalization process requires U.S. citizens to take an Oath of Allegiance renouncing their countries of birth, the Immigration and Naturalization Service (INS) routine deports ex-offenders of Caribbean origin to their countries of birth at the expiration of their prison sentences. This paper questions the constitutionality of this practice, and the validity of agreements between several Caribbean countries and the U.S. State Department to facilitate the deportation program. The problems faced by deportees and their families, and current attempts by the Caribbean human rights community to address this situation will also be discussed.
The Link Between the Community, the Family and Juvenile Delinquency: An Examination of Gender Differences Among Male and Female Juveniles
Among the most critical voids in our knowledge about juvenile delinquent behavior is the lack of attention that has been given to the link between the community and the family. Although current attempts are beginning to focusing on the community-family link with delinquency, there has been a lack of empirical attention given to the differential effects that this link poses among male and female juveniles. This paper addresses this void through an examination of male and female specific effects at the community-family-delinquency nexus. Theoretically generated hypotheses are tested using the National Survey of Children in an effort to identify significant differences among the genders and there importance to existing knowledge about juvenile delinquent behavior.
The Longitudinal EPESE Data With Police Reports From New Haven, Connecticut
There is a paucity of research about the epidemiology of crime committed against older adults, and virtually nothing is known about its health consequences. This paper will summarize the work being done on a project that is linking an established longitudinal data set of older adults living in New Haven, Connecticut, EPESE (Established Population for Epidemiologic Studies of the Elderly) with police records from the New Haven police department. The goals of the research are to (1) identify risk factors for crime victimization in this cohort of community dwelling older adults; (2) estimate the independent contribution of crime victimization to nursing home placement in the cohort, and (3) estimate the independent contribution of crime victimization to all-cause mortality in the cohort. The results of this project will not only help to inform policies aimed at preventing crime victimization against older adults, but also will help develop strategies that avert or forestall functional physical and emotional decline as a result of victimization.
The Low Rate of Offending by Asian Girls: Exploring the Interaction by Gender and Ethnicity
In his review of ethnic origins, crime and criminal justice in England & Wales, Smith (1997) contrasts the higher rate of offending amongst Afro-Caribbeans with a lower rate for South Asians and speculates that the differences may be due to the more protective ‘survival strategies’ adopted by the Asian group following migration. This paper reports findings from a recent self-report study of the involvement in crime of all 14-15 year olds (n=1957) in state schools in a medium-sized UK city and examines the role of structural characteristics (specifically ethnicity and gender) in explaining the overall lower rate of Asian offending. This lower rate was found to disguise an interaction effect between ethnicity and gender with the lower rates of Asian offending being the result of the far lower rate of offending by Asian females. A number of individual characteristics (e.g. Family & School Bonds, Self-Control, Shaming) were used to create a combined offending Risk-Protective score and it was found that Asian females displayed significantly more protective characteristics than Asian males. It is therefore suggested that the view of ‘Asian culture’ as providing a general ‘Protective Factor’ needs to be modified to address the gender imbalance in the nature of this ‘Protection.’
The Magic of Personal Encounters of Selves: Dalogicality in Norwegian Conflict Councils
An ongoing fieldwork in Norwegian restorative justices has made the Bakhtinian wording dialogicality useful for understanding the rituality of restoration compared to the ritual of criminalization. Coming from a field experience in Norwegian criminal court I recognise the two different organisations of justices, one monological – the other dialogical. In applying an anthropology of knowledge-approach, I look for comparisons on paradigmatic, communicational and epistemological levels as well as the different sources for appreciated knowledge. The positioning of the persons at conflict in the two justices as well as the positions of the witnesses create two totally distinct possibilities. I tend to think that herein lie some answers to why the dialogic relation between participants in restorative justice processes may develop into “magic”, a term frequently used by mediators/facilitators when they recall what happened during conferences. Persons who seemingly oppose each other, come through the dialogue offered by the mediator(s) or the conferencing facilitator(s) to a common understanding of the interpretation of the act; the event – on their own premises, with their own wording and their own rhythm of talk, with anger or anxiety, fury or sadness – and with the possibility of Forgiveness as an act of the future. Thus the meaning of sanction may be changed or no longer relevant. The endeavour of restorative justice in late modern societies, such as Norway, challenges The Force of Law.
The Marriage License as a Controlling License?: Controlling Behavior Within Marriage as a Particular Risk for Violence
Although the notion that the ‘marriage license is a hitting license’ has been criticized and debated, citing higher rates of intimate violence among cohabiters than married couples, the feminist notion that marriage may lead some men to assume that control over their spouses is warranted remains. Simultaneously, recent work has supported Johnson’s (1995) claim that there may be more than one type of intimate violence-one characterized by controlling behavior (predominantly by men) and one characterized by mutual poor conflict management. The current study combines these two related concepts and examines whether controlling behavior is more common among married couples than among unmarried partners and whether it is more likely to lead to violence within the couple. The analyses use data from the National Violence and Threats of Violence against women and men in the U.S., 1994-1996 survey and examine main and interactive effects of control and marital status on the likelihood, frequency, and severity of violence. Results indicate that controlling behavior within marriage is more likely to have violent outcomes than controlling behavior by partners outside of marriage. Larger implications are discussed.
The Meaning of Discretion in the Criminal Justice Sciences: A Conceptual Examination in the Case of Police Research and Theory
“For both normative and empirical ventures in the criminal justice sciences alike, “discretion” holds an undisputed place in the conceptual inventory of terms through which we attempt to understand a great many subjects of inquiry – e.g., as a feature of the work carried out by some class of actors identified within some particular institution or across institutions, as an aspect of the institutions themselves, or even an attribute assigned the systems as a whole. That discretion is, and is a matter of considerable import to both the realms of scholarship and policy, goes without question. It is perhaps curious, therefore, the apparent lack of development and clarification of what discretion is. This paper takes focus on the history, development, and current state of “discretion” in the field of police research/theory specifically, in light of the interdisciplinary history of the field, in order to suggest general themes of problematic definitional formulations and related theoretical/methodological implications for the use of the term as employed here and elsewhere in the field of criminal justice. Suggestions on rethinking the term are offered, considering as well issues of measurement, with potential limitations discussed.”
The Michigan Juvenile Intervention Initiative: Assessing Program Outcomes
The Michigan Office of Drug Control Policy has funded delinquency intervention programs in four Michigan cities for two years. These programs focused on 10 to 13 year old early adolescent delinquents that Farrington and Loeber (2000) characterized as extremely high risks for chronic and serious delinquent careers. Program criteria exclude trivial delinquents (curfew, truancy) and violent delinquents (serious assault, robbery). An assessment of family factors, anti-social behaviors, delinquent peers, and school factors was taken prior to the intervention and juveniles were tracked through the duration of the program. This paper presents preliminary research findings from two sites regarding the relative success of the delinquency interventions involving 65 delinquents. Juveniles from a historical control group will be used as a comparison by matching on race, gender, age at offense, and offense type as a comparison to the subsequent levels of delinquency of offenders in the intervention programs.
The Motivations of Defense Attorneys for the Indigent: Findings, Conclusions and Implications From interviews in Three Sites
Over the years, researchers have expended much effort attempting to explain the behavior of court actors. There have been noticeably fewer attempts to understand practitioner motivation, or to consider the extent to which practitioner motivation might be linked to occupational choices. As such, semi-structured interviews were conducted with indigent defenders in order to understand why they chose to enter this line of work, and why they continue to do the work that they do. This research is based on a total of nearly fifty interviews with indigent defenders in three sites, each different from the others in location, population, and office structure. This paper presents the results of this research and finds that indigent defenders report “practical” job-related motivations, as well as “political” motivations involving socio-legal and constitutional doctrine, humanitarian and altruistic impulses, and critical and rebellious responses to what is perceived to be a lack of justice in both the criminal process and the larger society. Such motivations appear in different forms for different defenders, although most respondents indicate that “political” motivations drive them more intensely. In the end, the following question will be addressed: how do these findings contribute to a fuller understanding of the criminal courts?
The Mouse Who Would Take Over the World! The Disneyization of American Criminal Justice
This paper specifies the relationships between the trend of Disneyization and the increasingly efficient, scientific, costly, control-oriented American criminal justice system. Disneyization is the process by which the principles of the Disney theme parks are coming to dominate more and more sectors of American society as well as the rest of the world. It is related to the concurrent phenomenon of McDonaldization, which has been more widely written about and even applied to criminal justice. This paper discusses the trend of Disneyization and then illustrates how the main elements of Disneyization (theming, dedifferentiation of consumption, merchandising, and emotional labor) typify American criminal justice activity.
The Myth of Mitigation: Jurors’ Failure to Understand the Law in Capital Cases
The United States Supreme Court has held that jurors must be able to consider any mitigating factors that they think make a defendant less blameworthy when deciding the sentence in a capital case (Lockett v. Ohio), and states cannot require juror unanimity for findings of mitigation (Mills v. Maryland; McCoy v. North Carolina). The Supreme Court has not fuled on the standard of proof required for establishing mitigation, but some state statutes explicitly say mitigation must be proven by a preponderance of the evidence and no state requires it be proven beyond a reasonable doubt. States are free to take different approaches to how they instruct jurors to consider mitigating evidence as long as they do not violate constitutional mandates. This paper will review the case law and statutory guidelines relating to mitigating evidence, and previous research showing inadequate understanding of how to handle mitigating evidence. It will then focus on Capital Jury Project data from over 1000 interviews with jurors who actually decided capital cases in 14 states. The results reveal that regardless of the statutory approach adopted by different states, many jurors do not understand how they are supposed to consider mitigating evidence, and the assumptions that the law makes about how mitigation tempers capital sentencing are often legal fictions.
The National Race and Justice Campaign
For several years, the National Council on Crime and Delinquency has conducted research and led reform efforts to address racial and gender disparities in the criminal and juvenile justice systems. Most recently, NCCD has embarked upon a national campaign to reduce the over-representation of people of color in confinement and along the continuum leading to the over-representation of ethnic minorities in the criminal and juvenile justice systems. This paper and presentation will discuss significant trends (data, policy, community mobilization, etc.) regarding disproportionate minority over-representation in the justice system, describe the activities of the Race and Justice Campaign, and offer practical strategies for ameliorating these disparities.
The New Face of Parole: The Dayton Street Wellness Project
Out of the need for one neighborhood in Newark, New Jersey to ‘take back its streets’ has evolved the Dayton Street Wellness Project; a highly collaborative, interagency program initiated by the New Jersey State Parole Board to provide comprehensive services of all kinds to residents as well as parolees in the Dayton Street neighborhood. This project grew out of neighborhood concerns about the safety of schoolchildren who attend the Dayton Street School amongst increased drug dealing, gang activity, and general neighborhood decay. This project gained momentum when the New Jersey State Parole Board committed itself to leading the charge by engaging in its ‘parole’ business in a new way. Traditional parole supervision is tempered with extensive community outreach and service brokerage, available not only to parolees who live in the area, but to all residents of the community. An evaluation of this program is provided, including the challenges encountered as a result of this new way of doing business. Suggestions for further research and evaluation are made
The New Penology: How Court Sentencing Practices Have Been Influenced by the Growing Emphasis of Actuarial Factors Over Individual Characteristics
Various criminal court scholars argue that the sentencing process is being driven by a new theoretical construct termed the “new penology.” While a good deal of literature covers the new penology, there have been no attempts to empirically demonstrate whether this theory explains sentencing practices. This research will empirically test one of the new penology’s predominate assumptions: that sentencing has shifted from an individual to an actuarial approach. One of the chief components of traditional sentencing was that, along with the current offense and prior record, courts would consider personal characteristics such as the offender’s rehabilitative potential. New penology proponents argue that courts in sentencing guideline states ignore individual attributes and base their decisions only on factors in guideline worksheets. While this proposition may hold true for sentences that adhere to sentencing guidelines, does it also apply in cases where judges depart from the guideline recommendations? In other words, when judges depart from sentencing guidelines, do they give any weight to non-guideline factors or do they continue to rely on guideline specified criteria? Sentencing data from Virginia will be analyzed to determine whether judges are citing guideline or non-guideline factors when they depart and the overall impact of their departure reasoning on sentencing.
The Not-For-Profit Prison
In recent years the debate over the privatization of prisons has reached an acrimonious stalemate. Opinions remain sharply divided, mostly along ideological lines. Criminologists and penologists on the right generally favor private prisons, while those of the left favor public prisons. There is a third alternative, however, that has been completely ignored. The private, not-for-profit prison contains the potential to maximize the advantage of both the public and the private prison, while at the same time minimizing the disadvantages of each. In addition, dedicated and talented professionals, who are primarily committed to penal reform and correctional innovation would be readily attracted to the private, not-for-profit prison. Finally, existing foundations and professional organizations, such as the Philadelphia Prison Society, the Edna McConnell Clark Foundation, the Ford Foundation, the American Correctional Association, and even the American Society of Criminology, are encouraged to establish their own not-for-profit prison.
The Number of Times an Average Person is Victimized by Violent Crimes: A Lifetime Perspective
The authors develop an analytical model to estimate the expected frequency of lifetime violent crime victimizations for persons in the United States. The model is built to demonstrate the unique capability of the National Incident-Based Reporting System (NIBRS) for analysis of violent crimes against juveniles and adults that is not present in the traditional Uniform Crime Reporting (UCR) Program. For the purpose of this study, violent crimes include forcible rape, aggravated assault, and simple assault. While murder is a violent crime, it is excluded from the study scope, since “repeated victimizations” of the model does not apply to this crime. The model will be applied to any single violent crime category and for aggregate classes of violent crime categories. In lifetime computations, data for a given year (e.g., 2000 UCR data) is held constant and no forecasting is made. This is because we are interested in what the current year’s crime rate means when it is translated into a lifetime frame.
The Ontology of Crime: On the Construction of the Real, the Image, and the Hyper-Real in Criminological Theory
Implicitly or otherwise, criminologists are interested in the nature of reality presupposed by a particular theory of crime. As such, it is theory that commits us to believe in a certain kind of reality. These are matters pertaining to social ontology; that is, notions addressing the nature of crime and what we come to say about its very existence in society. This paper explores the ontological basis of crime, mindful of the culture to which such theoretical explanations are connected. Accordingly, this paper explores the problematic nature of defining reality (and therefore crime), especially given the increasingly specialized and media-manufactured climate in which such theories are delineated. At issue is the tension between reality and representation, fact and counterfactual in an intense and incessant culture of consuming images. This paper argues that the reality of crime has been displaced by the appearance of the same and that this displacement is itself undone (i.e., devoid of ontological foundation), given the these images are themselves not based on reality but, instead, are nothing more than simulations of a “hyper-real” existence. The paper concludes by exploring the implications of this analysis for purposes of theorizing criminology and for explaining its social ontology.
The Police Perspective on Sex Offender Orders: A Review of Policy and Practice in England and Wales
In recent years there has been growing concern about the risk that sex offenders pose in the community. The British government has responded by introducing a range of legislation to aid the monitoring and management of such offenders. Sex Offender Orders (SOOs) are one example, and were inrroduced under the Crime and Disorder Act (1998). Sex Offender Orders aim to ‘provide an additional measure of protection to the public from sex offenders’. They serve to prohibit an offender from certain types of behaviour that have previously been a precursor to offending, and in this way, help prevent further serious offences being committed. This paper examines the use of SOOs by the police between 1 December 1998 to 31 March 2001. it draws on the findings of a telephone survey of all forces in England and Wales and interviews conducted with key personnel in 16 police forces. This paper provides an overview of the national picture in relation to SOOs, their varied use across forces and explores some of the reasons why this distribution is so uneven. The paper concludes by considering the development of more effective practices for dealing with the management of sexual offenders across police forces and implications for both practitioners and policy.
The Police Use of Force in Six Cities: Officers, Suspects and Situations Within the Continuum Perspective
The use of force by police officers is one of the most controversial and misunderstood actions in criminal justice. When deadly force is used there are often tragic and devastating consequences to the community and police department. There are numerous recent examples such as the 1999 shooting of unarmed West African immigrant Amadou Diallo, and the 2001 shooting of an unarmed African American suspect Timothy Thomas that sparked a riot and state of emergency in Cincinnati to name two. This research will apply a logistic regression analysis to examine the police use of force in 7,512 adult arrest in six cities in the United States, and determine which variables- officer, suspect or situational are the strongest predictors of the choice to use force, or its escalation within the continuum perspective.
The Politics of Reconciliation: The Competing Demands of Human Rights, Justice, Truth, and Reconciliation in Ghana
Ghana is one of the few countries in Sub-Saharan Africa that has enjoyed a relatively long period of political stability. Yet, like other countries in the sub-region, Ghana has had its share of political conflict in the past characterized by injustices, atrocities, and human rights violations. True to its electoral promise in the run-up to the 2000 elections, the current ruling New Patriotic Party (NPP) has since passed a Reconciliation Bill and named members of a Reconciliation Commission, which may soon start its work. The task of the Commission is to investigate past injustices, atrocities, and human rights violations; ascertain the truths of these; seek justice; and reconcile the nation. But, can a Reconciliation Commission resolve the competing demands of human rights, justice, truth, and reconciliation? Enmeshed in controversy even before the start of its work, can the Ghana Reconciliation Commission achieve its objectives? Based on a comprehensive literature review and content analysis of media reports of the controversy generated by the passing of the bill, this preliminary investigation on the quest for reconciliation in Ghana addresses these two questions and aims at contributing to the literature on peacemaking criminology, restorative justice, and conflict resolution.
The Postmodern Jury: From Representation to Deliberation
Voting as a juror is usually the only occasion on which an American citizen directly decides a matter of significant public import. Jurors are expected to analyze the evidence that litigants bring to them and, in criminal cases, arrive at a verdict based on their understanding of what the evidence means and whether these facts amount to “guilt beyond a reasonable doubt.” Jurors therefore interpret social and political reality. Under democratic theory, this power serves to cxheck the power of police, prosecutors, and judges by injecting a lay understanding of events into the formal, routinized mechanisms of justice. Legal and political opinion also holds that a juror is expected to represent his or her community, gender, and ethnicity while deciding cases, but recent commentary suggests that the constitutional requirement of “impartiality” does not translate into “representation” like that expected of delegates to legislative bodies. Rather, it means that a juries randomly selected from a true cross-section of a court’s jurisdiction will deliverate freely and equally among themselves. Hence, the great diversity of viewpoints and life experiences among the many jurors invite a postmodern analysis of the jury as an institution. Rather than define truth as a universal standard with which all must agree, postmodern philosophy posits that truth is contingent on different readings of “text” — in this example, the trial — and pragmatic philosophers such as Richard Rorty describe truth as a construction upon which diverse viewpoints agree and which evolves as the viewpoints do. This article posits that the jury system as it operates in the USA today is an excellent example of the process of constructing postmodern truth.
The Prague Police: Adopting Democratic Principles
This project identifies, describes, and analyzes the changes that have taken place within the Prague Police during the post-communist period. The Prague Police are the primary law enforcement entity in the capital and largest city in the Czech Republic, one of two countries that comprised the former state of Czechoslovakia. The project focused on the movement of the Prague Police toward a democratic policing organizational structure, while stressing the successes and failures that they have encountered. Interviews with twelve key informants, supplemented by official police statistics, victimization surveys, media accounts and a variety of other sources were utilized to explore the unique experiences that have been encountered by that agency. Results indicate that while a great deal has been accomplished by the Prague Police in their efforts to move toward what is commonly defined as a democratic style of policing, the process is still ongoing.
The Predictive Validity of the Youthful Offender Level of Service Inventory
In an attempt to triangulate demands for public safety, manage correctional resources, and rehabilitate offenders, correctional agencies are turning to risk/need assessment instruments to more effectively manage their offender populations. One such assessment gaining popularity for juvenile offenders is the Youthful Offender Level of Service Inventory (Y-LSI). The Y-LSI is a dynamic risk/need assessment inventory designed to inform the supervision level and case management of juvenile offenders. However, there are concerns that “one size fits all” risk/need assessment instruments may not accurately predict recidivism and identify criminogenic needs for all offender populations. The present paper is an examination of the predictive validity of the Y-LSI for a sample of 1700 youthful offenders from a variety of correctional settings
The Presentation of the Militia Movement in the Media
One of the most celebrated cases of the 1990s was the bombing of the Murrah Building in Oklahoma City in October 1995. The mass media played an important role in both defining this particular event as well as searching for policy issues that needed attention. An issue that received significant attention following the bombing was domestic terrorism. In particular, the militia movement was discovered as a significant threat. The militia movement was relatively unknown until McVeigh was loosely linked to the Michigan Militia. The media played an important role by discovering this relatively unknown militia movement, describing it as a threat, and making specific recommendations for a response. This paper will focus on two issues regarding the presentation of the militia movement in the news. First, it will examine the key claimsmakers cited within news stories. Second, it will explore the major frames used by the news media to define this newly discovered threat. Data include a sample of nearly 300 newspaper stories as well as interviews with militia leaders and members, reporters, and key policymakers. Implications for the role of the media in defining domestic terrorism will be discussed.
The Prevalence and Nature of Bullying at School
Recent incidents of multiple murder at school have drawn attention to the precipitants of these rare but terrible acts. In the discussions of the causes and remedies of these acts, bullying at school is raised as a possible precipitant of serious violence at school. Unfortunately, there is relatively little systematic data on the prevalence and nature of bullying at school. This paper uses the National Crime Victimization Survey (NCVS) to estimate the prevalence and distribution of bullying at school. Two different approaches are used to estimate bullying. The first treats bullying as a form of repeat victimization at school so that repeated threats and minor assaults at school is considered bullying. A second approach uses questions from the School Crime Supplement that allow the respondent to define the concept of bullying. The estimates and the distributions of bullying under these two methods are compared to determine how sensitive these estimates are to differences in survey design and strategy.
The Prevention and Control of State-Corporate Crime: Lessons From the Enron Scanal
The crimes involved in the Enron/Arthur Anderson scandal have generated intense media, political, and academic scrutiny since the first revelations of the energy gian’s fraudulent practices in the fall of 2001. Since then, a small cottage industry has emerged around proposals for reforming both law and business culture to preent and control future Enrons. Most of these suggestions, however, treat the Enron fiasco as a matter of individual business malfeasance, rather than complex case of state-corporate crime involving important structural failures as well as key actors in both business and government. By approach Enron as a case of state-corporate crime, this paper proposes a variety of strategies for controlling the kinds of state-corporate crime exemplified by Enron’s questional financial and political dealings./
The Prison-Crime Relationship in Low Income communities
As a theory of public safety, incarceration is based on the premise of “addition by subtraction:” removing people from their communities subtracts deficits and promotes safety. This paper argues that very high concentrations of incarceration may well have a negative impact on public safety by leaving communities less capable of sustaining the informal social control that undergirds public safety. This happens not only because incarceration, experienced at high levels, has the inevitable result of removing valuable assets from the community, but also because the concentration of incarceration affects the community capacity of those who are left behind. Data from a series of studies in Tallahassee, Florida, are used to explain how “coercive mobility” has negative effects on (1) what people do privately with intimate relations, (2) what people do collectively in social relations, and (3) the normative views people develop regarding criminal conduct argument.
The Problem With Enron: Criminological Narratives and Cultural Scripts
The much publicized bankruptcy of Enron Corp. and its roots in financial and political scandal deserves a serious and immediate response from the criminological community. However, in formulating this response, it is imperative that we resist the temptation to merely round up the “usual suspects”–i.e. weak regulatory and enforcement systems; political corruption; professional conflict-of-interest; and the criminogenic properties of the profit motive. While faithful to the proximate causes of the scandal, this etiological frame of reference overlooks a far more interesting, and yet potentially problematic question: what is it that is unique about the response to the Enron scandal, and what does this response tell us with respect to the nature, legitimacy, and “legality” of the current economic order? In attempting to re-frame the terms of the inquiry in this way, this paper will seek to analyze the societal reaction to Enron–including popular media accounts and professional publications–as a unique cultural script whose significance follows from its reproduction of a belief in the possibility of trust, transparency, and legality as features of the existing market economy–this despite its more practical reliance on secrecy, risk, and insecurity in the generation of wealth.
The Progression of DomesticViolence Cases through Misdemeanor Court, a Longitudinal Analysis
Over 1000 domestic violence cases were followed through the court system beginning with the initiation of the case by a complaining witness or through arrest and continuing through the eventual resolution of the case. The first author personally attended all court sessions in which cases were heard, recording both qualitative and quantitative information on each case. As cases moved through the various stages of the legal process (bond hearings, status calls, subsequent appearances in response to further complaints and in some cases trial) detailed information on the behavior of all courtroom actors including judges, witnesses and defendants was recorded. This presentation focuses on the quantitative analysis of the data. The principal independent variables are the age of the parties, their ethnic origin, what kind of legal representation the defendant had, whether defendants or witnesses were present, presence of children in the household and whether they witnessed the event, and the nature of the event. In addition, cases were heard by different judges, who varied in how they dealt with such cases. The first analysis, uses logistic regression to model the probability that the complaining witness dropped the charges, which includes the majority of such cases, and those where charges were pursued. The second uses multinomial logistic regression to examine a multi-category analysis of the outcome, distinguishing among cases which were dropped, cases in which the complaining witness received an order of protection and those in which the defendant received a Supervision Disposition, a Conditional Discharge Sentence, or most rarely jail time. Finally, the third analysis uses discrete time event history methods to study the outcome of the case at each stage of the process, modeling the outcome not just in terms of fixed characteristics of the case, but also including time-varying covariates principally involving the defendant’s behavior since the first complaint was filed.
The Promise of 21st Century Technology and the Police Organization
This paper addresses the organizational changes required in criminal justice agencies when technology is introduced. Drawing on the larger literature on technological impacts this apaper asks the questions what cultural, managbement, and assessment implications come with the introduction of technology throughout and agency. The primary technologies considered in this paper are information and DNA.
The Radical and Critical Foundation of Peacemaking Criminology
In their 1991 book of readings on peacemaking criminology Pepinsky and Quinney identified three intellectual traditions that form the foundation of this new way to conceptualize crime and criminals. These traditions, religious and humanist, feminist, and critical, offer a useful way to explore the historical ideas and theorists on which peacemaking criminology rests. Some observers such as Ronald Akers have questioned the appropriateness of linking peacemaking criminology to critical theorists such as Marx who advocated violence. This paper seeks to explicate how many o the ideas of various critical thinkers can be considered precursors to peacemaking criminology. Additionally, contemporary critial theorists are linked to peacemaking.
The Rates of Criminal Victimization Among Blacks and Whites by the Race of the Offender
It has long been recognized that the criminal victimization tends to be intraracial. Whites are typically victimized by White offenders and Blacks are typically victimized by Black offenders, especially with regard to violent crime. In this study we revisit this postulation and examine the rates of criminal victimization among Blacks and Whites using the National Victimization Survey 1992-2000. As expected, these data consistently show that Blacks are more likely to be the victims of crime and that this is particularly true for violent offenses, especially robbery. We then examine the racial characteristics of the offender. Interestingly, these data indicate that the crimes committed by Blacks are more likely than those of Whites to be interracial and this is particularly true for robbery. The limitations of the data and the implications of the relationships observed are discussed.
The Regulation of Rice Wine in the Downtown Eastside: A Critical Assessment
Alcohol and drug abuse has been rampant amongst those who live in or who frequent the downtown eastside of Vancouver, Canada, for several years. There are numerous forms in which alcohol in particular can be consumed that are not conventionally deemed potable. Amongst these is rice wine. Although intended for use as a cooking ingredient in Chinese cuisine, this product has been an attractive beverage for severe alcoholics due its high concentrations in alcohol and due to the fact that it is relatively inexpensive. By virtue of the geographic proximity of the core of the downtown eastside to Chinatown, the availability of this product has undoubtedly had a detrimental impact. Efforts to date have focused on reducing harm by directly controlling its availability. Following along these lines, a provincial regulation was passed in 1999 controlling the sale and distribution of this product. Rice wine has since been available exclusively in liquor stores province-wide. As the impact of this policy has not yet been assessed, the purpose of this paper is to highlight some of the issues that need to be addressed in such an assessment. More specifically, the purpose is to consider the historical context from which this regulatory policy emerged, and to consider the threat displacement may pose to such an evaluation.
The Relationship Between Arrestee Deference Levels and Arrestee Injury: Police Use of Force Explained Differently
Research examining the causes of police use of force has been plagued with the complicated definitional issues related to operationalizing use of force as a dependent variable where the officer actions are in question. This research utilizes injury to arrestees as a result of police use of force as a dependent variable and hypothesizes that low levels of deference lead to higher levels of injury.
The Relationship Between First Criminal Activity and Demographic and Behavioral Characteristics of Adolescents Entering Outpatient Substance Abuse Treatment
Although much is known about the criminal activity of adults entering substance abuse treatment, few studies have addressed criminal activity among youth entering such programs. Criminal involvement of adolescents entering five outpatient substance abuse treatment programs in Baltimore County, Maryland (n=194) between July 2000 and December 2001 will be described, along with their family structure, psychological functioning, substance abuse, and other problem behaviors. Analyses of criminal involvement showed that early onset of criminal activity was associated with greater severity of both criminal and aggressive behavior, having multiple sexual partners, and increased frequency of substance use prior to treatment admission.
The Relationship Between Incarceration and Crime Decline: A Case Study of New York City, 1993-2000
This paper will present research on how the amount and type of incarceration changed from 1993-2000 when violent crime declined by over 50% and homicides were reduced by almost 70%. During this period, New York City experienced twice the national rate of crime decline. There has been substantial debate about the causes of New York City’s crime decline during the 1990’s and much speculation on the role of the police, demographics and the changing nature of drug use and drug markets in contributing to the decline. However, there has been little attention focussed on any role that increased incarceration might have played in the decline. Increased incarceration has been frequently cited as one of the factors that has helped to drive down national crime rates. An examination of rates of incarceration before and during New York City’s decline, offers no evidence that the increasing use of prison or jail contributed in any way to the City’s dramatic crime decline. In fact the decline in the City’s crime rate was accompanied by significant reductions (over 50%) in the numbers of people sent to prison from New York City and the City’s jail system experienced huge declines in its average daily population. Though New York City had twice the rate of the national crime decline, its overall use of incarceration has gone in the opposite direction from the national trend.
The Relationship Between Race, Self-Control, Social Bonding, and Delinquency: Is There Evidence of Cumulative Disadvamtage?
While often viewed as competing theories, recent research has linked the concepts of self-control and social bonding in the study of crime and delinquency. The current project continues this line of research using data collected as part of a multi-site longitudinal study of youth. By adding the often neglected component of race, this study extends social control based theories of crime and delinquency. Implications for criminological theory and public policy are discussed.
The Relationship of Bullying to Other Delinquent Behavior
There is much recent interest in the prevention of bullying and the development of anti-bullying programs, in part as a prevention strategy for violence. However, there is not a great deal of information about the relationship of bullying to other proscribed delinquent behavior, including other aggression and violence. Thus, is it uncertain to what extent bullying, especially when considered with other known risk factors, is itself a risk factor for subsequent violence. Using developmental data from the Denver Youth Survey, this presentation examines (1) the prevalence of bullying at different ages in a high-risk sample (2) the concurrent relationship of bullying to other forms of delinquency including violent behavior, and (3) the relationship of bullying during childhood to subsequent delinquency and violence during adolescence.
The Relative Contributions of Court Interventions, Changing Marital Status, and Informal Social Controls to Delaying Re-Arrest for Domestic Violence
Researchers of domestic violence recidivism have focused primarily upon the effects of formal and informal social controls on the incidence and prevalence of re-offending, with little attention paid to how these factors might influence time to recidivism. To provide a more comprehensive understanding of repeat domestic violence, we present findings from an event history analysis of time to re-arrest (during a 58 month follow-up period) for 3603 domestic violence suspects in Cincinnati, Ohio. This study moves beyond previous research on police intervention with (a) an examination of court dispositions, (b) measures of “risk” tapping the individual-level characteristics of suspects as well as the aggregate-level characteristics of the neighborhoods where they reside, (c) consideration of a suspect’s changing marital status throughout the follow-up period, and (d) an analysis of possible interaction effects between legal interventions and the micro-/macro-level risk factors examined.
The Reliability and Validity of Questions Measuring Self-Reported Student-on-Student Victimization
Criminologists and policy makers have focused increasingly on issues pertaining to school violence in general and student-on-student victimization (SSV) in particular. This paper examines the validity and reliability of an interview schedule used to assess four subtypes of SSV – – i.e., psychological, property, physical, and sexual student-on-student victimization. The presentation will begin with a review of the core components of “The SSV Protocol”– a comprehensive, new, and theoretically-informed interview schedule designed for use with junior-high and high-school students. For each of the four subtypes of victimization, The SSV Protocol measures each student’s: 1) affective assessment of fear; 2) cognitive assessment of perceived risk for future SSV; 3) prevalence rates for reported SSV in the past 30 days, the past year, and all prior years of schooling; and 4) opinions regarding policy suggestions for preventing SSV. Because SSV occurs within the socio-environmental context of a school, this survey also measures socio-environmental factors that might increase or decrease the fear, perceived risk, and prevalence of SSV. Finally, this survey examines both avoidant and aggressive behaviors used by respondents to protect themselves against potential SSV. Although many survey and interview schedules are not necessarily designed to test theoretical models of school victimization, The SSV Protocol contains ample measures to test theoretically-informed hypotheses associated with criminal opportunity theories of victimization (Meier & Miethe, 1993; Miethe & Meier, 1994, 1990), and Goffman’s dramaturgical framework (1959, 1963) as applied to the role of stigma in SSV.
The Reliability and Validity of Self Report Crime of Among Drug Offenders
This presentation looks to address the reliability and validity of self reported crime among convicted drug offenders. Using self report data collected for the Baltimore City Drug Treatment Court evaluation, this presentation investigates the correlation between official arrest and self reported arrest and criminal activity along with examining the percentages of self reported arrest and criminal activity for which an official arrest was reported. Additionally, indicators of invalid reporting, such as age, gender, employment, marital status, etc. will be identified and discussed. Finally, weaknesses of the data will be addressed along with recommendations for future research in this area.
The Resettlement of Short-Term Prisoners
Earlier research involving two of the authors confirmed that the voluntary throughcare of short-term prisoners has virtually disappeared as a probation service activity in the United Kingdom. This paper presents the findings of the evaluation of the Resettlement of Short-term Prisoner Projects set up under the Crime Reduction Programme in response to that finding. The projects are sited in seven prisons, and were established to focus on the resettlement needs and (in some cases) the offending behaviour of prisoners serving sentences of less than 12 months. The main research objective is to assess the impact of that work, but the research team are concerned also with whether those projects that include a programme designed to address offending behaviour have a greater impact on reconviction than those that address only practical resettlement needs. In order to compare the six projects in their ability to address practical resettlement problems and tackle offending behaviour, outcome data were collected on attrition and reconviction rates, changes in resettlement problems and changes in attitudes/knowledge /skills. The paper will report on those outcomes (apart from the two-year reconviction study which is not yet complete).
The Restructuring of Public Housing and Murder Rates in Chicago, Los Angeles, and New York: An Exploratory Analysis
The newest iteration of America’s seventy-odd year experiment with public housing is the restructuring of public housing. These restructuring includes the dismantling and demolition of many of the most infamous housing complexes in the United States, including Chicago’s Cabrini Green. It will result in a new space of public housing, because at least seventy percent of public housing residents will be given housing vouchers, and are expected to move into scattered market-rate housing, while only thirty percent will remain in renovated or new public housing. This massive removal, relocation, and restructuring may be expected to have an effect on crime rates in cities that contain large numbers of public housing residents, including Chicago, New York, and Los Angeles. While Los Angeles and New York have demonstrated drops in their homicide rates over the past ten years, Chicago has experienced no such drop. In this exploratory analysis, data gathered from HUD, the 2000 Census, city police departments, and other sources will be examined to determine whether differences in the restructuring of public housing in these three cities may help to explain differences in homicide rates.
The Rise of Therapeutic Justice and the Decline of Reintegrative Community Policing
Both the drug court movement and the community policing movement serve as examples of the ways that reintegrative forms of social control have been applied in recent decades. Drug courts have been called a method of “therapeutic justice” that replace the adversarial approach to justice with negotiated service plans linking offenders with an array of drug treatment and related rehabilitative services in a community setting as an alternative to incarceration. Community police officers have also been promoted as organizers who can similarly link citizens to an array of social services or at least help in the expansion of crime prevention programs. But while drug courts have been largely successful, at least in terms of transforming traditional occupational orientations and forging linkages with service agencies, this is much less clear where community policing is concerned. Why is this the case? The purpose of this paper is to first place the drug court and community policing movements within the theoretical context of reintegrative methods of social control, drawing on the work of Braithewaite and others and their distinction between methods of justice that stigmatize versus those that seek to bring offenders back into the life of the community. Second, I criticially examine both the drug court and community policing movements in terms of how well they apply reintegrative control strategies. In particular, I argue that the community policing movement has become skewed towards aggressive order maintenance, and that this has subverted the ability of police officers to act reintegratively where the problem of substance abuse is concerned. The research will combine extensive literature reviews with original case studies done on drug courts as well as specific community policing initiatives.
The Road Less Traveled: Citizen Resistance of Police Directives
While most inquiries into the police-citizen encounter have focused exclusively on understanding officer behavior, the discretionary decisions citizens make have received only scant attention in the empirical research. This paper expands this line of investigation so as to understand why and under what condition citizens resist or submit to police authority. Using data collected from observations of officer-citizen encounters, we examine factors that contribute to citizen resistance to police authority. Results have implications for theories of officer discretion as well as administrators who seek ways to reduce conflict between the police and the public.
The Role of Education in Intimate Partner Homicides
One of the notable unexplored perspectives in both fatal and nonfatal violence among intimate partners is the role of education. Since the nineteen-eighties, a persistent feature of prevention literature is making available a wide variety of alternatives to remaining in a violent relationship. This not only includes well-publicized prevention programs such as hotlines and women’s shelters, but an outpouring of literature designed to inform women about the problem and what can be done about it (Browne, Williams, & Dutton, 1999; Caringella-MacDonald, 1997; Fagan, 1996). If alternatives to remaining in a battering relationship are generally available, it is reasonable to suggest its effect would vary by educational level, that is, intimate partners with higher levels of education would be less often the victims of violence. Research on nonfatal intimate partner violence and education is extremely sparse and the results vary. Straus, Gelles, and Steinmetz (1981) noted that it is often assumed that those with a lower amount of education have higher rates of family violence. Their study in 1975 indicated that the highest level of violence were among men and women who were high school graduates, with those having some college education and those who were primary school drop outs having the lowest rates of violence. Women having less than a high school education were most likely to be victimized, while those having some college education were found to be the least likely to be victimized. On the other hand, Walker (2000), in a survey undertaken between 1978 and 1981 of 435 battered women in the Rocky Mountain region found that 40% of the victims had some college education and 23% had a college degree. Tjaden and Thoennes (2000) found that it is the educational differential between intimate partners that is related to violence. In the National Survey of Violence Against Women they used a logistic regression and included two educational variables: whether the respondent had a high school diploma or less and whether the respondent’s education level was higher than the partners. The former dropped out of the final model, but the variable indicating differential educational levels was significantly related to violence against women. There are no studies known to the authors of the relationship between education and intimate partner homicides. This is due to the fact that homicide data is taken from the official records of the police departments or the Supplementary Homicide Reports, neither of which collect education information. The purpose of the present study is to analyze the role of education using a newly released data set of homicides in California that probabilistically matches 34,584 law enforcement and medical examiner homicide cases from 1990 through 1999 for a matching rate of 93%. This data set includes detailed information on the educational level of victims, among other variables, as well as variables that are present in law enforcement data.
The Role of Family Processes in the Prediction of Health-Compromising and Violent Behaviors: An SEM Utilizing Longitudinal Data From High-Risk African-American Adolescents
Despite recent decreases in crime rates, youth violence remains a serious public health concern in the United States. In light of this, criminological research must continue to identify potentially explanatory etiological factors in adolescent risky behavior. The present study examined whether family processes predicted both health-compromising and violent behaviors over time. Longitudinal data were collected from high-risk African-American adolescent males and females. The current study includes N = 3,028 adolescents between the ages of 10 and 19 years (mean age = 13.5). SEM was used to model three latent constructs, namely “family,” health-compromising behavior, and violence; each latent construct included 2-3 multi-item indicators at three points in time. Findings indicated that T1 “family” predicted subsequent health compromising and violent behaviors at T2 and T3. In addition, adding T2 and T3 family processes into the model slightly improved model fit and increased the amount of variance explained. SEM analyses by sex (1,568 males, 1,460 females) and age (1,220 early adolescents, 10-12 years old; 1,078 middle adolescents, 13-15 years old; 730 late adolescents, 16-19 years old) also indicated good fit for both models. Findings will also be discussed in terms of their usefulness for informing violence prevention efforts.
The Role of Gang Motivation in High Risk for Violence Situations
Previous research examining differences in the “nature” of gang motive and gang member homicides suggests that the two types are virtually identical (Maxson and Klein, 1996). The present study expands upon this research by examining whether having a gang motivation increases the likelihood of violent outcomes in various high risk for violence situations. In this way, non-lethal and more common forms of violence can be explored to see if gang motivation influences situational outcomes. It is hypothesized that situations involving “gang issues” (i.e., gang motivation) will be more likely to result in violence (as opposed to avoided violence). Data for this research were obtained from over 700 newly admitted male inmates to the Nebraska Department of Corrections. Data analysis examines both situational and person-level factors pertinent to violent outcomes. Preliminary results suggest that after controlling for situational factors (e.g., presence of others) and person factors (e.g., age, race), “gang motivation” still significantly increases the likelihood of violence.
The Role of Gender in Criminal Justice Processing
The present study seeks to clarify the role that offender’s gender plays at various stages of the criminal justice process. We will explore gender differentials from arrest offense type to decision to whether or not to incarcerate offenders including legal representation, charged offense, release status, and disposition offense. Expanding on previous research, this study focuses on defendant’s gender at every stage of the criminal justice process and does not simply rely on sentence length or likelihood of incarceration. Analysis will be done using structural equation models. The data derives from a stratified representative sample of 7,729 criminal dispositions in Texas during 1991.
The Role of Law Enforcement in Public School Safety: A National Survey
Recent events have stimulated increased attention on the role of law enforcement in public schools. Concerns about high-profile school shootings, increased instances of drug and violent crimes, and several policy initiatives (e.g., “zero tolerance”) have focused attention on the intersection between police agencies and schools. This paper presents results from a national sample of public school principals. Respondents were asked, among other things, to describe the nature and extent of law enforcement involvement in their schools. It identifies the range of roles played by law enforcement, and explores factors associated with different levels of law enforcement involvement in public schools. The paper concludes with a discussion of continuing research efforts.
The Role of Law Enforcement Within a Comprehensive Community Strategy
The Maryland HotSpot Communities Initiative is a statewide crime-fighting initiative, addressing both enforcement and prevention issues with multiple organizations in high-crime neighborhoods; it is also an example of a state effort to create a model of transorganizational systems. In part, the HSC Initiative is builds upon aspects of the service integration (SI) movement of the 1960s and 1970s by coordinating services for people with multiple needs as well as coordinating services for geographic areas with multiple needs, with the “partnership” movements of the 1990s. Furthermore, the HSC concept goes beyond mere service delivery. It encompasses an array of prevention and enforcement activities, including “core” and “enhancing” elements from a variety of organizations. These elements form a team to promote community safety, provide coordinated criminal justice services, and provide needed services for residents of the community. This is done in coordination with state, federal, and local funding – – and with the residents of the community as well as street-level service-delivery agents in the community- – through an innovative top-down and bottom-up approach. In this report we will specifically look at the following questions: Within this comprehensive community initiative, 1) What are the functions of the police officers?, 2) How is the police department “partnering” with other local agencies and the community?, and 3) What is the role of the community?
The Role of Modern Policing in Failing African States
This paper examines the stabilizing political role of modern policing under three successive regimes in Ethiopia since the 1940s. The study uses primary sources of historical documents published in the official Amharic (Ethiopian) language, including the current bi-monthly newspaper published by the Ethiopian police. The paper explores how police functions in contemporary Ethiopia mainly included the sustenance of the successive powers of the monarchy, the socialist military state, and the federal ethnic state. The Ethiopian police organization and its raison d’etre varied corresponding to the ideologies and political nature of each one of the three successive regimes. Policing encompassed law enforcement, judicial, and paramilitary functions. These consolidated powers were periodically exercised as emergency power in order to stabilize the states, when the regimes faced crisis of legitimacy in the midst of political opposition and armed insurrections. The continuance of this consolidated police power, albeit changes in regimes, mainly dealt with acts distinctively defined in the criminal statutes as threat to the security of stat power. Hence, policing in this East African country is generally viewed as instrumental to authoritarian state dominance in the absence of any semblance of democratic freedom and due process rignts. The paper further analyzes how policing not only reflected authoritarian governance, but also how it re-enforced authoritarian rule.
The Role of Non-Custodial Parenting on Children’s Delinquent Behavior
The role of family disruption in the production of delinquency has received considerable attention in both political and academic arenas. As such, issues like ‘single motherhood,’ ‘nontraditional families,’ and ‘absentee fathers’ have served as buzz phrases alerting us to the ‘potential dangers’ that family disruption poses for children. Not surprisingly, academic research has followed suit in its attention to family disruption with countless assessments of the relevance of these matters for the socialization of children, especially ‘single mothers’ and ‘non-traditional family structures.’ However, a notable deficiency exists in the empirical assessment of non-custodial parents, such as ‘absentee fathers,’ role in child socialization. The proposed study seeks to assess the relative impact of non-custodial and custodial parenting practices and their role in the production of delinquency. The National Survey of Children, a longitudinal data set containing items of interest collected from both children and custodial parents, will be used to assess the degree to which dynamics between custodial parents, non-custodial parents, and children have an influence on the outcome of delinquency. Multivariate statistical procedures will be used to assess the independent and combined effects of custodial and non-custodial parenting practices on children. Findings will be presented and discussed in order to provide a better understanding of the impact that the dynamics of non-custodial parenting has on adolescent delinquency.
The Role of Religiosity in Explaining Juvenile Drug Use
This paper reviews the literature exploring the role of religiosity in explaining gender differences in the frequency and extent of juvenile drug use. Alcohol, tobacco, marijuana/hash, and cocaine are the specific drugs that will be examined. Additionally, the literature on the impact that social learning and demographic variables have on juvenile drug use will also be reviewed, as these control variables are part of the theoretical model that will be tested in a future study. The research questions and theoretical model that evolve out of the literature review, as well as the hypotheses that will be tested in the study, will also be presented and discussed.
The Role of Religiousness in the Opposition to Drug Use
Arguments favoring the formal or informal control of drug use can be classified as paternalistic or moralistic based on the normative principles that underlie them. This paper investigates how and to what degree these arguments are shaped by religiousness. Empirical data were obtained about perceptions and attitudes regarding the use of six common drugs (alcohol, cigarettes, cocaine, heroin, LSD, and marijuana) using an electronic mail survey of university students. A series of models are estimated testing various hypotheses about the causal structure of four constructs: religiousness, perceptions of self-harm (the perceptive component of paternalistic arguments), perceptions of immorality (the perceptive component of moralistic arguments), and control attitudes (the degree to which an individual favors the control of a behavior). Preliminary findings show that religiousness affects control attitudes toward drug use indirectly through perceptions of immorality.
The Role of School and Peers in Overcoming Early Family Adversity
An extensive literature has demonstrated developmental difficulties stemming from early family adversity. Fewer studies have examined the roles school and positive peers can play in helping children overcome early family adversity. In this study, early family adversity is operationalized through indicators assessed in elementary school (including poor family management, low bonding to parents, parental substance use) and retrospectively at age 24 (abuse and neglect). We then examine the relationship between early family adversity and positive and negative outcomes at ages 21 and 24 (high school completion, engagement in school or working, involvement in clubs/activities, family bonding and depression, crime, alcohol abuse/dependence, drug abuse/dependence, respectively). Finally, we examine the extent to which positive school and peer experiences moderate the relationship between early family adversity and these outcomes. Data in the study are from the Seattle Social Development Project (SSDP). SSDP is a longitudinal study of youth development and behavior that has followed prospectively a panel of Seattle public school students from age 10 to 24. Implications for the development of intervention programs will be addressed.
The Role of Sexual Competition in Violent Events Among Adolescent Males
Descriptive analyses of the nature of violent events have shown that issues related to sexual competition and gender relations in society spark a significant portion of interpersonal violence between males (Oliver, 1994; Wilkinson, 2002). Social interaction among adolescent males reflects a growing interest and preoccupation with sexuality and heterosexual companionship. Violence is one of many strategies used by young males to create and sustain relationships with females in a context where competition is perceived as intense. This paper includes empirical data on decision-making and situational factors in 850 violent events reported by a sample of 400 urban youth aged 16 to 24 (an estimated 30% will be related to sexual violence). These situations typically resulted from sexual competition (both maintenance and acquisition), the protection of a girl’s honor or reputation, the defense of a female after physical victimization, the spread of rumors and the escalation of disputes through gossip, and the amplification of impression management in the presence of a relevant female. Event Structure Analysis (ESA) will be used to deconstruct the violent events. ESA is a qualitative methodology developed for understanding sequential events in narrative data that offers an alternative system for analyzing event-level data (Heise, 1997).
The Role of Song in the Expurgating of Shame
This research is part of a larger project which looks at South African women’s imprisonment. The role of singing, inside prison is examined as expurgation, catharsis and transformation into hope, for the lives of inmates during the post-colonial period in this country’s history.
The Role of Violence in UK Drug Markets
Violence is often assumed to be an integral feature of drug dealing networks, the main evidence base for this being US research. Research on drug markets is comparatively rare in the UK, although portrayals of drug dealing both in the media and in official discourses also give a prominent place to violence. This paper analyses the role of violence in different levels of drug markets in the UK. It is based on two research studies: the first, reported elsewhere in this panel session, which focused on `middle market’ drug distribution; the second, which examined the `night-time’ economy in the UK, with a special emphasis on clubs and other entertainment venues, and the role of doormen in maintaining security. The evidence is that the role of violence assumes different forms at different levels of drug markets, and might be over-emphasised in portrayals of upper level distribution where it runs counter to business principles and is largely instrumental in character when violence does occur. The changing nature of serious crime networks involved in drug distribution is discussed in this context, from tight kinship and ethnic groupings to more open entrepreneurially based trading partnerships.
The Roots of Governmental Corruption in China: An Organizational Perspective
By examining the role that democracy plays in anti-corruption campaigns, this paper explains the cause of corruption in China based on the “political-administrative” dichotomy. This paper first discusses practices and experiences of three nations/regions including: India, the nation that claimed “model of democracy for developing countries” but haunted by inefficiency and corruption of government; Hong Kong, who experienced the dramatic change from a rotten civil service system to the cleanest governing body among the world during 1970s, throughout which the nature of its colonial government hadn’t changed a bit; and United States, whose experience reveal that democracy can both stand against and for corruption depending on circumstances. The paper then looks into the situation and characteristics of the corruption problem in China. Attempt will be made to answer the question: “is it a regime problem or an organizational malfunction?” Theories of organization and administration will be used to evaluate the current governmental structure of China. The classical theory will be used to examine the internal checking mechanism. The behaviorist perspective will be used to examine the motivation for corruption in the governmental setting of China. The principle-based perspective will focus on a more culture-related examination. As conclusion, a more administration oriented, instead of policy or legal oriented, anti-corruption scheme is suggested.
The Second Amendment as a Guarantee of the Individual Right to Arms
The language, legislative history and case law establishes that the Amendment guarantees the right of every law abiding responsible adult to have firearms for self- and family defense
The Self-Appraisal Questionnaire
During this presentation the focus would be on presenting data about the reliability and validity of the Self-Appraisal Questionnaire (SAQ; Loza, 1996). This tool is the first self-report questionnaire, which was designed specifically for the prediction of recidivism. Also presented would be data about the SAQ’s usefulness in predicting institutional adjustment, helping staff with program assignment, and its use with mentally ill forensic patients. At the end of this presentation, data would be presented to refute the common belief that offenders deceit and lie on self-report measures predicting recidivism.
The Sentencing of Juveniles in Criminal Court
The present study utilizes criminal court data from the Pennsylvania Commission on Sentencing (PCS) to investigate the sentencing of juvenile offenders processed in an adult criminal court. As the number of juveniles facing prosecution in adult court continues to grow, we argue that it is crucial for the field to develop an understanding of the judicial decision-making processes that impact the sentencing outcomes of this population. This study therefore compares sentencing outcomes for juveniles to similarly situated adult offenders across criminal courts in Pennsylvania. We employ recent statistical advances in sentencing research to investigate the relative importance of juvenile status in the sentencing decision after controlling for other relevant legal and extra-legal factors. Our preliminary findings indicate that juveniles who are transferred to adult court are sentenced more severely than their equivalent adult counterparts. This finding holds for both the in/out and sentence length decisions and raises important questions about the role of juvenile status in adult courts. We discuss our findings in light of recent shifts in juvenile justice policies that increasingly rely on adult courts for the sentencing of juvenile offenders.
The Situational Aspects of Gang Homicides: Honor or Dispute?
Previous research has explored the concept of honor as a salient component of gang related violence. This study explores the prevalence of honor in gang and non-gang homicides and asks whether the dynamics are necessarily different from those that characterize dispute related homicides. Using St. Louis homicide data from the years 1990-1995, this research addresses the question of honor versus dispute through quantitative and qualitative methods.
The Smuggling of Chinese; A Dutch Perspective
Although a number of studies on the smuggling of Chinese have been conducted, next to nothing is known about the smuggling of Chinese to or through the Netherlands (or for that matter, other European countries). In our study, which is based mainly on police files, we study the extent to which the smuggling of Chinese to the Netherlands can be classified as “organized”. Using the same data, we will investigate the links between smuggling, trafficking and other (organized) forms of crime in the Dutch Chinese community.
The Social and Political Context of Sentencing Disparities: An Application of HLM to Federal Sentencing Practices
Research on sentencing has increasingly examined the social and political context that underlies criminal sentencing practices. Using data over the 1990s from the Federal Sentencing Guidelines Commission(FSGC), the current study extends this research tradition by examining the nature and magnitude of racial and ethnic disparities in sentencing practices across different contexts. State level data that are indicative of different political ideologies and various types of social threat are merged with FSGC data to determine whether sentencing disparities in the likelihood of a prison sentence, length of confinement, and the use of sentencing departures are accounted for by aspects of the wider socio-political context in which these decisions are made. The results of this study are then discussed in terms of their implications for future research on sentencing and its social context.
The Social Construction of Personal Protection Orders: Gendered Differences?
This study intends to give an overview of what is known about the violent phenomenon around the school and to reveal the extent and nature of juvenile victimization around schools in the U.S and Korea. To better understand the causation of the violence, this study also examine the relationship of hypothesized predictors related to school with delinquent behavior. Based on the general strain theory (GST), this study points to another major source of strain and its effect on delinquency. In particular, as the GST has argued that strains from various sources are most responsible for the delinquency in a certain society, higher education oriented school culture is addressed, as a major source of strain on adolescents in Korean society. This study employs a national sample data gathered by Korean National Institute of Criminology to address the issues above. The results support that school, as the major source of strain, has a direct and indirect effect on delinquency. This study suggests a new direction for the development of strain theory, and implications for future research on GST are discussed.
The Social Context of Drug Use Among Rave Participants
Drug use data indicate an increase in drugs associated with rave events. The proliferation of rave events in the U.S. along with increases in ecstasy use had lead to concern over the promotion of drug use at raves. The popularity of rave events among young adults and adolescents places these groups at high risk for drug involvement. This study examines the social context of drug use among rave participants through an online survey. The study examines the frequency, prevalence and types of drugs used within different settings for young adult ravers. Factors such as peer associations, family quality and age of onset are also examined in determining their relationship to patterns of drug use among settings. Participants were recruited from four online websites focused on providing rave information and promoting communication between rave participants. The study aims to identify the patterns of drug use for ravers and the high risk settings for drug use.
The Social Ecology of Juvenile Violence
The research examines the neighborhood context of violent juvenile crime. We will be utilizing Dallas Police Department data on all violent offenses committed by juveniles over a five-year period (1997-2001). We will be identifying and analyzing the social and ecological characteristics of the neighborhoods in which such offenses are most highly concentrated. These neighborhoods will be determined using the “hot spot” identification function in the ArcView GIS program. Additionally, US Census data for 2000 will be merged with the offense data thereby allowing analysis of the underlying characteristics of violent juvenile crime hot spots. The value of this approach is that, rather than subjectively choosing “areas” of the city that supposedly have higher crime density, we use spatial analysis methodology to identify and subsequently analyze the precise areas of the city that have the greatest concentration of violent offenses by juveniles. Thus, our research focuses on the distribution of such crimes in geographic space. By identifying both common and independent demographic, social and ecological characteristics of hot spots, we can approach some understanding of the correlates of violent offenses by juveniles. From this foundation we can begin to articulate policy initiatives aimed at preventing or reducing this kind of crime.
The Social Ecology of Violence: An Exploration of Contextual Factors in Cases of Youth Victimization
This research takes an ecological approach to exploring violent victimization among juveniles. Using data from the 1998 National Incidence Based Reporting System, this research examines the situational context and dynamics of youth victimization in order to identify those characteristics salient to explaining these violent incidences. Theoretically important contextual variables drawn from both social disorganization and routine activities will be examined as they affect varying forms of serious juvenile victimization. Study findings and implications for future research will be discussed.
The Social Growth of the Violent Brain: Brain Research on Teen Violence
: This paper will address the issue of relations between brain and violence. How do the brains of the young and the teens grow? What are the socially mediated interfaces between the development of the brain and the growth of violent behavior? How childhood abuse, neglect and experience of social violence shape the formation of the brain, and, hence, the articulation of socially expected behavior. There is strong sociological argument in criminology about relations between childhood abuse and the growth of deviant and violent behavior. But the question about how does abuse produce deviance remains largely unanswered in sociological literature on youth and teen violence. In recent years, we have seen a considerable amount of literature on this problem produced by the brain research community. It is imperative that we build a bridge of thought between this research from the brain research community and the extant sociological and psychological theories on childhood abuse and the growth of violence. This paper aims to bring to focus the major generalizations produced in recent years by the brain research community on this issue of relations between the brain and violence or what I call the issue of the growth of the “social brain”.
The Social Impact of Mass Incarceration on Women
Women, in general, and women of color from low-income communities in particular, occupy a set of uniquely vulnerable positions when we consider the social impact of mass incarceration. On the surface, women’s vulnerability within the prison industrial complex mirrors other settings in which gender arrangements serve to marginalize some women by limiting access to social resources and undermining women’s participation and our power; in places like traditional nuclear families, conservative community and cultural groups, occupational hierarchies and other hegemonic social institutions. A closer analysis of the social consequences of mass incarceration, however, reveals a much more complex interactive effect of a racialized justice system, persistent poverty, and gender oppression than is found in an analysis of other social problems. In this chapter I will argue that the nature of this interaction not only leaves women vulnerable to the harsh criminal justice practices that have caused the skyrocketing incarceration rates in this country, but in fact, sets in place a tightly organized system of injustices, disenfranchisement and social stigmas that leave women facing some of the most pernicious effects of the prison industrial complex.
The Social Structure of Vengeance
Donald Black’s (1993, 1998) theory of conflict management suggests that the social structure of a conflict, comprised of the social statuses and ties of the principal parties and third parties, predicts whether it will be handled violently. Focusing on the principal parties, Black argues that five conditions increase the probability of violence: relational distance, functional independence, immobility, equality, and cultural distance. Although Black’s theory is built on a wealth of evidence, it has not been tested. To test Black’s theory, I conducted interviews with 102 men incarcerated for violent conflict management (assault and homicide) committed against another man. Each interview addressed a pair of conflicts: the crime and a similar conflict the respondent handled non-violently. If, for example, a drug debt led to the crime then the respondent also describes a drug debt he handled non-violently. Because the respondent must choose a matching non-violent conflict that occurred during the same time period, the design controls for individual and ecological influences outside the theoretical model; if two conflicts occur around the same time then the respondent tends to have the same individual characteristics and live in the same neighborhood, meaning such influences are a constant for the pair. The interview produces quantitative and qualitative data. Conditional logistic regression is used to examine the quantitative data (CLR is appropriate for matched case-control studies because it avoids the problem of autocorrelation). The qualitative data offer context and nuance. In general, the results offer support for the theory.
The Spatial Patterning of Homicide and Suicide in Japan: 1985 and 1995
We test for geographic clustering of homicide and suicide at the level of Japanese Prefectures. Using data for two time periods, 1985 and 1995, we assess how the spatial patterning of Japanese violence changed in recent years. The techniques of exploratory spatial data analysis are used for this purpose. Multivariate spatial regressions are used to attempt to “explain away” observed violence clustering. Results of these tests are interpreted with reference to social-structural theories of violence and various diffusion-based explanations.
The State Police: Patrol Tasks and Trooper Discretion
To broaden the police literature and aid in professional innovation, this research focuses on the state police as a distinctive policing form. In particular, this study identifies the core tasks that make up trooper work, the critical tasks that supervisors expect troopers to perform correctly, and the legal and extra legal variables that mold trooper discretion. Based on empirical research of a state police organization, this work utilized various data sources, such as internal organizational documents, focus group interviews with troopers, supervisors, and command staff, and systematic observations of state police work through trooper ride alongs. The findings of this research echo past work by James Q. Wilson (1968), who classified municipal policing in the United States into three different organizational styles: the watchmen, legalistic, and service style. Like municipal police, state policing falls into three different organizational styles. Indeed, this study found that trooper barracks provide three types of state police services: exclusive service of bounded roadways, general police services to municipalities, or a mix of services to bounded roadways and rural communities.
The Statistical Relationship Between the Rate of Incarceration and the Rate of Crime in Each of the Fifty States: Has the Continuing Prison Expansion Changed Things?
The Politics of Prison Expansion: Winning Elections by Waging War on Crime. (Praeger, 1998) presented the results of a multiple regression equation that sought to find a statistical relationship between the rate of incarceration in each of the fifty states and the rate of crime in that state. The absence of a robust relationship between crime rates and incarceration rates was thought to be counter-intuitive by some reviewers. However, the study was based on data that ended in 1992 and during the subsequent decade the U.S. added more than a half million inmates to state prison population. This paper will ask whether the continuing expansion of incarceration has changed the relationship between crime rates and incarceration rates or if other variables continue to have greater salience for predicting incarceration levels in each of the fifty states
The Strange Case of the Non-Existent San Francisco Probate Files
Prof. Bellesiles claims that his research is supported by hundreds of pre-Civil War probate files but the San Francisco Superior Court (and several other repositories) claim that all these records were destroyed in the earthquake and fire of 1906. Scholars and reporters who pressed Prof. Bellesiles to name the archive where he researched these probate records have been given the names of a series of different Bay Area repositories all of which turn out not to have those records.
The Strengthening Washington D.C. Families Project: Description and Process Evaluation
The Strengthening Families Program (SFP; Kumpfer, DeMarsh, and Child, 1989) has been disseminated as an effective family-based program targeting several family and child risk factors for substance use. This program consists of fourteen hour-long sessions delivered to children aged 7-11, fourteen hour-long sessions delivered to the parents of these children, and fourteen hour-long family sessions during which the children and parents come together to practice their new skills. This paper reports on an ongoing randomized study of the effectiveness of for reducing substance use and its precursors among children from 800 primarily African American families residing in the Washington D.C. metropolitan area. As of the writing of this paper, 443 families have been enrolled in the study by five different program sites in the D.C. area. An extensive process evaluation documents implementation barriers and successes. Recruitment and retention of these families in a research study present major challenges, as do fear of research, poverty, stress, high mobility and greater availability of alternative non-research parenting programs in the local areas. Thirty percent of the families who register for the program and are paid to complete the extensive pre-test never attend a single session, and those participating attend only 8 of the 14 sessions, on average. The program is being delivered with reasonable fidelity to the SFP program curriculum, however, and tests of SFP-related knowledge administered at the end of each session indicate that parents correctly answer most questions. This paper will report on efforts to recruit and retain subjects in the study. Implementation fidelity will also be discussed.
The Strengthening Washington D.C. Families Project: Early Outcome Results From a Randomized Clinical Trial
This paper reports on an ongoing randomized study of the effectiveness of The Strengthening Washington D.C. Families Project (described in the previous paper). The study, funded by the National Institute on Drug Abuse, randomly assigns families of children between the ages of seven and eleven to one of four conditions: parent’s skills training, children’s skills training, family skills training, or minimal contact. The study compares the effects of each of the three training conditions on measures of child self control, rebellious behavior, attitudes about substance use, and academic performance as well as on family bonding and management and substance use of parents and children. With only a little more than half of the desired families enrolled in the study, the preliminary analyses testing 28 a priori hypotheses about relative magnitude of effects across the four conditions suggest no differential effects. Insufficient dosage and an inappropriate client population due to the recruitment difficulties are among the hypothesized reasons for the null findings. This presentation will report results of analyses to explore these hypotheses.
The Targets and Intended Victims of Terrorist Activities in the United States
Little empirical information has been available on the actual targets and/or the intended victims of terrorist groups. For the current analysis, the authors extracted actual targets and intended targets of terrorists indicted in the United States between 1980 and 1999. Using data from the American Terrorism Study, the authors identified the top three actual targets (completed acts) and the top three intended targets (prevented acts) oiof over 400 terrorists from about 50 terrorist groups. Information was extracted from the federal criminal indictments of the terrorists. Analyses of the data suggest that targeting typically falls into one or more of four categories: (1) efforts to obtain funding for the terrorist organization; (2) “ideological revenge” against specific persons who have been vocal in their opposition to the group or its goals; (3) “ideologically symbolic” targets that epitomize the group’s stance on sepcific political issues; and (4) internal targeting of wayward members for security purposes. While one would expect “ideologicalloy symbolic” targets to dominate such an analysis, the number of crimes committed by terrorists in the other categories suggests that the criminal activities of terrorist groups are much more varied and unpredictable than most persons realize.
The Tragic Death of Roy Lee Centers: Explaining Murder and Injustice
In 1974, Roy Lee Centers, a Kentucky singer and guitarist, who was and remains internationally acclaimed, was brutally murdered. The murderer, a local man who also was a deputy sheriff and a member of the local elite, had a history of violence which had been largely officially ignored. Arrested and charged at the scene of the crime, he ultimately was convicted of second degree murder and sentenced to 12 years in prison. After serving three months, he was released under the then new program — shock probation. Based on interviews, public record and newspaper coverage, this case study explores the dynamics of the murder and the manipulation of justice that resulted in the convicted murderer’s prison release and subsequent civil litigation.
The Treatment and Management of Risk: A Sex Offenders’ Perspective
Over recent years Britain has adopted a new set of measures for dealing with sexual offenders. A variety of laws provide for the increased sentences for first time and repeat sexual ofenders and the registration of personal information to criminal justice agencies. The substantial growth of sex offenders in the prison population accounts, in part, for the resurgence of interest in their rehabilitation. The Sex Offender Treatment Programme (SOTP) for prisons began in 1991 as part of an integrated assessment of sex offenders. Since, there has been a growth in the variety of sex offender programmes (accredited and non-accredited), both within the confines of the correctional institution as well as in the community. this paper explores the treatment and management of sex offenders from the perspective of sex offenders. it draws on interviews conducted with sex offenders on the SOTP, the Behaviour Assessment Programme (BAP) and the Community Sex Offender Groupwork programme (CSOGP). It also examines sex offenders’ perspectives of the control mechanisms in place in the community. Offenders’ perspectives are an important aspect of interventions that have been largely neglected by the research community. This paper outlines the significance of programmes and their delivery and surveillance-based initiatives from the offenders’ point of view.
The UK Home Office Research to Evaluate the Effectiveness of Measures to Assist Vulnerable and Intimidated Witnesses: Phase One Results
Following the inter-departmental report Speaking Up For Justice the UK government introduced a series of administrative and legislative measures to better enable vulnerable and intimidated witnesses (VIW’s) to give best evidence in court. The legislative measures are contained in the 1999 Youth Justice and Criminal Evidence Act. The Home Office funded research reported on here consists of a before and after study of the effectiveness of the special measures. It comprises a national survey of VIW’s conducted by BMRB and an evaluation of the measures by Evans and Sanders. This paper reports on the findings of the survey and evaluation from the before phase of the study and describes the research strategy for the after phase. It identifies some of the main issues for witnesses and for criminal justice agencies including the police, the Crown Prosecution Service, the Witness Service and the Courts.
The Ultimate Victimization: An Exploratory Analysis of Lethal Assaults Against Police Officers
Since the 1970’s, research involving victims of crime has been plentiful. The research into the violent victimization of police officers, however, has not received as much attention. Most often limited to descriptive and situational circumstances only, very few studies have actually sought to examine what factors, if any, correlate to a rise or fall in police officer murders. Furthermore, other than suggesting enhanced training, very few studies have used their data to identify possible methods of the preventing police officer victimizations. This study used qualitative and quantitative data from the California Peace officer’s Memorial to accomplish these tasks. Data will be collected for the past decade, and analyzed using both descriptive methods and quasi-experimental designs. What are the current trends in law enforcement deaths? Are certain types of calls more dangerous? Does a policy of selective incapacitation provide an added measure of protection to police officers or make it more dangerous for them? Keeping in mind that policing is a highly responsive institution, the results of this study could be valuable in re-inventing the way law enforcement practitioners police the public. In turn, the public will benefit from a better-informed, better educated, and more professionalized police force.
The Unanticipated Contributions of Criminology to Understanding Terrorism
American criminology was caught off-guard by the events of September 11, 2001. There was and is no “criminology of terrorism,” but criminology can make distinctive contributions to the broader intellectual and policy debates that have emerged during the last year. I discuss four such contributions related to defining terrorism, situational crime prevention and the egress problem, terror and anti-terror as moral crusades, and the institutional sources of terrorism. I conclude with criminological skepticism about the effectiveness of addressing the “root causes” of terrorism, when there are good reasons to believe terrorism is rooted in modernism itself.
The Unloved: Sex Offenders With Learning Disabilities
Research indicates that the overwhelming majority of learning disabled offenders tend to be men identified as having behavioural difficulties in childhood. Their childhood background is characterized not only by social and economic deprivation but also by instability that in some cases can even take the form of abuse. This instability does not account only for parental loss but also placing the person to different residences away from family or other caring guardians. Additionally like other mentally retarded people, offenders are at greater risk than non-learning disabled offenders to have fewer opportunities for success in maintaining friendships and close relationships (Murphy, 1992). The results of this research indicate that there are problems regarding relationships and family deprivation. This paper discuss why it appears that the sex offenders with mental retardation are more likely to regard people around them as friends despite the context. In the family context they also tend to minimize victimization and abuse that they have suffered from parents or other responsible caretakers, although it appears that they are more likely to be victimised.
The Use of Alternative Sentences to Imprisonment Under the Federal Sentencing Guidelines
Many legal scholars and some federal judges have criticized the Federal Sentencing Guidelines for their emphasis on sentences to imprisonment that are widely regarded as too severe. The guidelines do permit several sentencing alternatives to imprisonment (intermediate sanctions) for offenders that meet certain requirements. These alternatives include probation, fines, and intermediate confinement options (intermittent confinement, community confinement, and home detention) that substitute for imprisonment. However, critics have maintained that the guidelines do not encouraging the use of these alternatives in enough appropriate cases. For this reason, some federal judges have recommended amending the guidelines to allow for the use of alternatives in a wider variety of cases. This paper will examine the extent to which these alternative sentences to prison are available and being utilized in the federal system. In addition, a multivariate predictive model to determine the type of offender likely to receive an alternative sentence will be constructed. The association between important case and offender characteristics and the receipt of an alternative sentence will be investigated. The research will use logistic regression techniques to examine the relationship between both legal factors (criminal history, offense type and seriousness) and extra-legal factors (such as race, gender, socioeconomic status, citizenship, number of dependents, circuit, and district) with the receipt of an alternative sentence. The analysis will use U.S. Sentencing Commission data on sentenced offenders, available through BJS’s Federal Justice Statistics Resource Center at the Urban Institute.
The Utility of Drug Testing In a Community Prevalence Survey
This presentation focuses on an investigation of the utility of drug testing in this new study, in a random survey of Chicago adults, ages 18 to 40 years. To our knowledge, this is the first community prevalence study to incorporate three separate biological measures (hair, urine, saliva) as an adjunct to a drug survey. Specifically, we address the following research questions: “Compared to a confidential drug survey, what is the incremental value of drug testing to our knowledge of prevalence for three illegal substances: marijuana, cocaine, and opiates (heroin).” “What is the relative increment for each specific type of test considered in this study?” and “How does this increment vary by substance?”
The Validation of a Risk Assessment Instrument for Partner Abusers: Predictive Factors of Recidivism for Male and Female Offenders Deemed at Risk for Domestic Assault
Violence against intimate partners is a serious social problem. The criminal justice system has responded with various initatives in an effort to reduce the harm caused by domestic violence. The importance of assessing risk is crucial for decision-making regarding sentencing, management, supervision, and treatment of these offenders. A recent review of domestic violence risk instruments by Dutton and Kropp (2000) illustrated that there are a number of domestic violence specific risk assessment instruments in use but few have published predictive validity data. The purpose of this paper is to evaluate the predictive validity of the Partner Abusers Risk Assessment an instrument used in two Canadian provinces. Data on a sample of approximately 500 male and 300 female offenders (all had a history of violence against their intimate partner) was analyzed with respect to recidivism (average follow up period of over 2 years). The results focused on the predictive validity characteristics of the Partner Aabusers Risk Assessment as well as gender differences/similairities.
The Very Short-Term Consequences of Adolescent Employment for Grades, Truancy, and In-School Behavior Problems: Evidence From Sound Futures
Social science research on the consequences of high school students’ paid employment can be divided into two methodological camps. The first camp considers the cross-sectional association between adolescent employment and outcomes, and can only make weak causal claims. The second camp considers the longitudinal association between adolescent employment in one year and outcomes in subsequent years. Although the second camp can make stronger causal claims, the long time lag between measures of adolescent employment and outcomes is problematic because theories about the consequences of adolescent employment imply that any effects should be short-term in nature. In order to consider the very short-term effects of adolescent employment on grades, truancy, and in-school behavior problems, we utilize data that contains weekly measures of adolescent employment and these outcomes.
The Vice Lords After Four Decades: A Criminological Analysis
The Vice Lord gang is ideal for criminological analysis because of its growth and persistence over the years. Previous research on the Vice Lord gang is critically appraised. Current data based upon a multi-method research design is analyzed regarding the organization, structure, function, and activities of this gang. Implications for theory and some of the ethical issues involved in gang research are also discussed.
The Victim on my Mind. Incorporating Victim Costs in the Rational Choice Decision Function of the Offender, Accounting for Egoism and Impulsivity
In this theoretical paper we propose a new conceptualization of the rational choice model of criminal behavior, incorporating on the one hand, victim costs, and on the other hand, elements from Gottfredson and Hirschi’s general theory of crime. We distinguish two separate elements in the rational choice model, the unconditional cost/benefit balance of committing a crime, and the conditional costs of the crime, conditional on being caught and sanctioned, which remain zero if the offender is not caught. New in our approach is the introduction of ‘victim costs’ into the unconditional cost/benefit balance. We suggest that the amount of pain inflicted on victims of a crime influences people when considering the evaluation of the outcome of behavioral choices for themselves and therefore should be incorporated in what criminals perceive as costs. The second new element in our approach is our proposal to weigh (elements in) the two components of the rational choice evaluation function, since not all persons will be equally susceptible to conditional or unconditional costs. We propose to weigh the victim costs with a weighing factor dependent on the level of egoism of the individual and the unconditional costs with a weight dependent on the level of impulsivity.
The Vienna Convention and Mexicans Charged With First Degree Murder
Article 36 of the Vienna Convention on Consular Relations is the Supermen Law of the Land under Article VI of the United States Constitution which states that Treaties and Agreements between foreign governments shall be recognized by the United States (Adler, Mueller, Laufer. p. 451). The Violation of this right causes a great deal of problems for foreign nationals that are interrogated and sign a confession declaring their culpability in a crime that they might not have committed, but because they are not notified by the local authorities that they have the right to contact their Consulate there are not aware of what rights they are waiving when they sign the confession.
Their Dying Words: Analyzing the Last Statements of Executed Offenders
Our paper draws on several data sources including Texas Department of Criminal Justice records and local newspaper reports to analyze the last statements of offenders executed in the state of Texas from 1982 to the present. We code last statements for expressions of remorse, shame, forgiveness, contempt, situational constraint and innocence and relate the content of these statements to offender, offense and victim characteristics. Our analysis of approximately 200 cases indicates that the dying words of executed offenders are patterned, and that these patterns are related to factors including the race of the offender and his prior relationship to the victim.
Theorizing Criminal Justice: An Emerging Infrastructure
Crime and Justice Studies does not have a recognizable body of theoretical scholarship about the criminal justice system. The activity of “theorizing”, most assume, is reserved for explaining crime – implying that it is either not possible or desirable to theorize crime control or the CJS. This paper discusses the necessity and utility of theorizing criminal justice, and seeks to identify the various theoretical orientations in our field of study, both traditional and contemporary, which help us to make sense of the criminal justice apparatus. An organizational schema of these orientations is presented using the tool of metaphors (e.g., CJ as System, CJ as Socially Constructed Reality, CJ in Late-Modern Society).
Thinking About Gender, Vulnerability and Fear of Crime
: In “Doing Gender”, West and Zimmerman describe gender as a ‘routine, methodical and recurring accomplishment’ (1987:126). Stanko applies this constructionist perspective to women’s practices of crime prevention. In “Safety Talk” she asserts that being a woman means being aware of one’s vulnerability to crime and incivilities (1996). Hence, doing gender means doing safety. Recent work by Hollander has further explored the construction of gender around issues of danger (2001). She found that femininity and vulnerability are strongly linked in conversations about violence. However, femininity need not always be constructed as vulnerable. Women do overcome fear of crime in public spaces (Koskela 1997) and can reconstruct femininity to include aggressive behaviour (McCaughey 1998). To more fully understand the gendered nature of fear and vulnerability, intra-gender diversity on this topics must be examined. Therefore, this paper will explore the variation in women’s fear of crime and the differing responses to it. Using data from the 1999 Canadian General Social Survey on Personal Risk, structural variables will be examined in tandem with routine activities to account for the different ways women deal with their fear of crime.
Thinking Hard About Measuring the Effectiveness of Restorative Justice Programs
The extraordinary growth of interest in restorative justice both as an alternative and as an addition to normal criminal justice processing is widely recognised. This brings with it an obligation to test RJ programs as rigorously as we can to ensure that ƒ€˜feeling rightƒ€™ does not become a substitute for ƒ€˜doing rightƒ€™. It has been suggested that evaluating RJ programs is a more than usually difficult task because of the sometimes undefined nature of the intervention and the diverse and multiple objectives many espouse. In addition RJ programs are guided by values which may need also to inform the evaluation. The paper will discuss the processes by which realistic and useful outcome criteria can be arrived at, while acknowledging the special issues that need to be considered in restorative justice, and how relevant and appropriate methodologies for addressing the outcome criteria can be employed.
Threat, Social Control and Urban Violence: Examining Black Threat, Incarceration Rates and Urban Disadvantage in the Study of Violence
Much of the race-relations literature points to the decline in marrigeability in urban areas. Some scholars suggest this is due to an increase in joblessness among black males; others attribute it to a “marriage squeeze”– the point at which women who wish to marry outnumber available men. High mortality rates among young black men, in addition to high rates of incarceration, have been suggested to further exacerbate the imbalance in the pool of potential spouses. In this paper we explore the influence of disaggregated incarceration rates when examining the linkages between urban disadvantage and race-specific homicide rates. That is, we explore the direct and indirect relationships between urban disadvantage, marriageability, incarceration rates and violence among race-specific groups. By incorporating social control efforts into this study of violence, we integrate arguments of black threat with urban disadvantage when explaining the racial disparities in incarceration rates and violence in urban areas.
Thugs and Thieves: Differential Correlates for Violent Behavior and Stealing
There has been broad consensus among criminological theorists and others that criminals do not “specialize” (see, for example, the work of Farrington). Evidence suggests that high rate offenders commit a variety of crimes. Nevertheless, there are many studies that find distinguishing characteristics of violent offenders and the nature of violent crime and it is the case that only some offenders commit violent offenses. The present paper emphasizes the importance and the possibility of predicting violent behavior and presents data from the National Youth Survey that are instructive regarding differential correlates of violent offending and stealing.
Time Passages: Historical Relationships Between Crime and Violence Rates in the United States and Their Usefulness in Forecasting Future Relationships
In recent years, the relationship between lethal and non-lethal violence has increasingly become the focal point of scholarly research. A number of studies have investigated the extent to which homicides and assaults differ from one another in attempts to identify factors associated with lethal outcomes. However, much of this work has been based on cross-sectional data and little attention has been paid to historical trends in lethal and non-lethal violence rates. In this study, we use multivariate time series analysis techniques to more closely examine temporal variations in the relationship between lethal and non-lethal violence rates and the relationship between violence and property crime rates in the United States. Of particular interest is the extent to which rates of lethal and non-lethal violence exhibit similar trends in terms of increases, decreases, and periods of stability, and whether or not they respond similarly to macrolevel changes in the structure and organization of society and social institutions. Also of interest is the concordance and discordance between violent and property crime rates and the extent to which this information can be used in predicting or estimating future trends in crime and violence rates.
To Hit or Not to Hit: The Effects of Social Capital on Youth Violence
Data from the Cross-National Study of the Youth Drug-Violence Nexus being conducted in the Philadelphia and Toronto areas is utilized in this analysis of the impact of various social capital variables on self-reported violent behavior of adolescents. The analysis is limited to the U.S. detainee and community samples and is focused on social capital variables that include neighborhood attachment, parental/family attachment, parental and respondent activities, and attachment to friends. Each group of social capital variables is assessed as to their impact on the amount of violence visited upon the respondent in the past 12 months and on the amount of violence the respondent has done to others during that same period of time.
Too Late for Luck: An Analysis of Post-Furman Executions ‘Despite Doubts About Their Guilt’
This study will examine twenty executions nationwide from 1972-2000 that involved compelling claims of innocence. Narratives will provide a rich, descriptive, objective account of these cases as well as insiders’ opinions about the causes of the “wrongful convictions and executions” and the evidence used to support these claims. The second component of this study will be a quantitative analysis. It will consist of a systematic examination of the pivotal factors that may lead to an overturned conviction and subsequent release from death row. This section will focus on hypothesis testing relating to factors that may increase the likelihood of a case resulting in a reversal as opposed to an execution. In order to test these hypotheses, a comparison group of eighty documented cases from 1972-2000 in which prisoners were released from death rows because of “doubts about their guilt” will be utilized. This comparison will permit a systematic examination of the differences between cases that result in a release from death row and those that result in an execution. By analyzing the significant factors that may affect the outcome of the judicial review process, important insights into the dynamics of this process can be achieved.
Toward a Multilevel Integrated Model: Beyond the Theoretical Integration
This paper refutes the critiques against the theoretical integration in criminology and suggests an integrated model that incorporates two levels and two dimensions of social phenomenon. I argue that the critique against integration is rather based on psychological interpretation of assumptions raised by sociological theories so that the wrong interpretation should not be credited. Following Elliott (1985), I also argue that an integrated model should not be confused with a mixed model, which does not resolve the assumption conflict without any clarification of relationship between integrated theories. Finally, I argue that integration should not be limited to theoretical integration but should be expanded to the linking attempts between macro and micro levels. Upon these considerations, I propose an integrated model that incorporates two different levels (e.g. macro vs. micro or structure vs. process) and two different dimensions (community and opportunity factors) of delinquent process and elaborate the relationship between levels and dimensions. In addition, my theoretical framework includes the age effect by which I argue that age has an indirect effect on juvenile delinquency mediated through the social relationship change. A theory is none other than a proper guidance of research to explain the social phenomenon more broadly and thoroughly. It should not be an obstacle to do a research. Theories happen to exist in advance before researchers show their intention of research.
Toward an Integrated Theoretical Perspective of Juvenile Delinquency: A Partial Replication and Extension
Many criminologists have expressed considerable dissatisfaction with existing theories of crime and deviance noting that single theories have failed to adequately explain deviant behavior. As a result, many advocate theoretical integration as a viable alternative to single theories in explaining criminality. However, in order to develop a more complete crime theory, an examination of both offenders and victims is necessary. The primary purpose of crime theories is to determine what motivates the offender to commit a criminal act, but they ignore the role of the victims in the criminal or delinquent events. To date, the integration of criminological and victimization theories remain unexamined in empirical research. The present research fills this gap by synthesizing social bond, differential association, and routine activity theories into one theoretical model to determine its predictive utility in the explanation of juvenile delinquency. Using cross-sectional data obtained from the Gang Resistance Education and Training (G.R.E.A.T.) survey, a sample of 1,555 middle school students were examined. The theoretical implications of the integrated model are discussed.
Tracking DNA Offender Hits on the New York State DNA Data Bank: An Analysis of Criminal Justice Case Processing Outcomes
This report examines the first 100 hits on the New York State DNA Data Bank. Established in 1994 and expanded in 1999, the State DNA Data Bank is part of CODIS, the national Combined DNA Index System developed by the FBI. A hit denotes a match between a DNA profile taken from a forensic evidentiary sample, submitted by law enforcement as part of a criminal investigation, and an offender’s DNA profile stored on the Convicted Offender Index of the State DNA Data Bank.
Traffic Stop Data Collection: The Impact of Methodology on Research Regarding Race-Based Policing
In February 2002, researchers released findings from the North Carolina Highway Traffic Study (NCHTS). Various aspects of motor vehicle stops were examined, in order to determine whether racial disparities exist among drivers who were issued a citation. Accident rates were calculated for each racial/ethnic group and used as a baseline measure of risk for being involved in a traffic stop. In many instances, NCHTS researchers found that African American drivers were more likely to receive some sort of citation or written warning, when compared with accident rates for African American drivers. This paper replicates the likelihood ratios calculated by NCHTS researchers, using data from the Police Public Contact Survey (PPCS) collected by the Bureau of Justice Statistics. The paper will feature three distinct sections. First, similarities and differences in research findings will be discussed, with particular focus on the validity and reliability of the specific NCHTS and PPCS measures employed. Second, the advantages and disadvantages of the disparate data collection methods utilized by each study will be discussed in light of the research findings. Third, suggestions will be made for improving data collection regarding racial bias by police in traffic stops, based on methodological considerations highlighted in the previous two sections of the paper.
Training Cops About Kids: Still in the Toddler Stage
The amount and type of training in a police academy is fundamental to the preparation of police officers for their future role as tatekeepers of the criminal justice system. Police academy training is designed to enhance police officers decision-making processes without the use of personal beliefs and attitudes. This is critically important when dealing with juveniles, who have one of the most fragile and misunderstood relationships between police. Current police academy training curricula reflects little attention to the subject of understanding juvenile justice and delinquency. A preliminary nationwide survey indicates that on average, only a few hours of training in juvenile issues is mandated to instruction when compared to the total number of training hours in the academy curriculum. This current trend may be critically shortchanging a police officer’s initial understanding of juveniles and delinquency.
Trajectories of Alcohol and Drug Use Among French-Canadian Boys From Low SES Families
The aim of the present study was to compute trajectories of alcohol and drug use among French Canadian adolescent boys from low SES families. A semi-parametric mixture model was used to analyze data from a sample of 1037 boys, part of an ongoing longitudinal study in Montreal, Canada. Subjects were assessed yearly on substance use between the ages of 10 and 16. Alcohol, marijuana and hard drugs consumption were examined. Trajectories observed for the different substances were compared, and trajectories for general substance use were examined as well. The pertinence of examining substances separately when computing trajectories of use, and the methodological and conceptual issues involved in combining them are discussed.
Trajectories of Change in Suburban Violent Crime Rates: The Influence of Demography, Social Organization, and Spatial Disadvantage
Models of crime trends in the United States typically focus on the largest cities, metropolitan areas, or higher-level units of analysis like counties or states. We extend these efforts by examining how crime and victimization patterns are spread among much smaller places. Specifically, we estimate hierarchical latent growth curve models to describe and explain baseline differences in suburban crime rates and variation in rates of change over time for a sample of 122 Chicago suburbs (all with populations greater than 10,000). We draw from both official crime data over the decade of the 1990s as well as survey-based measures of victimization. Findings offer evidence of significant variation in baseline rates of violent crime as well as linear and quadratic time trends suggesting that spatial inequality in crime rates across suburbs (in 1990) was accompanied by differences in the degree to which suburbs benefited from declines in crime during the 1990s. The paper explores the extent to which social disorganization measures-concentrated disadvantage, residential stability, ethnic heterogeneity, population density, and community attachment-as well as spatial proximity to disadvantage explain differences in baseline rates and trajectories of change in violent crime.
Transient Males: Prison/ Jail Re-Entry, Drugs and Violence
This paper describesunstable “coupling” prevailing in the inner city referred to as transient domesticity. Men come and go between households, typically staying less than one year in any one place. These experiences are punctuated by prison jail terms. Drug use and violence are commonplace. This paper explores these transient males’ attitudes toward women, children and society and the criminal justice system. It also examines their difficulties exacerbated by societies’ attitude and interaction with the criminal justice system. They experience difficulty in obtaining or maintaining any type of self-sustaining stabilization force in their lives and the roles of their partners, mothers and children in this equation.
Transnational Terrorism and Terrorist Design: Modalities of Organizational Structure and Problem-Solving Proposed
Through the use of qualitative analysis, this study seeks to analyze the manner by which the United States government categorizes, classifies and responds to terrorist groups. Little or no research has been performed appraising the methods governments utilize in classifying or categorizing terrorist groups, or the modality governments might employ when responding to incidents of transnational terrorism. The underlying assumption is that the current systems employed by the United States government both fail to comprehensively categorize terrorist groups, or sufficiently address the motivating factors behind transnational terrorism. These systems are inadequate for classifying terrorist groups or responding to incidents of transnational terrorism; therefore, new models will be presented.
Transnational Trafficking of Women and Girls
Trafficking of women for commercial sexual exploitation is a growing international problem that is attracting wide attention from certain governments, especially the U.S., the U.N., Non-Governmental Organizations and other public and private agencies. The paper will discuss the problem of trafficking in some of the so-called “destination countries” and summarize the latest anti-trafficking measures adopted by the U.S., the U.N., and several individual countries in Europe, Asia and Africa.
Treat Juveniles as Adults: General Perception of Southern Nonmetropolitan Residents
Recent studies show that juvenile crime has risen in proportion to overall crime rates since the mid-1980s. Nationally, juveniles arrested for violent index crimes increased 60 percent since 1987, and the estimated number of juvenile arrests for year 2000 for most serious offenses, was 2,369,4000. In year 2000, there were an estimated 1,200 juvenile arrests for murder. Youth under the age of 15 accounted for 67% of all juvenile arrests for arson in year 2000. The involvement of juveniles in gun violence is also relatively high in U.S. The firearm homicide rate for children under 15 years of age is 16 times higher in the United States of America than 25 other industrialized countries combined. The prosecutors are under pressure to treat these youths as adults in adult courts. This study intends to measure how the nonmetropolitan residents view the separate juvenile justice system and treating youth offenders through juvenile justice system, which according to many is a too lenient system. This study will interview a sample of nonmetropolitan residents and measures their attitudes about the juvenile justice system. It will measure people’s attitudes and ideas about how society should punish juvenile offenders.
Treating Drug-Involved Juvenile Offenders
The Juvenile Breaking the Cycle (JBTC) Program, a National Institute of Justice (NIJ) funded initiative, is an ambitious effort to effect major changes in the lives of juvenile offenders in Lane County (Eugene), Oregon. Extensive evidence suggests that juvenile offenders are often involved with alcohol and drugs, and that substance use is one of the etiological factors contributing to delinquency. The JBTC program is a comprehensive yet focused approach for dealing with drug-involved juvenile offenders, as it addresses substance use and other potential disorders, such as mental illness and familial problems. The evaluation of JBTC, which is funded by NIJ, includes a process evaluation, an outcome evaluation, and a cost/benefit analysis. Data for these evaluative components are gathered from three primary sources: (1) individual juvenile offenders; (2) key service providers and programmatic stakeholders; and, (3) program, county, and state management information sources. This paper presents (6 month) outcome data on the relationships between key outcome variables, namely substance use and delinquency, and various juvenile offender characteristics, such as demographics, substance abuse and mental health treatment utilization, risk assessment, substance use, victimization, educational involvement, and mental health diagnoses.
Treating Drug-Involved Prisoners: Implications for Drug Control and Community Safety
With continually growing numbers of drug-involved offenders in the criminal justice system, substance abuse treatment may be a critical part of the overall correctional process. A multistage therapeutic community treatment system, corresponding to the client’s changing correctional status, had been implemented in the Delaware correctional system, with a centerpiece of treatment during the transition from prison. Treatment participants in the program have significantly lower rates of relapse to drug use and criminal recidivism 5 years after release. These outcome data suggest that the widespread implementation of such treatment programs would bring about significant reductions in both drug use and related crime and the substantial associated costs.
Treating Technical Parole Violators in Pennsylvania: Outcomes From an RSAT Evaluation
Findings from a three-year outcome evaluation of the Residential Substance Abuse Treatment (RSAT) program in Pennsylvania. The RSAT program is designed for technical parole violators (TPV), a population that accounts for an increasing percentage of the state correctional population, and is the first corrections-based program targeting this group in the state. The three-phase program consists of six months of intensive treatment in a prison-based therapeutic community followed by six months community corrections living and intensive outpatient care, and, six months of outpatient participation while on parole. The evaluation includes both process and outcome findings for each phase of programming. Implementation findings include descriptive information on the treatment sample, the treatment programs and correctional and parole supervision. Researchers will present data on RSAT participants for up to thirty months after release from state prison for return to custody. This treatment group (n=412) is compare with a matched group of technical parole violators who were not placed in RSAT (n=288) and were released from state incarceration during the same period as the treatment group. Outcome findings will include rates of retention, rates of return to custody, period of time at risk and reason for return. The presentation will conclude with a discussion about the benefits and challenges of providing corrections-based drug treatment.
Treatment and Services Usage Among Juvenile and Adult Offenders
Outcry for rehabilitation and/or punishment of juvenile offenders has increased the need for appropriate treatment and services. In order to address the needs of this population, it is imperative that we examine the treatment and services utilized by offenders. This presentation will describe differences in the number, type (drug/alcohol or emotional need and setting) and helpfulness of treatments and services by (1) adult offenders (2) adolescent offenders in the juvenile justice system and (3) adolescents who have been transferred to the adult system. Adult offenders will be fairly matched with juvenile offenders, using juvenile offenses committed by the adults, for an historical perspective of the changes made in service accessibility over the decade. Further, the sample will include psychopaths in each age group to address the issue of whether psychopaths receive services and, if so, how they view these services. Findings will address the potential disproportionate receipt of services between (a) adults and adolescents, and more importantly, (b) between adolescent psychopaths and nonpsychopaths. Despite the assumption that psychopathic kids are untreatable, there is evidence of a dose-response effect for adolescents who have received high scores on the PCL:YV. This presentation will be vital in understanding the current service accessibility, utilization, and helpfulness in the offenders’ communities. This work will facilitate future discussions on where treatment and services should be directed for increased success.
Treatment Approaches in Juvenile Drug Courts
The application of adult drug court models in programs for juvenile offenders presents a series of challenges, not the least of which is adapting treatment protocols to the specific needs of a juvenile population. Drug abuse interventions for juveniles generally follow a preventive approach rather than an addiction treatment model, a notion that is mostly appropriate for substance-using juveniles. The thirteen principles of effective treatment developed by the National Institute on Drug Abuse (NIDA) may still be the best source of information for developing approaches to treating court-based juvenile populations. This paper examines the application of these principles to juvenile drug courts, with specific attention to treatment effectiveness.
Trends in Adolescent Female Crime
This paper addresses the issue of trends in adolescent female crime and delinquency. Claims that adolescent female crime is rising and increasing faster or catching up with male rates is frequently asserted. The principal goal of this paper is to examine trends in adolescent female delinquency over the past two decades. Our analysis includes multiple data sources on female crime including both official (UCR arrests) and unofficial (Monitoring the Future) sources. Material presented will include male and female rates, female share of offending and offender-profile percentages.
Trends in Female (and Male) Crime: An HLM Analysis of the Impact of Changing Family Structure on Levels of Violence, 1970-2000
Little research has been directed toward explaining trends in female violence and differences across communities in levels of female offending. Moreover, although original theoretical explanations of the ecological distribution of crime were dynamic, that is, rooted in theories of community change, modern models of these processes have remained static (i.e., cross-sectional). This paper compares the influence of macro-structural variables on female and male violent offending for 1970-2000 through the use of county-level sex-disaggregated arrest data from the Uniform Crime Reports merged with county-level Census data. Specifically, the analysis addresses: 1) whether spatial patterns of county-level female violent crime are similar to those for males for 1970 through 2000; 2) how changes in the structural features of communities, particularly in the family institution but also in the economy, drive female and male rates of violent crime; and 3) the extent to which these changes differentially impact female and male criminal behavior. Hierarchical linear modeling (HLM) techniques appropriate for repeated measures are used to assess how changing social and economic conditions impact trends in levels of violent offending for females and males. Little research has been directed toward explaining trends in female violence and differences across communities in levels of female offending. Moreover, although original theoretical explanations of the ecological distribution of crime were dynamic, that is, rooted in theories of community change, modern models of these processes have remained static (i.e., cross-sectional). This paper compares the influence of macro-structural variables on female and male violent offending for 1970-2000 through the use of county-level sex-disaggregated arrest data from the Uniform Crime Reports merged with county-level Census data. Specifically, the analysis addresses: 1) whether spatial patterns of county-level female violent crime are similar to those for males for 1970 through 2000; 2) how changes in the structural features of communities, particularly in the family institution but also in the economy, drive female and male rates of violent crime; and 3) the extent to which these changes differentially impact female and male criminal behavior. Hierarchical linear modeling (HLM) techniques appropriate for repeated measures are used to assess how changing social and economic conditions impact trends in levels of violent offending for females and males. Little research has been directed toward explaining trends in female violence and differences across communities in levels of female offending. Moreover, although original theoretical explanations of the ecological distribution of crime were dynamic, that is, rooted in theories of community change, modern models of these processes have remained static (i.e., cross-sectional). This paper compares the influence of macro-structural variables on female and male violent offending for 1970-2000 through the use of county-level sex-disaggregated arrest data from the Uniform Crime Reports merged with county-level Census data. Specifically, the analysis addresses: 1) whether spatial patterns of county-level female violent crime are similar to those for males for 1970 through 2000; 2) how changes in the structural features of communities, particularly in the family institution but also in the economy, drive female and male rates of violent crime; and 3) the extent to which these changes differentially impact female and male criminal behavior. Hierarchical linear modeling (HLM) techniques appropriate for repeated measures are used to assess how changing social and economic conditions impact trends in levels of violent offending for females and males.
Trust in a High Risk Environment: Implications for Correctional Officer Stress
Stress is a well-documented problem for correctional staff as well as other law enforcement professionals. Unmanaged stress can negatively effect institutional security and therefore can potentially hinder the mission of a correctional facility. Existing research has identified work peers and the overall functioning or management of an institution as two key sources of stress. This paper examines the impact of “trust in peers” and “trust in management” on reducing correctional officer stress. Taking the perspective of organizational stress research, we hypothesize that Correctional Officers with high levels of trust appraise their environment as less threatening and as a consequence experience less work related stress. Data from a system-wide survey of 1,000 correctional staff from a southern U.S. state found strong support for the beneficial effects of both types of trust. Further analyses suggest that, while always important, the impact of trust decreases with organizational tenure.
Trying Kids as Adults: The Phenomenon of Transfer in the 1990’s
Arguably the most major change in the last decade in mechanisms for dealing with youth crime has been the significant and rapid increase in trying youth as adults. Between 1990 and 1996 alone, 40 states implemented new laws to govern such transfer provisions – in all cases making it easier to transfer more and younger youth to criminal court jurisdiction. Too often subsumed under general theories of larger social trends toward punitive punishment practices in the last two-three decades, the transfer phenomenon is worthy of its own in-depth analysis. This paper examines a number of relevant factors, and the interplay among them, including the contradictions and ambiguities that have been part and parcel of the juvenile justice system, the moral panic over “youth violence” in the late 80’s/early 90’s, the inability of the public, media, and political leaders to understand the distinction between “juvenile crime” and “youth violence,” as well as the role that trying youth as adults plays in the larger complex of increasingly punitive punishment that characterize the US at the end of the 20th century. By examining the convergence of all these factors we can begin to understand why the sweeping changes in transfer provisions occurred when they did, their impact upon the guiding theories and functionality of a transformed juvenile justice system, and the impact upon the many “adult kids” the system has created.
Turbulent Talk: Girls’ Making Sense of Violence
This paper draws on research which investigated teenage girls’ views and experiences of violence. The research objective was to explore girls understandings of violence and how it is both encountered and mobilised in their daily lives. The research draws on girls’ personal accounts of their own involvement in, and avoidance of, violence and conflict situations. The research was not conceived of as a study specifically of ‘violent girls’; rather it focused on the everyday understandings, conceptualisations and experiences of ‘ordinary’ girls. Critical to the girls’ discussions about violence is the tension between, on the one hand, blaming individuals and, on the other, explaining their actions by means of an appeal to social context.
Two Steps Forward, One Step Back: Evaluating the Effectiveness of New Jersey’s Halfway-Back Program
Historically, in the state of New Jersey, up to 150 offenders per month have been returned to state institutions where they are required to serve the remainder or some portion of their sentence due to parole violations. Returning such large numbers of offenders to prison comes at great cost; these offenders often take up space in prison that should otherwise be reserved for violent offenders. Furthermore, returning parole violators to prison may in fact lessen offenders’ chances for successful reintegration into the community. Offender’s whose violations are for technical reasons only may well be better served by being sent ‘halfway back’ to more restrictive programs than traditional parole supervision, but less restrictive methods of detainment than incarceration. This paper evaluates the effectiveness of New Jersey’s halfway back program. Policy implications as well as assessments of offender outcome are assessed. Cost-benefit analyses are provided.
Typology of Terrorists
Using a broad definition of terrorism, this paper will identify three broad categories of terrorists who are analyzed by their motivation. The categories consist of those who are motivated by a political or religious belief sysytem, those who have psychological dysfunctions, and those who seek personal benefit or revenge. In addition the paper will present a detailed discussion of subcategories within the main ones that are presented. Various terrorist offenders who fit into specific categories and sub categories will be identified and analyzed, as well as those hybrid actors who share characteristics between categories. The benefits and shortfalls of these categorizations will be discussed, as well as their potential application to government officials, law enforcement, researchers and others.
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U.S. Military Policy Regarding Gays and Lesbians: Lessons Learned From Racial Integration and Homophobia
Service of homosexuals in the nation’s military currently reflects the “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell, Don’t Pursue” policy that is both homophobic and hetersexist. In wartime, “stop loss directives permit retention of homosexuals; in peactime, gays and lesbians are targeted for discharge. We examine trends from World War II through 2001, identifying homophobic policies and future trends, and propose new policy for re-inventing justice.
UCR Versus Locally Acquired Arrest Data as Weighting Targets
Due to the challenges of survey implementation, most studies of arrestees are based on convenience samples from which statistical generalization is problematic. A primary goal of the Arrestee Drug Abuse Monitoring (ADAM) program is to estimate various characteristics of the arrestee population with known precision based on probability samples of booked arrestees in 35 metropolitan areas. Post-sampling stratification adjustments are performed to take into account facility types within sites, variations in arrestee transport patterns, release procedures for different offense types, barriers to continuous 24-hour sampling in most locations, and other similar considerations. ADAM sites currently collect the needed arrest data on all bookings from sampled facilities during the survey field period. This paper explores the possibility of supplementing or substituting these locally acquired booking data with Uniform Crime Report (UCR) data for some or all of the respective ADAM sites, which might permit reliable derivation of weights through statistical means at substantial savings in survey cost. We construct statistical models to examine the relationship between the UCR and locally acquired arrest data and draw conclusions pertinent to ADAM, other arrestee surveys, and similar survey sampling problems.
Understanding Gang-Affiliated Adolescent Females: Developing a Typology
While gang-affiliated young women constitute the largest number of “girls in gangs,” it is ironic the least amount of research has been conducted about this specific group. Since a paucity of studies on gang-affiliated females exist, it is not known whether their type of affiliation (family member and/or friend) or length of affiliation influences the nature and extent of illegal gang activity. Not only do we attempt to examine the social contexts and interrelationships between the family and the gang, we also identify the influence of peer relationships and gang activity. This research contributes to the developing gang literature by using data from a community-based random sample of gang-affiliated young women from San Antonio, Texas. This random sample includes 150 young Mexican American women age 14 to 18 involved in 26 different gangs to explore their relationships, associations and types of illegal gang activities. Specifically, we examine the extent to which these young women differ in illegal gang activities based on social relationships. Such examination of these questions is used to create a gang affiliation index and lays the groundwork for developing a typology of gang-affiliated young women.
Understanding Police Mediation: Promises and Challenges
This exploratory study examined police use of mediation as understood by those who are among those most likely to know how police use mediation in their respective communities, namely the leaders of the community dispute resolution programs in New York State. Questionnaires were mailed to program directors in each of the 62 NYS counties, selected informal interviews were conducted, and official data collected, in order to elicit information regarding how police use mediation themselves or make referrals to the community dispute resolution centers funded by the Unified Court System in New York State. Despite the challenges reported by approximately half of the community dispute resolution programs in providing mediation training to police departments, in fact dispute resolution programs have made some inroads in connecting with their local police departments. This paper will share results from the study as well as promises and challenges of police use of mediation.
Understanding Restorative Conferencing: A Case Study in Informal Decisionmaking in the Response to Youth Crime
A number of different strategies have emerged under the umbrella of restorative decisionmaking. Based on examination of these prototypes prior to this study, it has been apparent that both structural and procedural differences appear to be to some degree linked to the goals, intervention priorities, and ideological orientations of these programs. Despite these programmatic differences, there are common concerns and challenges that cut across model distinctions, as well as important differences within model types. It is therefore important to first identify and describe those common theoretical and policy elements in the restorative conferencing movement that seem to most clearly differentiate these innovations as a group both from formal justice processes, and from other non-restorative informal justice processes. We use the generic term conferencing to include a broad array of restorative decisionmaking programs aimed at addressing the aftermath of a crime, or other harmful act not formally charged as a crime. What makes the response and the process itself restorative, is adherence to a set of core principles and a focus on the overall goal of repairing the harm crime causes. In an evolving restorative justice movement where new hybridized approaches seem to be emerging almost monthly, we hope to focus attention away from programmatic distinctions that may be rather parochial, arbitrary, and temporary and instead emphasize theoretical and philosophical distinctions with more universal application to policy, practice and research.
Understanding the Epidemiology, Etiology, and Consequences of Drug Abuse and Crime
Although it is well known that drug abuse and crime co-occur, the nature of this association between remains unclear. The uncertainty is due, at least in part, to definitional and conceptual confusion related to the heterogeneous nature of both drug abuse and crime. Drug abuse often refers generically to the spectrum of drug use, abuse and addiction, despite important distinctions among these concepts and despite the wide array of drugs of abuse. Crime is a similarly complex human behavior that refers, for example, to violent and non-violent acts, group and individual offenses, and gang and non-gang activities. Furthermore, not only does the drug/crime association vary across crime types, but there are also systemic drug/crime relations linked to drug trafficking that are separate from drug taking. Given the diverse manifestations of and associations between drug abuse and crime, the impact of conceptual imprecision on understanding the drugs/crime nexus is not trivial. Drawing in part from diverse research supported by NIDA’s epidemiology research branch, this paper will discuss conceptual issues and synthesize what is known about the potential mechanisms of association. We suggest that the drugs/crime association is best conceptualized as a cycle with longitudinal, cumulative, and transgenerational effects that are represented at multiple (individual, family, community) levels.
Understanding the Etiology of Female Delinquency and Domestic Violence
This paper explores the correlates and outcomes of girls’ involvement in domestic violence. We argue that family violence plays a major role in many girls’ involvement in the juvenile justice system. It is hypothesized that prior abuse, family violence, and official responses to domestic violence play key roles in recent increases in girls’ violent offending. It is also hyupothesized that a recent statute (Fla. Stat. 985.213 (2)(b)(3)) related to domestic violence and the use of juvenile justice detention facilities has had a differential impact on female juvenile offenders. We present data collected as part of a four-year OJJDP-funded study of juvenile girls committed to secure facilities in Florida. We conduct quantitative and qualitative analyses, triangulating three data sources. The first is the Detention Risk Assessment Instrument for all referrals during 2000-2001 (n=70,000), with particular focus on youths referred for domestic violence-related offenses. We triangulate these findings with data from the Juvenile Justice Information System to develop complete abuse/negelect, referral, offense, and placement history profiles. Multivariate and logistic regression analyses are used to evaluate gender differences in domestic violence-related offending, referrals, and secure residential dispositions. The third data source is semi-structured interviews conducted with a 25% random sample of girls in commitment in Florida (n=68). Qualitative analyses consider issues such as the relationship between the girls’ rationale for violent behavior, ethnic differences, and whether substance abuse was involved.
Understanding the Link Between Girls’ Victimization, Re-victimization, and Delinquency: Results From the Navy Family Study
Factors that have been identified as chief causes of female delinquency have been typically traced back to severe problems in intimate/family relationships, including witnessing marital violence, physical abuse and sexual victimization. Re-victimization has also been examined as both an outcome of child maltreatment and more recently as correlate of female offending. However, the mechanisms through which all three factors interact and influence each other remains generally unexplored. Taking an integrated approach we begin to untangle the complex relationships stemming from girls’ victimization to later delinquency. Data for this presentation come from the Navy Family Study, a project being conducted by Wellesley College, the Medical University of South Carolina, and University of New Hampshire in collaboration with the Navy Family Advocacy Program (FAP). This is a prospective study that involves recruitment of Navy families who have been referred to FAP for intrafamilial physical and/or sexual abuse or partner violence. For this presentation, we will examine data from the initial assessment 2-6 weeks following the report to FAP and the 9-month follow-up interview with 84 girls, ages 7-17. Child abuse history is measured through official report, parent report, and child report. Re-victimization history and delinquency were measured by in-person interviews with the children.
Understanding the Opposition to Parole: Surveying Public Opinion of the Canadian Parole System
The present study examines the nature of public opposition to parole. A total of 400 respondents were included in the survey from across Toronto, Ontario. Respondents were randomly distributed among four experimental information conditions. They either received no additional information about the benefits of parole (CONTROL), information regarding the imminent release of offenders (IMMINENT RELEASE), information on the costs of imprisonment in Canada versus the costs of parole sanctions (PAROLE COSTS), or they received both information sets on the benefits of parole (BOTH). Five hypotheses were tested: (1) that the lack of accurate knowledge regarding the benefits of parole is related to public opposition to parole in general; (2) parole, like any other area of the criminal justice system, is viewed as too lenient on offenders; (3) parole diminishes the principle of proportionality and equity between offenders convicted of similar offences in sentencing; (4) parole diminishes feelings of public safety; and (5) that the administration of parole is unsatisfactory. Each factor that may account for the public’s opposition to parole has been found to work interdependently to weave a complex tapestry of pubic attitudes.
Understanding the Range of Female Criminality: A Prison-Based Test of Three Theories
This study tests three well-respected traditional theories of criminality, which were previously tested primarily on adoelscent boys to see if they could be utilized to predict the range of severity of female criminality found in women’s prisons. Constructs representing Agenew’s Extended Strain Theory, as well as deleterious social structural influences, were tested on a sample of 96 women interviewed by Gilfus in 1966 and 1987 at the Massachusetts Correctional Institution at Framingham. Multiple regression analyses carried out using Gilfus’ data showed that the construct representing Agnew’s Extended Strain Theory, deleterious social structural influences, and the construct representing Hirschi’s 1969 Social Control Theory each significantly predicted the level of severity of female criminality by themselves, but none of the constructs by themselves was able to be combined to improve the prediction of the level of female criminality. Constructs representing three traditional theories of criminality (Agnew’s Extended Strain Theory, Sutherland’s Differential Association Theory, and Hirschi’s 1969 Social Control Theory), as well as deleterious social structural influence (e.g. low income), were tested on a new sample of 120 female inmates at the Topeka Correctional Facility in August of 2001. The findings obtained from analyzing data from the Topeka Sample are somewhat similar to the findings reported from carrying out regression analyses on Gilfus’ data. The construct of Extended Strain was a significant predictor of level of criminality in both samples, but while deleterious social structural influences added to the prediction of Extended Strain in the Topeka sample, this was not found in the data from Gilfus’ sample. These results from analyzing both sets of data on imprisoned women suggest that some of the ideas contained in Agnew’s Extended Strain Theory may offer insights into more serious female criminality.
Understanding the Relationship Between Income Inequality and Homicide Victimization in Central Eastern Europe During the Post-Socialist Transition
Several quantitative cross-national studies have demonstrated a strong positive relationship between income inequality and homicides. However, few of these studies have included nations from Central Eastern Europe in their analyses due to data limitations. The communist history of these countries, which placed a strong emphasis on equality, and the post-communist political and economic transitions, which have resulted in increased inequality, make this region an interesting case for understanding the relationship between income inequality and homicide during a historically unique period of social change. This paper utilizes pooled time series analysis on data from the World Health Organization and the World Bank to understand the relationship between income inequality and homicide victimization in nine post-communist Central Eastern European countries over 10 years. The aim of this paper is to understand how the transition from Soviet-style communism to democratic capitalism has affected income inequality and, in turn, homicide rates both across countries and over time.
Understanding Violent Crime in the Young Adult Offender: A Review of the Literature
With the major concepts of various theories of crime and/or delinquency as a foundation, this paper explores the life of one young male currently serving a 40-year sentence in a Texas prison. Explanations for the decisions made by this young man are explored through face-to-face interviews, a self-administered survey, and other methods of communication (telephone and mail). The interview protocol and survey instrument include questions that are grounded in criminological theory and tested elsewhere for reliability and validity.
Understanding Women’s Pathways to Jail: A Life Event History Analysis of the Lives of Incarcerated Women
The idea of divergent pathways to the criminal justice system has gained increasing theoretical and empirical attention in the past ten years. At issue is whether there is a single causal mechanism that increases the likelihood of criminality (e.g., criminal propensity) or whether there are multiple pathways to crime and, subsequently, to the criminal justice system. Of related interest are the questions of whether pathways diverge by gender or by the point of criminal justice contact. Using a Apathways approach,@ we examine the life experiences of 350 women incarcerated in the Baltimore City Detention Center (BCDC) to identify the different pathways of women to jail. Using life event history analyses, we explore how the pathways of these jailed women compare and contrast with the trajectories of women and men who appear in Daly’s (1994) study of felony court.
Unemployment, Job Access and Crime: A GIS Analysis of Cleveland, Ohio
In many urban areas there is a spatial mismatch between where people live and where the jobs are. In such cases, access to regular employment is difficult, expensive, and time-consuming, especially for those without personal vehicles. Under these conditions, crime may become a more attractive alternative to legitimate employment. Numerous theories and ethnographic accounts have posited a relationship between employment access and crime rates, but the relationship has rarely been studied formally. Using data disaggregated to the census tract level, the present research examines the relationships between job access, unemployment, and crime rates in Cleveland, Ohio in 1980 and 1990. Preliminary analysis of these data has revealed an inverse bivariate relationship between job access and crime rates. In the present study we examine the relationships between job access, unemployment, and crime, controlling for a number of other demographic factors. The core question is whether job access exerts an independent effect on unemployment and crime, or whether it is an undifferentiated part of a general pattern of social disadvantage.
Unemployment and Crime: A Time-Series Analysis Disaggregated by Criminal Career Type
Crime and unemployment (UC) research has often yielded contradictory and inconclusive results. At the theoretical level, these results may reflect the fact that unemployment simultaneously increases criminal motivation and decreases criminal opportunity. At the methodological level, such results may reflect different UC relationships at the micro and macro levels of analysis, the failure of certain studies to control for potentially confounding variables, or the failure of most studies to disaggregate their analyses by key demographic variables and career offender types. To date, reliance on UCR statistics has prevented researchers from disaggregating the analysis of the UC relationship by criminal career type. Drawing on Blumstein’s criminal career paradigm, this study examines whether the UC relationship differs for first-time and habitual offenders. The present study examines complete longitudinal arrest histories (“rap sheets”) of over 1.5 million persons arrested in Georgia since 1985, a cohort that represents over 30 years of arrest history. This analysis will offer the first look into the interplay between unemployment, crime, and career offender types.
Unlikely Partners: The Choreography and Politics of Exotic Dancing
It has been well documented by myself and others that prostitution is more than just a deviant lifestyle. Sex work is, in reality, an enduring social institution comprised of a complex network of inter-related social roles and relationships that mirror, in many ways, those found in the more conventional institutions of society. Yet, the institution of sex work takes on a life of its own-one that brings social stigma as well as legislative and law enforcement attempts to curb its presence. This paper examines one venue in which prostitution plays itself out-the world of the exotic dancer. It is a qualitative study that focuses on sex work in a small, Midwestern community of 400 residents. Located adjacent to a major metropolitan area, this particular community relies upon gentlemen’s clubs, video arcades, and the sale of sex for its livelihood. It is a community bound by the same laws as any other in the state. It is also a community wherein state law and a police presence do little to thwart the sex trade. As I conducted the in-depth interviews necessary for interpretive ethnography I did so with one underlying question in mind: for whom is justice being served?
Unraveling Crime in the Making: Re-examining the Family Context of Adolescent Delinquency
Sampson and Laub’s (1993) Crime in the Making ranks as one of the most important and influential works in criminology over the past decade. Although their work has had a major impact on the criminological enterprise, surprisingly, to date, it has essentially been left unchallenged. This paper represents a critical and crucial theoretical and empirical re-examination and re-analysis of Sampson and Laub’s informal social control theory, within the family context, using the Glueck and Glueck data. Theoretically, it argues that the family model presented by Sampson and Laub is mis-specified by omitting a measure or measures of self-control and including incomplete measures of “difficult temperament.” As a result, Sampson and Laub’s results and interpretation overemphasize the importance of informal social control in the genesis of adolescent delinquency. Empirically, a careful re-analysis and re-specification of Sampson and Laub’s family process model shows that, indeed, the case made for informal social control in Crime in the Making was likely overstated.
Unraveling the Effects of Juvenile Transfer on Recidivism: The Post-Release Behavior of Juveniles Sentenced to Adult Versus Juvenile Correctional Institutions
A growing body of research suggests that prosecution and punishment of juveniles in the criminal courts may exacerbate re-offending. One possible explanation for this result is that incarceration in juvenile facilities differs from incarceration in adult institutions in meaningful ways that have important implications for recidivism. In this presentation we report results of a follow-up study of 144 serious male adolescent offenders whom we interviewed in Florida penal institutions in 1997 and 1998. At the time of the interviews, half of the youths were incarcerated in “deep end” juvenile correctional facilities, while the remainder were housed in adult correctional institutions to which they had been sentenced following transfer to the criminal courts. Recidivism data are reported for those youth who have been released. We then explore whether and to what extent re-offending is related to what youth earlier reported about their experiences in and reactions to incarceration in the two systems.
Unraveling Trends in Arrests and Self-Reported Juvenile Offending
Recently, criminologists have made the claim that juvenile delinquency is declining and that there is in fact no juvenile crime wave (Zimring, 1998; Bernard, 1999). These conclusions rely heavily on official reports of juvenile arrests for serious offenses such as aggravated assault and burglary. While the study of these types of offenses is certainly important, the majority of juvenile offending is of a much less serious nature. Using official Uniform Crime Report arrest data and self-reports of delinquency from the Monitoring the Future Survey, this paper will address the following questions. First, what do time trends in both minor and serious offending over the last 25 years look? Second, what is the correspondence between rates based on self-reports and offense rates based on arrest? Finally, can increases and decreases in aggregate levels of minor offending be used to help researchers better predict changes in rates of serious offending? Analyses reveal that disaggregating indexed juvenile crimes by offense type may facilitate a more inclusive and more sophisticated explanation of juvenile crime trends over the last 25 years.
Unveiling Asian American Bias Victimization
In this paper, I examine the misperceptions of bias crime against Asian ethnics. Although there are clear differences among Asian ethnics, they do share a common reality –they are targets of bias crime due to their real or perceived race –non-white. Since this study does not intend to concentrate on important intra-group differences but on shared experiences as a targeted group, for ease of discussion I refer to all Asian ethnics as Asian Americans. This analysis of Asian American perceptions of bias crime, including knowledge of what shapes them, and reasons for non-reporting, will look deeply into the Asian American victimization experience. To study a group that disproportionately underreports its perpetuators can broaden knowledge about victims and their experiences not captured in reported data.
Urban Regeneration and Crime Reduction: Contradictions and Dilemmas in the U.K. Context
Since New Labour came to power in their landslide victory in 1997 a number of initiatives have been introduced or redeveloped with the aim of regenerating neighbourhoods experiencing deprivation on a range of indicators. Reducing crime and involving local communities form important parts of their remits. These initiatives include the (new) Single Regeneration Budget (SRB) the New Deal for Communities (NDC), and, more recently, a package of activities included in the National Strategy for Neighbourhood Renewal. A common theme running through these initiatives, and indeed others preceding them, is that they are to be pursued in partnerships involving local authorities, other statutory bodies, private, the voluntary and community sectors. While these developments signify that there have been some considerable improvements in the government’s approach, questions remain about whether the major problems that undermined previous efforts to regenerate communities, and reduce crime, will persist under these initiatives, despite the government’s claim that it has learned the lessons of the past. This paper seeks to address some of these issues and in so doing will show why it is simplistic to assume that community regeneration will reduce crime and disorder, particularly in declining and distressed neighbourhoods.
Use and Evaluation of Hair Analysis, Urinalysis, and Ion Mobility Spectrometry in a Juvenile Diversion Program in New Orleans
This paper will report on a innovative juvenile drug-offender pre-trial diversion program modeled after the ongoing New Orleans (Adult) Diversion Program. Among the distinctive and unique features of this program are the combined use of three drug detection technologies, urinalysis, hair analysis, and ion mobility spectrometry (IMS). These techniques are used for client assessment and monitoring. Although the Juvenile Diversion Program is generally modeled on the principles of an established Adult Diversion Program, it contains a number of unique and specific features that target the specific client juvenile population; young, primarily teenage, first-time criminal offenders who are involved in drug-abuse. This paper will describe the conceptual basis of the juvenile diversion process, its specific operational character, the integration of the three drug testing technologies into the protocols of the program, and the results of the application of these technologies. The Juvenile Diversion Program is an example of an important method for responding to drug-involved, arrested juveniles. The amount of drug use by criminally involved youth is substantial. Diversion represents a potentially effective way to deliver treatment and services to this population, and consequently maximize the likelihood of long-term, positive behavior change. Furthermore, diversion as a general approach to the handling of juvenile offenders represents a mechanism of criminal justice response that is less financially costly than traditional approaches relying on incarceration. The diversion program offers a wide range of aid, services, and support in addition to traditional correctional monitoring. The paper will offer the intensive diagnostic and clinical assessments, treatment options, and ancillary support that are central components of a viable diversion process.
Use of Cost Effectiveness Criteria in Selecting Program Models
When the National Academy of Science Panel on Violence published its final report in 1994 it did not identify any specific strategies or program models that were proven to be effective in reducing criminal violence. In the 8 years that have elapsed since the publication of that report the research community has identified at least a dozen program models that have proven themselves to be effective through rigorous scientific testing, long term follow-up of subjects, and replication in multiple sites. Most of the proven programs involve individually targeted approaches to high-risk youth. Most require a significant expenditure per subject, ranging from a few hundred dollars for the less intensive programs, to more than $10,000 per subject for youth already involved in the juvenile justice system. However, despite these significant costs, many of the proven programs have been shown to produce savings in future criminal justice costs that far exceed the costs of the programs – more than $10 in savings for every one dollar invested in the program. However despite this potential win/win situation, very few communities have moved aggressively to capitalize on this new information. This paper looks at how this information is being used by communities to select program models, and the roadblocks that arise to prevent full exploitation of the information.
Using a New Typology of Deviance to Analyze Ten Common Norms of the United States Middle-Class
In a recent article, we proposed a new typology that integrates normative and reactivist perspectives on deviance. This typology cross-classifies reactivist and normative definitions of deviance and more precisely distinguishes different types of deviance. Negative) deviance involves underconformity to norms and negative evaluations. Rate-busting refers to overconformity that is negatively evaluated. Deviance admiration refers to underconformity that is positively evaluated. Positive deviance refers to overconformity that is positively evaluated. Our typology compensates for deficiencies in the separate conceptions of deviance by highlighting their contradictions (e.g., reactivists fail to consider rate-busting; normativists ignore deviance admiration). In this paper, we show how these different types of deviance can be applied to ten common norms Tittle & Paternoster (2000:35) identified as operating among the U.S. middle-class. They specified the forms of classic deviance that result from underconformity to these norms (e.g., underconformity to the norm of group loyalty is apostasy; underconformity to the norm of honesty is deceitfulness). We show the importance of examining social reactions and overconformity, by identifying other forms of deviance (rate-busting, deviance admiration, and positive deviance) associated with each of these norms. For example, over-adherence to the norm of group loyalty can be negatively evaluated as fanaticism and overconformity to honesty can result in tactlessness, which are both forms of rate-busting. In summary, we use our typology to extend their classification of types of deviance.
Using Algorithms to Create Long-Term Measures of Self-Reported Public Mood
One of the major limitations of self-report data about crime or punishment is that few longitudinal studies have asked respondents the same questions over extended periods of time. In response to the problems of incomplete data series, political scientists have used algorithms to create a single measure of public mood by incorporating several different data sources that ask respondents similar questions about a policy issue over time. This process focuses on what we don’t know – missing values – to what we do know, by combining similar series from different sources over time. This study examines several indicators of public mood created using algorithms, including political disaffection, racial policy preferences and public policy mood. Implications for the study of criminology and public opinion over time using algorithms are discussed.
Using Cluster Analysis for the Identification of Multivariate Trajectories
Criminologists have used six strategies for studying quantitative and qualitative changes in the course of offending. They provided interesting information on the various developmental trajectories of offending. However, all of them suffer of some limitations. The most often used method to date was the semi parametric group-based modeling on a single variable. In this paper, we will present an alternative analysis to the common groups detection methods used in criminology: cluster analysis. Even if clustering techniques were subjected to criticisms, we will show that when used in an appropriate way, this analytical strategy could overcome the univariate nature of the methods used to date and allow researcher to analyze small special population samples.
Using Econometrics to Test Gender Differences in Delinquency: Different Effects or Different Exposure?
Prior research on the relationship between gender and delinquency has examined whether differences in rates of delinquency result from differing effects of predictor variables or from differential exposure to predictors that have essentially the same effect. Much of this research has relied upon testing of individual coefficients across models in order to test the relative strength of predictors across gender groups. This study attempts to test these effects in simultaneous models using econometric techniques. Using survey data from a sample of 6,956 eighth graders, we test whether the effects of risk seeking, parental attachment, and delinquent peers on drug use and delinquency differ across gender groups and whether any differences result from a difference in intercepts or slopes. We additionally test whether predictors of lifetime use/delinquency are the same as predictors of regular use/delinquency, and whether these effects differ across gender groups.
Using Geographic Information Systems and Cluster Analysis for Drawing Comparative Geographic Areas in Quasi-Experimental Designs: A Police Patrol Example (Concept Paper)
In any experimental design, it is inherently preferable to draw experimental and control groups randomly. Examples from the criminal justice literature include the Kansas City Preventive Patrol Experiment, the Minneapolis Domestic Violence Experiment, the San Diego Field Interrogation Experiment etc. However, random assignment is typically not an option when the experimental units have been selected a priori. In this research, the Houston Police Department selected seven police beats in the city for additional police resources based on total Part I crimes, excluding shoplifting (to avoid selecting beats with shopping malls). The additional resources would take the form of extra patrol units in the seven targeted beats, freed from calls for service, and directed to deter and prevent serious crime in the beat. In short, the department was interested in targeting those beats most in need of additional police resources and not with “maintaining experimental integrity” as they attempted to reduce serious crimes in their most troubled neighborhoods. Therefore, random assignment in the research was not possible. The targeted beats were spread throughout the city and reflecting varying socio-demographic populations. Selection of comparison beats for a quasi-experimental design presents unique difficulties. Typically when the unit of analysis is individuals, the researchers try to match the individuals on as many characteristics as possible to increase comparability and reduce error. When the unit of analysis is a geographic area, researchers typically use relatively few matching variables for a variety of reasons. Chief among these reasons are lack of information, difficulty in matching what information is available to the geographic units under study, and the simple need to proceed expeditiously with the research. The advent of Geographic Information Systems (GIS) alleviate most of the problems mentioned and a host of other problems associated with finding information about a geographic area. The choice of comparison groups in a quasi-experiment is typically based on matching variables or on some other logical comparison point. The researcher selects comparison groups based on characteristics that both groups possess equally. In some research, the choice has been based on the research question being asked. For example, if a group of prisoners is subjected to a new innovative treatment, their success is gauged based on comparison with a control group of similar prisoners who did not receive the treatment. The same logic applies to geographic areas that receive some treatment when we wish to gauge the effectiveness of the treatment. The choice of similar geographic entities, whether cities, neighborhoods, or countries is based on similarity. The conclusions drawn from a quasi-experiment must account for and be made in reference to the comparability of the experimental and comparison groups. If there is sufficient variation between the two groups, the validity of the comparisons and the final conclusions can be drawn into question. There is a need to reduce the amount of error introduced in the matching process. One way to accomplish this is to match the experimental and control groups based on as many comparable qualities as possible. The greater the number of similarities among comparison variables, the less the chance that some rival causal factor or extraneous variable is responsible for any observed changes. In other words, the more sources of error that can be limited or controlled in the matching process, the more likely it is that we can dismiss rival causal factors in the analysis and conclude that the treatment was responsible for significant changes if any are found. The goal of reducing as much error as possible is the driving force behind the reasons and justifications for using GIS and cluster analysis to select the matching beats for comparison in this analysis. GIS allows an accurate measurement of socio-demographic variables within a fixed area. As such, a vast array of census variables could potentially be used to compare the experimental beats with all the other beats in the city to select a closely matching comparison beat. However, when a large number of variables have been selected, simplistic analysis becomes impossible due to the complexity and sheer number of variables. Cluster analysis allows comparison between a large number of variables without introducing researcher bias into the selection process.
Using NIBRS Data to Model the Predictive Ability of Case Based Reasoning for Repeat Victimizations
Research, while limited, continues to demonstrate that repeat victimizations appear to be unique compared to other crimes. This uniqueness obliges researchers to look past traditional approaches (e.g. demographic or geographic variables). While current statistical models explain variation in dependent variables, they cannot predict retroactively or proactively, nor can they test the accuracy of predictions. The accuracy of current statistical techniques is further limited by various problems, including underlying assumptions. Case-Based reasoning (CBR), a development in the use of artificial intelligence, allows for better predictive analyses and is not plagued by statistical problems. CBR, used on victimization data, may predict whether an individual would be a multiple victim. Previous research utilizing data from the NCVS demonstrated some success with this approach. However, the NCVS data themselves are problematic for various reasons. Problems with the NCVS data stem primarily from a lack of incident based data which might be necessary for appropriate model formation. This project utilizes CBR to analyze victimization information from the NIBRS data. The NIBRS data are a more robust data set, featuring many different variables previously unavailable in victimization studies using the NCVS data. In addition, this project includes additional learning features designed to improve the accuracy of predictions. A successful series of retroactive predictions will allow for greater learning and refined models. If the program can successfully predict multiple victimizations retroactively, there exists potential for proactive prediction with proper model specification.
Using the Factorial Survey to Measure Death Penalty Support for Special Offender Populations: Juveniles, the Mentally Incompetent, and the Mentally Retarded
A review of Supreme Court case law across the special offender populations of juveniles, the mentally incompetent, and the mentally retarded reveals considerable inconsistency in Supreme Court logic and its application of the “evolving standards of decency” test. Indeed, public opinion, as an indice of society’s “evolving standards,” offers a direct measurement of societal beliefs toward capital punishment in a real-time format. Yet most public opinion polls continue to assess death penalty support for “normal” offenders in single-item formats. In actual capital trials, however, there is substantial variability in the characteristics of offenders, and thus great relevance in gauging support for special classes of offenders. Thus, the present study utilizes a quasi-experimental approach called the factorial survey design in an attempt to measure capital punishment support for juveniles, the mentally incompetent, and the mentally retarded. Respondents’ sentencing recommendations across the factorial vignettes are then compared to existing case law to determine whether significant differences exist. In addition, the analysis examines the degree of consensus across major sociodemographic classifications in death penalty support for each of these special offender groups. Lastly, the substantive, methodological, and policy implications of this study are discussed.
Using the WWW to Spread the Word About Practical Crime Prevention to Business Owners
Communicating research findings to laypeople is often a challenge for criminologists. Based on the model of the agricultural extension service, the Crime Prevention Service in Newark, NJ was established to disseminate information about inexpensive, practical situational crime prevention measures to small business people. After reviewing the literature and “translating” it for this audience, a web site with about 400 individual pages was created. Portions of this web site will be presented, along with details about usage and other efforts taken to reach out to local business owners.
Utility of Hospital Admissions Data as a Supplement for Describing Levels of Domestic Violence
One of the key issues facing researchers of domestic violence is the significant under-reporting of these events. Several effots have been made to identify alternative data sources which describe the occurrence of domestic violence more accurately than crime reports (Rudman and Davey, 2000; Strom, 2000). This research proposes an analysis of hospital admission data, particularly data describing specific injury types, and a comparison of these findings with other data sets. Hospital data will be compared with UCR data and NCVS data to consider their utility as a proxy, or supplement to other data, for the occurrence of domestic violence.
V
Validity of Commonly-Cited Risk and Protective Factors for Assessing Release Readiness Among Incarcerated Delinquents
Comprehensive reviews and meta-analyses of longitudinal research have fostered growing consensus concerning the risk and protective factors associated with onset of serious and violent delinquency. However, the factors that predict recidivism or the timing of desistance among youth with a history of serious delinquency are not necessarily the same as the factors that predict onset. This distinction is critical for the design of programs for serious and chronic delinquents, given the increasing acceptance of the “risk principle” of case classification and the “need principle” for focusing on “criminogenic needs” in selecting appropriate intermediate targets for intervention. This paper synthesizes information gleaned from four evaluation studies examining recidivism among adjudicated youth placed in the custody of the New York State Office of Children and Family Services (OCFS). In all four studies, many of the variables commonly cited as risk and protective factors have failed to predict recidivism among the serious and chronic delinquents placed in state custody, while other variables have appeared to take on correspondingly greater importance. It is argued that the findings cannot be explained as a simple statistical artifact of restriction of range, and alternative explanations are discussed.
Variation in Definition of Homicide
Objective: Compare manner of death as certified by medical examiner (ME) on death certificate to district attorney (DA) charging decision and final disposition of case in court system in an effort to identify the frequency of and factors contributing to a disparity in classification of homicide by MEs and prosecutors. Methods: Cases certified by county ME to be homicide, accidental motor vehicle deaths and accidental firearm deaths from 1990 through 1999 were matched to cases presented to homicide unit of DA’s office from October 1991 through 1999. Results: Of 1247 cases certified as homicide by ME, 766 were matched to DA homicide cases. Factors influencing successful matching included apprehension of perpetrator(s) and prosecution in adult court. In a sample of 67 homicide cases reviewed but not charged by DA’s office, 47% determined to be self-defense, 26% insufficient evidence, 11% no defendant or death of the defendant, 3% accidental shooting, and 13% other. Conclusions: There is variation in how medical and legal practitioners define “homicide.” This variation results from different goals of practitioners, as expressed in levels of intentionality and differing burdens of proof (reasonable medical certainty vs. beyond a reasonable doubt). Effects of such variation have yet to be determined.
Vengeance, Security, and Political Repression: The Present and Future Struggle for Human Rights in the Wake of Structural Violence
The suicide pilots who destroyed the World Trade Center towers, a portion of the Pentagon, and a fourth airplane did more than vaporize thousands of lives and millions of dreams; they created the conditions that have allowed an unelected President and his corporate cronies both inside and outside government to cripple U.S. civil liberties and corrupt American souls with promises of peace and security through vengeance. The rhetoric of axes of “evil,” the continued narrowing of civil rights in the pursuit of “homeland defense”, and the doublespeak that justifies killing of civilians in Afghanistan as “collateral damage” while condemning killing done by those we call “terrorists” poses serious challenges to our national perceptions of what constitutes law and what will give birth to justice. This paper traces the intersection of post-9/11 political strategies as a logical extension of the Conservative politics of vengeance that began shaping current justice police in the 1980s. Specifically it examines how the politics of vengeance generate a willingness to accept both domestic and foreign repression as the inevitable price of security, how these represent a serious threat to both world security and the American soul, and how these policies require a new politic – not of peace through security, but of security through peace.
Vermont Reparative Probation Year 2000 Outcome Evaluation: Final Report
The Vermont Department of Corrections Reparative Probation Program began in 1995. In 1999, the program received the Ford Foundation’s Innovations in Government Award. Since its inception literally hundreds of community board programs have been launched across the country (Bazemore et al. 2001), including boards for juvenile offenders administered by the Vermont Department of Social and Rehabilitation Services. Although several evaluations of restorative justice programs have been published in the U.S. and abroad, this is the first formal independent evaluation of outcomes of a probation-based community board model and of Vermont reparative probation in particular. Reparative probation can be summarized as follows. Upon conviction of a minor offense, burglary or drunk driving for example, the judge will sentence the offender to probation with the condition that he or she appears before a local reparative board. A board composed of trained citizen volunteers convenes with the offender and attempts to work out a solution to the problem created by the offense. Victims and other affected parties (such as parents of a youthful offender) are invited to attend. Board meetings vary in length, but average between 35-40 minutes. The outcome of the meeting is a negotiated agreement, signed by the offender, specifying a set of tasks to be accomplished during a 90-day probationary period. Typically, offenders will return to the board for a mid-term review and a final closure meeting before discharge. Offenders who fail to comply are in violation of probation and returned to the court. The board members seek to accomplish four goals with the offender. First, they wish to engage the offender in tasks that will help him or her better understand the harmful consequences of the crime on victims and the community. This may entail asking the offender to listen to the victim’s account or to the reactions of victims of similar offenses. It may mean asking the offender to write an essay describing the harm that was done. Second, the board seeks to identify ways the offender can repair the harm to victims. Third, they try to engage the offender in making amends to the community. Restitution to the victim, community service, and letters of apology may be required. Fourth, the board works with the offender to find a strategy to reduce the likelihood of re-offending. This might include a wide variety of educational and counseling opportunities. The typical board meeting is held in an informal conference room in a town hall, public library, or probation office. Boards vary in their formality, but all are much less formal than the courtroom setting. Meetings begin with introductions, proceed through a general review of the incident, and become task-oriented as they strategize over terms of the agreement. Some boards ask the offender to leave the meeting so that board members can have a short period of private deliberation. Lengthier descriptions of program features can be found in Dooley (1996); Karp (2002); Karp and Walther (2001); Perry and Gorczyk (1997); and Walther and Perry (1997).
Versatility in Criminal Offending and Its Effects on Coverage of the Convicted Offender Index: A Comparison of Models for Expanding a DNA Data Bank
The growth of DNA data banks among the states reflects the widespread acceptance of forensic DNA technology in criminal justice applications. This growth, coupled with their much touted ability in solving “cold cases”, has given rise to issues involving the expansion and evaluation of DNA data banks. The emerging trend among the states toward expanding DNA data banks is to increase the number of indexed offenders whose DNA profiles are available for matching against forensic DNA evidentiary samples. However, short of universal profiling, the utility in expanding the offender index to increase DNA data bank hit productivity depends on the extent to which indexed offenders specialize in-or are versatile in-committing crimes that yield forensic DNA evidence. The first paper examines the effect of versatility over the offending career in assessing the relative efficacy of the offender index to provide coverage of forensic DNA crimes. The common model of indexing offenders upon conviction of selected violent felonies is compared to progressive models of expansion that would index offenders for all felonies or for all crimes. The performance of a DNA data bank is often assessed on an anecdotal basis involving “cold hits” that solved high-profile crimes. Little effort has been made to produce a more comprehensive evaluation that would track the case outcomes of DNA-hits through investigation, prosecution and adjudication in the criminal justice system. The second paper presents the results of a standard criminal justice case processing analysis, and discusses pathways for evaluating performance through the more purposeful integration of forensic and criminal justice official information systems.
Victim-Based Disparity and Death Sentences: A Specification of Previous Findings
Several death penalty studies have examined whether victim race is associated with differential death sentencing outcomes; however, these studies tend to ignore the potential interaction effect of victim race and victim gender on decision-making outcomes. This article examined the impact of victim race and gender on death sentences in Ohio. When victim race and gender were considered only those homicides with white female victims were significantly associated with a death sentence. This finding expands on previous research by identifying a specific victim gender-race combination, white female victim, as a key extra-legal factor that may increase the probability of an offender receiving a death sentence and may partioally explain prior victim race disparity findings.
Victim Needs and Services: An Assessment of Indiana’s Resources in Support of Crime Victims
Crime victims stand to benefit from a significant infrastructure of services supported by federal, state, and private resources. Little is known, however, of the reach and impact of those services. Do they address victims in greatest need? Do the quality and quantity of victim services match victims’ needs? Are services accessible by all victims in need? The Indiana Victim Services Assessment Project sought to find answers through information from representative samples of victims and service providers statewide. This paper presents findings focusing on the mismatch between victim needs and available services, as apparent from the differing perspectives of victims and service providers. The paper concludes with a discussion of implications for decision-making with respect to the distribution of resources intended to help victims of crime.
Victim Precipitated Domestic Assault — Does This Provide an Explanation for Female Arrests?
The present study obtained information on 317 heterosexual couples jointly arrested for domestic violence (i.e., dual arrest). The study examined whether males in the sample looked significantly different than female partners in terms of their past criminal histories, prior domestic violence, and behavior during the instant offense. The analysis was framed by Wolfgang’s idea of victim precipitation. Specifically we looked at whether male domestic violence victims looked more like male offenders or female victims in terms of their history of violence and criminality. With the increase in the numbers of dual arrests occurring nationally, this analysis seeks to shed light on women arrested for domestic violence so as to provide additional information on whether they are victims of domestic violence who are merely defending themselves or truly are the aggressors.
Victimization Among Incarcerated Juveniles in Japan: A Subsequent Report of the National Survey of Inmates in Juvenile Training Schools
This is the second report of the national survey of inmates in Juvenile Training Schools that provide treatment and education in secure facilities for juvenile offenders. The first report of the last ASC meeting presented the extent of childhood abuse by family members, and suggested possible links between childhood abuse and later criminal behavior. The aims of this report are: to show the rate of physical and/or sexual victimization among inmates by others including non-family-members before incarceration; to demonstrate the overlap of various victimizations; and to outline the key differences among the 4 groups of inmates with victimization histories by both family and non-family, only family, only non-family, and neither family nor non-family. Overall, 70% of the 2,354 respondents were victimized by both family and non-family members. Statistically, a history of victimization by family is more likely to associate victimization by non-family. The group victimized by both family and non-family shows earlier arrest and history of more institutionalization than other groups.
Victimization and HIV Risk Behavior Among Female Crack Users
Victimization and HIV risk have consistently been associated in the research literature. For example, Cohen et al. (2000) found that women at risk for HIV had experienced high rates of abuse with approximately 1 in 3 reporting child sexual abuse and 1 in 4 of the women reporting intimate partner violence in the preceding year. Whitmire et al., (1999) found that women who had been sexually victimized as children were five times more likely to have been sexually assaulted in adulthood than women who had not been sexually victimized as children, and that the adult experience of rape was associated with increased
Victimization and Offending: Exploring the Role of Victimization in the Delinquent Subcultures
Violence and victimization are inexorably linked, yet the role of victimization in subculture theory (especially the subculture of violence) has not been explored to any depth. We know that persons who are victims of crime are given to a higher incidence of non-normative behaviors, such as drug use or menta disorder. Additionally, persons who perpetrate crime are more often locate in the same context where victims are more prevalent (e.g., most violence is perpetrated by males against males). Subculture theories generally contend that ower class, adolescent males will be more involved in criminal activity than other groups. However, these theories do not address or have left implicit the notion that persons who engage in criminal activity are also more likely to be victims of crime. Using theories of delinquent subcultures (particularly the subculture of violence), this paper draws on that body of theory to guide an empirical investigation into a link between victimization and (violent) offending. Data are drawn from the Nation Youth Survey (NYS). Results are presented and discussed.
Victimization and White Collar Crime: Random or Structured?
The diffuse nature of victimisation from white collar crime was seen by Sutherland as one factor underlying a lack of organised resistance to white collar crime. Victimisation is also assumed to be random in its effects and offences are often seen as `accidents’, constructions which amount to a denial of victimisation. This paper will critically explore how victimisation from white collar and corporate crime can be alternatively conceptualised and, drawing from a range of sources, will look at the extent to which, far from being random or accidental, the impact of many forms of offending can be seen to reflect wider structures of social inequality. This will be illustrated with reference to gender, age and socio – economic status.
Victimization Experiences Among Prisoners in the United States: A Reanalysis of BJS Data
This research is based on data from over 14,000 prisoners in the United States, collected by the Bureau of Justice Statistics in 1997. A re-analysis of these data revealed that over 70% of men and women prisoners have experienced either physical or sexual violence during their lifetimes, compared to the 57% of women and 16% of men previously reported. This re-analysis was conducted in order to add data from behavioral indices of physical violence included in the protocol but left out of previous analyses. The inclusion of five of these behavioral indices greatly increased the overall prevalence estimate, compared to the rates previously reported for this sample (see above). In addition, disaggregation by perpetrator-victim relationship revealed opposite patterns of victimization by gender not included in the original reports. Findings from these re-analyses highlight the impact of measurement and methodological choices in estimating prevalence figures of these behaviors, and emphasize the need for disaggregation that looks beyond who is being assaulted to the relationship between perpetrator and victim. Analyses now underway are examining childhood exposure to violence as a risk factor for victimization, perpetration, and crime type in the aggregate and by gender. These findings also will be presented.
Victims’ Rights, Law Enforcement Work, and Victims’ Experiences
Despite the implementation of victims’ rights legislation across the United States, many victims remain dissatisfied with the criminal justice system, and some evidence suggests that victims who work with the system have higher levels of depression and anxiety than victims who do not. This paper examines victims’ experiences with law enforcement, and the focus is on a particular group of victims, people who have lost a loved one to murder (“bereaved”). The data for the study come from in-depth interviews with 32 bereaved whose loved ones were murdered between 1994 and 1999 in Center County (pseudonym). In-depth interviews with 7 Center County law enforcement professionals and a participant observation of 6 murder cases in the Center County criminal justice system supplement the bereaved interview data. The findings reveal the hierarchical nature of the law enforcement-bereaved relationship and the obstacles and easements that law enforcement presents to bereaved following their victimization. Some of these obstacles emerge when law enforcement detectives: confiscate the deceased’s corpse for autopsy, control information about the status of the investigation, and refrain from offering sympathy to bereaved (to maintain authority over and emotional distance from bereaved).
Vietnam War Genre Films and Ideological Messages: Perceptions of Conflict and Moral and Political Disenchantment
Debate surrounds the grounding of film noir genre Vietnam war films as to the moral and political disenchantment versus enlightenment concepts. Styrker contends that both society and person are abstractions from ongoing social interaction, and selves and society have no reality apart from interpersonal interactions from which they derive. Rafter argues the depiction of crime films’, for my purposes Vietnam era war films, relationship to social reality is “dialectical” in that these films draw from and shape social thought. Content analysis of signficant Vietnam era films argue the relevance of symbolic interactionism and contemporary ideological cocncerns as to the role of film in shaping positive versus negative interpretations of war environment conflict.
Views of College Students on Alternative Lifestyles: Do Criminal Justice Students Differ in Their Views of Gays and Lesbians?
Little research has been conducted on how criminal justice students view gays and lesbians. This presentation reports the differences in the views between Criminal Justice and other students from a survey of students at a Midwestern university. Possible interventions aimed at increasing social acceptance of gays and lesbians among college students, particularly Criminal Justice students, will be discussed.
Violence, Recidivism and Patterns of Achievement in Criminal Careers
In this paper, we reanalyze the rich data set provided by Rand’s 1978 jail and prison inmate survey. Our distinctive focus is that we analyze individual differences in reported criminal earnings across property and market offenders (n=1260) Our first finding is that the higher the offenders criminal earnings (prior to current incarceration) the higher the odds of recidivism (based on Rand’s six years follow probe). Our second finding is that specialization, status, strategic offending, (rather than types of offences), self confidence, and lack of self reported alcoholic abuse all contribute to increase the likelihood of a successful criminal career. Our third finding is that offenders who have a record of violence are more likely than other offenders (who do not have such a record) to achieve higher criminal earnings. Indeed, the higher their lambdas of violence, the higher their illegal earnings.
Violence and Religion: A Test of an Expanded Model of the Social Bond
Despite the many different categories of theory that draw the interest of criminologists, social control theories continue to garner a great deal of theoretical attention. More specifically, different forms of social bond theory while frequently tested over the years, continue to generate scholarly debate. The traditional form of the theory argued that the bond should be measured in four separate contexts: attachment, commitment, involvement, and belief. This paper examines an expanded version of the social bond that includes the additional measurement context of religion. Results presented are for the explanation of violence.
Violence Behind Bars: An Examination of Collective Action and Individual Violence in Adult Male Correctional Facilities
Goldstone and Useem (1999) propose that prison riots be viewed as microrevolutions that result from causes that state-centered theory (Goldstone 1991) hypothesizes are responsible for revolutions against centralized authoritarian states. These include fiscal stress and other externally-imposed factors that limit administrative resources and effectiveness, dissension between prison staff and administration and/or divisions among correctional staff members, grievances about staff actions among prison inmates, widespread ideology among inmates that conditions must be changed, and staff responses to inmate grievances that are viewed as arbitrary, unjust, and/or ineffective. We test the microrevolution theory of collective prison violence using data from 700 adult male state prisons collected in the 1995 prison census. We hypothesize that the factors identified by Goldstone and Useem will be significant predictors of major collective inmate disturbances, while not having an impact on individual forms of prison violence (assaults, homicides). In addition, we expect that variables derived from traditional functionalist (e.g., Sykes 1958) and managerial (e.g. DiIulio 1987) theories of prison disorder will be more important in explaining individual types of inmate violence than they will in predicting collective disturbances. The results from our multilevel analysis provide support for the microrevolution theory of collective prison violence.
Violence in the Schoolyard: School Girls’ Use of Violence
Much of the behaviour by girls which is classified as ‘violent’ takes place at school. Reporting on a school-based violence prevention programme, this paper notes the greater receptivity of girls to such programmes and reinforces arguments that girls’ violence emerges from experiences that are different from those of boys and that girls set their own violent behaviour in a context of moral judgements. Girls who utilise physical and verbal violence have a disproportionate experience of violence in their own lives and view themselves through the ‘hegemonic male gaze’, internalising male expectations of women and judging their own worth by male standards.
Violent Behavior Among Girls in Violent Contexts: Results From the Project on Human Development in Chicago Neighborhoods
Although there is a large literature on the etiology of violent behavior among adolescent boys, there are relatively few studies of the development of violent behavior among girls 18 years and younger. None have taken a multi-level approach to study the influence of violence exposure at community and family levels. This study is a multi-level, prospective investigation of the prevalence and etiology of violent behavior among 1202 girls, ages 12-18 at baseline, participating in the Project on Human Development in Chicago Neighborhoods. The sample is diverse with respect to race/ethnicity and socioeconomic status, residing in 80 distinct Chicago neighborhoods. Two in-home interviews were conducted approximately 24 months apart with girls and their caregivers, and comprehensive community-level data were collected in their neighborhoods. Data from a qualitative study of girls’ violent behavior among a sub-sample of the cohort (n=61) will also be presented. At baseline, 38.0% of the sample reported engaging in one or more violent behaviors in the past year. Approximately one-fourth of the sample (28.1%) reported engaging in the same behaviors at follow-up. A linear scale of girls’ violent behavior was created using Rasch Modeling, a method of Item Response Theory. The scale consists of 6 violent behaviors, takes into account the frequency and severity of items, and has acceptable psychometric properties. Our preliminary findings show that girls report perpetrating more violent behavior in families where there is violence between parents, and child physical abuse. Girls also report perpetrating more violent behavior if they live in disadvantaged and/or violent neighborhoods. Hierarchical linear modeling will be used to investigate the effects of individual, family, and neighborhood factors on violent behavior. Multivariate, multilevel models will be presented that bring community and family violence, socioeconomic disadvantage, and other family and individual characteristics together to assess their relative contribution to the development and perpetration of violent behavior by adolescent girls.
Violent Entertainment and Social Misconduct: The Myth of Social Learning as a Significant Cause of Crime
The field of social psychology reports worrisome effects on behaviors and attitudes resulting from exposure to violence in the media. This work is reported in the context of childhood exposure to violent television and adult exposure to various kinds of pornography. However, the leading criminological theories find little persuasive evidence for the association, and even if credited as valid, the effect sizes are so small as to be trivial. In this paper, I argue that the evidence for significant media effects is largely associated with experimental work that is inconsistent with field studies. I argue further that the core theoretical explanation that underlies these studies, social learning theory, is not distinct from classical or operant conditioning, that the changes measured in the lab are not owed to mimicy but to excitation transfer (arousal theory) and that the latter has little relevance for the explanation of crime. It is further argued that the methods of linking exposure and aggression are artifacts of the Buss paradigm that have little ecological validity. Even if the association is established in field studies, the correlation between media and behavior is correlational, not causal. Preferences for violent entertainment may be a marker for elevated risk tolerance or low self control. This perspective explains why the link between media and aggression can be identified spuriously in the lab while having little bearing on the explanation of crime in everyday life. The incentives for crusading against television violence and hardcore pornography are examined in terms of the ideological role of academic expertise in the formation of public policy. O Augustine Brannigan 2002 “This filth purveying medium . is filled with stories of a dangerous character, most of them relating incidents, which not only have to do with sex, but which are told in such a way and from such an angle as to make any sensible reader conclude that the only safe method by which one can dispose of such muck, is to ban it from the mails altogether. One’s determination will not be lessened in the least by the information that these magazines are commonly snapped up with avidity by young school girls. A fine school for moral training they provide!” The Public Health Journal Editorial (1923) “We do not maintain that comic books automatically cause delinquency in every child reader.But we found that comic-book reading was a distinct influencing factor in the case of every single delinquent or disturbed child we studied.” Frederic Wertham (Crist, 1948) “In the 20 years since the publication of the Surgeon General’s report, research into the TV violence issue has burgeoned. Laboratory experiments continue to provide evidence of a causal relationship between violence viewing and aggression. The results of nonexperimental field studies support the same conclusion.The majority of new investigations suggest that viewing violent entertainment can increase aggression and cultivate the perception that the world is a mean and scary place.” Liebert and Sprafkin (1988: 135)
Violent Offenders at School
The literature on school violence is dominated by information about the victims of such incidents. With the exception of school-associated homicide, we know very little about who commits crime at school. This report examines school-based offending patterns using the National Crime Victimization Survey (NCVS) 1992-1999 files. Victim incident accounts are used to provide national estimates of violent offending patterns (total violence and serious) at school by individual offender characteristics (gender, age, race). In addition, offender behaviors specific to the incident (e.g., armed offender, gun use, co-offending) are described.
Violent Offenders Talk (About) Remorse: Implications for Restorative Justice
Remorse is a central concept for justice theory and particularly for restorative justice. I examine expressions of remorse from qualitative interviews with men who committed violent crimes. Some men talked of feeling remorseful, while others talked about remorse, revealing critical insights about the concept as it pertains to their own experience of justice. Analysis of these discursive data is brought to bear on restorative justice practice.
Violent Street Crime and Alcohol, Marijuana, and Hard Drug Use: A Longitudinal Analysis of Runaway and Homeless Adolescents
A substantial literature exists on the inter-play between adolescent criminal behavior and substance use, including alcohol, marijuana, and hard drugs. However, few studies examine the effects of adolescent victimization and victimizing behavior on substance use, especially among at-risk populations. Using longitudinal data, I examine predictors of runaway and homeless adolescent drug use, with emphases on victimizing behavior or those who are victimized. This paper encompasses several different types of drug use, includiung alcohol, marijuana, and hard drugs, such as cocaine, methamphetamines, and heroin. Preliminary results show that relationships do exist between being victimized and hard drug use among runaway and homeless adolescents.
Violent Victimization in Adolescence and Problem Drinking Outcomes: Findings From the Violence and Threats of Violence Against Women and Men in the United States Survey, 1994-1996
This study explores the connection between violent victimization in adolescence and subsequent problem drinking. Using data from the Violence and Threats of Violence against Women and Men in the United States Survey, 1994-1996 we examine the effects of adolescent physical and sexual victimization on problem drinking behavior. Problem drinking is characterized by both drinking behavior (heavy intake and intensity of drinking episodes) and its consequences (negative social and personal outcomes). We define binge drinking as four or more standard drinks in a single setting in the last two weeks. While many researchers define binge drinking for men and women as drinking five or more drinks at one sitting (Schulenberg, O’Malley, Bachman, Wadsworth and Johnston, 1996), a strong argument has been made that a more equivalent bingeing criterion for women is four drinks per occasion and that the five-drink level may underestimate binge drinking among women (Wechsler, Dowdall, Davenport and Rimm, 1995; Wechsler, Davenport, Dowdall, Moeykens, and Castillo, 1994). The study had two purposes: (1) to identify the frequency of binge drinking among a sample of women; and (2) to examine the impact of violent victimization in adolescence on binge drinking. We draw on the literature on adolescent development and suggest that stressful and traumatizing events in adolescence, such as violent victimization, shape a number of life course outcomes (Steinberg, Seffield Morris, 2001; Loeber and Hay, 1997). Moreover, we hypothesize that the consequences of violent victimization are more salient for adolescent girls as compared to women (Macmillan, 2001) and will therefore have a greater effect on problem drinking. Research has identified a number of long-term social, psychological and behavioral consequences of violent victimization (Macmillan, 2001; Margolin and Gordis, 2000). Violent crime victims are at higher risk for depression, post-traumatic stress disorder and other internalizing problems (Davis, Taylor and Lurigio, 1996; Kilpatrick, Saunders, Veronen, Best and Von, 1987). Research suggests that crime victims are more likely to experience anxiety, suffer from negative self-perceptions and that child and adolescent victims of violence experience suicidal thoughts and attempts. Experiences with violence in early childhood by parents and caregivers increases the risk for a variety of antisocial behaviors, childhood and adolescent aggression and violent offending in adulthood (Kaufman and Widom, 1999; Rivera and Widom, 1990). Violent victimization experiences also have consequences for alcohol use and abuse. Violent victimization, particularly childhood sexual assault and molestation, increases the risk for alcohol dependency, problem drinking, and alcohol related difficulties (Clark and Foy, 2000). Research also indicates that physically abused and neglected children are significantly more likely to have alcohol and drug related arrests in adulthood (National Institute of Justice, 1995). Alcohol may be used by victims in an attempt to cope with the trauma of violence (Flannery, Singer, Williams and Castro, 1998; Runtz and Schallow, 1997), thereby reducing anxiety and increasing feelings of mastery and control (Runtz and Schallow, 1997; Pearlin and Radabaugh, 1976). While a number of researchers have explored the impact of violent victimization on alcohol abuse, these studies have often only looked at the implications of child physical and sexual abuse and/or other victimizations in childhood. At the same time, previous studies have not concurrently examined the impact of violent victimization at different points in the life course on problem and binge drinking.
Vital Links: Connection Between Criminal Behavior and Animal Cruelty
This study will examine the relationships among human violence, criminal behavior, delinquency and cruelty & abuse toward animals. The association of cruelty to animals to acts of violence, crime, and delinquency has received acknowledgment throughout the history of social movements. Violence towards animals is often correlated with other forms of violent behavior against humans. Abuse against animals, when perpetrated or observed by juveniles, has the capability of evolving into more generalized acts of violence and criminal behavior in adulthood. The major aim of the study is to examine the critical links between animal cruelty and other forms of violence. The study will also explore how interventions through collaborations among the areas of criminal justice, human services and animal welfare organizations can influence and reduce crime and delinquency.
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War on Drugs: War on Women: Applications of Peacemaking Criminology to Gender Inequities in Crime Control Strategies
The war on drugs, which has now survived through two decades of punitive sentencing, has had profound affects on the demographic features of American prisons. Significant increases in the rate of incarceration of African American men is a startling effect of the war on drugs. Gender distributions, which may be less obvious and represent minute absolute representations by comparison to race-based shifts, are also a troublesome byproduct of the war on drugs. Over 70 percent of the women under correctional supervision in jail, on probation, or in prison during the decade of the 1990s had committed a property or drug crime. While women’s incarceration for other crime declined during the 1990s, prison sentences for drug crime increased. Women who are the wives, mothers, or girl friends of drug dealers may serve significantly longer sentences than the dealers themselves for drug convictions under current sentencing guidelines. The present paper explores the consequences of strategies adopted to fight the war on drugs and applies a peacemaking theoretical paradigm for understanding and addressing both subtle and overt gender inequities in sentencing. This paper uses the peacemaking theoretical approach of Richard Quinney and others to explain and address the issue of gendered differentials in drug sentencing.
War on Terrorism: The Views of Criminal Justice and Non-Criminal Justice Majors on Terrorism and the Punishment of Terrorists
The terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001 have brought to the forefront the problem of terrorism and has raised the question of how terrorists should be treated and punished for their crimes. This presentation reports the results of a survey of college students at two Midwestern universities concerning terrorism and terrorists and examines whether Criminal Justice majors differ from other majors in their views on terrorism and the punishment of terrorists.
“We Hate You and We Don’t Care”: The Character Traits, Racism, and Xenophobia of English Football Hooligans
Since the beginning of the year England has once again become embroiled in a battle on an old, and particularly surly nemesis, football hooliganism. Individually football hooligans are generally not too dangerous, but when they organize they are responsible for inflicting severe injury and social disorder, and on occasion, mass destruction. English football hooligans have organized in crews since the 1960s, having similar behavioral, organizational, and social characteristics to the American street gangs that were forming in the same period. But unlike American street gangs, the literature on hooliganism indicates that these crews evolved around a shared racist and xenophobic ideology. Using data from West and Farrington’s Cambridge Study in Delinquent Development, a clearer picture of the individuals involved in the first generation hooligan crews will be provided. The intent of this paper is to discuss the social, political, and economic backgrounds of those involved in this criminal subculture, and to identify whether this group of hooligans were as racist and xenophobic as the literature has suggested.
Weapon Carrying, Use and Delinquency Among Young Urban Females: Impact and Consequences
Using data from an ongoing panel study of urban youth, this paper provides an examination of female weapon carrying, use and delinquency. Although females are considerably less delinquent than males, we still seek to gain a comprehensible and accurate representation of this phenomenon, including the scenarios in which weapons play a role. The analysis is based on the sample of adolescent females in the Rochester Youth Development Study and explores the types of weapons carried and used in relation to delinquency and associated behaviors. In particular, the girls are used as their own controls to address questions regarding their delinquent behavior when a weapon is carried and/or used versus when it is not. This is assessed by evaluating the impact and consequences of weapon carrying and use on various forms of delinquency over multiple waves of data covering early adolescence to young adulthood. Future research and policy implications will also be discussed.
Weapons and Youth in Toronto and Philadelphia
Violence by and against youth, a serious problem in both Canada and the United States, may be exacerbated by the use of weapons, particularly firearms. The following paper presents preliminary results from an on-going cross-national study examining the relationships between youth, drugs and violence. The paper provides a cross-city comparison of the prevalence of weapon-related behaviour and attitudes among young offenders and high school dropouts in Toronto and Philadelphia aged 14 – 17. The descriptive analyses presented highlight the patterns of pro-weapon attitudes, perceived weapon-related behaviour of others and personal weapon carrying patterns and types of weapons carried by youth in the two cities. We conclude that the Toronto youth in both samples reported higher rates of weapon-carrying behaviour themselves, as well as among others in their network, than the comparable samples in Philadelphia.
Welcome to the Last Chance Saloon Bail Supervision and Support and Its Young Offenders
As a focal element of the Youth Justice Board for England and Wales central aim to ‘reduce youth offending’ the bail supervision and support schemes integrated with Youth Offending Teams are an intrinsic part of this overall aim. Bail supervision and support is targeted at those young offenders perceived to be at risk of being remanded into custody or local authority accommodation while awaiting trial for their suspected offences. This paper presents a case study of research at one such scheme in the north of England. For a significant minority of ‘hardcore’ persistent young offenders referred to and accepted onto the scheme, the research findings argue that this particular aspect of youth justice intervention offers little in its central aim to reduce re-offending for a significant minority of young people on bail. This paper contends that although the scheme proposes pragmatic interventions for the majority of its target group for a significant sub-sample of its population the scheme offers little by way of interventions that are aimed at transforming their criminal activities while on bail.
Welcome to the Machine: Child Remand Prisoners and the Limits of Custodial Reform in England and Wales
Within a context defined by reactionary penal politics, populist punitive policies and widespread moral panics in relation to juvenile crime, the number of incarcerated children in England and Wales has reached unprecedented levels. Throughout the final decade of the 20th Century, and into the opening decade of the 21st, state policy has ushered in a sequence of correctional measures which have combined to provide the courts with ever-increasing powers to condemn sentenced and unsentenced children to locked institutions. More recently, the New Labour government, through the Youth Justice Board for England and Wales, has invested substantial resources to ‘humanise’ the treatment and conditions of child prisoners. Recalling Stan Cohen’s observation that ‘by making the system appear less harsh, people are encouraged to use it more often’, this paper will subject this reform effort to critical inspection. Moreover, by drawing upon recently completed primary research within youth prisons across England, the limits of custodial reform in respect of unsentenced children will be outlined, and the incivilities of child incarceration will be re-exposed.
What ‘Penitential People’ Think About Prison and Media?
In the first semester of the year 2000 in France was a lot said in media about prison. I wanted to understand and to explain in which way people dealing with prison (voluntaries, executives of the Minister of Justice, journalists, etc_.) received all what appeared on TV and in the press media. By making 20 interviews, I could analyse reactions, perceptions and problems on what those persons felt right or wrong in the debate on prison. They told me much about their social representations on media, prison and public opinion. Therefore I caught main stream theories and clich‚ on those themes, especially the fact that one doesn’t see exactly what someone else think as one could have thought. It said also about the way people try to give an image of their own activities, and how in that matter it could change the elements of an objective reality. Not that individuals lie, but certainly that they defend what define them. I mean to clear the reputation of prison.
What Criminal Justice Response to Domestic Violence Tells Us About System Limitations
ABSTRACT Efforts to reduce domestic violence, through policy and practices which rely heavily on the criminal justice system, reveal a great deal about the limits of the system in responding to some social problems. One of the persistent ironies in the violence against women movement is the degree to which policies and practices designed to protect women have resulted in no effect or a “backlash” effect on women. Using longitudinal data from 58 counties in California, we explore some of the disparities by gender in criminal justice system response to domestic violence. Several hypotheses emerge that explain disparities, some offering more explanatory power than others. While the criminal justice system does have an important role to play with regard to a problem such as domestic violence, the use of the system is not a cure-all, and can likely have paradoxical effects on violence in the absence of continued scrutiny and other remedies.
What Do We Know about Inequality and Crime? A Comparison of Meta-Analysis and Qualitative Analysis
This paper assesses the utility of meta-analysis by comparing its yield to that of qualitative literature review in ascertaining extant knowledge on the relationship between inequality and crime. The data for this analysis are drawn from thirty-four inequality and crime aggregate data studies reported by Hsieh and Pugh (1993), published between 1974 and 1991 and covering the 1970s and 1980s. These studies obtained multiple estimates of inequality or unemployment crime relationships, which could then be summarized as average correlations obtained under different methodological conditions. In contrast, the qualitative approach to research synthesis is examplified by Chiricos’s (1987) examination of the direction and significance of the unemployment effects on crimes according to methodological conditions. Applying the qualitative approach to the inequality – crime relationship shows complex and contradictory results. Both bivariate and multivariate analyses yield similar proportions of positive-significant and negative-significant inequality – general violent crime relationships. However, results are more varied when specific violent offenses were examined. With respect to property crime, multivariate estimates are yet more ambiguous. This study concludes that meta-analysis is useful in obtaining a general summary estimate of the strength of the relationship between a dependent and an independent variable. However, until further research helps us to know how these important and theoretically conflicting factors influence crime, meta-analysis cannot substitute for the rich knowledge obtained by qualitative analysis.
What Does the Way in Which a Victim is Killed Tell Us About a Homicide?
There is some anecdotal evidence that the injuries received by ahomicide victim say something about the social context of that particular homicde. For example, it has been suggested that domestic homicides often feature `overkill’, and that some serial killers will attempt to depersonalise a victim, or make sexualised attacks. The current study examines female victims of homicide over a four-year period in Victoria, Australia, in order to determine whether there is any relationship between the number, type and location of wounds and the relationship between the victim and the offender. Implications for the investigation of homicide and research are discussed.
What Exactly Are We Teaching Our Students?
This paper analyzes the curriculum of all four-year undergraduate criminal justice programs in the United States. The presentation will be a summary of the findings dealing with the average program in relation to core courses, number of credit hours and specific electives, with a particular focus on the existence of white collar and organized crime courses. Discussion will be focused on the lack of organized crime and white-collar crime courses that are offered in the various curricula. Argument will then be made as to why it is essential that given the times and various other reasons which will be discussed, these courses should be a part of every criminal justice program.
What Goes Around, Comes Around: The Co-occurrence of Victimization and Offending Patterns Among Juvenile Offenders
Building upon ‘lifestyles theory’ of deviance, this paper examines the co-occurrence of victimization and offending patterns among a sample of 697 male and female juvenile arrestees. In addition, the study explores: a) how youths’ deviant lifestyles (e.g., drinking and drug use, involvement with deviant peers) mediate the relationship between socio-demographic risk factors and victimization; and b) their exposure to community violence mediates the relationship between victimization and offending. Data is drawn from the Maryland Juvenile Substance Abuse Need for Treatment Among Arrestees [SANTA] study conducted by the Center for Substance Abuse Research in the summer of 1996.
What is Your Attitude: Male and Female Drug Users
There is a large body of literature which discusses the gender specific treatment needs of women. Some of the these different treatment needs are supported by research on gender differences among drug users in sociodemographic and other background characteristics such as drug use, employment history, family situation, and psychological disorders. However, there are no studies which systematically examine gender differences in motivations and other attitudinal characteristics. An understanding of similarities and differences in men and women’s attitudes at admission to treatment may be helpful to the development of gender-specific programming. This paper provides a profile of gender differences in attitudes and motivations by comparing men and women across several attitudinal measures. This study was completed within the context of a multi-site evaluation of in-prison residential drug treatment programs. The sample of approximately 1,200 men are from 16 treatment programs and the sample of approximately 300 women from 4 treatment programs. Comparisons between men and women are provided for measures of motivation to change, ways of coping, and two measures of self-efficacy – general and drug-specific. The paper concludes with a discussion of the implications of these gender differences for program recruitment, program design and for measuring treatment effectiveness.
What’s in a Name?: Women-Centered Corrections or Misappropriation of Feminist Goodwill
The 1990s were ushered in on the promise of a new direction for women’s corrections in Canada. After decades of government tinkering with correctional reform, it seemed the time had come to take the plight of federally sentenced women seriously by striking a task force to research, collaborate and implement a woman-centered approach to corrections. The major distinguishing feature of the 1990 Task Force on Federally Sentenced Women (TFFSW) was its focus on creating meaningful choices for women based on the collaborative input by women prisoners, feminist activists and scholars, aboriginal organizations, and government officials. While the TFFSW was hailed both nationally and internationally as a progressive step toward improving the conditions of women’s corrections it has come under increased scrutiny and criticism in its failure to advance the workings of the task force to the level of implementation. I argue that this major downfall has to do with the unwillingness of the state to incorporate feminist ideologies and practices into their ‘women-centered’ approach. This paper will examine how feminist core values have been misappropriated all the way from the language used to describe this ‘new’ vision to the abject exclusionary practices adopted at the implementation stages of the task force which dramatically altered its intended outcomes.
What’s My Best Chance? : Bench Trials, Jury Trials and Personal Characteristics of Offenders
Criminal defendants in the United States have a constitutional right to a trial. As a defendant, what are the risks and benefits of a jury trial as opposed to a bench trial? The small amount of existing literature on this subject has revealed mixed results, with some researchers arguing for the existence of a “jury penalty,” meaning that defendants who use the courts’ time and money for a jury trial will be punished more severely. Spohn (1992) reported the existence of a jury trial penalty and examined the effect of the penalty on defendants’ of different races. Subsequent research has highlighted the importance of the interaction of race and age in sentencing decisions, even in states with sentencing guidelines. The current paper analyzes the differences in criminal justice processing for 7,175 offenders in Florida and Georgia. We will search for the existence of a jury trial penalty compared to the outcomes for bench trials and those who plead guilty. Additionally, we include race and age (separately, and as interaction variables) along with several legal and extralegal variables to determine whether defendants with different characteristics are treated differently based on their decision to seek a jury or bench trial.
What Strain? We Run This Place: Strain Theory, Race, and Rule Violations committed by Prison Gang Members
This paper will test hypotheses derived from Strain theory regarding the relationship between the commission of prison rule violations and an inmate’s gang status. Prior researh has suggested that prison gangs engage in ahigher number of prison rule violations than non-gang inmates. Prior research has also shown that minority inmates are more likely to commit rule violations. The interaction between gang status and race has not been thoroughly tested in the past. The current study examines these issues by using strain theory as an explanatory framework.
What To Do With Mentally Ill Offenders? A Case Study of a Small Urban County in New Hampshire’s Attempt to Create a Mental Health Court
For many mentally ill, entry into the criminal justice system represents the stop of last resort, as a local mental health advocacy group in southwestern New Hampshire contends. This group consits of mental health professionals, advocates, attorneys, and law enforcement officials. Group members argue that mentally ill offenders in their community are not receiving mental health support throughout the criminal justice process and are ultimately “warehoused” in state and county correctional facilities. After studying a mental health court system in large northwestern metropolitan area, several members called for a mental health court in their small city. Mental health courts have been tried, with varied results, in urban settings but do not exist, to our knowledge, in smaller communities. This paper describes process by which community leaders in this small community are developing a mental health court, noting the problems that have emerged as they attempted to model this court after those established in large metropolitan areas. Additionally, it describes how they modified previous models of mental health courts to reflect the specific needs of the community. Finally, it speculates upon the mental health ability to reduce recidivism among the mentally ill.
What We Do and Don’t Know: Systematic Reviews and Methods
This research examines 213 death penalty cases, randomly selected from the years 1973 through 1991, as they proceed through the state and federal appeals process. The research provides a procedural history of death penalty appeals, from direct appeal to the state’s highest court to the final writ of certiorari to the U.S. Supreme Court, rather than a “snapshot view”. Cases were selected from judicial election states and non-judicial election states. Extensive information was gathered and analyzed, such as, relief grant rates by appellate courts, relief grant rates over time, outcomes of grants of relief, grants of relief overturned by higher courts, issues raised on appeals, reasons relief granted, number of state post-conviction and federal habeas corpus petitions filed, average time betweeen sentence, appeals and executions, and unanimity rates and dissent rates in capital and non-capital criminal cases. The study reveals that overall 56% of capital inmates were successful in obtaining relief from their initial conviction/or death sentence. A court of higher authority, however, overturned 15% of the grants of relief. Half of the states that require their supreme court justices to face judicial elections had supreme courts that reversed capital convictions and/or death sentences at a rate of 50% or higher. This finding casts incertitude on the argument that justices who face elections in states that clearly support the death penalty will be hesitant to overturn a capital defendant’s conviction or sentence. Only 3 grants of relief were obtained on successive petitions. Finally, the data reveals that of the inmates who proceeded into federal habeas courts, 23% were “ultimately” successful in obtaining relief.
What We Do and Don’t Know: Systematic Reviews and Methods
This paper explores two key areas in the reporting of homicide. First, the potential for comparing homicide rates in the UK and US over a period of time using sources such as police data and vital statistics. The second area is an examination of how these data are collected and the various procedures and processes in each country. Due to certain reporting regulations it seems that neither system can easily provide the definitive number of deaths by violent intervention per year. Even within each national jurisdiction there is a confusing variance in the number of deaths that can be considered the result of homicide, creating difficulties with the analysis of trends or differential rates of homicide internationally. Hence, in this paper we argue that it is possible to make comparisons but there should be some estimation of the incomplete nature of some data, and the over reporting of deaths by homicide in others.
What We Know and Don’t Know About ‘the’ Immigration-Crime Link
Criminological theory and conventional wisdom hold that immigration and crime are inextricably linked: Immigrants are more criminal than non-immigrants, higher rates of immigration cause higher rates of crime, and increased immigration causes increased crime. Such “facts,” if true, present important implications for criminological theories and for social policy. However, a review of extant research indicates that these “facts” are either incorrect or unknown. This review highlights the need for (1) much better data to assess “the” immigration-crime link, (2) specification of a standard criminological facts about immigration and crime (e.g., the prevalence of crime among legal and illegal immigrants versus non-immigrants, immigrant crime rates disaggregated by crime type, changes in immigrant crime rates), and (3) considerably more well-developed theories that can explain any individual or aggregate-level links, cross-sectionally or over time, between immigrants/immigration and crime. These issues and avenues for future research are discussed.
What Will the Supreme Court Say About Second Amendment Issues and How Will Society Respond?
Though the lower federal courts have generally rejected the notion that the Amendment protects individuals in owning firearms, the Supreme Court’s statements so unilluminating that the contending sides (states’ or collective right v. individual right) interpret them to diametrically opposite effect. The 2001 decision of a lower federal court embracing the individual right theory may prompt the Supreme Court to at last resolve the controversy. But a final resolution by the Court will likely consume many years. In the meantime, tens of thousands will die each year because of gun violence.
What Works for Me? Arrest Decisions as Adaptive Behavior
Studies of arrest discretion have highlighted arrest’s distinctive sociological, psychological, and organizational dimensions, while ignoring the mundane effects of arrest-processing itself. Yet it is this process of arrest-making, and its impact on the personal lives of officers, that may be the most critical arrest determinant of all. Consider the 40,000-uniform member New York City Police Department, where the applicant, a police lieutenant, observed fellow officers for twenty years. In the NYPD, post-arrest procedures often involve prolonged paperwork and contact with prisoners, and officers must extend their tour in proportion to the lateness of their arrests. This situation generates powerful private motives to make or avoid arrest at any given time. The most common benefit afforded by arrest is overtime, calculated at time-and-a-half rates, taken in cash or compensatory time. Arrest also offers an escape to the station house from an unpleasant assignment. The major personal costs of arrest processing are also two-fold. It is an intrusion upon officer’s lives as private individuals, and it poses inherent risks and discomforts. Controlling the timing and type of arrests is thus a way officers can control their income, personal schedule, and working conditions. New York City patrol officers seem to absorb the skills and rationales of arrest-control from their first station house roll call. There, many officers speak freely of their need for arrest overtime to pay for a car, a vacation, or their children’s braces. Some officers mention how they were up all night with a heavy date or a sick baby and are thus in no condition to stay late with an arrest. Others talk about a class, a second job, or a party after work that would preclude their making an arrest. One officer, itching from contact with a lice-infested prisoner, declares that he will never again arrest a derelict. Those in car-pools coordinate their arrest plans to accommodate their transportation needs going home. Officers poll one another as to who that day would offer or take an unwanted arrest. When these arrest-sharing arrangements fall neatly into place, they have little impact on the arrest decisions. But sometimes officers who have arranged to pass off their arrest find the “catchers” tied up with other patrol incidents. Occasionally, those officers most willing to take arrests are “capped out,” discouraged by management from making any more cash overtime. On Super Bowl Sunday or on holidays, officers may not find a single volunteer to take their arrest. At other periods, like the pre-Christmas shopping season, nearly every officer is out scrambling for arrest overtime. Thus peer cooperation cannot guarantee that on a given day an officer will be able to make or avoid an arrest. Some officers therefore feel a need to modify their patrol style to enhance their “arrest control.” On a no-arrest day they may keep themselves busy with summonses and service calls, drive slowly and noisily to crimes in progress, avoid blocks where arrests “fall into your lap,” and forego proactive measures like license plate checks and stop-and-frisks. They may avoid the types of people and the kinds of arguments that get them “pissed off.” They may construe incidents as non-crimes, or ignore them entirely. And on an arrest day, they may do exactly the opposite – rush to incidents, initiate interventions, provoke disputants, and pat down “known criminals” – particularly late in the tour, when arrests mean overtime. Oft-repeated maxims endorse officer self-interest as a rationale for adaptive arrest behavior. “Your job is to get home safe at the end of eight hours” and “Your family comes first” remind fellow officers not to be too self-sacrificing. “Make the Job work for you” celebrates the officer’s ability to control the timing and type of arrest, so as to garner perks usually reserved for non-patrol assignments – more money, timely sign-out, or less unpleasantness. Other expressions justify adaptive arrest behavior by alluding to the “revolving door” nature of arrests. Capturing the broad disillusionment with the entire “System” is the common refrain, “The Job’s not on the level.” Supervisors struggle to keep officers content and arrests honest. They may occasionally indulge subordinates who ask for an arrest-prone or arrest-proof assignment, and may give a disproportion of non-arrest posts to women officers with young children. They may ask officers “looking for a collar” to identify themselves for the benefit of those hoping not to get stuck. They may help negotiate arrest-processing responsibilities, or assign an end-of-tour arrest to an officer on straight time. But even the most diligent sergeants are unable to oversee every potential arrest scene, and would incur great resentment if they tried. Moreover, sergeants sometimes feel they must barter for the cooperation of subordinates, even if it means “hanging back” from problematic arrest situations or accepting questionable arrest decisions. Commanding officers are less familiar with their officers’ motives. They must focus on the “heavy hitters” who run up department overtime, and to a lesser extent, on the “empty suits” who “get paid for doing nothing.” So, perversely, the most opportunistic officers may escape notice by balancing arrests and avoidance, while the most conscientious crime-fighters may be penalized by being denied scheduled overtime tours, or being reassigned to posts with few arrest opportunities. These observations are at odds with the prevailing paradigm of arrest discretion, wherein officers randomly respond to situations, discover an offense, and then weigh a host of factors that broadly may be termed incident-related. Here, personal concerns predisposed officers to make or avoid arrest, affecting which situations they handled and how they handled them. Adaptive arrest behaviors appeared to be most affected by officers’ finances, post-work commitments, and arrest-related aversions. These adaptations developed early, as officers ended formal training, gained patrol experience, and absorbed coworkers’ arrest-control techniques and motives. The behaviors were encouraged by verbal endorsements of self-interest and cynical arrest attitudes. They seemed to vary with gender, tour, and the particulars of arrest processing. Finally, these activities were little restricted by management. The proposed research will empirically examine the qualitative and quantitative dimensions of these preliminary observations.
What Works in Probation: A House Built on Sand?
The `What Works’ or `Effective Practice’ initiative dominates current probation practice in England and Wales. It has become institutionalised in a very short time as the only effective way of working with offenders. As such, it should have strong foundations. This paper discusses the origins and conditions of emergence of the `What Works’ initiative in an effort to unpick the monolith and expose its foundations. It is argued that, despite the claims made for `What Works’ its foundations are weak. The paper goes on to examine the current context in which `What Works’ is being implemented in the National Probation Service; (NPS) and again the argument is that this context is not especially conducive to the successful implementation of a national initiative. While `What Works’ is set to determine to a considerable degree the future of the NPS, it can also be seen as the first significant demonstration of the authority of the National Probation Directorate and exemplifies one aspect of the centralised disciplinary control of the probation service; the other two aspects being financial control and training arrangements, both of which are intimately linked to the `What Works’ agenda.
What You See is Wht You Get: The Shaping of Public Opinion Through media Portrayals, and Its Effect on the Administering of Justice
The American justice system is rooted in the premise that everyone deserves the right to a fair trial. What has become quite evident, however, is the justie system’s increasing dependence on public opinion, which, as we know, is many times influenced by often inaccurate and incomplete media representations. It is then reasonable to assume that these misguided and misshapen opinions will negatively influence the trial process and inhibit the administering of true and fair justice. By employing Richard Quinney’s Social Reality of Crime, I will highlight common portrayals of criminals and will dissect the impact of these portrayals in the media. Furthermore, I will reveal the numerous injustices that reside in our criminal trial process, which directly affects the outcome of high profile cases such as Timothy McVeigh, Theodore Kaczinski, and John Walker Lindh, but also the trials of the “average American criminal.”
When Research Makes Sense: The Advantages of Practitioner-Informed Research on Delinquent Girls
Both studies of and responses to delinquent youth in the United States were almost exclusively male-specific until the1980s. That is, until recently, with few exceptions, it was assumed that delinquent was synonymous with male. The increase in both feminist scholars and feminist professionals working with delinquent girls since the 1970’s has resulted in unprecedented pressure to examine the processing and treatment of delinquent girls (see Belknap, 2001; Chesney-Lind & Shelden, 1998; Daly & Chesney-Lind, 1988). A recent report by OJJDP asks “What about the Girls?” (Budnick, 1998). This report documents the nationwide problem of the increasing numbers of delinquent girls, but also addresses the challenge across the U.S. in the “demand for comprehensive needs assessments that identify gaps in the provision of services for girls” (Budnick, 1998, p.2). In 1992 there was a reauthorization of the Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention Act of 1974 (JJDPA) (the 1974 act was designed to de-institutionalize status offenders). A significant aspect of this reauthorization was that the U.S. Congress heard and understood some of the concerns raised by some professionals who work with delinquent girls, that the existing program was insufficient for delinquent girls’ needs (Belknap, 2001). These professionals were convincing in their presentation of the existing programs as designed for boys, and even then, often unavailable for girls. Hence the 1992 Reauthorization of the1974 JJDPA birthed the current focus on identifying and implementing the “gender-specific needs” of delinquent girls. The1992 Reauthorization legislation provided that each state should (1) determine the need for and assessment of existing services and treatment for delinquent girls, (2) develop a plan to provide needed gender-specific services for the prevention and treatment of juvenile delinquency, and (3) provide assurance that youth in the juvenile system are treated fairly regarding their mental, physical, and emotional capabilities, as well as on the basis of their gender, race, and family income (Belknap et al.,1997). To this end, states across the U.S. have been receiving federal monies in attempts to attend to the three provisions outlined in the 1992 Reauthorization of the JJDPA. Most of this work is in progress, so it is too early to make conclusive statements. Practitioners were key in testifying before the U.S. Congress to convince them of the need for the 1992 Re-Authorization. However, to our knowledge, professionals who work daily with delinquent and at-risk girls, have not been “allowed” to play a significant role in the research on delinquent girls, including the “gender-specific” programming research called for in the 1992 OJJDP Act.
When Science, Politics, and Advocacy Collide: A Personal Encounter With D.A.R.E.
In the “war on drugs,” social scientists, politicians, and advocates for various programs have been engaged in their own battle on the question of what works, what doesn’t, and what we should do about it. This collision of philosophies, political agendas, and research data is best illustrated in the case of D.A.R.E. – the world’s most popular school-based drug education. Professor Rosenbaum will reflect upon his personal experiences over the past decade as someone who passed through this intense vortex and survived to talk about it.
When the Shoe Doesn’t Fit: Misguided and Counterproductive Policies and Practices for Girls in the Juvenile Justice System
Because girls have traditionally comprised such a small proportion of youths in the juvenile justice system, policies and practices have been focused primarily on boys’ offenses, behaviors and needs. Although the number of girls in the system has been increasing over the past decade, policies and practices have not been revised to take their particular issues into account. A recent study of girls under state supervision in georgia revealed that not only were many policies and practices misguided, some were, in fact, counterproductive, often contriubuting to an increase in the girls’ problems. This paper presents examples of some of these policies and practices, along with a discussion of how they are not only inappropriate, but may, in fact, do more harm than good. Recommendations are then offered for improvements that can be made based on research and knowledge about girls’ particular issues and needs.
When Worlds Collide: Perspectives of Detainees, Parents and Detention Officers on Delinquency in the Context of Disproportionate Minority Confinement
This paper is based on participant observation at a Midwestern county juvenile detention center, and on interviews with detention officers, detainees, and detainees’ parents. Participants shared some basic assumptions about the purposes of detention, but their beliefs about detained youth, their families, and their experiences in detention varied markedly across groups. Juvenile justice personnel explained delinquent behavior and problems with detainees in largely individualized terms of personal choice, apathetic or inadequate parenting and “bad attitude.” In contrast, detainees and their parents explained individual choices in part by referring to broader contextual factors such as poverty, adolescent identity development, and specific experiences of injustice such as harassment by police and negative labeling by teachers. Observations in the detention center suggest that these differences affect detention officers’ interactions with detained youth, as well as influencing both groups’ interpretations of events in the center. Because the majority of detainees are African American, and the majority of detention officers are European American, across-group interactions affect and are affected by participants’ beliefs about race and racism. Implications of these combined influences for the detention center’s role in the community and its influence on the thinking and behavior of detained youth will be discussed.
When Worlds Collide: Women’s Responses to Arrest and Prosecution for Domestic Violence
While several studies have explored the circumstances of battered women who kill their abusers less has been written concerning female domestic violence offenders charged with lesser offenses. This paper presents the results of a study of 40 women who were arrested and charged with domestic violence misdemeanors. The women were interviewed on two occasions, prior to beginning a court ordered treatment program and after completing the program, about their experiences with the police and in court. The study examines the effects of the criminal justice system intervention on women’s behavior, self-definitions, and attitudes toward domestic violence and the criminal justice system. The majority of the women in the study had not previously been arrested and the experience of arrest and incarceration had a profound effect on them. The women’s use of violence is examined contextually with attention to the complex relationship between their victimization and use of aggression. While the women gain a different perspective concerning the nature of the police response to domestic violence incidents over the course of their treatment, they voice a strong disinclination to call the police in the future. This finding raises important questions about the effectiveness of current policy, the accuracy of recidivism measures, and the effect of proactive arrest procedures on battered women.
Whipping the Offender: Corporal Punishment Views of University Students
The caning of Michael Fay in 1994 brought forth adamant debate on the issue of corporal punishment. The attorney for Fay incorrectly announced that corporal punishment was unconstitutional. The U.S. Supreme Court has never ruled on the constitutionality of corporal punishment for criminal offenders. A large number of students across different majors were surveyed at a large Midwestern university on the issue of corporal punishment and whether nonviolent offenders should receive corporal punishment rather than incarceration. The results of the survey are presented, along with a discussion of the policy and social issues surrounding the use of corporal punishment as a criminal sanction.
White-Collar Crime in Nigeria: A Conceptual Inquiry
White-collar crime has been variously described as both endemic and widespread in Nigeria. White-collar crime is an offense that is economically motivated and is committed by persons of power and status in the course of their occupations. Generally known as corruption in Nigeria, it is an offense that usually remains unreported because of the general distrust of the Criminal Justice Institutions charged with its control, hence the attitude: why “report corruption to corruption”. White-collar crime is blamed for Nigeria’s poor economic performance, its political crisis, and poor human rights records. Several factors foster white-collar crime, including weak institutional, economic, political, social and historical bases and, it flourishes in the absence of the rule of law, weak democratic institutions and traditions. All measures put in place by successive Nigerian governments to prevent and combat white-collar crime remain ineffective. This many observe is mostly due to the condoning attitude of the people towards white-collar crime and the fact that everyone is “involved in the act”, so to speak. This study therefore seeks to inquire into the concept of white-collar crime in Nigeria. Specifically, the historical, social and cultural factors that foster white-collar crime will be examined.
Who Do Communities Trust?
Crime prevention and policing professionals are increasingly looking to key into the “…networks, norms and trust – that enable participants to act together more effectively to pursue shared objectives…” (Putnam 1996:56) both at the level of community and at the intersection of community and policy. While there has been some attention paid to building networks of social capital within communities and the communitarian agenda has foregrounded the process of constructing a shared understanding of neighbourhood norms and values, little consideration has been given to the ways in which trusting relations are established and maintained within neighbourhods. This paper explores how day-to-day interactions in a number of high-crime neighbourhoods in the UK help to actively maintain relationships of trust among people who share the same “environment of risk” (Giddens 1990:35). It shows little trust of “expert systems” (Giddens 1990:21) – for those organisations and authorities which were perceived to lie outside of this shared experience. It argues that, in the absence of trust in the “expert” that people look to develop trust within their own social groupings, either through legitimate and accepted forms of organisation e.g. community groups and residents associations or through counter-cultural forms such as the criminal gang or “no grassing” dogmas (Walklate and Evans 1999).
Who Researched What We Know and Under What Circumstances? Period and Cohort Effects in the Production of Criminological Knowledge, 1951-1993
Cohort and period effects are explored for criminological journal literature. The paper links traditions of biographic interviews with and essays by criminologists (Laub 1983; Cressey 1990) and sociologists (Rossi 1990) with a body of research on cohort and period effects on knowledge (Mannheim 1952; Kertzer 1983; Schumann and Scott 1989). The data set is based on content analysis of 1,612 crime and crime control articles in leading American sociology and criminology journals (1951-1993), supplemented by information on the year and place of authors’ graduation. Distinguishing between six cohorts and four periods of production, results indicate that period and cohort membership mutually affected criminological work, topic, level of analysis, and type of theory examined. For example, all productive cohorts shifted from criminal behavior to control research between the 1960s and the 1970 while all productive cohorts at least partly reversed this trend during the 1980s. Yet, each cohort begins its shifts at a different level and moves at its own pace. Cohort and period effects are interpreted against the background of historic information regarding dominant ideological currents of different eras and dominant schools that nurtured different generations of criminologists
Who Took the Outhouse: Institutionalized Racism and the Culture of Tradition
Cultural Criminology examines the criminal identities and events that are indoctrinated with the meaning, style, and symbolic production of an underprivileged group. The use of collective perceptions, situated meanings, and social control helps define culture as crime, but may also produce harmful myths and stereotypes. Unchecked it can oppress, suppress or dominate less powerful groups. This paper explores the development of a criminal subculture at the oldest university in Texas, Texas A&M, through the tradition known as “Aggie Bonfire.” Here Aggies created a collective aesthetic environment of crime with symbolism and style. Poor rural white students from Texas sponsored a well-known and much loved tradition with less well-known racism and crime. Finally, this paper will examine the everyday perceptions of the community, the operations and events surrounding bonfire, and the historical effects of this cultural enterprise.
Whose on Probation?
The paper is an analysis of the Survey of Adults on Probation data compiled by the Bureau of Justice Statistics. This was the first national survey to gather information on the individual characteristics of adult probationers. The survey comprised record checks and personal interviews with probationers. The record check provided detailed information on 5,867 probationers. A subset of the population selected for record checks were selected for personal interviews resulting in 2,000 completed interviews. This paper will report on various social, legal, and demographic characteristics of these sample populations.
Why Are They Dying: Gender and Suicide in Correctional Facilities
A growing concern among social sciences has been violence in correctional facilities and how rates differ by sex. The concern is whether the violence within jails and prisons leads to self-destructive forms of crime such as suicide. This study will examine rates of violence within adult correctional facilities and its correlation with suicide rates. The assumption is that facilities with high rates of in-house violence among the inmates have higher suicide rates. In addition, this study will make comparisons of violence and suicide rates of males to that of females. This study will also look at what other characteristics the facilities with high rates of violence have. These would include cell assignment and size, work assignment availability, educational programs, other special programs, etc. The data I will be using will be from the Oklahoma Department of Corrections and the National Institute of Justice. This study will help with regards to decreasing violence in correctional facilities and making them safer places for inmates and staff.
Why Are They Using? Understanding the Role of Self-Control and Opprtunity in Adolescent Substance Use
One of the most widely researched theories in criminology over the last decade has been Gottfredson and Hirschi’s General Theory of crime. In large part, the empirical findings support the General Theory. However, there are some unresolved issues that still need to be addressed. One is the role of self-control in explaining substance use among adolescent. The literature is equivocal in this area. Moreover, the role of opportunity continues to be under-studied and poorly operationalized. In this study, we address these issues by assessing the role of self-control, opportunity, and their interactive effects in explaining substance use among a sample of adolescents. Data are drawn from the Rural Violence and Substance Abuse Project, which sampled 4,000 adolescents located throughout the commonwealth of Kentucky. Results indicate that self-control and opportunity have both independent and interactive effects in explaining substance use among our sample. Implications for the theory and future research are discussed.
Why Don’t Rogues React on Less Police Surveillance?
When the 2000 United Nations International Climate Conference was organised in The Hague (The Netherlands), a substiantial part of the regular police force had to be reallocated for security tasks around that conference. Regular police tasks hads to be put on a minimum scgedule. Rational choice theory would predict that criminals, especially those engaged in planned crimes, would take this opportunity when the probability of being caught and sanctioned is substantially decreased. However, analysis of police records shows that this has not occurred. I discuss how we should interprete this surprising result. Does it falsify the rational choice theory? Or is it an artifact of police recording practices? Or is deterrence so low anyway that a further diminshing makes no difference?
Widening the Feminist Lens on Restorative Justice
A troubling feature of analyzing any social phenomenon “from a feminist perspective” is the restrictions we, as feminists, may impose on the subject matter. A case in point is restorative justice (RJ). To date, the major debates about restorative justice “from a feminist perspective” have almost universally focused on whether RJ is appropriate in particular kinds of cases, those involving women (or girls) as victims of family or sexual violence. When I first decided to conduct research on RJ, my focus was on this area because at the time, there seemed to be no other way in “from a feminist perspective” than this. In this paper, I want to suggest that we think about the potential and limits of RJ with a wide angle of vision, a very wide feminist lens, which includes all the major actors and reasons that bring people to an RJ practice. Also in the mix I want to include some key philosophical and legal arguments that have been brought to bear on RJ. In reviewing the current literature and the key players in RJ, I am struck with the dominance of men on the podiums and in the edited collections of works. Why might this be the case? One reason is that many feminist scholars who are curious about RJ come into this new academic/justice practice area with interests in violence against women; others come into the debate wary and skeptical about what this new justice practice will mean for female victims. Few have wondered what RJ may mean to women or girls as lawbreakers, or whether the dialogic encounter that features so prominently in RJ offers a step forward or backward for a feminist friendly justice practice. While the men are asking about the legal frameworks for RJ or sketching future RJ models, I see few feminist scholars (or even women scholars) doing the same. This should be of concern to all of us. There are many questions that need to be addressed about the applicability of RJ in cases of sexual and family/domestic violence, and as importantly, there are keen debates on this question between white women and women of color. Working from these areas, feminist researchers have challenged mainstream thinking in RJ, which misapprehends family or domestic violence as incident-based, not on-going (see Stubbs 2002), and which ignores the views and experiences of grassroots victim advocacy workers. However, other crimes, even if they do not appear to be “gendered harms” (Daly 2002), invite feminist attention. Likewise, the debates between and among white women and women of color over the the potential of RJ need not be confined to its applicability in cases of sexual and family/domestic violence. In fact, these debates provide a template for a broader discussion on the gender and race politics of what I term “new justice practices” more generally. (By new justice practices, I include not only particular kinds of RJ practices such as conferencing or sentencing circles, but also a variety of sentencing alternatives such as specialized Drug Courts, Domestic Violence Courts, and Aboriginal Courts, or participation by indigenous community groups in advising judges and magistrates.) While I restrict my attention in this paper to what can be termed local justice forms (the state’s criminal justice system practices), there is a wide and untapped area of feminist intervention in international courts and tribunals, where RJ can be used (or has been invoked) in the resolution of broader political struggles and civil wars such as in South Africa and Rwanda (Drumbl 2000; Roberts 2002). My theoretical and political interests currently lie in the gender and race politics of RJ (and new justice practices more generally). I use the term to characterise the different logics and competing justice claims that are associated with (1) victims and offenders and (2) feminist and anti-racist groups. In theory, a “feminist perspective,” broadly defined, ought to be able to appreciate and include an “anti-racist” perspective; and it ought to be able to appreciate and see a victim’s and offender’s interest in a justice practice. The practical problem, however, is that each side of the dualism is often in conflict with the other, and one is often forced to choose sides. For women of color and indigenous women, problems of divided and competing loyalties are especially acute. My argument, then, is that while feminst theory and research is making a substantial contribution to the RJ discussion, especially in working through areas the mainstream ignores, it needs to extend on these developments and broaden its reach. I will give examples of this by drawing from my research on RJ in Australia and by reviewing key areas of philosophical debate. [To give more background on my view of RJ as friendly critic; seeing the potential, but also calling the question on advocates’ strong claims and myths of RJ. To recognize also that some feminists may argue that RJ should not be entertained at all, that despite its many flaws, the established justice system needs to be reformed first.]
Will the Real Murderer Please Stand Up? Transnational Corporations and the Violation of Human Rights, Homicide or Cancer?
The presence of economically and politically powerful transnational corporate industries disproportionately affects poor minority communities as well as third world nationa. The effects of transnational corporate behavior include resource deprivation, pollution, and economic inequality. Air, water, and ground pollution have been linked to a variety of health problems including increased rates of cancer. And in the United States cancer mortality rates are higher among whites and blacks of all ages than homicide rates (National Health Statistis, 1999). We expect that a similar relationship will exist in a variety of other nations. This work compares the cancer mortality and homicide rates among European Union nations, and nations participating in North American Free Trade Association to third world developing nations. Independent variables utilized in the analysis will include the presence or absence of strutural adjustment programs, transnational corporations, international environmental regulations, and IMF strutural adjustment programs. Control variales will include a variety of social, political, and economic, variables known to increase traditional homicide rates. We anticipate that among developing nations the implementation of NAFTA policies and structural adjustment programs will prohibit economic growth and will result in increased pollution and cancer mortality rates compared to similiar rates among Euopean Union nations.
Winning the Battle/Losing the War: Cultural Nostalgia and the “True Crime” Comic Genre
In recent years, there has been a resurgence of the “true-crime” comic genre available on the mass market. Yet, what is surprising about this re-emergence is the popularity of 1940s justice in the contemporary political and social climate. In a culture saturated by modern tales of reality crime, why the resurgence of war-era law and order? Using Fredric Jameson’s (1999) theory of the nostalgic mode of contemporary society, this article provides a cultural account for the recent republication of 1940s era “true crime” comic books, examining the ideological role of war-era justice in a contemporary social setting.
Women and Children First: Process Evaluation Results From the Greenbook Initiative
The goals of the Greenbook Initiative are to improve the ways the three systems-dependency courts, child protective services, and domestic violence service providers-work together and with their broader community to address the problems of families with co-occurring domestic violence and child maltreatment. To accomplish this, the Ssix federally-funded demonstration communities are undertaking within and across system change in such areas as screening and assessment, information sharing, reauthorization, cross-training, safety planning and batterer accountability, service provision, case management, and advocacy to pursue this goal. This paper will address the overall evaluation strategy and preliminary results from the process evaluation of Greenbook.
Women and Crime: Theory and Indian Reality
This paper focuses on various theoretical speculations on women and crime and their (ir)relevance to women offenders in an Indian prison. I will address some of the following concerns: (a) knowledge systems that have been used to understand female offenders as an “essential category.” (b) Eurocentric criminological discourses (both malestream and feminist) that have ignored the various multiple specificities relating to female offenders. (c) How in some contexts like the Indian context, women offenders face two competing justice systems: traditional and legal. Thus, the need to dismantle unified and universal explanations. My study is based on the field-work I conducted in the Chanchalguda prison, Hyderabad, India. This paper argues that unified knowledges have ailed to address multiple specificities.As a result, women offenders merge as an “essential” category for criminological and penological purposes.
Women and Methamphetamine: A Review of Current Research
This review examines the interaction between women and methamphetamine use, sales, and production. Particular attention is paid to parallels with crack cocaine and asosciation with outlaw motorcycle groups. Evidence suggests that women involved with methamphetamine are often relegated to a secondary social status. The secondary social status is often displayed through patriarchal organizations and compulsory heterosexuality intensified by illicit drug use. In many areas women’s methamphetamine use rates are on par with male use rates. However the evolution of women’s methamphetamine use appears to differ from men’s experiences. Further, the effect of addiction to methamphetamine is also considered.
Women and the Death Penalty: A Feminist/Legal Perspective
The decision of Gregg v Georgia (1976) led to the continuation of the death penalty in the United States. To be included were women who had murdered and/or committed the most heinous of crimes. Capital punishment is a “hot” item whose merits are continually debated among scholars. Though we are the only Western civilization to utilize such a penalty, capital punishment is part of our national crime control policy. During the years 1930 – 1967 statistics on lawful executions tell us that a total of 3,859 executions had occurred including 32 women. Such statistics do not include extra-judicial executions, i.e., lynching that accounted for at least 4,730 additional deaths between the years 1882 and 1952. According to Carroll (1997), the disparity between the risk of male and female execution tends to support the belief that there exists “a chivalrous disinclination to sentence women to die” (Rapaport, 1990, p. 504). No gender-based theory boasts the long and exhaustive support that race or class based theories enjoy, even though theories based on race or class may not consider gender-centric causative factors unique female criminality. Under the theory of chivalry, women appear to be safeguarded by traditional and protective notions of femininity, which preclude jurors from seeing women as “death eligible” despite the vicious nature of the act with which they are charged (Carroll, 1997; Schulberg, 2003). According to Carroll “gender assumptions that stereotype women as being weak, passive, submissive, and dependent on men as viewed as creating a protective shield that makes females less attractive to imprison and less eligible to execution” (Schulberg, p. 420). As noted “it’s like a girl playing on the football team. Knocking her on her butt doesn’t give you the same thrill as it would if it was a big guy. The death penalty is partly man against man” (Schulberg). Such a notion has also been echoed by Leigh Beinen, law professor at Northwestern. It is Beinen’s belief that “few women face execution because of the symbolism central to capital punishment. Capital punishment is about portraying people as devils, but women are usually seen as less threatening” (Schulberg). There exists as well the evil woman theory which states that a female “who acts particularly violently, or in gender-defying or forbidden ways, is denied the protections of gender afforded others of her gender” (Schulberg), thereby making her more eligible for the death penalty. If a woman is to fit this model she must violate the important social values by her commitment of criminal acts, thereby acting in an “unladylike” manner. This allows the judges and jurists to forget about women being the “gentler sex.” Supporters of both the chivalry and evil women theories, appear to agree that the death penalty “really acts to enforce the outer bounds of acceptable feminine behavior by marking gender-acceptable boundaries” (Schulberg, p. 421). In order to be executed a murderer represents the power of evil. Women, who historically were thought not to descent to such levels, would theoretically rarely be put to death. It appears that it is only the rare women “and the rare act of evil by women that is sufficiently powerful to make executing her [that] reassures us about our own personal safety” (Schulberg).
Women and War: The Hidden Casualties
The presentation examines the effect of the war situation on Palestinian women in The West Bank. The database consists of focus group meetings with mothers of children who were killed by the Israeli forces during the current Intifada from three main locations, Jerusalem, Nablus and Ramallah. The data suggest that international and national bodies nullify women narratives. Women’s pains and reaction to the loss of their children was considered “child abuse” according to some international bodies, and “national heroism” or martyrdom according to national sources. Such reactions, we claim, might deny the acknowledgement of the actual victimization of mothers and their families as a reaction to their children’s killing. The implications for such victimization will be discussed and drawn.
Women and War: The Hidden Casualties
The presentation examines the effect of the war situation on Palestinian women in The West Bank. The database consists of focus group meetings with mothers of children who were killed by the Israeli forces during the current Intifada from three main locations, Jerusalem, Nablusa, and Ramallah. The data suggest that international and national bodies nulliufy women narratives. Women’s pains and reaction to the loss of their children was considered “child abuse” according to some international bodies, and “national herosim” or martyrdom according to national sources. Such reactions, we claim, might deny the acknowledgement of the actual victimization of mothers and their families as a reaction to their children’s killing. The implications for such victimization will be discussed and drawn.
Women in Blue: Predictors That Buffer Female Police Officers From Perceived Gender Discrimination by Men in Blue
Although women have served as sworn police officers since the 1970s, research indicates that they continue to face resistance from male colleagues. Previous research on women in policingm gowever, has produced inconclusive results on whether certain predictors significantly affect perceived gender discrimination. In addition, prior studies of women in policing have typically been qualitative, and much of the previous research is now old. To address the limitations of previous research, this study employs quantitative data collected between 1997 and 1999 from sworn members of the Baltimore City Police Department to test whether certain predictors buffer female officers from perceived discrimination. Findings indicate that demographic characteristics and adhering to masculine policing norms do not buffer female officers from perceiving gender discrimination. However, women in blue who are committed to their jobs are significantly less likely to perceive gender discrimination from men in blue.
Women on the Bench: The Different Voices and Experiences of Female Judicial Officers
This paper will explore the experiences and views of female judicial officers as they progress in a field predominantly occupied by men. Specifically, it examines how women “do gender” in their everyday work, the effect gender played and continues to play on their careers and views of the criminal justice system, and the “different voices” they may bring to the profession. The data include in-depth interviews, in addition to surveys. The final section of the paper will compare the findings to those of another study conducted in a contiguous state.
Women’s Problems or Problem Women? Menstrual Disorders in Women Serving a Prison Sentence
Accounts from prison health care staff indicate that menstrual disorders take up a high proportion of doctors’ time in women’s prisons, ranking among the conditions most frequently presented for consultation. This paper explores the way in which menstrual disorders are defined and managed in women’s prisons through an analysis of data drawn from a qualitative study of women, health and imprisonment in England. The findings suggest that, in prison, where control is taken away as the prisoner and her body become the objects of external forces, women are quick to reflect on menstrual symptoms, to interpret them in terms of illness, to regard them as problematic and, hence, to help-seek. In turn, the issue of gender which has invaded the medical perspective on menstrual disorders, creates particular difficulties for women prisoners, as ‘women’ and as ‘offenders’, in their dealings with the medical profession. Here, a medicalised view of suffering may lead to an increased willingness on the part of prison doctors to define and treat menstruation as pathological, to accord a diagnostic label to menstrual symptoms and, by extension, to women prisoners. The findings raise questions about the medicalisation and social control of deviant women and how cultural judgements and ‘folk wisdom’ can influence medical management in this context.
Women’s Styles of Doing Time and Their Adjustment in Two Different Prison Settings
The classic research on the social organization and culture of the inmate community conceptualized the inmate society as an adaptation to a total institution. Researchers were concerned with how both inmate characteristics and organizational features of prisons fashioned a set of responses to prison regimes that simply made life more tolerable for inmates and facilitated their adjustment. While research on prisoner adjustment has continued the classic tradition of considering the contribution of individual and environmental characteristics to prisoner adjustment, the inmate society has disappeared as an important component of understanding prison misbehavior, mental health and other indicators of adjustment. This paper draws from both of these traditions to study women’s adjustment to imprisonment. Its purpose is (1) to reveal the different types of adaptations women use today to manage their carceral lives; and (2) to explore how these adaptations are related to self-reports of prison misbehavior, mental health, and program participation within and across different prison environments.
Women Sex Offenders: The Use and Misuse of Classification
This paper reports on a recent UK study of 30 convicted women sex offenders in prison and probation settings. Based on interview and documentary data, it discusses the relevance of dividing this offender group into distinct categories. The paper suggests that much previous research has generated oversimplistic explanations of sexual offending by women. It outlines a typology that recognises the relevance of individual and social factors to women’s sexual offending, dividing the women into three categories based on motivation and offence dynamics.
Women Who Kill: A Quantitative Application of the Gender Entrapment Model
This research focuses upon women who are incarcerated for having committed homicide and whether their lives prior to incarceration differ by race, class, and experience of abuse. I develop an intra-gender analysis of all women incarcerated for homicide on the basis of their relationships to the victims – that is, whether the victim was an intimate or any other person. Multivariate statistical analysis of the data set “Survey of Inmates of US Federal and State Correctional Facilities, 1997” will be applied in order to explore how women incarcerated for killing an intimate partner differ from the other women incarcerated for homicide in their pre-prison experiences and demographic characteristics. More specifically I apply the theoretical framework of the gender entrapment thesis to motivate and interpret a quantitative investigation of how women’s pathways to prison are often shaped by what they experienced and suffered in the outside world. The gender entrapment model shows that women incarcerated for the homicide of an intimate differ from the other women in the homicide group in their pre-prison experiences of abuse, their socio-economic backgrounds, and demographic characteristics.
Writing With and For Prisoners: A Feminist’s Tale
In this paper I will discuss my recent research on the U.S. Federal Prison system. I will demonstrate the challenges and rewards of writing a text designed in large part for prisoners and their families. Methodological issues that I will address include the emotional toll of prison research, the difficulty of building rapport by mail, and how to deal with gender relations when corresponding with the confined. Reflecting on feminist research methodologies I will discuss how each of these issues relates to pwer dynamics that are inherent in criminological studies. Finally, I will make a case for the importance of including the voices of prisoners to build an effective critique of the current system.
Wrongful Convictions in Capital Cases and the Legacy of Lynching
Wrongful convictions in capital cases has sometimes been called “legalized lynching.” This research examines whether there is an association between the use of capital punishment and a history of lynching for states in the continental U.S. It tests the hypotheses that capital punishment is used more often in states in which lynching was more prevalent and that wrongful convictions in such cases are more frequent in these states. Data are used from the Prisoners on Death Row series, 1972-1999, collected by the U.S. Department of Justice and archived in the National Criminal Justice Data Archive at the University of Michigan. Statistics on lynching aggregated by state are used from historical studies by the NAACP, the Southern Poverty Law Center, and other sources. Analysis of the data support the hypothesis that capital punishment is more likely to be legalized in states in which lynching was more prevalent. Capital punishment is not used at all in states with little or no history of lynching. Wrongful capital convictions in a state are also associated with a history of lynching. The rate of wrongful capital convictions is greater in states that have a stronger history of lynching. The results offer evidence that the prevalence of wrongful capital convictions is related to a state’s history of lynching.
Wrongful Convictions in Death Penalty Cases: Defining Innocence
With the release of the 100th person wrongly convicted of capital murder, prisoner’s claims of innocence become more compelling than ever before. Most analyses of systemic errors in the death penalty process have focused on actual innocence. However, the concept of innocence encompasses two additional dimensions: legal innocence and factual innocence. These legitimate concepts in legal doctrine pose challenges in capital trials wherein the defendant is “presumed guilty until proved innocent.” It is argued that legal analysis must consider these alternative theories of innocence to unmask the fatal errors in death penalty cases. This paper presents the results of a study that examines all the clemency petitions of those executed in Missouri since the re-instatement of the death penalty in 1977. Clemency petitions allow the condemned to present the most persuasive, full and complete story to prevent a miscarriage of justice. Eighty-two percent of the Missouri execution roll had serious claims of innocence. Finally, unless this broader understanding of innocence is recognized in the public discourse, the magnitude of wrongful convictions will continue to be underestimated.
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You Can Hang With Us But: Peers and the Options for Being Non-Delinquent in High Crime Neighborhoods
It has long been a staple finding of criminological research (for example Warr and Stafford 1991; other refs) that having delinquent or criminal peers increases the chance that a person engages in delinquent and criminal behavior. This is thought to be especially true for young people. However, even in high crime neighborhoods there are significant numbers of young people, even those who have delinquent and criminal peers, that manage to stay out of trouble. Based on the data from a multi-wave comparative study of delinquent and non-delinquent youth in three high crime Philadelphia neighborhoods we argue that within peer groups young people are often prohibited from engaging in delinquent behavior by delinquent peers. We explore the reasons for this, and suggest that the often contradictory norms found in peer groups serve merely to ensure that individuals whose talents can take them beyond their origins not get involved in behavior that can threaten their future. We suggest that this twist on cumulative continuity has implications for how we think of the relationship between peers and delinquency.
“You Know Who You Can Go To”: Cooperation and Exchange Between Incarcerated Women
This paper builds on prior research examining relationship formation among incarcerated women. Qualitative data, based on unstructured, in-depth interviews with 40 incarcerated women, underscore the benefits of inmate relationships and their support functions. Utilizing exchange theory, this paper examines how female inmates perceive their relationships with each other and assesses the role of these relationships in women’s adaptation to incarceration.
Young Adults in the Juvenile Justice System — German and European Experiences
The paper discusses the situation of young adults in the juvenile justice system in different European countries with special emphasis on the sentencing practice of juvenile courts in Germany. In many European countries reforms of the juvenile justice system have empowered the juvenile courts to apply educational sanctions towards young adults (regularly at the age between 18 and 21). Recently Austria, the Netherlands, Lithuania, Slovenia and Spain have introduced such flexible regulations. In Germany already since 1953 young adults have been included into the juvenile court’s jurisdiction. The paper describes empirical data on the sentencing practice particularly in Germany with comparison to other jurisdictions in Europe. In the German system in general and especially in East Germany (former GDR) in comparison to West Germany different sentencing practices have emerged. The paper presents the analysis of up to now unpublished statistics. The transfer to adult courts for offenders aged 18-21 years is practised very differently in comparison of the German Federal States. In contrary to the American waiver decision practice the more serious cases remain under the jurisdiction of the juvenile court in order to find a milder sentence in comparison to more than 21 year old adults. Adult criminal law is applied in the case of traffic and petty property offences in order to use a summary (written) proceeding, regularly with the outcome of a fine. Looking at the other European countries the application of educational sentences concerning young adults seems to be more restrictive than in Germany. The paper discusses the causes of different sentencing patterns and the perspectives for a European harmonisation in juvenile crime policy and practice.
Young Women Offenders and the Challenge for Restorative Justice
Thus far gender has rarely been addressed in discussions of restorative justice in the juvenile justice area. The omission of reference to gender implies an assumption that the outcomes and the processes will be the same for boys and girls. At this point there is very little research that allows examination of this assumption. In this paper I draw on research on girls’ experiences of juvenile justice more generally to suggest that there are issues that need to be acknowledged and addressed if the promises of restorative justice, in particular, group conferences, are to hold true for girls. The principles of some restorative justice models suggest potential benefits for young women in the juvenile justice system. However, before we can feel comfortable about the use of restorative justices practices the questions and issues raised in this paper need to be acknowledged and addressed. Most urgently, he practices of restorative justice need to be evaluated and monitored in regard to their implications for young women.
Youth Tobacco Prevention Programs and the Importance of Testing Alternative Models of Youth Tobacco Use
In 1998, the Master Settlement Agreement between 46 states and the tobacco industry, as well as separate settlements in four other states, resulted in a commitment of $246 billion by the tobacco industry over the next 25 years. Thirty states have already used these funds to make modest to substantial commitments to fund tobacco prevention programs. A review of these prevention programs reveals that relatively few reference theoretical models or criminological theory as a guide. Instead, several states refer to the American Cancer Society “Best Practices” as a guide to policy development. It is argued that criminology should have a role in the rapid development of youth tobacco prevention programs. National Youth Survey data were used to test learning, social bonding, and labeling models of youth tobacco use. Policy implications for tobacco prevention programs are discussed.
Youths Referred to the Juvenile Justice System: What Are Their Needs and Is There a Gap Between Needs and Services?
Many experts have noted the importance of risk and need factors in developing prevention and intervention strategies for juvenile offenders. However, few jurisdictions collect information about the risk/need profile of known youthful offenders or whether their needs are being met. Using referral data collected in Texas, we estimate the prevalence of mental health, substance abuse, educational, and family-related needs for youths referred to seven juvenile probation departments (representing 21% of referrals statewide). Analyses indicate that the most prevalent criminogenic needs of juvenile referrals are: problems associated with parental supervision, school behavior, school attendance, parental/family problems, disposition/self image, and substance abuse. Additional analyses suggest that substantial gaps exist between the number of juveniles needing and receiving programs and services.
