SUPERVISION REGIMES,RISK, AND OFFICIAL REACTIONS TO PAROLEE DEVIANCE*

Parolee deviance has emerged as a central issue in policy debates about crime and punishment in American society as well as in scholarship on “mass incarceration.” Although the prevailing approach to studying parolees conceives of parole violations as outcomes of individual propensities toward criminal behavior (i.e., criminogenic risk), we consider how indicators of individual risk and characteristics of formal social control systems combine to account for reported parole violations. Using data on California parolees, we examine the effects of parolees’ personal characteristics, their criminal histories, and the social organization of supervision on parole violations. We advance the notion of a “supervision regime”—a legal and organizational structure that shapes the detection and reporting of parolee deviance. Three components of a supervision regime are explored: 1) the intensity of supervision, 2) the capacity of the regime to detect parolee deviance, and 3) the tolerance of parole officials for parolee deviance. We find that personal characteristics and offense histories are predictive of parole violations. However, we also find that introducing supervision factors reduces the effects of offense history variables on violation risk, suggesting that the violation risks of serious, violent, and sexual offenders are partially explainable through the heightened supervision to which they are subject. In addition, we find that supervision intensity and tolerance are generally predictive of violation risk. Capacity effects are present but weak. We conclude with a discussion of how the supervision regimes concept illuminates the gap between macro‐ and micro‐analyses of social control.     

FACTORS INFLUENCING THE DECISION TO PROSECUTE ECONOMIC CRIME*

Increasing attention to the area of economic crime has raised questions about the abilities of social control agencies to handle this phenomenon effectively. While some research has focused on federal and state enforcement procedures, little is known about how local agencies attempt to deal with this form of crime. This study of a local county economic crime unit utilizes a logit analysis procedure to identify those factors which appear related to the decision to prosecute a case of economic crime. The analysis suggests that cases in which the defendant is an individual, the victim is an organization, and there is more than one victim more frequently result in prosecution. A theoretical framework emphasizing the demand for performance statistics in the face of limited resources is used as a means of explaining the observed pattern in the data.     

THE CHINESE COMMUNES

The following observations were made in the Summer of 1963.
There are still no overall statistics available from China, but it is reported that the harvest last year was better than the year before. Rations have been increased and imports of wheat reduced. Industrial production also is reported to be climbing back to the trend from which it was knocked down in 1960.     

A Model Response to Truancy Prevention: The Louisville Truancy Court Diversion Project

The Jefferson County Truancy Diversion Project in Louisville, Ky., is a judicially‐driven school and community initiative created to improve school attendance and to enhance family function and behavior. Initiated in 1997, this program brings the judge and community resources directly to the schools and students for a hands‐on, no‐efforts‐spared intervention. Now a national model, this program has far‐reaching implications in the prevention of juvenile delinquent behavior and in the establishment and preservation of safe and permanent homes for children. This article addresses the history and methodology for program implementation.     

AN ANALYSIS OF SERIOUS CRIME BY YOUNG BLACK WOMEN*

This research focuses on a relatively unexplored phenomenon—black female juvenile offenders. Both theoretical and research work are weak or nonexistent regarding these offenders. This paper seeks to fill some of these gaps. In addition, this research effort draws on a source of data that has in frequently been adapted to study offenders, National Crime Survey (NCS) victimization data. Utilizing NCS data from 1973 through 1981, a comparative analysis of NCS rates of juvenile offenses by black females, black males, white females, and white males is presented and discussed. A number of propositions which are found in the literature regarding black female offenders are examined. Trends in offending by black females compared with trends for other age-race-sex subgroups are also presented and analyzed. Finally, some implications for future theoretical and research efforts are presented     

Procedural legitimacy and political trust: The case of citizen juries in Spain

Abstract.  During the past few years, new mechanisms of citizen participation in decision making have been introduced into local governance frameworks in many countries around the world. One of the basic objectives of these mechanisms is to bridge the gap between citizens and politicians or, in other words, to build political trust. In Spain, citizen juries are one of the main manifestations of this trend towards local democratic innovation. Their contribution to the building of political trust depends above all on their ability to secure their own procedural legitimacy. Case studies of Spanish citizen juries demonstrate that this mechanism can guarantee sufficient pluralism, and that appropriate amounts of information and deliberation, as well as devices to guarantee neutrality, can be incorporated. However, the limited role that citizen juries assign to associations and the strategic considerations that all political actors have with respect to them are crucial limits to their broader political acceptance. Moreover, their educative effects are limited by two factors: they are isolated experiences in a context of very limited opportunities for participation; and their impact on decision making tends to be irregular and diffuse. Nevertheless, Spanish citizen juries also have the potential to increase citizens' interest in local events and the topics under discussion, and to stimulate reflection on social problems. Their contribution to achieving better informed and more responsive bureaucrats and politicians could also be a crucial step towards establishing a greater degree of political trust.     

NATIONAL VICTIM COMPENSATION: Its Cost and Coverage

In recent years, numerous states have established programs to compensate victims of violent crime, and efforts to enact a national victim compensation law continue. One of the major obstacles to positive legislative action on victim compensation programs has been the lack of reliable estimates of the potential costs of such programs. In this article, a series of compensation program models with varying eligibility criteria are examined. Data from a variety of sources—victimization surveys, the Uniform Crime Reports, and existing state compensation programs—are brought together to determine the effects of differing statutory criteria on the coverage and costs of possible national victim compensations programs. Program model recommendations are made and policy issues are discussed.     

Testing the input-process-output model of public participation

The characteristics of participatory institutions can be articulated in three main dimensions: input, process and output. The common assumption is that a dependency relationship exists, with process serving as a mediator between input and output. This paper puts the model to a rare empirical test drawing on a unique dataset of 70 Spanish advisory councils. Through a combination of exploratory factor and path analyses, we analyse the dimensionality of input, process and output and investigate the direct and indirect impact of inputs on process and outputs. Our analysis provides evidence that input factors have a direct impact on the output factor transparency, but their impact on effects on policy and participant satisfaction is mediated by the process factor deliberation. Further, the capacity of the public administration to steer the advisory council (wardship) mediates negatively the impact of input variables on transparency. The analysis provides a nuanced account of how different input and process design characteristics of participatory institutions have profound direct and indirect effects on their outputs.