DEVELOPING AND IMPLEMENTING A CYBERLAW COURSE

"Business spending on the Internet marketing and sales and services will increase to more than $300 billion in year 2002. Internet commerce or the purchase of goods and services over the Internet, will near $250 billion by that year."     

CITIES AND CRIME A Geographic Model

An ecological model of interurban crime draws on numerous examples to illustrate the computed relationships. The model is unique in that it emphasizes geographic context and is based on more cities (726) than any previous study. Five measures of serious crime and 25 socio-economic variables, chosen on the basis of their theoretical relationship to crime, are correlated using canonical analysis Variables representing black population characteristics, residential stability, economic status, and age of the population are prominent among clusters of predictors that relate significantly to the crime parameters. The results confirm and extend prior findings at the interurban level.     

FEMALE DELINQUENCY AND BROKEN HOMES A Re-Assessment

Most studies examining the relationship between broken homes and delinquency conclude that females react more adversely to a break in the home than do males. In a study of 1,103 adjudicated delinquents, it was found that when type of offense is controlled, the higher proportion of broken homes among female delinquents represents their greater involvement in “morals” offenses. Black males arrested for person and property offenses actually come from broken homes more often than do black females. In general, there appears to be no unique relationship between broken homes and female delinquency except for family-related offenses.     

CRIME AND THE POLICE A Multivariate Analysis

In an effort to assess the correlates of the variations in the rate of crime aggregated at a city level, data are analyzed using multiple correlation analysis that includes indicators of socioeconomic and social control (police) characteristics of the cities The results indicate that the rate of police and money budgeted to police contributes little to the explained variation in rates of crime. In addition, these indicators of social control variations do not correlate with variations in clearance rates The data are interpreted in terms of their implications for public policy, evaluation of police, and deterrence theory.     

ADVERSARIAL AND NONADVERSARIAL JUSTICE: A COMPARISON OF GUILTY PLEAS AND TRIALS*

Despite the frequency of guilty pleas, researchers disagree about the ability of plea bargaining to provide justice. Critics argue that plea bargaining deprives defendants of due process rights and procedural safeguards Proponents argue that guilty pleas save resources for cases that require trial and allow officials flexibility to tailor justice to individual defendants. This article explores these issues by examining the effect of defendant and case characteristics on sentence severity for 3,269 male robbery and burglary defendants who either pled guilty or were tried in six U.S. jurisdictions, three of which had recently attempted to eliminate or greatly reduce plea bargaining and three with few restrictions on plea bargaining. The results confirm some criticisms of plea bargaining, but refute others. More criminally experienced defendants and defendants who pled guilty at the earliest opportunity did not receive sentencing leniency. Moreover, to a large extent, the same variables predict sentence severity for guilty pleas and trials. In contrast, the results show that defendants convicted at trial received more severe sanctions than defendants who pled guilty, controlling for case severity, evidence, and offender characteristics The results also suggest that the jurisdictions which attempted to control plea bargaining through more centralized control of assistance succeeded in tightening the fit between case characteristics and sentences for both cases adjudicated by guilty plea and trial.     

TREND AND DEVIATION IN CRIME RATES: A COMPARISON OF UCR AND NCS DATA FOR BURGLARY AND ROBBERY*

Trends and year-to-year deviations in UCR and NCS data on burglary and robbery are examined for the period 1973 to 1985. We find strong correspondence between year-to-year deviations in UCR crime rates and NCS victimization rates for both crime types. The difference between the two data series lies primarily in their contrasting trends, although there is some evidence that trends in UCR and NCS crime rates have been converging in recent years. Ex post forecasts reveal that the UCR/NCS relationships estimated from the 1973–1985 data continued through 1986 and 1987. Although the UCR rates in 1986 were somewhat influenced by unusual increases in the proportion of crimes reported to the police that year, changes in crime reporting for the period as a whole have had little effect on UCR burglary and robbery rates. We conclude that, within the two serious crime types examined in this study, there is strong consistency between the alternative data sources on variations in crime rates over time.