Legal education and early career mentoring: mid-career attorneys' pro bono commitment

Much extant research suggests that students who enter law school highly enthusiastic about public interest law and pro bono work often take mainstream jobs with minimal participation in pro bono activities. Frequently, these studies place some of the blame on law schools. This study, however, suggests that law schools, as well as mentors in first post-graduation jobs, might positively affect attorneys' level of commitment to pro bono work. This longitudinal study is unique in that it includes measures of students' attitudes during law school and in mid-career. It raises the possibility that attorneys whose level of commitment to pro bono work did not decrease since law school were substantially influenced by their law school training and early career mentors. Although some students will leave law school with less dedication to public interest law and pro bono work, this study offers hope that, through legal education and mentorship, other students will maintain their strong commitment to helping poor clients.     

Distributive Justice and Attitudes Toward the Welfare State

Current debates concerning the viability of the welfare state evoke the question of the social bases of support of the welfare state. Past research has documented fairly consistent relationships between sociodemographic characteristics and attitudes toward welfare policies. Yet, the nature of these relationships is not well understood. In the paper we argue that the level of support for the welfare state is largely determined by the principles of distributive justice espoused by individuals as well as their images of society. We develop a theoretical framework, which outlines the structural relationship between social attributes, principles of justice, perceived conflict, and support for the welfare state. Using data from a recent population survey on the legitimation of inequality, conducted in Israel in 1999 (N = 1057), we test a number of hypotheses. For the empirical analysis we use structural equation modeling with multiple indicators. Our findings reveal substantial support for policies aimed at reducing inequality. At the same time we find strong support for rewards according to merit and unequal earnings distribution. The impact of social attributes on attitudes toward the welfare state is partially mediated by the justice principles and images of society.     

Causes of Career-relevant Interest Changes Among First-Year Law Students: Some Research Data

The third report in a study of career-relevant changes in interests, attitudes, and personality characteristics among first-year law students at Brigham Young University, this article examines the impacts of five kinds of possible causes of interest changes. The author elaborates what it means to say that a career-relevant interest has "changed" in light of changes due in part to both reconceptions of the content of law and of the demands and rewards of various work settings and to changes in the students' conceptions of themselves which carry with them changes in career interests.     

Interpretation of blood alcohol concentration in maritime accidents—A case report

The human element is increasingly acknowledged as an important factor contributing to accidents at sea. Alcohol and drug abuse is becoming an increasing problem among seafarers in the last few years. Recently we registered a few similar maritime accidents on the Adriatic coast. During the analysis of these incidents, it became apparent that the consumption of alcohol on duty was the main cause of the ship being stranded. We report a maritime accident recently happened in port of Rijeka, where the merchant ship stranded on the main breakwater. During the investigation, forensic alcohol analysis established that master's consumption of alcohol on duty was the main cause of the incident. The BAC–UAC relation we found was not physiologically possible, so further diagnostic workup demonstrated that urine was diluted. Various issues are being discussed, such as urine dilution, retrograde calculation, elimination rate, two subsequent blood samples, drinking after the accident, as well as prevention measures. Our observations indicate a need for stricter and more precise legislation as well as more frequent police control that will hopefully result in prevention of serious maritime accidents caused by alcohol consumption. In our opinion, better understanding of the above mentioned apparent problems in navigation rules and maritime law regulations can prevent similar accidents from happening in the future. Accidents like the one described cause double damage for society: due to acute health problems of the crew and navigation safety, as well as due to the long-term harmful consequences such as suspension of career on ship board and early retirement of employees.     

Civil Asset Forfeiture Laws and Equitable Sharing Activity by the Police

Research Summary

For several decades, critics have argued that civil forfeiture laws create incentives for law enforcement to increase departmental revenue by “policing for profit.” By using data on federal equitable sharing payments to nearly 600 local law enforcement agencies between 2000 and 2012, we examine the relationship between the characteristics of state forfeiture laws and equitable sharing payments to local agencies. Our results indicate that agencies in states with state laws that are more restrictive or less rewarding to police collect more in federal equitable sharing. This finding supports the critics’ argument that police behavior in regard to forfeiture activities is influenced by the financial rewards and burdens involved.

Policy Implications

Our results reveal that the findings of investigative journalism and case study research, that is, that police forfeiture activities are influenced by financial rewards, may be more generalizable to law enforcement than previously thought. Despite recent state‐level reforms, federal equitable sharing and most state forfeiture laws provide limited due process protections and have minimal accountability or reporting requirements. Concerns about the impact of civil forfeiture practices on perceptions of procedural justice and police legitimacy are discussed, and possible policy reforms are reviewed.     

Rational Choice and the Gender Gap in Crime: Establishing the Generality of Rational Choice Theory in Russia and Ukraine

Abstract

Using data elicited from a random sample of 1435 adults residing in Lviv, Ukraine, and Nizhni Novgorod, Russia, this study tests rational choice theory (RCT) across gender groups. It seeks to determine whether men and women have different perceptions of sanction risk and crime rewards, whether the formation of these perceptions is gender-specific, and whether RCT predicts criminal behavior equally for men and women. Results suggest that, for both genders, perceptions of crime rewards appear more important than sanction threats. Furthermore, perceived rewards of crime, but not sanction threats, partially explain associations between offending and personal and vicarious experiences with crime. Finally, the performance of RCT is consistent, but not identical, in explaining crime by men and women. The gender gap in offending appears to reflect differences between men and women in levels of perceived rewards, most likely acquired through direct and vicarious experiences with crime as well as through gender-variant emotional bonds.     

MENTORS AND CRIMINAL ACHIEVEMENT*

Much of the research focusing on conventional occupations concludes that mentored individuals are more successful in their careers than those who are not mentored. Early research in criminology made a similar claim. Yet contemporary criminology has all but ignored mentors. We investigate this oversight, drawing on Sutherland's insights on tutelage and criminal maturation and incorporating ideas on human and social capital. We argue that mentors play a key role in their protégés' criminal achievements and examine this hypothesis with data from a recent survey of incarcerated adult male offenders in the Canadian province of Quebec. In this sample, a substantial proportion of respondents reported the presence of an influential individual in their lives who introduced them to a criminal milieu and whom they explicitly regarded as a mentor. After studying the attributes of offenders and their mentors, we develop a causal framework that positions criminal mentor presence within a pathway that leads to greater benefits and lower costs from crime.     

Competition policy in the United States and the United Kingdom ‐ A look at underlying forces*

Summer schools in law are a common feature of Irish legal education today. Originating in the US, summer schools are now an international phenomenon. In 2005, the eLaw Summer Institute (or ELSI), was established at University College Cork as a four-week international summer school. In this article, we reflect on the design and development of ELSI, with reference to three key aspects of this summer school. First, we address issues arising from the intensive teaching aspect of ELSI, including the use of technology as part of a blended learning experience. Second, we explore the challenges posed by the international audience in ELSI. Lastly, we critically examine the comparative elements of the school in terms of curriculum design and delivery of the programme. Our analysis builds upon existing literature in the areas of curriculum design and delivery, intensive teaching, the international classroom and comparative legal studies; and is informed by empirical data in the form of anonymous student questionnaires. The aim of the article is to engage with others involved in summer programmes, to share our experiences and critical analysis and to provide an insight for those not involved in summer school programmes into the challenges and the rewards for students, staff and the institutions involved.     

The effects of different paraphrasing styles on the quality of reports from young child witnesses

The link between criminal attitudes and behavior is well established throughout the literature. We know, for example, that offenders have higher levels of criminal attitudes than non-offenders. However, it is also likely that individual differences in criminal attitudes exist among offenders. The aim of the study is to explore the unique contribution of (1) individual, (2) criminal career, and (3) social characteristics to individual differences in criminal attitudes. Data were used from the Prison Project, a large-scale study among prisoners in all Dutch remand centers (N = 1612). Hierarchical linear regression models were used to identify factors associated with two types of inmates' attitudes. Among the most salient relationships with criminal attitudes were having more agreeable personality traits, having a criminogenic social network, and having experienced more prior incarcerations. Criminal history and social characteristics had the most salient links with criminal attitudes. The results seem to support the idea that criminal behavior is learned in interaction with criminal others, which is in line with the ideas of differential association and reinforcement. The current study might serve as a starting point for individually oriented prison intervention strategies and rehabilitation efforts based on specific offender characteristics.     

宋代经济领域中的告赏立法

立赏告奸作为鼓励吏民揭发犯罪的手段,早在商鞅变法时已经出现,其后历代多有此类立法。而宋代的告赏立法,不仅适用于刑事犯罪,而且对经济、思想文化、社会生活等领域中的犯罪亦广立告赏之法。仅此项立法,在宋代已形成了一个广阔的法域,成为古今中外实不多见的一种法律现象。     

论法家关于奖赏之法的思想及其现代意义

法家是我国历史上有名的重刑主义者，但他们关于奖赏方面的法律思想也是很丰富的。法家法律思想中重视奖赏之法的思想启示我们，奖赏与刑罚一样，既是法律内容的重要组成部分，也是法律调整社会关系不可缺少的手段。为此，我们应重视激励性立法的研究工作，在法律中增添有关奖赏的内容     

Structuring Mr. Nice: Entrepreneurial opportunities and brokerage positioning in the cannabis trade

A case study of the career of international cannabistrade smuggler, Howard Marks (a.k.a. DonaldNice), is conducted to investigate the crucial, yetoft-overlooked network mechanisms inherent in drugdistribution chains. Using Marks' recent andsubstantially detailed autobiography of his 20-yearparticipation within and around importation links inthe cannabis trade, a series of analyses are conductedwith specific convergence on the makings of hispersonal working network as well as on how thisrelational structure served in embedding the variousentrepreneurial opportunities that triggered 14importation ventures and 41 consignments therein.Marks' career demonstrates that the capacity to brokerand seize information benefits needed and sought afterby others allows some participants to achieve morecontrol of entrepreneurial opportunities in illegaltrades as well as explaining variations in successfrom one phase of the career to the next. Thisrelational argument offers an alternative to moreconventional instrumental violence explanationsconcerning the attainment of competitive advantage inillegal business settings.     

Informal politics: the role of Congressional letters in legislative behaviour and careers

Members of the United States Congress are cross-pressured by constituents, party leaders, the president, and even by their own career goals. Yet, they are limited in their time and resources, and must maximise the tools available to them. Given that Congressional letter writing to the president as a tool available to all members occurs so widely, such behaviour informs a deeper understanding of how legislators seek to professionalise as politicians in competitive national politics. Utilising a data set of nearly 13,000 Congressional letters across eight Congresses, the author finds that letter writers systematically differ from non-letter writers, shedding light on the value of letter writing in Congressional behaviour and career aspirations, as well as the drivers behind this form of behaviour. Letter content varies based on the institutional and individual characteristics of the letter writer, suggesting members differ in how they view and use this tool.     

Men and Women of Elite Law Firms: Reevaluating Kanter's Legacy

This paper tests the effects of minority partner representation on minority associate representation in a sample of 97 law firms from 1980 to 1990. We perform separate analyses for women, African Americans, Hispanics, and Asian Americans, and we consider both within-group and cross-group effects. We find that minority partner representation has a positive effect on minority associate representation, which is statistically significant in the case of women and Asian Americans. Our findings are consistent with lawyers'own accounts, which emphasize the impact of partner composition on the distribution of rewards within law firms. We also show how our findings clarify previous studies about the effects of minority representation on the distribution of organizational rewards, focusing particularly on Kanter's work and subsequent related research.     

AGE,CRIMINAL CAREERS,AND POPULATION HETEROGENEITY: SPECIFICATION AND ESTIMATION OF A NONPARAMETRIC,MIXED POISSON MODEL*

This article addresses three issues that are central to the criminal career debate. First, is the life course of individual offending patterns marked by distinctive periods of quiescence? Second, at the level of the individual, do offending rates vary systematically with age? In particular, is the age-crime curve single peaked or flat? Third, are chronic offenders different from less active offenders? Do offenders themselves differ in systematic ways? Using a new approach to the analysis of individual criminal careers—based on nested, mixed Poisson models in which the mixing distribution is estimated nonparametrically—we analyze a panel data set that tracks a sample of males for more than 20 years. Our results provide empirical evidence in support of some features of criminal propensity theory and some in support of conventional criminal careers theory. In support of latent-trait criminal propensity theory, the individual-level average offense rate (per unit of time) varies as a function of observable individual-level characteristics and unobservable heterogeneity among individuals, and the age trajectory of the offense rate is generally single peaked rather than flat. On the other hand, in support of conventional criminal careers theory, models that incorporate a parameter that permits periods of active as well as inactive offending across age have greater explanatory power than those that do not. In addition, the nonparametric, discrete approximation to the population distribution of unobservable heterogeneity in the individual-level mean offense rate facilitates identification of four classes of offenders—nonoffenders as well as individual-level characteristics that are unique to each group. Problems of theoretical explanation and empirical generalizability of these results are described.     

Public Rewards and Innovation Policy: Lessons from the Eighteenth and Early Nineteenth Centuries

There has been renewed interest in recent years in using prizes and rewards to promote innovation. History has played a central role in public debates in the UK about the merits of such interventions, with the Longitude Prize 2014 being self‐consciously modelled on its eighteenth century precursor. Similarly, historical case studies have been used extensively in the scholarly literature in this area. However, it is striking that there has been little engagement with parliament's role generally in rewarding inventors in the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries and how this formed part of a broader system of rewards. The article explores how this system operated and demonstrates that it formed an established part of the legal landscape for many decades. It considers the extent to which a more complete understanding of the historical use of prizes and rewards during the key period of Britain's industrialisation might inform current debates.     

Not Just a Boy's Club

Abstract

The extant literature suggests that habitual criminality among women is rare and that female career criminals are ostensibly nonexistent. Using the criminal records of 500 male and female adult recidivists, this study applies the concept of career criminality to women and describes how this application has specific gendered elements. Like their male peers, women are chronic, versatile offenders engaged in violent, property, and public-order offending. Women are disproportionately engaged in forgery, fraud, and prostitution whereas men are disproportionately engaged in rape, robbery, and aggravated assault. No gender differences existed for a variety of additional offenses and criminal justice system statuses. However, significant gender differences exist for social demographic characteristics, such as age and timing of onset, and criminal career parameter indicators, such as span of criminal career. These data and analyses indicate that the career criminal classification has important implications for criminal career research and gender-based criminology.     

Need,Connections, or Competence? Criminal Achievement among Adolescent Offenders

Variations in criminal performance have been much less explored than other parameters of criminal careers. We explore the factors associated with differential criminal achievement in a sample of 154 adolescent offenders involved in cannabis cultivation. Drawing from theories of earnings attainment, we examine the role of drug use, criminal social capital and criminal human capital in providing either (a) monetary, or (b) in kind (cannabis) rewards from crime. Results reveal that criminal social capital and criminal human capital are related to performance while drug use explains little of the variation. Their effects, however, differ between outcomes: young offenders who are mainly connected to adult growers tend to be paid in kind, whereas respondents connected to a majority of other young growers tend to receive money. Criminal human capital is crucial to earning money but insignificant to obtaining larger payments in cannabis. Implications for criminal career and desistance research are discussed.     

‘There were ethical dilemmas all day long!’: harrowing tales of ethnographic researchers in criminology and criminal justice

While there have been many ethnographies published within the disciplines of criminology and criminal justice, very few studies have examined actual field researchers who have successfully employed this qualitative technique. In this exploratory study, we identified and conducted phone interviews with a sample of eight scholars who have used variations of the ethnographic method to study aspects of life which relate to crime, deviant behavior, and social control. Respondents revealed to us their colorful stories, as well as the risks, rewards, and ethical dilemmas they experienced while attempting to balance the delicate roles of being insiders, outsiders, researchers, and participants. They specifically discussed how they negotiated the personal and professional obstacles of being thrust into criminal worlds (as well as criminal justice worlds) and ultimately managed to thrive while conducting fieldwork in perilous places.