Appeals to community and crime prevention

This paper considers the growing appeals to the idea of community in criminal justice policy and the involvement of actual communities in criminal justice initiatives. It draws on a completed two year research study of a number of community-based crime prevention initiatives in the South East of England. The paper considers the nature of community to which appeals are made in criminal justice discourse and policies, the contribution of community to the practices of social order and the nature of community representation and participation in crime prevention initiatives. It is argued that appeals to community in crime prevention, and crime control more generally, embody shifts in what constitutes the legitimate responsibilities of individuals, collectivities and the state. This has a number of implications, the first of which is a redrawing of the cost of policing and security services. Additionally, there is an associated shift in blame for failure. Finally, actual community involvement in crime control gives rise to new structures and forms of local governance that evoke key questions about the regulation of social relations, the nature of conflict resolution, citizenship, democracy and social justice.     

Everyday Life and Legal Values: A Concept Paper

This concept paper emerged from a Law and Human Behavior (LHB) Workshop, that was called by the journal's Editor, Richard Wiener, and held at St. Louis University on March 19–21, 1999. This workshop, which brought together 22 scholars and researchers in legal psychology, was part of James Ogloff's Presidential Initiative Project for the American Psychology/Law Society, and was supported by St. Louis University and an NSF grant. Prior to our arrival, each participant answered queries from the Editor about LHB and the field of psychology and law, and each was asked to offer five topics that were underrepresented in the journal or that we would like to see addressed in future issues. At the workshop, we were assigned to small groups, and the authors of this paper constituted one such group. The charge for all groups was to develop plans for encouraging submissions in areas of psycholegal scholarship that continue to be infrequent topics of investigation, and then to develop a concept paper. The direction our group took is captured by our title, Everyday Life and Legal Values, and within this paper we explicate the topic, identify a number of underrepresented research areas, suggest some research paradigms for investigating them, and present this within a perspectival directions frame that ties established lines of research to the newer ones we propose.     

The Cost of the Game: A Taxonomy of Social Interactions

This paper considers the role of reciprocity rules in various strategic settings. After distinguishing four typical categories of social interaction, the paper examines three forms of reciprocity constraints. An ideal rule of perfect incentive alignment (structural reciprocity) serves as a benchmark for the analysis of a golden rule of reciprocity, characterized by a mechanical linking of one player's strategy to that of the other player; and a silver rule of stochastic reciprocity, characterized by a probabilistic symmetry in the relationship between the players.     

Interviewing Preschoolers: Comparisons Of Yes/No and Wh- Questions

This study investigated the influence of question format on preschool-aged children's errors, their response accuracy, and their tendency to say I don't know when given non-misleading questions in a neutral, unbiased context. Children (3 to 5 years old) participated in a craft-making session that included a staged accident with two experimenters differing in gender and appearance; the environment also had several distinctive features. One week later children were interviewed about actions, participants, and environment; questions were yes/no format with the veridical response yes (yes questions), yes/no format with the veridical response no (no questions), and specific wh- format questions. Question format substantially influenced children's responses: they were most likely to make errors if asked no questions, and were unlikely to answer either yes/no question with I don't know. In contrast, children spontaneously and frequently said I don't know to wh- questions about content they did not recall (environment), but not about content that was well recalled (actions). Implications of question format for reliability of eyewitness testimony by preschoolers are discussed.     

Globalisation and Conceptualisation in the Sphere of International Criminal Law

Professor Wiener mentions that [w]hile an agreement has evolvedin the juris-prudence concerning the meaning of criminal law' and publicinternational law', the opinions regarding what international criminallaw is still diverge to a great extent.1 The task of this report isto clear up what we mean by international criminal law, because itis not an exact expression.     

Narcotics trafficking and the American mafia: The myth of internal prohibition

Numerous books assert that the Mafia long had a prohibition against engaging in narcotics trafficking, either for reasons of morality, or else because of the public stigma attached to drugs. In reality, there are many problems with the belief in voluntary abstention. The mythical nature of internal prohibition, and the far different reality, will be illustrated from the case of Philadelphia, supposedly the base for one of the most powerful and traditional-minded of all the American Mafia groups, the family headed from 1959 to 1980 by don Angelo Bruno. We will attempt to explain the roots of the prohibition myth, both for writers and for the wider public that appears so endlessly enthusiastic about sagas of organized crime. Finally, the paper examines the implications of this myth for policy makers in successive wars on crime.     

Do trials have real winners?

Conclusion In this paper, narrative coherence has been looked at as an institutional strategy in anticipation of the verdict rather than in retrospect of the crime or charge. The analysis of binary notions has been instrumental in the reconstruction of the coherence between the narrative(s) and the theoretical outcomes of the criminal trial. As the abstraction and polarisation of narrative versions focus on the achievement of professional consensus, the verdict, which is almost always based on the selection of a binary option does injustice to any narrative which is unfolded in the court-room. Whether the defendant is acquitted or convicted, therefore, does not make him a winner or a loser, as his personal experience is abducted and institutionalised for the facilitation of smooth institutional decision-making.     

Selective incapacitation and the Philadelphia cohort data

The University of Pennsylvania study of delinquency in a Philadelphia birth cohort has been described byNewsweek as perhaps the most influential piece of criminal justice research in the last decade (March 23, 1981). Many have construed the findings as showing that, if imprisonment were focused on the minority of offenders with especially bad prognoses, the rate of crime could be reduced substantially. But others have taken the opposite view that the cohort data, far from endorsing such a selective incapacitation strategy, might actually provide strong evidence that such an approach is futile. Through some further analyses of the Philadelphia data, we attempt to clarify their policy implications.     

Insanity,justification, and culpability toward a unifying schema

Insanity has long been viewed as an excuse rather than a justification: Insane people are acquitted not because they did nothing wrong, but because they are considered morally blameless for their wrongful conduct. A new substantive test based on justificatory rather than exculpatory principles—a quasisubjective justification (QSJ) test—is compared to Finkel's relative culpability test, and to two excuse oriented tests, ALI and IDRA, across seven cases. QSJ and Finkel's test both produced significant verdict differences, whereas ALI and IDRA verdicts were not significantly different. The QSJ effect, however, was observed only in cases judged low in justification, and thus did not play a determinative role across cases; other variables, such as perceived severity of the disorder and culpability for bringing about the disorder, to which only Finkel's test was sensitive, seem to have more explanatory power.     

European Editors of Economics Journals—A General Discussion

In a final inquiry at the end of the Conference on Editorial Policies the three editors, Bruno S. Frey (Kyklos), Manfred J. Holler (Homo oeconomicus), and Jürgen G. Backhaus (European Journal of Law and Economics), were asked to comment on their editorial policies. They answered by explaining the challenges they were or still are confronted with, which strategies they have already developed to go on and of course what they have learnt from the deliberations at this conference. In their statements they referred to their preceding paper presentations, and the contributions by Wolfgang Bergsdorf, who is the chief editor of Die Politische Meinung, and Peter Senn.     

Testamentary competency

This paper examines the development of the doctrine that restricts testation to competent persons, and the use of expert testimony in implementing that doctrine. Since 1870 the leading articulation of this doctrine has been Lord Cockburn's Rule, which among other things requires that the testator knew the natural objects of his bounty at the time the will was made. The facultative theory of mind underlying Lord Cockburn's Rule is consistent with the contemporary, functional approach to competency to make medical decisions taken by the President's Commission for the Study of Ethical Problems in Medicine and Biomedical and Behavioral Research. Where expert testimony, based on training in the behavioral sciences, takes a functional approach to discovering the nature of the testator's values regarding other persons, it can assist the trier of fact significantly more than the lay opinion testimony which many courts have preferred in questions of testamentary competency. The concern of commentators that courts make false attributions of testamentary competency out of a perceived need to protect the family would be lessened, and the freedom of testation promoted, if courts directed their attention, through the kind of expert testimony proposed, to the testator's psychological family, instead of the persons identified as family members in intestacy statutes.The author wishes to thank Professors John Monahan, Roberta A. Morris, and Richard J. Bonnie for their helpful critiques of an earlier draft of this paper. The author also gratefully acknowledges the research assistance of Vicki L. Epling and Paul A. Lombardo, law students at the University of Virginia.A portion of this paper was presented by the author at the 1982 Annual Convention of the American Psychological Association under the title, The Application of Psychology to Legal Problems Involving Trusts and Estates, as part of the symposium, Psychological Questions in Legal Areas Largely Unexplored by Psychologists. This symposium was proposed and organized by Professor Gary B. Melton of the University of Nebraska-Lincoln.     

Natural advantages and contractual justice

Anthony Kronman has argued that libertarians cannot distinguish non-arbitrarily between legitimate and illegitimate advantage-taking in contractual relations except by reference to a liberal, wealth-redistributive standard Kronman calls paretianism. We argue to the contrary that libertarians need not concede that any advantage-taking in contracts is legitimate and thus need not be liberal paretians with respect to advantage-taking.     

Effects of Positive Impression Management on the Psychopathic Personality Inventory

The Psychopathic Personality Inventory (PPI; S. O.Lilienfeld & B. P. Andrews, 1996) is a self-report test that has shown considerable promise as a screening measure for psychopathy. A current limitation of the PPI is that no data exist regarding the impact of response sets such as positive impression management. Although the PPI contains a validity scale (Unlikely Virtues) designed to identify response biases such as faking good, its utility has not yet been assessed. In this study a repeated measures analogue design was employed in which 186 respondents completed the PPI both under standard conditions and with specific instructions to create a favorable impression of themselves. In the fake good condition, participants were able to appear significantly less psychopathic, with those who obtained higher scores in the standard instruction condition showing the largest decreases in their PPI scores. Receiver Operating Characteristic analyses indicated that, although the Unlikely Virtues scale significantly differentiated between fake good and honest protocols (area under the curve = .73), a considerable number of misclassifications occurred. The clinical and forensic implications of these findings are discussed.     

Social justice and legal justice

The main aim of this paper is to challenge the validity of the distinction between legal justice and social justice. It is argued that what we usually call legal justice is either an application of the more fundamental notion of social justice to legal rules and decisions or is not a matter of justice at all. In other words, the only correct uses of the notion of legal justice are derivative from the notion of social justice and, hence, the alleged conflicts between criteria of social and legal justice result from the confusion about the proper relationship between these two concepts. Two views about the social justice/legal justice dichotomy are of particular importance and will provide the focus for the argument: this dichotomy is sometimes identified with a classical distinction between distributive and commutative justice and sometimes with the distinction between substantive and procedural justice.     

Terrorism and the law: Historical contexts, contemporary dilemmas, and the end(s) of democracy

Recent proposals by the G7 (and Russia) to clamp down on terrorists and terrorism do not define that which is prohibited. Instead, a threat is communicated which in turn allows, among other things, greater attention to be paid officially to camouflage charities and terrorist use of the Internet. Nevertheless, it is somewhat of a truism to note that terrorist violence is ultimately defined or characterized, for purposes of legal prohibition, within a highly politicized atmosphere. Starting with a short summary of anti-terrorist codification efforts made this century, this article examines some of the security interests cited by governments today in their respective struggles against terrorism. More specifically, it is argued that individual perceptions of personal and societal threat are heightened unnecessarily not only by a constant stream of governmental anti-terrorist rhetoric, but further, by an awareness of official and unofficial methods of anti-terrorist surveillance, and the use to which the information so obtained can be put.     

Comparing the Social Service Utilization, Exposure to Violence, and Trauma Symptomology of Domestic Violence Female “Victims” and Female “Batterers”

Although some authors have suggested that women batterers may really be self-defending victims, to date, no research has been initiated to empirically support this assertion. This paper describes the design and outcomes of a research project that investigated the similarities and differences between women adjudicated as domestic violence batterers and women identified as domestic violence victims. Findings indicated group similarities in the areas of exposure to violence and social service utilization. Although both groups reported high levels of trauma symptomology, victim scores were significantly higher.     

Holy Mountains and Anti-Cult Ecology: The Campaign Against the Aumist Religion in France

After the homicides and suicides of the Solar Temple (1994–1995), anti-cult movements received an unprecedented degree of public support in France, and a moral panic against cults was generated, eventually producing two parliamentary reports and the establishment of a governmental Mission to Fight Cults. The Aumist Religion, headquartered at the Holy City of the Mandarom, in the French Alps, although comparatively small, became one of the most visible targets and was perceived by anti-cultists, the media, and the government as the epitome of the dangerous cult. The paper examines the history of the Madaron controversies, especially the involvement of government-financed anti-cult organizations and representatives of the ecology movement, and argues that the Aumists' greatest sin is their very visibility.     

“Staatswirtschaftslehre”—A Component of “Staatswissenschaften” Today and Tomorrow

The paper starts from problems of reorganization of the Welfare State. The second paragraph contains definitions and materials. The third paragraph turns to the development of Staatswissenschaften, especially to cameralistic views, public choice and deregulation. The fourth section deals with present Staatswirtschaftslehre as a component of Staatswissenschaften. The fifth paragraph is focussed on deregulation and reorganization of the state.The paper demonstrates: Staatswissenschaften and Staatswirtschaftslehre will be important academic disciplines also tomorrow, though the State will be reorganized by privatization, non-government-organizations and rearrangements of private and public sector activities under the conditions of new technologies and open markets.     

Expanding coupled shock fronts of urban decay and criminal behavior: How U.S. cities are becoming “hollowed out”

This work attempts to formalize an emerging paradigm in criminology, examining the structural consequences of feedback between community physical decay and behavioral pathologies caused by the social disintegration resulting from that decay. Adaptation of a standard reaction/diffusion approach produces a model of radially expanding coupled traveling-wave shock fronts of interrelated contagious physical decay and criminal activity. The standard threshold theorem associated with the model equations suggests that currently advocated triage policies, which recommend the virtual abandonment of bad communities behind the expanding front, will fail spectacularly. The model suggests that, just as the hollowing-out process has a complex, synergistic and dynamic structure, so, too, must interventions be interactive and mutually reinforcing, adaptively, targeted at communities in all stages of the phenomenon.     

What Is Forensic Psychology,Anyway?

The issue of how forensic psychology is defined has taken on a new urgency in the context of an application to have forensic psychology designated a specialty by the American Psychological Association. To provide a historical perspective, I briefly review early attempts to apply psychological concepts to legal issues, beginning with the McNaughten trial in England in 1843. I then review current conceptualizations of forensic psychology, which have either a broad focus on all psychology–law interactions or focus more narrowly on clinical applications to the legal system. Potential advantages and disadvantages of each conceptualization are briefly discussed. After touching upon the major differences in the cultures of psychology and of law, I discuss three law-related areas of contemporary controversy: use of clinically based evidence in the courtroom, recovered memories of child abuse, and the use of the criteria-based content analysis technique to evaluate children's claims of sexual abuse. Issues concerning the education and training of psychology–law scholars and practitioners are briefly surveyed. I conclude that a broad conceptualization of forensic psychology is important in terms of relevant ethical standards, but that a more narrow distinction that differentiates between clinicians and researchers or legal scholars also is useful.