Toward the safety society: Police agencies and environmental planning

The authors of this paper outline one approach to crime prevention which has recently become available - participation by police agencies in the environmental planning process. Two environmental management devices, the environmental impact assessment process and the general plan, are described and opportunities for police agency involvement are detailed. The contribution of public safety personnel to environmental management is seen as residing in two areas: precicting the effects of a project on the demand for police services, and suggesting ways in which a project may be designed with a view to the prevention of crime. In the latter context, the literature in environmental design and environmental psychology is reviewed for findings relevant to the creation of a safe environment.     

Adolescent Sexual Activity: Links Between Relational Context and Depressive Symptoms

Little is known about the impact of the relational context of adolescent sexual activity on depressive symptoms. The present study examined trajectories of depressive symptoms among 6,602 adolescents (44% male, 60% White) taken from a nationally representative study (Add Health). Sexually active youth in romantic and casual relationships were first compared to virgins and then to each other by relational context. Longitudinal, multilevel models examined differences in the course of depressive symptoms based on sexual activity separately by gender and age group (ages 12–14 and 15–18). Results indicated that when compared to virgins, any differences in depressive symptoms by relational context of sex were present prior to youth’s sexual debut. The few significant differences found between youth who had sex in romantic relationships verses those who had casual sex were present before sexual initiation and not maintained over time, suggesting that casual sex in adolescence is not associated with long-term risks for depressive symptoms.

Twenty-Five Years of <Emphasis Type="Italic">Social Science in Law</Emphasis>

In this essay, we take the publication of the seventh edition of the casebook Social Science in Law (2010) as an opportunity to reflect on continuities and changes that have occurred in the application of social science research to American law over the past quarter-century. We structure these reflections by comparing and contrasting the original edition of the book with the current one. When the first edition appeared, courts’ reliance on social science was often confused and always contested. Now, courts’ reliance on social science is so common as to be unremarkable. What has changed—sometimes radically—are the substantive legal questions on which social science has been brought to bear.     

Strategies for an empirical analysis of the prediction of violence in emergency civil commitment

Dix (1976) recently has proposed that a “true experiment” be conducted to assess the validity of predictions of imminent violence. A random sample of persons predicted to be iminently violent would be denied emergency civil commitment in order to test whether they do, in fact, commit a violent act. This article analyzes Dix's proposal and finds that it presents an unacceptable level of risk to the community. Four alternative methodologies by which preliminary data can be gathered on the validity of predictions of violence in emergency civil commitment are described.     

Toward undergraduate education in the interface of mental health and criminal justice

The relationship between the mental health and criminal justice systems is a controversial one and of growing importance. Formal education in the interface of mental health and criminal justice is a prerequisite to progress in this area. While some educational opportunities are currently available on the graduate and post-graduate levels, there appears to be no reason for this restriction. The present paper describes an undergraduate course on the interface of mental health and criminal justice, and analyzes its contribution to the field in terms of priming future graduate and law students for specializing in this area.