CRIMINOLOGICAL THEORIES AND REGULATORY COMPLIANCE*

Four traditional criminological theories—opportunity, control, subcultural, and differential association—are tested for their explanatory power in accounting for organizational compliance with regulatory laws. The primary data source is interviews with 410 chief executives of small organizations. Partial support is found for each theory; certain key concepts of each theory have a significant effect on regulatory compliance, net of a variety of characteristics of the nursing home, the residents in the home, and the inspection team. The results show that blocked legitimate opportunity has a significant effect on regulatory compliance, as does the structure of illegitimate opportunity. There is also an effect on compliance of participation in business subcultures of resistance to regulation. Belief in laws increases compliance with those laws as does differential association with or attachment to the upholders of the law. Overall, however, control theory and differential association lack explanatory power, and the explanatory power of subcultural theory is modest. Only opportunity theory explains a credible proportion of variance in compliance as a standalone theory. The significant effect of some but not all of the measures for each theory, coupled with the lack of significant explanatory power by three of the four theories, suggests the need for theoretical integration.     

REINTEGRATIVE SHAMING AND COMPLIANCE WITH REGULATORY STANDARDS*

Australian nursing home inspection teams are partitioned into those with an enforcement ideology supportive of reintegrative shaming, those who believe in being tolerant and understanding when confronted with noncompliance with the law, and those with a more stigmatizing ideology toward noncompliers. Nursing homes visited by teams with a reintegrative shaming ideology display significantly improved compliance in the period following the inspection. Nursing homes visited by inspection teams with a more stigmatizing attitude toward noncompliance display an approximately equal drop in compliance. The performance of homes visited by tolerant and understanding inspection teams falls between these two extremes. A more specific test of the theory shows that when interdependency exists between the nursing home and the inspection team, reintegrative shaming has a stronger positive effect on improving compliance. In nursing homes with no link between the home and the inspection team, reintegrative shaming has no effect on compliance levels. These effects demonstrate both the importance and the limitations of reintegrative shaming as a theoretical concept worthy of further empirical investigation.     

REGULATORY ENFORCEMENT: An Economic Study of the British Factory Inspectorate

The British Factory Inspectorate is the body responsible for enforcing occupational health and safety legislation in the manufacturing industries. The concept of economic efficiency is used to link the compartmentalized disciplines involved in regulation. Many enforcement practices in social regulation can be seen as attempts to minimize social costs of disobeying regulations subject to institutional, political, and budgetary constraints.     

MASS COMPLIANCE AND SOCIAL INTERACTION

When government policy decisions affect the general public, people may or may not comply. How and why compliance occurs is not well understood. Current research on compliance has several weaknesses: (1) it tends to focus on the behavior of public officials rather than on the general public; (2) it relies on static rather than dynamic models; and (3) it underestimates the impact of social groups on individual choices. The present analysis treats compliance as a dynamic process incorporating both social influence and individual calculation. We assume that primary groups (family, peers), social status, and a society's culture all play important roles in changing compliance over time.     

COMPARING ANTITRUST ENFORCEMENT IN THE UNITED STATES AND EUROPE

Among the many important changes wrought by Regulation 1/2003are the decentralization of responsibility for enforcing EUcompetition law from Brussels to Member States and the creationof the European Competition Network to encourage coordinationand information-sharing among the 26 competition authoritiesin the EU. This article contrasts Europe's new system of competitionenforcement under Regulation 1/2003 with that of the UnitedStates. I focus upon two of the more significant features ofthe U.S. system: the dual legislative and enforcement authorityof the States and the Federal Government, and private enforcement.The Commission is presently evaluating measures to facilitateprivate enforcement and is set to release a Green Paper on thattopic later this year. I highlight a few characteristics thathave made private enforcement such a significant component ofthe U.S. antitrust regime, in some ways and at some times providingtoo much incentive for plaintiffs, at the expense of neutralor procompetitive business activity.     

WOMEN'S AND MEN'S VIEWS OF MEDIATION IN VOLUNTARY AND MANDATORY MEDIATION SETTINGS

This article reports findings regarding women in mediation from a combined group of 184 persons who received mediation services from the Alameda County Superior Court Family Court Services or the Northern California Mediation Center. This empirical study refutes many of the criticisms of mediation by some feminist critics of the process.     

LAW ENFORCEMENT AND THE RULE OF LAW: IS THERE A TRADEOFF?

This essay assesses whether a strong evidence‐based argument can be made to support the proposition that when police violate the rule‐of‐law they do more harm than good with respect to their collective, as well as personal, interests. The assessment is undertaken to counter the common presumption among police officers that circumstances often justify cutting legal corners in the interests of public safety. The essay first examines what research shows about the facilitators of police law breaking. It then examines seven reasons why violating the rule‐of‐law works against the instrumental interests of the police themselves. After assessing the strength of the evidence against the instrumental benefit of violating the rule‐of‐law, suggestions are made about research that is needed to make the case more compelling. In conclusion, the essay discusses how empirical knowledge might be most productively used to change the culture of contemporary policing.     

CONFLICT AND CONSENSUS IN THE LAW ENFORCEMENT PROCESS Urban Minorities and the Police

The social psychological dimensions of intergroup consensus and conflict are explored as a framework for interpreting police-minority group relations The limitations of the cultural systems model (cross cultural perspective) are discussed and an intercultural approach is proposed as an alternative. This model, which focuses on the interpenetration of perspectives in social relations, is applied to the analysis of intergroup relations in both interactional and organizational contexts The specks problems of social coordination presented by the enforcement process are examined as a basis for predicting police-minority conflict. The implications of the analysis for social policy are outlined in both organizational and interactional terms.     

MEASURING PROFESSIONALISM IN LAW ENFORCEMENT

The five-dimension scale of professionalism developed hy Hall and revised by Snizek was used to assess the level of professionalism among the members of three small law enforcement agencies. Conceptually it is unclear whether “professionalism” is what the scale is measuring, and technically there are problems of wording and redundancy on some of the items and a suggestion of nonunidimensionality on the subscale measuring autonomy. Nevertheless, factor analysis showed that, with few exceptions, the basic empirical integrity of the scale is reaffirmed. Based on these preliminary findings a number of cautions are offered to guard against misapplication of the scale in future research.     

FORENSIC ECONOMICS IN COMPETITION LAW ENFORCEMENT

This paper delineates the specialty field of forensic industrialorganization (IO) as the application of theoretical and empiricalindustrial organization economics in the legal process of competitionlaw enforcement. Four stages of that process that can benefitfrom forensic IO techniques are distinguished: detection andinvestigation; case development; decision-making and litigation;and remedies, sanctions, and damages. We survey the use of economicsin such aspects as identifying potential forms of anticompetitivebehavior, screening markets for competition law violations,determining causality, advising on appropriate remedies, andassessing antitrust damages. The paper discusses the role ofexpert economic witnesses in competition cases. It calls foran organization of forensic IO within the context of existingforensic institutes.