Explaining School Corporal Punishment: Evangelical Protestantism and Social Capital in a Path Model

School corporal punishment is associated with many negative outcomes. This research explores the antecedents to the practice and prevalence of school corporal punishment. A series of regression models indicated that two variables were significant predictors of a state’s practice of school corporal punishment: rate of evangelical Protestant adherents and social capital. A path analysis indicated that these two variables significantly predicted the rate of school corporal punishment in practicing states. The path analysis also revealed a significant and negative relationship between rate of evangelical Protestant adherents and social capital, but no relationship between rate of mainstream Protestant adherents and social capital. A mediation analysis indicated that social capital serves as a mediating variable between evangelical Protestantism and rate of school corporal punishment. Practical and theoretical implications are discussed.     

Race and Jurors' Receptivity to Mitigation in Capital Cases: The Effect of Jurors', Defendants', and Victims' Race in Combination

This paper examines the variation in receptivity to mitigation evidence by capital jurors as it varies by the race of the juror, defendant, and victim individually and in combination. Attitudinal and racial characteristics from 865 respondents in the Capital Jury Project were used in the analysis. Using a generalized form of multiple regression, the respondent's receptivity to mitigation evidence was predicted and changes in receptivity were calculated as the race of the main trial participants (juror, defendant, and victim) were varied. Statistical controls were put in place for gender of respondent; respondent's perception of the dangerousness of the defendant, heinousness of the crime, and view of the defense attorney; respondent's formation of a premature sentencing decision; and whether the trial took place in a southern state jurisdiction. Results indicate that Black jurors in cases where a Black is charged with killing a White victim are chiefly responsible for the observed variance in receptivity to mitigation.     

Actuarial Sentencing: An “Unsettled” Proposition

This paper discusses the concerns associated with the introduction of, and increased reliance on, actuarial risk tools in sentencing in order to: (1) stimulate cross-disciplinary dialog and research about the impact of incorporating actuarial risk logic into sentencing processes and (2) identify questions requiring further empirical examination. In this article, I recognize that actuarial risk logic offers managerial and organizational benefits, but I also demonstrate that the application of actuarial risk when sentencing offenders is not without important consequences. First, I provide a brief outline of the emergence, logic, and entrenchment of probabilistic reasoning within criminal justice decision-making, and the more recent extension and application of actuarial risk logic to sentencing. Then, I use the following themes to define the limits of using risk sciences in sentencing: (1) the logical structure of risk; (2) the slippage between risk prediction and individual causation; (3) current methodological limits of risk science; (4) the potential for gender and race discrimination; (5) the legal relevance and transparency of risk-based sentencing; and (6) the jurisprudential and organizational impact of various risk technologies. Importantly, the nature and severity of these complications will vary by, and within, the jurisdiction (or sentencing regime) because current sentencing practices are influenced by local jurisdictional needs and sentencing laws.     

Contemporary Regional Differences in Support by Whites for the Death Penalty: A Research Note

Despite good theoretical reasons to expect strong differences between Southern whites and non‐Southern whites in death penalty support, prior research with 1990 General Social Survey (GSS) data found only a small difference that lacked statistical significance. This paper investigates the possibilities that this null result was a statistical anomaly due to sampling vagaries or that a regional difference has emerged since 1990. Examining GSS data from 1974 through 2006, we initially found that a South/non‐South regional difference among whites did not exist before 1993 but has existed since then. However, further analysis revealed that a Northeast/non‐Northeast difference among whites has also existed during this same period. These findings suggest that future research on death penalty opinion should use both such differences as regional controls rather than just the customary South/non‐South division.     

论法家关于奖赏之法的思想及其现代意义

法家是我国历史上有名的重刑主义者,但他们关于奖赏方面的法律思想也是很丰富的。法家法律思想中重视奖赏之法的思想启示我们,奖赏与刑罚一样,既是法律内容的重要组成部分,也是法律调整社会关系不可缺少的手段。为此,我们应重视激励性立法的研究工作,在法律中增添有关奖赏的内容     

Murder in Black and White

Abstract

In this paper we will tell the story of “The Poisoning of the Late Levi Smelser.” Through detailed examination of both the media reports and official documents, the ensuing narrative portrays how race and gender influence the criminal justice processes of late antebellum New Orleans. As the story unfolds, two types of accounts emerge. We come to know the major participants in this case, Kitty, the slave, Levi Smelser, the victim, Theresa Smelser, the widow, and Adam Scott, the young foreman of Smelser's tin and copper shop, in their ordinary and comfortable lives before the murder. Secondly, we see these same characters play shifting roles of guilt and innocence in the planning and implementation of the murder as the newspapers reveal, magnify and glorify new “particulars,” day-by-day. This story is actually composed of a number of plots and constitutes a “scenario” of crime creation by sources of the mass media and related groups. As a scenario, the story represents “an interactional moment or site of meaning creation.”     

Race,economy and punishment: inequity and racial disparity in imprisonment, 1972–2002

Guided by the Rusche and Kirchheimer thesis, this study examines variation in incarceration rates across states. Time-series regression analysis is applied to 30?years of state-level data to examine how economic factors interact with aggregate measures of race/ethnicity in predicting rates of incarceration. The analysis indicates that income inequality, not unemployment, is the most salient predictor of incarceration rates. That is, state-level measures of income inequality exert a strong, positive effect on state-level incarceration rates, and this effect is particularly salient in the presence of higher percentages of African-Americans.     

Black and White School Violence

Abstract

This study examines racial, social, and contextual-environmental factors to determine what effects they have in predicting the likelihood of student victimizations in urban, suburban, and rural schools. In doing so, it seeks to answer two basic questions-Is school violence more prevalent among African-American students in urban schools? And if so, which factors predict the likelihood of one being victimized in urban schools compared to suburban and rural schools? The results of this study indicate that race was not significant in predicting victimizations among students in either urban, suburban, or rural school districts. However, the probability of student victimizations increased for students who attended school in the Western regions of the U.S. where student diversity is greater. Also, students who attended schools where gangs, drugs, weapons, and security were present were more likely to be victimized than those who did not have these elements in their schools. Finally, the regression models for school crimes did better in predicting student victimizations than the personal and property crime models.     

Are Girls Getting Tougher,or Are We Tougher on Girls? Probability of Arrest and Juvenile Court Oversight in 1980 and 2000

Girls suspected or convicted of assaults make up an increasing proportion of juvenile arrests and court caseloads. There is indication that changes in domestic violence arrest policies, school handling of student rules infractions, and practices of charging youth for assaults rather than status offenses account for these trends. To determine whether girls were treated more harshly for assaults after these policies changed, the present study compared the probabilities of conviction and institutionalization, net of the effect of self-reported attacks on persons, for 1980 and 2000. Data were from the National Longitudinal Surveys of Youth 1979 and 1997 cohorts. Girls experienced a unique increase in the probabilities of justice system involvement that was replicated only for Black males. The increase was magnified for Black girls. Additional research is needed to better connect specific policies to drawing selected subgroups more deeply into the justice system and on the consequences for affected youth.     

A conceptual kaleidoscope: contemplating ‘dynamic structural risk’ and an uncoupling of risk from need

ABSTRACT

Recent calls for ‘evidence-based’ approaches have firmly positioned risk assessment as a promising path towards more efficient, unbiased, and empirically based offender management, in custody and in the community. Simultaneously, sociological and critical legal scholars have questioned the focus on individual needs at the expense of wider structural factors’. I will demonstrate the need to reconceptualise risk/need logics and the use of ‘evidence’. I will argue that various criminal justice processes are themselves dynamic criminogenic risks that produce systemic conditions for recidivism and which, if modified, could make a measurable difference in recidivism and other correctional efficiencies. Finally, I will argue that the logic of dynamic risk is transferable to an analysis of socio-structural factors, and that this characterisation can alter the framing of penal subjects, governmental responsibilities, and potentially interrupt the systemically produced criminogenic pathways that perpetuate criminal involvement and marginalisation.