The politics of race and juvenile justice: The “due process revolution” and the conservative reaction

Through the prism of race, this article analyzes the social structural and political context of juvenile justice law reforms over the past half century. Throughout the 1950s and 1960s, the Supreme Court imposed national legal and equality norms on recalcitrant southern states that still adhered to a segregated Jim Crow legal regime, and these norms provided the impetus for the Supreme Court's juvenile court “due process” decisions in the 1960s. The article then analyzes sociological, criminological, racial factors, media coverage, and political dynamics of the 1970s and 1980s that contributed to the “get tough” legislative reformulation of juvenile justice policies in the 1990s. During this period, conservative Republican politicians pursued a “southern strategy,” used crime as a code word for race for electoral advantage, and advocated “get tough” policies, which led to punitive changes in juvenile justice laws and practices and have had a disproportionate impact on racial minorities.     

“To not hate”: reconciliation among victims of violence and participants of the Greensboro Truth and Reconciliation Commission

The Greensboro Truth and Reconciliation Commission (GTRC) was an intervention promoting reconciliation among the victims and community affected by the 1979 Greensboro Massacre in North Carolina. An exploratory qualitative research design was used, in which in‐depth, open‐ended interviews were conducted with victims of the Greensboro Massacre who subsequently participated in the GTRC (n = 17). Findings revealed a typology of reconciliation that includes cognitive–affective, behavioral and social reconciliation. Respondents displayed different orientations in how they prioritized reconciliation with the twin goals of seeking truth and justice. The GTRC did contribute to interpersonal reconciliation, and can be a useful model of communities working to recover from violence. The cognitive–affective, behavioral and social typology of reconciliation can be used to assess other interventions aimed at promoting reconciliation. Individuals’ personal orientations towards reconciliation can also be used to explain different reactions among people to restorative justice efforts.     

Community prosecution tenets and practices: The relative mix of “community” and “prosecution”

Community prosecution encourage prosecutors to collaborate with constituents to mutually determine solutions to community problems. However, the potential exists for prosecutors to continue seeking their traditional goals of maximizing convictions while nominally working within a community-prosecution framework. A random survey of 261 Georgia prosecutors helps to determine whether community-based prosecutors spend more time in community outreach and law enforcement coordination activities. The results show that attorney caseload measures correlate with time spent on community outreach and law enforcement. Being assigned to community prosecution or a specialized crime unit is not consistently related either of these activities. In short, consistent differences do not emerge between community-based and traditional prosecutors.     

Mock jurors’ perceptions of a child witness: the impact of the presence and/or intervention of a registered intermediary during cross-examination

ABSTRACT

In recent years Registered Intermediaries (RIs) have been involved in facilitating communication in children's investigative interviews and trial proceedings. Their presence and interventions are generally deemed to have a positive impact on child engagement, but their impact on jury appraisal of evidence, during cross-examination is unclear. This study addressed this issue in a more ecologically valid context than that previously used. Adult mock juror participants (N?=?217) watched a video-recording of a mock cross-examination of a child witness in which a RI was present or absent, and in which RI type interventions were either included or omitted. The participants rated the quality of the cross-examination and the child's responses in relation to child credibility, child understanding, legal professional's behaviour, and trial progression. Findings indicated that RI presence or absence, and inclusion or omission of interventions had no effect on mock juror ratings. However, an interaction between these variables demonstrated that mock jurors rated trial progression towards a guilty verdict according to which court professional did, or did, not intervene. The findings also demonstrated that mock jurors based their assessment of trial progression towards a guilty verdict on the evidence presented, and that child understanding per se was irrelevant.     

The performance of private companies in China before and during the global financial crisis: firms’ characteristics and entrepreneurs’ attributes

Economic Change and Restructuring - This work sheds light on how firm- and entrepreneur-specific attributes covariate with Chinese private firms’ growth rates before and during the global...     

Teaching procedural justice and communication skills during police–community encounters: Results of a randomized control trial with police recruits

Objectives

To describe and evaluate Chicago’s Quality Interaction Program (QIP) for police recruits. The training focused on procedural justice, interpersonal communication, decision-making, cultural awareness, and stress management during encounters with the public. Attention was given to emotions, empathy, and communication skills.

Methods

The QIP is an underutilized approach to police training that involves engaging recruits through applied case studies, role-playing scenarios, repetitive opportunities for practice, and individualized feedback. The impact of QIP training on 142 officers’ attitudes and behaviors was evaluated in a randomized control trial. Treatment and control groups were assessed through responses to self-reported questionnaires as well as research-coded videos that recorded officers during role-playing scenarios.

Results

The QIP did not change recruits’ attitudes toward procedural justice, nor did it impact their self-reported interpersonal communication skills. However, the program was effective at creating more respectful and reassuring behaviors during role-playing scenarios that were videotaped. The program also improved recruits’ decision-making during a scenario with rebellious youths and reduced officers’ reliance on force and arrest relative to controls.

Conclusion

The QIP initiative was instrumental in moving police training beyond “talking heads” to interactive adult education, while promoting a more sophisticated understanding of human dynamics during police–public encounters. The results, however, were mixed, due in part to a training academy environment that emphasized aggressive policing and officer safety. Thus, reform-minded agencies may need to rethink the totality of the training experience to achieve strong results.

     

Finding a voice – the feasibility and impact of setting up a community choir in a forensic secure setting

This study reports on the feasibility and impact of running a choir for forensic psychiatric inpatients, staff and members of the local community, within the confines of a medium secure psychiatric unit. The choir ran between October and December 2013. Eight weekly workshops and a final concert performance were evaluated through participant observation and focus groups held with the participants. Between 12 and 16 male and female patients attended each workshop and the final concert. All participating patients had received a diagnosis of schizophrenia, schizo-affective disorder or personality disorder, all had committed serious violent or sexual offences and all were legally detained and receiving treatment in a forensic medium or low secure ward, under the Mental Health Act (England and Wales). Considerable benefits were reported by patients, as well as by the participating community choir members and staff. Primary benefits reported by patients included the following: improved happiness and well-being; increased confidence and self-esteem; greater emotional connectedness and reduced sense of stigma. Participating staff also reported increased feelings of well-being and happiness, greater tolerance and more positive perceptions of the functioning and capabilities of forensic psychiatric patients. The longer term benefits of music participation on the mental health and social functioning of forensic psychiatric patients require further investigation.     

Social capital in Scottish and Danish neighbourhoods: paradoxes of a police–community nexus at the front line

Community-oriented social capital strategies and punitive-oriented policing approaches conflict. Establishing local networking initiatives with community-oriented policing at the centre lends itself to an assets-based policing approach, based on honouring, mobilizing and extending the assets of community members. Scholars argue about the need for comparative research on convergences and divergencies across subcultures on the streets and communities. Based on qualitative data gathered from working class communities in Scotland and Denmark in 2014, the article draws inspiration from community-generated theory of social capital to explore the micro-sociology of experiences and understandings about community–police integration policy initiatives. We use this perspective to argue that the building of positive inter-generational and police–community relationships is the result of social exchanges and officers’ use of what we call ‘constructive investment strategies’. Ironically, our insights from Scotland to Denmark also suggest what appear as positive achievements of community policing may instead intensify residents’ negative perceptions of police officers and organizations. In this way, the article illuminates the tangled and conflicted nature of these embedded symbolic interactions, social capital formations and the latter’s form as a potential positional and ‘tribal’ commodity.     

Marriage and household in the Belgrade elite at the beginning of the 20th century: The Novaković family

Building on Ahmad ibn Yusuf b. al-Qadi al-Timbuktawi's treatise entitled Hatk al-Sitr Amma Alayhi Sudani Tunis min al-Kufr (Piercing the Veil: Being an Account of the Infidel Religions of the Blacks of Tunis) this paper examines the implications of the Hausa non-Muslim Bori cult practice in Ottoman Tunis on enslaved West Africans' retentions of religious and family values from their original homelands. Specifically, the paper traces and analyses the evolution of Bori cult practice in the Tunisian milieu and places it in its proper historical and diasporic contexts. To this end, the paper goes beyond questions that are not central to al-Timbuktawi's condemnation of the enslaved West African community of Tunis, but which nonetheless attracts the attention of scholars interested in the diasporic and historical significance of Bori cult practice in the Maghreb.     

Queer Contestations and the Future of a Critical “Queer” Criminology

It is intuitive to include critical criminologists in early conversations about “queering” criminology given that the paradigms and methods of critical criminology can be employed to challenge subordination and inequality in its several dimensions. The first part (and main focus) of this article problematizes this intuition, which is easy to accept at face value, by reflecting backwards and explaining how early influential critical criminological views perpetuated damaging stereotypes and representations of lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, and queer (LGBTQ) people as sexual deviants. The second part reflects forward, and discusses the difficulties of carving a space in the discipline for critical queer perspectives. Drawing on critical and critical race theories, this article advocates a relational, intersectional approach to conceptualize sexual orientation and gender identity in criminological theory and research. This approach considers the connections among sexual orientation or gender identity and other differences (e.g., race, ethnicity, nationality, religion, class, gender, etc.) without assuming or attaching fixed meanings to those differences.     

Patterns of family formation: Marriage and fertility timing in Bulgaria at the turn of the twenty-first century — A case-study of Sofia

In this paper, we discuss the changes in the process of family formation in Bulgaria at the end of the twentieth century. Studying the ideal patterns of family formation and the place of children and marriage within them, we offer six typological models. Based on recent population developments and social values changes, we argue that the Hajnal line and the associated hypothesis concerning the existence of separate Eastern and Western Marriage Patterns are irrelevant for understanding the present demographic situation. Attempts to update the line to accommodate recent developments are counter-productive as they obscure the commonality of demographic processes at work across the European continent.     

Trademark parody and the mass media: Going beyond survey evidence in the determination of “a likelihood of confusion”

This article examines trademark parody in statutory and mass media case law by, in part, analyzing several key cases which illustrate the use of quantitative social science research in the determination of trademark parody infringement. Although the definition and nature of trademark parody has not been settled definitively, courts’ attitudes toward survey evidence, particularly its probative value and materiality in the determination of copyright and trademark infringement litigation, have evolved over time. Courts now admit survey evidence if it meets certain methodological conditions. In trademark parody litigation, survey evidence pointing to a “likelihood of confusion” has evolved as the standard test of trademark infringement. However, there are questions whether vague, subjective concepts like “a likelihood of confusion” and “perception of substantial similarity” between trademarks can be adequately measured by consumer surveys. It is argued that multi‐method research which has both quantitative and qualitative aspects would provide more reliable data than the “one‐shot” surveys or case studies that are widely used in settling trademark infringement cases.     

Policing terrorism and police–community relations: views of the Arab minority in Israel

Police involvement in counterterrorism has special ramifications on minority groups that may be viewed as presenting high risk to homeland security. Our public survey shows that the Jewish respondents in our sample expressed positive attitudes toward police involvement in mission of counterterrorism, while Israeli Arabs expressed more concern with the ramifications of police involvement in counterterrorism on its relations with the Arabs in particular. The results show that both communities recognized the central role that the police may play in dealing with terrorism, and they both expressed high levels of willingness to cooperate with the police to fight against terrorism.     

“Demystifying” the police: a participant observation study of police stops (and searches)

Police are empowered by law to stop and search vehicles and their occupants, once reasonable grounds for suspicion come into being. However, as attested by this study, not all suspicions are followed up, nor all stops-searches follow on suspicions. Police stops-searches involve bounteous discretion of whom, where, and when to stop-search, and this process entails a long chain of judgments and actions on behalf of the constables faced with given street-level situations. A six-month complete participant observation study of the Emergency Response Unit of the Cyprus Police resulted in asserting that police stops-searches of vehicles and their occupants rest upon multiple, perplexed, and intertwined factors that range from racial predilections to heat tolerance levels of constables who may or may not be inclined to enforce the law. In all, over one hundred dimensions were found to relate to constables’ decision-making process on whether to conduct a stop-search or not.     

“To develop and test:” The inventive difference between evaluation and experimentation

The National Research Council (NRC) Report on Improving Evaluation of Anticrime Programs raises a fundamental question about the mission of evaluation research. The implicit premise of the report is that the mission of evaluation is to answer questions about programs developed by others; in short, to test anti-crime programs. In contrast, the mission of experimental criminology has, historically, been to develop anti-crime programs as well as to test them. There are times when an arm’s-length relationship between program and evaluation may be appropriate. Yet, such a separation necessarily produces a courtroom-like adjudication role for evaluators, rather than the laboratory-like, participant–inventor role that has characterized the best of experimental criminology. The recent case of the Chicago police’s “evaluating” the use of sequential suspect identification methods developed by academic psychologists shows the many flaws of the “testing-only” model. This suggests that providing “effective guidance of criminal justice policy and practice,” as the NRC report defines its focus [Lipsey, M. ed (2005). http://newton.nap.edu/pdf/0309097061/pdf_image/R1.pdf] will not only require evaluation research (defined as arm’s-length testing) but the full toolbox of experimental criminology to develop and test anti-crime programs.

‘She Felt Strongly the Injury to Her Affections’: Breach of Promise of Marriage and the Medicalization of Heartbreak in Early Twentieth-Century Australia

This paper examines the relationship between law, medical knowledge and romantic suffering in early twentieth-century Australia. Drawing upon a sample of breach of promise of marriage actions from 1824 to 1930, it argues that where the plaintiff’s pain was largely presumed in the nineteenth century, by the twentieth century mastering the language and performance of anguish became crucial to legal success. The less that women suffered socially from romantic disappointment, the more they sought to prove it in court. Women dressed the lesions of their hearts in the disinterested language of medicine and borrowed psychological categories of trauma from victims of war and railway injuries. Heartbreak was thus legitimized as a species of pain by a convergence of law, medicine and women’s audacity to take their feelings seriously. The court’s response to these new bodily articulations of suffering provides a counter-history to the usual tale of law’s preference for the tangible over the intangible. Somatic injury was relegated to special damages, determined by the evidence of doctors and with less lucrative compensation, while emotional injury occupied the dominant, more profitable category of general damages. The history of heartbreak thus demonstrates the historical contingency of legal hostility to emotional injury.