Criminal justice students: A research note

During the last five years, there have been a good deal of discussion about the nature, purpose, and future of criminal justice education. On the whole, this research has focused upon three areas of investigation. First, it has focused upon the distribution of criminology and criminal justice programs and majors within the United States. Aside from a few comments about the composition of student bodies as an aspect of the makeup of criminal justice programs (Bennett and Marshall, 1979; Berger, 1980), there is little analysis of criminal justice students. This research note focuses upon an on-going longitudinal research effort which is tracking a cohort of criminal justice majors from their upper level college experience through the first few years of their early career development.     

Criminal justice in Israel: A research note

In recent years there has been a steady rise in crime in Israel, especially in the type of violent crime. This note describes the criminal justice system in Israel and analyzes some of the problems of law enforcement, courts, probation, and corrections in Israel.     

Academic dishonesty among criminal justice majors: A research note

There is a limited, but growing body of literature on the academic integrity of criminal justice majors. This study adds to the research by surveying 850 students at a Midwestern university and comparing criminal justice majors to students majoring in other disciplines. The survey consisted of various academic dishonesty behaviors, rationales for being academically dishonest, and whether or not the behaviors were ethical. The results indicated that there were some differences between criminal justice and non-criminal justice majors; however, for most measures, the two groups of students were similar. Unfortunately, the overall level of cheating was high for both criminal justice and non-criminal justice students.     

Assessing the prestige of journals in criminal justice: A research note

This study extends earlier periodical prestige research by determining journal prestige for three criminal justice membership categories and reexamines the emergent rankings, controlling for a potentially salient variable—previous journal publication. Data for the project were derived from questionnaire responses of 1,028 criminal justice educators who were members of either the American Society of Criminology, Academy of Criminal Justice Sciences, or both associations, via a three-wave mail survey. Generally, the findings demonstrated conflicting or competing professional ideologies operating in assessments of the relative importance of criminal justice publications. Particularly, respondents' subjective evaluations established two relatively divergent stratification systems of journal prestige.     

Exploring academic dishonesty among undergraduate criminal justice majors: A research note

The nature and extent of academic dishonesty among undergraduate criminal justice majors at a mediumsized university in the Southeastern US were explored. Using several theories of deviance as theoretical frameworks, the research sought to investigate the motivations for such behaviors. Criminal justice majors indicated that they are aware of, have engaged in, and plan to become involved in various low, medium, and high levels of academically dishonest behavior in the future. Additionally, study results reveal that specific acts defined as academically dishonest by the university and individual professors are not viewed as dishonest by students. Implications and directions are discussed in light of these research results.     

Measuring the relative impacts of criminology and criminal justice journals: A research note

Journals can be rated according to a number of subjective and objective criteria. The present paper uses citations of a journal as an index of objective rank. Previous work using this index has several flaws, including a reliance on a single source journal and a lack of adjustments for age and size to its raw citations scores. The present paper uses a longer list of source journals to tabulate citation counts and provides raw impact, age-adjusted impact, and impact factor scores for each of 26 criminal justice/criminology journals. In addition, this study found subjective ratings from previous research on criminology journals to be significant, although not strong predictors of the impact factor, one objective index of journal quality. Little evidence was found for the notion that journal rankings are a function of other variables, including age of the journal or sponsorship by a professional organization.     

Comparative criminal justice—search and seizure,interrogation, and identification of suspects in India: A research note

India's legal system derives, as does the American system, from British common law. Some of the familiar principles and procedures have been modified to reflect Indian cultural, economic, and demographic realities. This note explores the similarities and contrasts in the methodology of the police in India and the United States during three key stages of the investigative process.     

Citation analysis of randomized experiments in criminology and criminal justice: a research note

In recent years multiple studies have used citation analysis as a way to examine the most cited scholars and works in criminology and criminal justice and its subfields. This study is the first to focus on the most cited randomized experiments in criminological research. Using citation counts from both Social Science Citation Index and Google Scholar, and multiple sources of randomized experiments, I present the most cited experiments in six areas: policing, courts, corrections, schools, community, and early prevention. Experiments published in non-criminological (e.g., medical) journals tend to be the most cited, and early prevention research is generally cited most frequently of the six categories. I conclude by considering possible reasons why certain experiments are more cited than others.     

Reputation and behavior of battered women who kill their partners: Do these variables negate self-defense?

Vignettes describing a case in which a battered woman killed her husband were presented to college students. Independent variables were the presence or absence of verbal aggression by the woman toward her husband before the final beating, the woman's reputation and social desirability as a wife and mother, and whether or not a weapon was present when the battering husband threatened the woman before she killed him. After reading a vignette, subjects (N=413) selected a verdict, reported what influenced their verdicts, and completed attitudinal measures on sex-role attitudes, attitudes toward wife-beating, and “just world” attitudes. The presence of verbal aggression by the woman increased the odds of subjects choosing a guilty verdict by 1.71 times compared to the absence of verbal aggression. A defendant characterized as a “bad” wife/mother or a dysfunctional wife/mother was, respectively, 6.24 and 2.49 times more likely to be found guilty rather than not guilty by reason of self-defense (NGRSD) than the “good” wife/mother. Use of a weapon by the husband did not significantly increase the number of NGRSD verdicts over conditions in which no weapon was present. Neither subjects' attitudes nor demographics appeared to be related to their choice of verdicts.     

Distributive justice: Theory and research

The concept of distributive justice and the theoretical and empirical work conducted on it during the past two decades are examined. Three questions provide the structure for this examination: (i) What are fundamental conceptual dimensions of distributive justice and the specific substantive issues to which they are related? (ii) What central questions has recent work on distributive justice addressed? and (iii) What are the most important emerging issues on which work in the near-term future should focus? Much of the theory and research examined in the paper is social psychological in nature, but reference is made to related work in related disciplines, particularly sociology and philosophy.     

Prediction of burglary: A research note

This note examines the relationship between individual burglary and individual burglar characteristics. The primary contribution of this work is the development of a practical prediction model designed to assist in burglary investigations. By using various statistical techniques, a number of discriminating variables were identified, and subsequently clustered in such a fashion as to disclose a probability of occurrence figure based on ex post facto data. While the use of such a device may increase both the nature and extent of the information available to investigative officers, it is neither a substitute for the elements of probable cause nor a replacement for competent field investigation.     

Predicting criminal recidivism: A research note

Criminal justice researchers often develop prediction instruments as a practitioner tool for improving the allocation of resources in community corrections administration. Although best practices have emerged for developing predictions, those best practices lead to predictions that fail to distinguish risk factors from control and correctional responses to risk. The consequence is that predictions fail to predict what they purport to predict, and this limits the utility of those predictions for public policy. This note argues that when properly done, predictions pertain to a latent, unobservable population. Given that perspective, some best practices advocated for prediction should be abandoned, and new best practices should be adopted.     

Low self-control and coworker delinquency: A research note

Since the publication of Gottfredson and Hirschi [A General Theory of Crime. Stanford, CA: Stanford Univ. Press, 1990], a large amount of research has shown a link between low self-control and delinquency. Some research has revealed that low self-control has not been able to account for the strong effects of peer delinquency on delinquency. Criminological literature has, until recently, neglected the interactional relationship between low self-control and delinquent peers in predicting delinquency. This study used a sample of employed high school seniors to assess the interaction between low self-control and coworker delinquency on occupational delinquency. Regression analyses indicated that the interaction term was a strong predictor of occupational delinquency, even after controlling for several established predictors of delinquency.     

Revalidating the salient factor score: A research note

In conjunction with a system of explicit decision-guidelines, the United States Parole Commission uses an actuarial instrument as an aid in assessing risk of recidivism. Known as a “salient factor score,” the instrument currently employed by the Parole Commission was constructed on a sample of federal prisoners released in 1970, and initially validated on two samples of federal prisoners released in 1971 and 1972. Since the power of any predictive instrument may change over time, periodic revalidation is essential. In this note, revalidation of the salient factor score, using a sample of federal prisoners released in 1976 (N = 1260), is described.     

Volunteers in probation: A research note on evaluation

Despite the widespread adoption of volunteers in courts, probation, and parole, surprisingly little hard evidence exists demonstrating their effectivenes. Several studies are reviewed and one is reported on here. These studies suggest that volunteers are not effective. The reason for this may be that volunteers compete unsuccessfully with other aspects of clients' environment. Reasons for the adoption of volunteer programs may include selection biases that falsely tend to make volunteers seem effective. Recommendations for definitive study of volunteer programs are made.     

Racial differences among shelter residents: A comparison of anglo,black, and hispanic battered

The implications of racial differences for shelter services has become an increasing concern with the expansion and development of shelters for battered women. This study employs bivariate cross-tabulations and discriminant analysis of shelter intake and exit interviews to determine the most influential variables in differentiating anglo, black, and hispanic women. The groups appear to be differentiated most by income and marital related variables, and very little by abuse and help-seeking variables. The findings suggest that the greatest differences overall are between anglo and hispanic women, and that additional economic and educational supports need to be directed to the hispanic group.     

A factorial analysis of police pursuit driving decisions: A research note

Police pursuit driving has become an important public policy concern and topic of research during the past few years. The present study reports the attitudes of police officers and supervisors from four different agencies concerning the continuation of a pursuit. Using logistic regression, it is reported that the most influential factor on the officers' opinions is the offense for which the suspect is wanted. This one factor is more than twice as important as the environmental factors such as chase area, traffic conditions and weather.     

A decade of disciplinary, administrative, and protective control of inmates in the Washington State Penitentiary: A research note

Although prisons and their residents have been subjected to much empirical scrutiny, one area has received very little attention, solitary confinement as a mechanism of social control in prison. This study reports the results of an investigation of the uses of punitive isolation, administrative segregation, and protective custody during the decade between 1966 and 1975, at the Washington State Penitentiary in Walla Walla. Findings show significant fluctuations in the use of segregation. These changes were related to administration shifts at the Washington Department of Corrections.