THE ELUSIVE PURSUIT OF SOLOMON: FALTERING STEPS TOWARD THE RIGHTS OF THE CHILD

This article provides a brief critique of presumptions about parenting and children seen through the lens of family law. It argues that, historically, decisions largely followed gender‐based and/or moral presumptions of the day and that sometimes these were in tension with each other. Sometimes, too, as in the biblical story of Solomon's judgment, biological parenthood was contested and/or gender did not provide a ready answer. The article argues that, as children's rights and the best interests of the child increasingly came to dominate the decision‐making rhetoric, a Solomon‐like belief has nonetheless persisted, that judicial ingenuity and sophisticated investigative resources can determine the underlying truth of a dispute and lead to the correct outcome. The evidence, however, points in the direction of significant predictive limitations to the legal, social, and psychological knowledge bases supporting most postseparation parenting decisions. It is argued that what is needed is a formal shift in emphasis from a somewhat idealized commitment to discovering the truth in most contested cases to a focus on good decision‐making processes. It is suggested that most transitional families are best served by an emphasis on good, respectful processes associated with good‐enough decisions that formally acknowledge the limitations of our capacity to predict. Good processes and good‐enough decisions are in turn best supported by a clear emphasis on children as individual agents, who, though dependent on adults, are entitled to the full panoply of human rights.     

THE EVOLUTION—OR END—OF MARRIAGE?: REFLECTIONS ON THE IMPASSE OVER SAME‐SEX MARRIAGE

The debate over legalizing same‐sex marriage implicates the question of whether doing so would signal the end—or destruction—of the institution of marriage. The appeal to preserving a millennia‐old tradition of marriage against change fails to reckon with the evolution that has already occurred. Invocations of gender complementarity between parents as essential to child well‐being also conflict with growing recognition in family law that children's best interests can be served by gay and lesbian parents. Canada's path toward same‐sex marriage suggests that impasse need not be inevitable. In the United States, this impasse stems in part from the problem that same‐sex marriage serves as an emblem of everything that threatens marriage.     

“I WANT MY MOMMIES”: THE CRY FOR MINI‐DOMAS TO RECOGNIZE THE BEST INTERESTS OF THE CHILDREN OF SAME‐SEX COUPLES*

In child custody cases, courts will look to the best interests of a child to maintain visitation/custody rights only with the child's biological parent, not third parties. However, with a same‐sex couple, it is inevitable that one parent will not be the biological parent. Thus, when that parent is in a mini‐DOMA state, where same‐sex couples from non‐mini‐DOMA states do not have to be recognized, that parent will be viewed as a third party and lose all visitation/custody rights if the couple separates. This note advocates that mini‐DOMAs allow both the biological and nonbiological parents of a same‐sex couple to have visitation/custody rights of their children if it would be in the best interest of the children to do so.     

THE DEVELOPMENT OF SELF‐CONTROL: EXAMINING SELF‐CONTROL THEORY'S STABILITY THESIS*

Research on self‐control theory consistently supports its central prediction that low self‐control significantly affects crime. The theory includes other predictions, however, that have received far less scrutiny. Among these is the argument that self‐control is developed early in childhood and that individual differences emerging then persist over time. The purpose of this study is to provide a rigorous test of the stability thesis. First, we examine the extent of stability and change in self‐control for a national sample of U.S. children age 7 to age 15. Second, we consider whether parenting continues to affect self‐control during adolescence—a period after the point at which self‐control differences should be fixed. The analysis revealed strong absolute and relative stability of self‐control for more than 80 percent of the sample, and this stability emerged in large part as early as age 7. Contradicting the theory was a smaller portion of respondents (roughly 16 percent) who experienced substantial absolute and relative changes in self‐control even after the age of 10. Moreover, parental socialization continued to affect self‐control during adolescence, even after accounting for both prior self‐control and exposure to parental socialization.     

BEYOND ADOLESCENCE‐LIMITED CRIMINOLOGY: CHOOSING OUR FUTURE—THE AMERICAN SOCIETY OF CRIMINOLOGY 2010 SUTHERLAND ADDRESS*

For over a half century, criminology has been dominated by a paradigm—adolescence‐limited criminology (ALC)—that has privileged the use of self‐report surveys of adolescents to test sociological theories of criminal behavior and has embraced the view that “nothing works” to control crime. Although ALC has created knowledge, opposed injustice, and advanced scholars’ careers, it has outlived its utility. The time has come for criminologists to choose a different future. Thus, a new paradigm is needed that is rooted in life‐course criminology, brings criminologists closer to offenders and to the crime event, prioritizes the organization of knowledge, and produces scientific knowledge that is capable of improving offenders’ lives and reducing crime.     

STRICTLY LIABLE: GOVERNMENTAL USE OF THE PARENT–CHILD RELATIONSHIP AS A BASIS FOR HOLDING VICTIMS LIABLE FOR THEIR CHILD'S WITNESS TO DOMESTIC VIOLENCE

Studies estimate that between three and ten million children in the United States witness domestic violence annually. Although studies have demonstrated a co‐occurrence of domestic violence and child abuse, there is no concrete evidence to support the assumption that a child's exposure to domestic violence increases the risk to the child of abuse or neglect. Recently the New York State Court of Appeals determined that a child's witness to abuse does not suffice, in and of itself, to show that removal of the child is necessary or that removal is in the “best interests” of the child. Programs which have developed alternatives to presumptive removal understand the importance of viewing the interests of the battered parent and children as being in accord with each other rather than in opposition. Private and government sponsored programs have demonstrated some success in protecting the parent‐child relationship, ensuring the safety of both parent and child, and increasing accountability of batterers while reducing the necessity for removals. Alternative programs are less costly to the state than foster care, and emotionally less costly to the families.     

SELF‐CONTROL THEORY AND THE CONCEPT OF OPPORTUNITY: THE CASE FOR A MORE SYSTEMATIC UNION*

The purpose of this study is to advance the idea that low self‐control—one of the strongest known predictors of crime—likely has effects that are conditional on the supply of criminal opportunities. Some scholars initially interpreted the theory to make this exact prediction, but Gottfredson and Hirschi (2003) have rejected this interpretation. They have insisted that the simplistic nature of most crimes ensures that opportunities are limitless and that variation in opportunity simply reflects variation in self‐control. We trace the history of this uncertain position of opportunity in self‐control theory and argue that it should play a significant role in the theory, even if Gottfredson and Hirschi did not originally envision this. Next, we draw on routine activities theory and applications of it to individual offending to offer a theoretical statement of how opportunity should be incorporated into self‐control theory. Last, using data from a national sample of juveniles, we test the arguments that have been made. The analysis suggests that the effects of low self‐control on delinquency partially depend on the availability of criminal opportunities, as indicated by the time juveniles spend with their friends or away from the supervision of their parents.     

EVIDENCE OF A DIFFERENT NATURE: THE CHILD‐ RESPONSIVE AND LESS ADVERSARIAL INITIATIVES OF THE FAMILY COURT OF AUSTRALIA

This article charts the constellation of vision and research that underpin a new era in the Family Court of Australia, focusing on the development and outcomes of two programs that have attempted to meaningfully reinforce the centrality of children's rights and needs in family court proceedings. The Less Adversarial Trial and its front‐end Child Responsive Program (CRP) both aim to minimise the potentially negative effects on parents of a litigation process by application of a more intensive case management model adopted with the intention of altering the parents’ experience of the journey. Key features of this approach include the adoption of inquisitorial techniques, which include direct consultation with children through the CRP, modified application of the rules of evidence, and strong judicial management rather than being party driven. Findings from two studies into the pilot Children's Cases Program (now the Less Adversarial Trial) and the CRP are discussed. Significantly, evidence is outlined around the capacity of the new processes to impact on both the co‐parenting and parent–child relationships and to influence short‐term adjustment of complex families in high‐conflict dispute. In encouraging a more active focus on children's needs and views and by facilitating a stronger voice for children in proceedings that affect them, both initiatives advance Australia's commitments under the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child.     

IT WAS MY IDEA: CONSIDERING THE INSTIGATION OF CO‐OFFENDING*

More than twenty years ago, Albert Reiss (1988) recognized that some individuals are responsible for instigating group offending, whereas others follow accomplices into crime (or offend alone). Since this initial discussion by Reiss, however, little clarity has emerged regarding the factors that predict or explain the instigation of co‐offending. Specifically, some literature has suggested that the tendency to instigate varies systematically across individuals, such that chronic or serious offenders are more likely to instigate group crime. Instigation also may vary across crime types (i.e., within‐individuals), according to whether individuals have crime‐specific skill or experience. Using data from inmates in the Colorado Department of Corrections to investigate these hypotheses, the results reveal that individuals with earlier ages of criminal onset are more likely to report they instigate group crime, net of controls. At the same time, indicators of crime‐specific expertise predict the tendency to instigate group crime. The Discussion section considers the implications of these results and offers directions for future research.     

SEX EDUCATION LEFT AT THE THRESHOLD OF THE SCHOOL DOOR: STRICTER REQUIREMENTS FOR PARENTAL OPT‐OUT PROVISIONS

Current state law creates the risk that, if sex education is not provided to a child in public school, no similar instruction will be given to the child. Legislatively enacted opt‐out provisions give parents broad control over their child's education by granting them the option to have their child excused from any sex education requirements within a public school's curriculum. Through public school sex education, professionals provide youth information aimed at protecting them from the dangers of pregnancy and sexually transmitted diseases (STDs). A stricter statutory opt‐out provision should be enacted by state legislatures that only allows parents to excuse their child from sex education after a parent attends a 90‐minute STD prevention course and receives the instructional material used in the school's sex education curriculum. Parents should be provided up‐to‐date information and a structural framework designed by the school to encourage them to discuss with their child the many sexual issues addressed within a school's sex education curriculum.     

MANAGING CITIZEN CALLS TO THE POLICE: THE IMPACT OF BALTIMORE'S 3‐1‐1 CALL SYSTEM*

Research Summary: Our paper explores the impact of implementing a nonemergency 3‐1‐1 call system in Baltimore, Maryland. We found a large (34.2%) reduction in 9‐1‐1 calls following the introduction of the 3‐1‐1 nonemergency call system. Many, but not all, of these calls simply migrated over to the 3‐1‐1 call system. Overall, we identified a 7.7% reduction in recorded citizen calls to the police post 3‐1‐1 intervention. This recorded reduction in citizen calls was confounded by an increase in high priority calls to the 9‐1‐1 system (27.5%), a large overall reduction in low priority calls (54.3%), and an estimated increase (perhaps 8%) in unrecorded calls to the police. We also note a small increase in response times to high priority 9‐1‐1 calls following the implementation of the 3‐1‐1 call system and virtually no change in the amount of officer time available for community policing or problem‐oriented policing activities. Policy Implications: Our findings suggest that nonemergency call systems, such as 3‐1‐1, can greatly facilitate police efforts to better handle citizen calls for police service. However, the intrinsic value of nonemergency call systems is tightly woven with a police department's willingness to change dispatch policies (especially for those calls received via the 3‐1‐1 system), reallocate patrol resources, and adopt organizational reforms to support alternative methods (apart from dispatch) for handling nonemergency calls for service.     

RETHINKING THE “NORM” OF OFFENDER GENERALITY: INVESTIGATING SPECIALIZATION IN THE SHORT‐TERM

The life‐course approach to criminal career research has devoted a good deal of attention to the generality or specialization of offending behavior. Typically, extant research demonstrates versatility on the part of offenders, yet such findings could be attributable, at least in part, to time and measurement aggregation bias. This work uses a temporally disaggregated and individualized measure of diversity in offending to determine whether the previous findings of generality hold up to shifts in methodology. Using data from a sample of serious felons, results indicated that the magnitude of specialization is greater than in prior studies. Regression results indicated that certain demographic and local life‐circumstance variables are related to the extent of diversity. Theoretical and methodological implications are identified and discussed.     

A LONGITUDINAL TEST OF THE EFFECTS OF PARENTING AND THE STABILITY OF SELF‐CONTROL: NEGATIVE EVIDENCE FOR THE GENERAL THEORY OF CRIME*

This study investigates two core propositions of Gottfredson and Hirschi's (1990) general theory of crime. Using longitudinal data collected on approximately 750 African American children and their primary caregivers, we first examine whether self‐control fully mediates the effect of parenting on delinquency. Consistent with the general theory, we find that low self‐control is positively associated with involvement in delinquency. Counter to Gottfredson and Hirschi's proposition, we find that self‐control only partially attenuates the negative effect of parental efficacy on delinquency. Next, we assess the theory's hypothesis that between‐individual levels of self‐control are stable. Finding substantial instability in self‐control across the two waves, we explore whether social factors can explicate these changes in self‐control. The four social relationships we incorporate (improvements in parenting, attachment to teachers, association with pro‐social peers, and association with deviant peers) explain a substantial portion of the changes in self‐control. We then discuss the implications of these findings for the general theory of crime.     

THE IMPACT OF ORDER‐MAINTENANCE POLICING ON NEW YORK CITY HOMICIDE AND ROBBERY RATES: 1988‐2001*

Local officials and national observers have attributed the New York City drop in violent crime during the 1990s to the aggressive enforcement of public order, but relevant research is limited and yields contrasting conclusions regarding the effects of order‐maintenance policing (OMP) on violent crime trends in New York City. The current study investigates the effects of order‐maintenance arrests on precinct‐level robbery and homicide trends in New York City with more reliable crime and arrest data, longer time series, and more extensive controls for other influences than used in prior research. We find statistically significant but small crime‐reduction effects of OMP and conclude that the impact of aggressive order enforcement on the reduction in homicide and robbery rates in New York City during the 1990s was modest at best.     

A METHODOLOGICAL ADDITION TO THE CROSS‐NATIONAL EMPIRICAL LITERATURE ON SOCIAL STRUCTURE AND HOMICIDE: A FIRST TEST OF THE POVERTY‐HOMICIDE THESIS*

Dozens of cross‐national studies of homicide have been published in the last three decades. Although nearly all these studies test for an association between inequality and homicide, no studies test for a poverty—homicide association. This absence is disconcerting given that poverty is one of the most consistent predictors of area homicide rates in the abundant empirical literature on social structure and homicide in the United States. Using a sample that coincides closely with similar recent studies, applying a proxy for poverty (infant mortality) that is commonly employed in noncriminological cross‐national research, and controlling for several common covariates (including inequality), this study provides the first test of the poverty—homicide hypothesis at the cross‐national level. The results reveal a positive and significant association between a nation's level of poverty and its homicide rate. The findings also suggest that we may need to reassess the strong conclusions about an inequality—homicide association drawn from prior studies, as this relationship disappears when poverty is included in the model.     

THE UNREPENTANT HORSE‐SLASHER: MORAL INSANITY AND THE ORIGINS OF CRIMINOLOGICAL THOUGHT*

This paper raises questions about the origins, definition and nature of criminological knowledge by seeking to identify the earliest examples of scientific criminological thought. Pushing the story further back in time than previous studies of criminological history, it proposes a way to think about criminology before criminologists—that is, efforts to study crime scientifically before the emergence of specifically criminological discourses and before the formation of the professional specialization of criminologist. The roots of scientific criminological thought lie in late 18th‐ and early 19th‐century discourses on the phenomenon of moral insanity, or uncontrollable, remorseless criminal behavior. Examination of these texts reveals both the origins of criminological knowledge and the birth of idea that crime can be studied scientifically.     

FATHER INVOLVEMENT AND LONG‐TERM YOUNG ADULT OUTCOMES: THE DIFFERENTIAL CONTRIBUTIONS OF DIVORCE AND GENDER

The present study investigated the relationship between retrospectively reported father involvement and current reports of psychosocial outcomes in an ethnically diverse sample of 1,989 young adults. Outcomes included subjective well‐being, which has been traditionally used as an outcome of divorce, and desires for more or less father involvement, which have only recently been conceptualized as an outcome of divorce. The present results indicate that reported father involvement was related to subjective well‐being primarily in children from intact families, whereas it was related to desired father involvement primarily in children from divorced families. Among participants from divorced families, young women were more likely than young men to desire more expressive father involvement than they received. Implications for family court practices are discussed.     

EDWIN H. SUTHERLAND AND THE MICHAEL‐ADLER REPORT: SEARCHING FOR THE SOUL OF CRIMINOLOGY SEVENTY YEARS LATER*

In response to a devastating critique of the state of criminology known as the Michael‐Adler Report, Edwin H. Sutherland created differential association theory as a paradigm for the field of criminology. I contend that Sutherland's strategy was flawed because he embraced a sociological model of crime and in doing so adopted a form of sociological positivism. Furthermore, Sutherland ignored key facts about crime that were contrary to his theoretical predilections. Recognizing that facts must come first and that criminology is an interdisciplinary field of study, I offer life‐course criminology as a paradigm for understanding the causes and dynamics of crime. In addition, I identify three warning signs that I believe inhibit the advancement of criminology as a science and a serious intellectual enterprise.     

UNBUNDLING THE ETHICAL ISSUES OF PRO BONO ADVOCACY: ARTICULATING THE GOALS OF LIMITED‐SCOPE PRO BONO ADVOCACY FOR LIMITED LEGAL SERVICES PROGRAMS

This article seeks to articulate the practical goal of unbundled legal services for the pro bono family law sector as it applies to limited legal services programs (also known as brief advice clinics), through the use of a goal spectrum, derived from the theoretical goal of access to justice. This article briefly discusses the status of the Indiana Rules of Professional Conduct, as they pertain to the ethics of unbundling. This article then focuses extensively on some practical considerations within the ethical issues of both the scope of representation and attorney competence in order to articulate an appropriate goal for unbundled legal services. Finally, the article concludes that service providers in limited legal services programs should explicitly identify and then perform an essential, discrete service that the client needs to have performed in order to help the client meet his or her ultimate objectives. The service provider and the client could then gauge the success of the limited scope representation based on whether and how well the specific service has been provided.