RESPONDING TO THE "CALL FOR PAPERS": Participation at A.S.C. Annual Meetings

The purpose of this study is to examine the participation of criminology and criminal justice graduate departments at the 1977-1979 American Society of Criminology meetings. Results show that institutional prestige. not productivity, is the leading predictor of meeting participation. In addition, meeting participation does not appear to be influenced by meeting site. Finally, it is suggested that criminologists focus more attention upon professional activities in order to facilitate our understanding of criminology as a science.     

Constructing C.A.L. tutorials

ON THE assumption that law schools should seek to foster a legal profession which takes ethics seriously, this article explores how it may promote the moral development of its students. Having examined how legal education currently fails in this regards, it explores competing psychological theories of moral development and argues that law schools should seek to start students on a ‘moral apprenticeship’ leading to the development of the necessary moral character to equip them for the ethical challenges of practice. The article then looks at the extent to which ideal methods for promoting moral development can be implemented given the current climate in legal education. In particular, it argues that an excellent and viable means of assisting in the process of moral character development is through student involvement in live‐client clinics, particularly if they are run on an extra‐curricular basis.     

COURT CASELOADS,PLEA BARGAINS,AND CRIMINAL SANCTIONS: THE EFFECTS OF SECTION 17 P.C. IN CALIFORNIA*

In an effort to relieve its overburdened superior courts, California introduced a statutory amendment which allowed lesser felonies to be dealt with in lower-level courts. Using an interrupted time-series methodology, this study examines the impact of this change in law on caseloads, plea bargaining, conviction rates, and sentencing in the superior courts. After the statutory intervention there was a reduction in superior court caseloads, but the overall rate of plea bargaining remained relatively constant. However, there were substantial changes in types of plea bargains with a decline in fast pleas and a corresponding rise in slow pleas. It was also found that severity of sanctions was related to the changing caseload patterns. Policy and theoretical implications of these and other findings are discussed.