DOMESTIC VIOLENCE LEGISLATION: EXPLORING ITS IMPACT ON THE LIKELIHOOD OF DOMESTIC VIOLENCE,POLICE INVOLVEMENT,AND ARREST*

Research Summary: This research uses data from the National Crime Victimization Survey to test whether legislation affects domestic violence, police involvement, and arrest. Findings suggest that most laws do reduce the chances of family or intimate violence. Fewer appear to influence police involvement, and none relate to more arrest. This suggests that laws may deter would‐be offenders from harming family and partners. Policy Implications: The findings suggest that states should continue to aggressively pursue domestic violence offenders. However, local officials should recognize that mandatory arrest laws could reduce the number of cases that enter the system. Further, more protection should go toward victims when the state awards them custody of the children.     

THE PRIVATIZATION OF VIOLENCE*

Norbert Elias's (1939) work on “the civilizing process” highlighted the long‐term decline in violence within Western societies. A substantial amount of more recent anthropological and historical evidence suggests that violence has evolved not just quantitatively but qualitatively as well. In particular, the social characteristics of the parties to violence have changed over time. Drawing on Donald Black's (1976, 1993a) theoretical ideas on conflict management, the present paper proposes that as intimate social ties weakened and the state strengthened, collective and nonintimate forms of (nonpolitical) violence declined significantly. Consequently, violence increasingly became less public, more private. Pockets of residual public violence can, however, still be found within modern state societies. Privatization varies, then, across time and social space.     

THE IMPACT OF BRITISH COUNTERTERRORIST STRATEGIES ON POLITICAL VIOLENCE IN NORTHERN IRELAND: COMPARING DETERRENCE AND BACKLASH MODELS*

Since philosophers Beccaria and Bentham, criminologists have been concerned with predicting how governmental attempts to maintain lawful behavior affect subsequent rates of criminal violence. In this article, we build on prior research to argue that governmental responses to a specific form of criminal violence—terrorism—may produce both a positive deterrence effect (i.e., reducing future incidence of prohibited behavior) and a negative backlash effect (i.e., increasing future incidence of prohibited behavior). Deterrence‐based models have long dominated both criminal justice and counterterrorist policies on responding to violence. The models maintain that an individual's prohibited behavior can be altered by the threat and imposition of punishment. Backlash models are more theoretically scattered but receive mixed support from several sources, which include research on counterterrorism; the criminology literature on labeling, legitimacy, and defiance; and the psychological literature on social power and decision making. In this article, we identify six major British strategies aimed at reducing political violence in Northern Ireland from 1969 to 1992 and then use a Cox proportional hazard model to estimate the impact of these interventions on the risk of new attacks. In general, we find the strongest support for backlash models. The only support for deterrence models was a military surge called Operation Motorman, which was followed by significant declines in the risk of new attacks. The results underscore the importance of considering the possibility that antiterrorist interventions might both increase and decrease subsequent violence.     

THE IMPACT OF SOCIAL SUPPORTS ON POLICE STRESS*

Utilizing a theoretical perspective (the “social supports model”) increasingly applied by stress researchers in other fields, the present endeavor explores whether social supports operate to shield officers from the stresses emanating from police work To investigate this issue, 91 suburban officers were administered a questionnaire that contained scales measuring four job-related stressors, four types of social supports, and two forms of psychological stress—work and life. With regard to the stressors, the data analysis revealed that feelings of dangerousness were significantly and positively related to both stress scales, while shift change and court problems increased only general lye stress. It was also found that supervisory support mitigates work stress while family support helps to reduce more general psychological discomfort. These latter results rein force the assertion that future research could profit by systematically exploring the circumstances, such as social supports, which enable police to cope effectively with the more stressful features of their work.     

A TEST OF VARIOUS PERSPECTIVES ON THE INTERGENERATIONAL TRANSMISSION OF DOMESTIC VIOLENCE*

Past research indicates that adults who were subject to severe physical discipline as children are often violent toward their spouse and children as adults. This association is usually attributed to modeling or the learning of attitudes that legitimate hitting family members. Using four waves of data from a sample of midwestern families, this study found only limited support for these explanations. Analysis showed that the relationship between childhood exposure to harsh parenting and recurrent adult violence toward children or a spouse was mediated by the extent to which parents displayed an antisocial orientation. This pattern of findings is consistent with criminological theories that view criminal and deviant behavior of all sorts as rooted in a general antisocial orientation acquired in childhood largely as a result of ineffective parenting.     

THE EFFECT OF SUPERMAXIMUM SECURITY PRISONS ON AGGREGATE LEVELS OF INSTITUTIONAL VIOLENCE*

Supermax prisons have been advanced as means of controlling the “worst of the worst” and making prisons safer places to live and work. This research examined the effect of supermaxes on aggregate levels of violence in three prison systems using a multiple interrupted time series design. No support was found for the hypothesis that supermaxes reduce levels of inmate‐on‐inmate violence. Mixed support was found for the hypothesis that supermax increases staff safety: the implementation of a supermax had no effect on levels of inmate‐on‐staff assaults in Minnesota, temporarily increased staff injuries in Arizona, and reduced assaults against staff in Illinois.     

THE SOCIAL ECOLOGY OF VIOLENCE AGAINST WOMEN*

Despite more than three decades of research on the topic of violence against women, the relative contribution of individual, family and community factors to victimization risk remains unknown. We use self‐report data from the Area‐Identified National Crime Victimization Survey to study the correlates of stranger, nonstranger and intimate‘partner violence against women. Regardless of victim‐offender relationship, we find that the risk for victimization is highest among young, single women with children, particularly those who have lived in the current home for relatively shorter periods. Area family and age composition appear to have stronger direct relationships with women's violence than poverty or racial composition measures. We also find there to be more similarities than differences in the individual, family, and community correlates of stranger, nonstranger and intimate partner violence. We discuss these findings as part of the growing body of multilevel literature on violence and on violence against women.     

THE IMPACT OF FLORIDA'S HABITUAL OFFENDER LAW ON CRIME*

Research examining the impact of habitual offender laws on crime has suffered from numerous methodological problems, including failure to consider incapacitation effects that may be responsible for most of the laws' impact but that may not appear until years after the law is passed; not addressing simultaneity issues; and omitting needed control variables to avoid spurious or suppressed results. The present study specifies procedures that can be used to mitigate these problems. These procedures are used in the current study to estimate the impact of Florida's habitual offender law on crime using a multiple time series design, with data for 58 counties from 1980–1998.     

THE IMPACTC OF DIVORCE ON FAMILIES

Australian research on the impact of separation and divorce on children and their families has consistently shown that although separation is a stressful event in the lives of families, the long-term prospects for these families is encouraging. A number of issues arising from the research presented in this article warrant closer consideration by decision makers, court administrators, and professionals dealing with disputing families. First, programs aimed at reducing conflict and assisting families to deal with the emotional impact of separation need to be given priority. Second, there is sufficient indication to suggest that poverty as a result of separation and divorce has a debilitating effect on women and children. Third, in dealing with disputes over custody and access, care needs to be taken to respect the needs of individual children. Finally, high conflict in a family postseparation should be a warning to pay particular attention to the potential harm of applying joint custody and frequent access presumptions.     

THE MANAGEMENT OF VIOLENCE BY POLICE PATROL OFFICERS*

This study examines the dynamics of potentially violent encounters between police and public. It is based on systematic observation of about 350 eight-hour tours of duty by patrol officers in three precincts of New York City during the summer of 1986. It compares the tactics and resulting outcomes found in encounters handled, respectively, by patrol officers believed by their peers to be especially skilled at minimizing violence and a cross section of all other patrol officers. Its major conclusions are (1) violence, even verbal aggression, is relatively rare in police work: (2) most conflict is dampened by the arrival of the police, leaving little scope for the use of defusing tactics: and (3) the behavior of officers judged by colleagues to be skilled in minimizing violence is measurably different from the behavior of “average” patrol officers, and in ways that suggest that colleagues may be good judges of on-street performance.     

THE IMPACT OF SENTENCING GUIDELINES ON JAIL INCARCERATION IN MINNESOTA*

Although available empirical evidence suggests that Minnesota's Determinate Sentencing Law has had little effect on prison incarceration, it is still uncertain whether the sentencing guidelines affected jail use. A few recent studies imply that the guidelines have had a positive effect on jail incarceration rates. Accounts have pointed to preexisting trends, more severe sanctioning of repeat property offenders, and judicial concern with prison overcrowding as possible underlying causes of this observed increase. Using longitudinal data and an ARIMA study design, we investigate the validity of these competing explanations. Our findings show that the onset of the sentencing guidelines increased judicial use of the jail sanction beyond the effect of preexisting trends. In addition, the effect of mitigated dispositional departures from the no prison/prison outcome on jail use is salient only when prison population levels are high. This latter finding supports the thesis that judicial concern with prison overcrowding motivated judges to circumvent the guidelines in order to shift the burden of incarcerating offenders from the state to the local level. The policy implications of these results for determinate sentencing reform are discussed.     

PUTTING VIOLENCE IN ITS PLACE: THE INFLUENCE OF RACE,ETHNICITY, GENDER,AND PLACE ON THE RISK FOR VIOLENCE*

Research Summary: This research shows that non-Latino black, non-Latino white, and Latino males and females in the U.S. experience significantly different levels of stranger and non-stranger violence, and that these forms of non-lethal violence are especially pronounced in areas with high levels of socioeconomic disadvantage. Many of the differences between these groups are eliminated once community and other individual characteristics are taken into account. Policy Implications: The results suggest that victimization resources should be geographically targeted at places with high levels of poverty and single-parent families, and that the most stable institutions within these communities be drawn upon to deliver information about victimization prevention and services.     

THE RELEVANCE OF PEACE TO STUDIES OF DRUG MARKET VIOLENCE*

Goldstein's (1985) concept of systemic violence has contributed substantially to criminological thought and research, but its power can be enhanced by connecting it to a broader typology of social life: the resource exchange—social control typology. That typology connects systemic violence logically with two important yet neglected forms of drug market behavior: peaceful resource exchange and peaceful social control. This article, which is based on 50 in‐depth interviews with individuals involved actively or recently in drug selling, describes the various forms of violent and nonviolent resource exchange and social control in illicit drug markets, stating them in quantitative terms that are conceptually distinct and empirically observable. We conclude by discussing 1) the implications of peaceful behavior for a fuller understanding of violence and 2) the relevance of the resource exchange‐social control typology to criminological theory and research.     

PREDICTING THE VIOLENT OFFENDER:THE DISCRIMINANT VALIDITY OF THE SUBCULTURE OF VIOLENCE*

This study tests the extent to which an adherence to the subculture of violence uniquely predicts a tendency to favor violence or instead predicts a more generalized offending repertoire, of which violence is part. Specifically, we use a unique analytic technique that provides the opportunity to distinguish empirically between the “violent offender” and/or the “frequent offender.” The results suggest that holding values favorable toward violence consistently predicts general offending but do not identify youth who systematically favor violence over nonviolence. This discussion considers the impact of these findings for the continued utility of the subculture of violence perspective.