Predicting pretrial misconduct with drug tests of arrestees: Evidence from eight settings

Identifying defendants at high risk of pretrial misconduct is a major problem for the judiciary. Currently, some have argued that testing arrestees for recent drug use is one way to distinguish between those who will and those who will not commit pretrial misconduct. The research reported here questions whether the incremental predictive power resulting from drug testing always improves predictions of pretrial misconduct. Using survival analysis to study time until rearrest and a probit model to analyze the occurrence of a failure to appear, we show that urine test results have no consistent power to predict pretrial misconduct after accounting for defendant's criminal records, community ties, and other factors commonly known by the court. These results are based on our analysis of eight data sets from different locales, time periods, and age groups.     

Restoring accountability in pretrial release: the Philadelphia pretrial release supervision experiments

As drug arrests and jail overcrowding added pressure to increase pretrial release in localities during the 1980s and 1990s, the need to manage a larger and higher-risk pretrial population of defendants awaiting adjudication in the community became a high priority for justice agencies. In the late 1990s Philadelphia officials sought to discover the ingredients of a successful supervision strategy through four interlinked field experiments to provide an empirical basis for a major reform of the pretrial release system. The results of the linked randomized experiments question common assumptions about “supervision,” its impact and effectiveness, about the underlying nature of the noncompliant defendant, and deterrence implications. The study emphasizes the importance of interpreting the findings in the context of implementation of the policy reform. Findings suggest that facilitative notification strategies wield little influence on defendant behavior and that deterrent aims are undermined by the system's failure to deliver consequences for defendant noncompliance during pretrial release. The most significant contribution of the article is its illustration of a major evidence-based policy reform undertaken by a major court system.     

A survival model of pretrial failure

This paper examines the likelihood of rearrest during the pretrial period with a model that depends on both time elapsed since release and on individual and case characteristics. Using data on a sample of male arrestees released on recognizance in the District of Columbia in 1984, we apply a survival or hazard model to the problem of predicting pretrial rearrest. We are particularly interested in whether drug use, as measured by urinalysis at arrest, is predictive of pretrial rearrest and its timing. Results show, for example, that drug use or a charge for larceny is associated with high risk levels in the period immediately following release. In our data, the number of prior convictions exerts a strong effect on rearrest risk throughout the pretrial period, but the initial high risk associated with being on probation or parole or having pending charges decreases rapidly over the course of a year at risk.     

Racial and ethnic disparity in pretrial criminal processing

This study uses data on the processing of felony defendants in large urban courts to analyze racial and ethnic disparities in pretrial processing. There are three major findings. First, racial disparity is most notable during the decision to deny bail and for defendants charged with violent crimes. Second, ethnic disparity is most notable during the decision to grant a non‐financial release and for defendants charged with drug crimes. Third, when there is disparity in the treatment of Black and Latino defendants with similar legal characteristics, Latinos always receive the less beneficial decisions. These findings are consistent with the theoretical perspective offered, which suggests that stereotypes influence criminal processing when their specific content is made salient by either the concerns relevant to a particular processing decision or the crime type of a defendant’s primary charge.     

Criminal justice decision making as a stratification process: The role of race and stratification resources in pretrial release

Our purpose is to bridge the criminal justice and stratification research literatures and to pursue the argument that homologous structural principles stratify allocation processes across central institutions of American society. The principle observed here in the making of bail decisions, as in earlier studies of the allocation of earnings, is that stratification resources operate to the greater advantage of whites than blacks. The operation of this principle is established through the estimation of covariance structure models of pretrial release decisions affecting 5660 defendants in 10 federal courts. Education and income are treated in this study as observed components of a composite construct, stratification resources, which works to the greater advantage of whites. Prior record is also found to operate to the greater advantage of whites. Two further variables, dangerousness and community ties, increase bail severity among blacks and whites. While the effect of community ties has been legally legitimized since the Bail Reform Act of 1966, the effect of dangerousness was not so legitimized until the Bail Reform Act of 1984. However, because our data precede the latter act, they confirm that this act simply reinstitutionalized earlier practice. Meanwhile, our race-specific findings may explain why although this and earlier studies find negligible main effects of race on criminal justice outcomes, black Americans nonetheless perceive more criminal injustice than do whites. In the criminal justice system, as in other spheres of American society, whites receive a better return on their resources, but our findings that the statutory severity of the offense and dangerousness work to the relative disadvantage of white defendants challenges conflict and labeling theory's one-dimensional characterization of black defendant disadvantage.     

Race and sex differences in the measurement of risk for drug use

The study uses data from 2018 Black and White males and females and latent-variable structural equations techniques to examine group differences in the measurement of risk factors for substance use. First, the equivalence of measurement models for four demographic groups is examined separately for 12 risk factors and 2 measures of substance use. Then these 14 measures are correlated with five external criteria to assess measurement validity. Results imply that one measurement model fits the data for 11 of the 12 risk factors. For one risk factor (Peer Drug Modeling) and the two drug use scales, observed group differences in the factor loadings stemmed from differences in the distributions of a few drug-related items which were infrequently endorsed, especially by Black females. No meaningful group difference in the validity coefficients relating the scales to external criteria were observed. The results are optimistic for the study of race and sex differences in the correlates of substance use. But research on group differences in the prediction of rare behaviors should examine group differences in distributions which may effect measurement differently for different groups.     

Drug Policies and Drug Prevalence: The Role of Demand and Supply

Changes in drug policy within countries and variations in drug policy across countries do not show clear cut relationships with drug prevalence levels. Neither liberal nor repressive policies promote or reduce drug use. Though policy might affect supply, factors associated with demand seem to exert a greater impact. Socio-economic conditions and attitudes of the populations towards drugs and related areas might be more important than policy in determining the prevalence level of cannabis and the turnover rate to hard drug use.     

Assessing the Relationship between Immigration Status and Drug Use

The immigration–crime connection has been the basis for numerous immigration policy decisions. However, there are theoretical arguments and empirical evidence both for and against the positive relationship between immigration and crime. Moreover, much of this research has failed to focus specifically on illegal immigrants. The current study examines drug use patterns among 3,050 recently booked arrestees in Maricopa County, Arizona, from April 2007 to September 2008. Using logistic regression, the authors isolate the effects of immigration status on several types of drug use while controlling for relevant individual and situational characteristics. Findings show that illegal immigrants are generally less likely to use drugs when compared to US citizens, with the exception of powder cocaine use. The paper concludes with a discussion of the study's implications for the larger body of research on immigration and crime, as well for immigration and enforcement policy and practice.     

Using the Arrestee Drug Abuse Monitoring (ADAM) program to further understand the relationship between drug use and gang membership

In this paper, we examine the relationship between drug use and gang membership using data from the Arizona Arrestee Drug Abuse Monitoring (ADAM) program, which collects both self‐report and hard measures (i.e., urinalysis) of drug use. Our analyses revealed that self‐reported recent drug use (i.e., drug use in the past three days) and urinalysis outcomes were similarly associated with the gang‐membership variables. These findings suggest that self‐reported data obtained from gang members is a particularly robust method for gathering information on their recent behavior. Additionally, our results were supportive of the social facilitation model, showing that current gang members were significantly more likely to use marijuana and cocaine compared with former gang members. The implications for policy and future research are discussed.     

新时期中国毒品禁而不绝的原因及对策探析

由于社会环境、毒品的种类及现今中国毒品犯罪形态发生了变化,致使我国毒品禁而不绝。开展禁毒人民战争将是遏止毒品蔓延的有效途径。     

Drug and alcohol use as determinants of New York City homicide trends from 1990 to 1998

In this population-level study, we analyzed how well changes in drug and alcohol use among homicide victims explained declining homicide rates in New York City between 1990 and 1998. Victim demographics, cause of death, and toxicology were obtained for all homicide (N = 12573) and accidental death victims (N = 6351) between 1990 and 1998 from the Office of the Chief Medical Examiner of New York (OCME). The proportion of homicide and accident decedents positive for cocaine fell between 1990 and 1998 (13% and 9% respectively); the proportion of homicide and accident decedents positive for opiates and/or alcohol did not change significantly. Changing patterns of drug and alcohol use by homicide victims were comparable to changing patterns of drug and alcohol use in accident victims, suggesting that changes in drug and alcohol use among homicide victims between 1990 and 1998 cannot solely explain the decline in NYC homicide rates.     

Urban Drug Problems, Policymakers and the General Public

The main focus of this paper is: how strong are people's opinions and policy preferences on the issue of drugs and drug users influenced by their own exposure to drug problems? From a general population survey conducted in eleven European cities, it is concluded that opinions and policy preferences are influenced only to a limited degree by exposure. The people who are not exposed to drug problems in their neighbourhood are more strongly inclined towards a repressive approach than the people who are affected by drug nuisance. Personal experiences with illicit drugs play an important part in the viewpoints. People who have tried drugs themselves lean far more strongly towards a health approach. That tendency is even stronger among those who are exposed to drug-related nuisance.     

重庆新型毒品违法犯罪的现状及对策

新型毒品的使用以青少年为主体,由主城向郊县、郊区蔓延,并已在吸食者中形成新型毒品亚文化圈。新型毒品在生产方面以当地生产为主,向周边乡镇转移。制毒组织以多人入股为主。制毒方式以高技术性、规模化生产为主。因此,在新型毒品的禁毒斗争中需要调整过去针对传统毒品形成的思路和方法,改变以往的禁毒宣传模式,制定、完善相关法规和标准,明确相关单位职责,协调各单位职能,调整人员配置,加大力度强化易制毒化学品的控管工作。     

Gender and Juvenile Drug Abuse: A General Strain Theory Perspective

This study is a partial test of Robert Agnew's (2006 Agnew , Robert. 2006 . “Pressured Into Crime: General Strain Theory.” Pp. 201 – 209 in Criminological Theory: Past to Present. , 3rd ed. , edited by F. T. Cullen and R. Agnew . Oxford , England : Oxford University Press . [Google Scholar]) general strain theory. The sample consists of 39,879 juveniles between the ages of 10 and 17 from a metropolitan area in Texas with more than 5 million people. Logistic regression is used to determine the effect of living situation on drug offenders, drug recidivists, and juvenile court case outcome when race, abuse, sex, and mental health problems are controlled. Gender-specific analysis is used to test L. Broidy and R. Agnew's (1997 Agnew , Robert and Timothy Brezina . 1997 . “Relational Problems With Peers, Gender, and Delinquency.” Youth & Society 84 – 111 .[Crossref], [Web of Science ®] , [Google Scholar]) hypothesis that girls and boys react differently to strain. Results show partial support for the influence of a strained living situation on drug offenders, drug recidivists, and case outcome. Support is found for the hypothesis that boys' and girls' experiences with strain differ.     

广东制造新型毒品犯罪及其侦查对策

广东省目前成为制造新型毒品犯罪案件的高发地区。应根据广东制造新型毒品犯罪的发展变迁和特点，采取以下举措：重视禁毒工作，进一步强化情报在侦破制造毒品犯罪案件中的主导和核心作用；强化手段建设和业务培训，提高缉毒民警的执法能力和执法水平；严格管制易制毒化学品，防止流入非法渠道；夯实禁毒基础性工作，掌握本地人口和外来人口活动情况，及时发现可疑情况；扩大禁毒宣传的深广度，降低毒品需求。从而减少制毒案件的发生。     

我国创新药物专利司法保护的量化分析——基于药品专利案件裁判文书的实证研究

专利司法保护的范围和强度对制药企业自主创新具有关键的作用,人民法院审理药品专利案件的司法实践正是发挥这一作用的具体体现。细化该类案件中各种审判因素,从微观角度逐一进行深入剖析,对具体条款的调整、具体措施的推行以及审判实务中裁判尺度的把握将发挥积极效果。本文将以“中国知识产权裁判文书网”登载的所有药品专利案件为样本,通过建立指标体系进行量化统计,对近年来我国药品专利民事诉讼的主体、客体、适用法律、审理裁判等方面进行具体分析,探究此类案件在审理实践中所存在的问题及其成因,以期为完善药品专利司法保护制度提供可行的政策建议。     

毒品与毛发的结合及其影响因素

毛发毒品的分析在毒品检验中具有独特优势,而毛发与毒品的结合状况及毒品聚集于毛发的机制影响其检测的准确性和灵敏性。对毒品与毛发的结合位点、毒品与毛发结合的差异性因素以及外界因素对毒品与毛发结合的影响进行了综述。     

重庆地区毒品犯罪的现状和对策建议

重庆位于长江与嘉陵江交汇之处,历史上是川、藏、滇、黔等西南各省区的水陆交通枢纽。解放前是烟毒的主要集散地。解放后,党和政府采取了一系列果断有效的措施,创造了人类文明史上短短几年彻底禁绝毒品的奇迹,以“无毒国”的光辉形象享誉世界30年。20世纪50年代之后,世界毒品犯罪的格局发生了巨大变化,国际毒品从种植、生产、加工、贩运、销售形成一体化、组织化、集团化、网络化的格局,形成了“供、销两旺”的世界大趋势。重庆面临毒品多头渗入,新型毒品猛增,吸毒人群中的亚文化现象侵蚀青少年的精神意志等严重现状,鉴于此提出一系列的对策及建议。     

日本预防毒品犯罪对策的重点及其启示

基于对禁毒意义的充分认识和借他山之石推动中国禁毒事业发展的朴素想法,介绍了日本的毒品犯罪现状、吸食毒品人群、毒品来源渠道以及毒品犯罪研究的领域归属等,着重解读了“对策”的重点“一体两断两借”。指出：中国禁毒必须扎扎实实“技术”攻关,准确定位禁毒技术,迅速建立并不断完善具有中国特色的“断绝毒源”和“断绝客源”两大系统。强调：必须充分认识,禁毒是促进中国社会安定的维稳工程,也是民族抢救民族、人类抢救人类的自救工程。