“Who made the code in the first place?”: Delinquency and justice in an American Indian community

This paper examines the emergence of official categories of delinquency and a formal system for the legal processing of youth on one American Indian reservation. The creation of the legal code, Children's Court and Juvenile Detention Center, and the ongoing activities of these agencies are placed in the context of the larger social system of the reservation and the history of federal policies toward Indian peoples. Through in-depth interviews, participant observation, case file review, and the analysis of existing statistics, perceptions of delinquency and justice and trends in the legal processing of adolescents in this community are explored. The implications of this imposed system of law and justice for this community are discussed.     

Social sciences and the evolving concept of corruption

The term corruptio appears in many languages, but behind it lie several contrasting strands of thought and language. Current political usages of corruptio--emphasizing bribery, which in turn is just one of several families of ideas to which the term has variously been attached--date from the late 18th or early 19th century, have been strongly influenced by Anglo-Saxon legal thought, and may be traced to Roman roots. But French lexicographers developed a richer and more diverse vocabulary to encompass the crimes of civil servants and judges in addition to those of the people who sought to influence them. Religion, and in particular offices within the Church, also strongly influenced the ideas and vocabulary of corruption. Ultimately, corruptio can be said to have Biblical origins and a core meaning centered around injustice. The complexity and richness of the idea of corruption, as viewed from that perspective, in often lost in the narrower and more technical usages that dominate contemporary debate and analysis.     

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.     

Belgium's Anti-Sect War

Since the suicide—homicide of 53 members of the Order of the Solar Temple in 1994 and the gas attempt by Aum Shinrikyo in Tokyo's subway in 1995, a number of European states have decided to fight against sects. France and Belgium are in the forefront of this battle. Both countries have set up official observatories of sects and state agencies involving various ministries to combat them. Preventive policies targeting sects are being carried out. In Belgium, the Anthroposophic Society, a philosophical movement listed as 1 of 189 sects suspected of being dangerous, has sued one federal entity that printed unfounded accusations against their movement in a widely distributed brochure against sects. The same Anthoposophic Society has also petitioned the Court of Arbitration to have the law establishing an observatory of sects annuled. This report deals with both legal actions.     

Rethinking the Probative Value of Evidence: Base Rates,Intuitive Profiling,and the “Postdiction” of Behavior

It is argued that American courts may be routinely admitting evidence with little to no probative value and great potential for prejudicial impact. This may be particularly likely with regard to what is essentially intuitive profiling or stereotype related evidence, defined herein as evidence suggesting that the defendant (or other party), or his (her) behavior, fits intuitive profiles (or stereotypes) of the type of person likely to commit the crime or behavior in question. In other words, intuitive profiling evidence is admitted to postdict behavior. Formal empirically based profiling evidence (testimony regarding the fit of a defendant's characteristics or behaviors to formal or scientific profiles of the typical perpetrator of the crime in question for use to prove guilt is inadmissible in American courts. However, we suggest that everyday use of informal intuitive profiles underlies both judicial determinations of probative value diagnosticity, and thus admissibility, of evidence, and jurors' use of the evidence in determining guilt. Demonstrations of the use of base rate information to evaluate the probative value of such intuitive profiling evidence both as evidence of guilt and as evidence of innocence are provided. Demonstrations of both how to evaluate the actual probative value of evidence (when all necessary values are known), and the theoretical limit of its probative value (in circumstances where some values are not known) are provided. It is argued that such evaluations may provide the basis for (1) support of motions to either admit or to exclude evidence, (2) testimony to the jury to help them weigh or interpret evidence, (3) exculpatory profiling (profiling evidence of innocence), (4) pretrial research to establish probative versus prejudicial value of evidence, and (5) sufficiency analyses to determine maximum likelihood of guilt, given multiple items of evidence. Among these, the first two are considered most important, as it can be demonstrated that many profiling characteristics currently admitted in trial (such as evidence of battery to support a murder charge) are not probative of guilt.     

The Process of Recovery and Rebuilding among Abused Women in the Conservative Evangelical Subculture

This study utilized a naturalistic methodology to develop a grounded theory of the process of recovery and rebuilding among abused women situated in the conservative evangelical subculture. Among all the women, spirituality and church participation were an integral part of their identity and generated culture-specific issues that needed to be addressed in therapy. The women's faith functioned as a meaning-making framework that could either engender shame and guilt or inspire hope and empower transformative change. The church functioned as an extended family system that could minimize, deny, and enable abuse or provide much-needed social support, spiritual encouragement, and practical assistance. The recovery process required that these women rebuild their personal and spiritual identity, redefine their relationship with the religious community, and find ways of expressing their new identity within the religious subculture.     

Toward an Empirical Approach to Evidentiary Ruling

This paper responds to criticisms/misconstruals of our measure of the maximum probative value of evidence (D. Davis & W. C. Follette, 2002), and our conclusions regarding the potentially prejudicial role of intuitive profiling evidence, including motive. We argue that R. D. Friedman and R. C. Park's (2003) criticisms and example cases are largely based on inappropriate violation of the presumption of innocence. Further, we address the merits of our absolute difference measure of probative value versus those of the Bayesian likelihood ratio championed by D. H. Kaye and J. J. Koehler (2003). We recommend methods for presentation of measures of evidence utility that convey complexities of interdependence between new and existing evidence. Finally, we propose a probable cause standard for admission of potentially prejudicial evidence, dictating that admissibility of such evidence should be contingent upon other substantial evidence of guilt.     

Insights on Technology Transfer from the Bureau of Mines

The U.S. Bureau of Mines was established in 1910 to reduce the high accident rate in the nation's coal mines. For 85 years, it conducted a wide variety of tasks related to mining before it was abolished in 1995. The BOM had many technology transfer successes in its lifetime, including more than a dozen R&D100 awards. This essay identifies and discusses five transfer factors that can explain the success (or failure) of many Bureau of Mines projects. These five factors are termed pressure, pitfalls, path, price, and profit.     

How Large Should the Strike Zone Be in “Three Strikes and You're Out” Sentencing Laws?

So-called three strikes and you're out sentencing laws for criminal offenders have proliferated in the United States. The laws vary considerably in their definitions of what constitutes a strike. This paper adapts the classic Poisson process model of criminal offending to investigate how varying sentence lengths and definitions of what constitutes a strike affect the effectiveness and cost-effectiveness of these sentencing laws. In particular, it asks whether, by using different definitions for the first, second, and third strikes or different sentence lengths, one can make the resulting incarceration more efficient in the sense of incapacitating more crimes per cell-year served.     

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.     

From fiddle factors to networks of collusion: Charting the waters of small business crime

Small business crime has been largely ignored in American criminology; studies of nontraditional crime have focused mainly on corporate crime or on the misdeeds of employees pursuing personal gain. This paper calls for criminologists to redirect their efforts toward the systematic study of small business crime. In particular, it advocates in-depth qualitative studies that explore small business culture and opportunity structures, and that examine the networks of collusion that subvert the legitimate economy. The paper concludes with illustrations from an own story currently being shared with the author by a small businessman who participated for five years in an urban crime network that infiltrated the redistributive economy.     

From coercion to deception: the changing nature of police interrogation in America

Our police, with no legal sanction whatever, employ duress, threat, bullying, a vast amount of moderate physical abuse and a certain degree of outright torture; and their inquisitions customarily begin with the demand: If you know what's good for you, you'll confess. (Ernest Jerome Hopkins, 1931)¹ Today, Ness Said, interrogation is not a matter of forcing suspects to confess but of conning them. Really, what we do is just to bullshit them (William Hart, 1981)² There is an interesting irony at work here: restrict police use of coercion, and the use of deception increases. (Gary Marx, 1988)³ In both popular discourse and academic scholarship one continually encounters references to the tradition-bound police who are resistant to change. Nothing could be further from the truth. The history of the American police over the past 100 years is the history of drastic, if not radical, change. (Samuel Walker, 1977)⁴ A longer version of this paper was presented at the Annual Meeting of the American Society of Criminology in November, 1991.     

Society's retributive response to juvenile violence: A developmental perspective

Examines theoretical and empirical challenges to a national trend toward increasingly punitive determinate sentences in juvenile court, and automatic transfer of juveniles to criminal court, for homicides and other serious violent offenses. Theory and research in developmental psychology, criminology, and child clinical psychology and psychiatry are examined, with special attention to (a) decision-making by adolescents; (b) characteristics of adolescents who commit homicide; and (c) adolescents' recidivism and potential for rehabilitation. Theoretical support is found for promoting legal responses to adolescent violent offenders that are different from those for adult violent offenders, arguing against determinate sentences based on the offense alone. Empirical support, however, is limited by the lack of relevant systematic research, for which specific recommendations are offered.     

Do Śrāvakas understand emptiness?

Conclusions The present study has attempted to artriculate a central issue of Mahäyäna soteriology through an examination of the writings of two Mädhyamika masters, Bhävaviveka and Candrakïrti. The purpose here has been to demonstrate a further criterion for the retrospective designation of their respective philosophies with the terms Svtantrika and Prasangika an exhaustive study of the nature of the Hinayäna wisdom according to the Mädhyamika school would entail an analysis of the writings of many other masters, especially those who produced what has been called the Yogäcära-Mädhyamika synthesis. To attempt to determine the position of Maitreyanätha, for example, on this issue would entail an analysis of the famous Five Treatises (the Dharmadharmatävibhaa, the Madhyäntavibhaga, the Mahayanasutrlamkara, the Uttratantra, and the Abhisamayälamkära) as well as the myriad commentaries on these works. It is possible to speculate briefly here on what the position of Nägärjuna may have been on this issue and then go on to discuss the implications and possible motivations of the views of Bhävaviveka and Candrakïrti.     

Jurors' Perceptions of Adolescent Sexual Assault Victims Who Have Intellectual Disabilities

Children and adolescents with intellectual disabilities are especially likely to be sexually abused. Even so, their claims are not likely to be heard in court, possibly because people assume that jurors will not believe them. We tested this assumption in a mock-trial study in which 160 men and women watched videotaped excerpts from an actual trial. As predicted, when the 16-year-old sexual assault victim was portrayed as mildly mentally retarded instead of as having average intelligence, jurors were more likely to vote guilty and had more confidence in the defendant's guilt; considered the victim to be more credible and the defendant to be less credible as witnesses; and rated the victim as more honest, less capable of fabricating the sexual abuse accusation, and less likely to have fabricated the sexual abuse accusation. Men and women were affected similarly by the disability manipulation, but women were generally more pro-prosecution in their case judgments and perceptions than were men. Finally, jurors who had more liberal views toward persons with disabilities were more likely than other jurors to make pro-prosecution judgments on measures of guilt. Implications for psychological theory and the law are discussed.     

MCMI-III Results for Batterer Program Participants in Four Cities: Less “Pathological” Than Expected

Previous research using diagnostic inventories describe the extent and nature of psychopathology among batterers. MCMI-III scores from batterers in a multisite program evaluation (n = 840) were used to replicate this previous research. As in previous batterer research using the MCMI-I and MCMI-II, the MCMI-III results suggest a complex diversity of psychological problems that does not readily conform to previous profiles. However, less than half of the men had scores suggesting a personality disorder (BR scores 85), as opposed to 80% in a previous batterer study using the MCMI-II. Only one quarter of the men (25%) show evidence of a severe mental disorder. Narcissistic or antisocial tendencies were evident in 39% of our batterer sample, reflecting the sense of entitlement often attributed to batterers. Voluntary, as opposed to court-referred men, were more likely to have depressive and dependent tendencies and evidence of severe disorders. Our multisite sample appears to be less pathological than previous batterer samples and samples of psychiatric or drug outpatients.     

Juror decision making in the capital penalty trial

Two factors thought to influence jurors' penalty decisions in capital trials—the nature of the crime committed and the defense's portrayal of the convicted offender's character—were examined. Mock jurors were death-qualified and exposed to one of twelve simulated penalty trials. Each trial was comprised of one of three capital crimes and one of four defense strategies. Jurors were least punitive in robbery-murder conditions and most punitive in multiple murder conditions. A conceptual argument against capital punishment was the most effective defense; a mental illness defense was the least effective. Penalty decisions were mediated by three attributional variables: (a) juror perceptions of the defendant's volition, (b) juror perceptions of the defendant's future dangerousness, and (c) juror perceptions of the relative competency of the opposing attorneys.This article is based on the author's dissertation which received an Honorable Mention in the 1985 SPSSI Dissertation Prize competition. The research was made possible by grants from the University of California, Santa Cruz and Division 41 of the American Psychological Association. The author is indebted to Craig Haney, Elliot Aronson, and Dane Archer for their valuable suggestions and support.     

MCMI Results for Batterers: A Response to Gondolf

Gondolph [Gondolf, E. W. (1999). J. Fam. Violence 14: 1–17] recently published MCMI-III results on men in batterer treatment groups that appeared to indicate much lower levels of psychopathology than previous studies. Gondolph concluded from these results that the existence of an abusive personality was debatable. Gondolph is mistaken in drawing conclusions about the abusive personality based solely on MCMI results. The assessment of the abusive personality is not based on this instrument. Also, respondents in Gondolph's study had extremely high Desirability scores on the MCMI-III, so even his estimates of the incidence of personality disorder are questionable. Current assessment of personality disorder has begun to steer away from self-report instruments such as the MCMI-III; this practice should be utilized in assessing batterers.     

Precedent Externality, Network Effect, and the Possible Inefficiency of the Evolution of Laws

Using the traditional scenario of tort conflict as an example, I argue that the marginal precautionary costs of injurers and victims are not constant, as was assumed by most previous researchers. The precedent of a liability rule has some natural externality on the precaution technology, and hence marginal cost, faced by future agents involved in torts. The adoption of legal rules therefore has a network effect, meaning that the present prevalent adoption of one rule increases the probability of its future adoption. Treating the dynamic evolution of legal rules as a random process, we are able to apply an established result in the literature of network economies to conclude the path-dependence, non-predictability, and potential inefficiency concerning the final legal rule to which the dynamics converge.     

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.