Ethics in Criminal Justice: John Dewey Revisited

John Dewey has much to say to contemporary criminal justice educational strategies, particularly in respect to broadening the curriculum to include exposure to the humanities, values exploration, and moral decision-making. The case study method, coupled with Socratic teaching use of varied materials from the humanities, can approach an optimal learning experience within the Dewayan model. This educational model is offered in response to the calls for sensitive, holistic criminal justice practitioners in the modern age.     

Examining Prison Effects on Recidivism: A Regression Discontinuity Approach

The “get-tough” era of punishment led to exponential growth in the rate of incarceration in the United States. Recent reviews of the literature indicate, however, that limited rigorous research exists examining the effect of imprisonment on the likelihood of future offending. As a result, scholars have called for assessment of this relationship, while using methodologies that can better account for selection effects. This study addresses these calls directly by applying regression discontinuity, a methodology well suited to account for selection bias, on a cohort of felony offenders in Florida. Results suggest that prison, as compared to non-incarcerative sanctions, has no appreciable impact on recidivism. Although no differential effects surfaced across race/ethnicity, the analyses indicated that imprisonment exerts a differential effect by gender with the effect being more criminogenic among males than females.     

Assessing Violence Risk in Stalking Cases: A Regression Tree Approach

Advances in the field of risk assessment have highlighted the importance of developing and validating models for problematic or unique subgroups of individuals. Stalking offenders represent one such subgroup, where fears of and potential for violence are well-known and have important implications for safety management. The present study applies a Classification and Regression Tree (CART) approach to a sample of stalking offenders in order to help further the process of identifying and understanding risk assessment strategies. Data from 204 stalking offenders referred for psychiatric evaluation to a publicly-funded clinic were used to develop and assess putative risk factors. A series of nested models were used to generate tree algorithms predicting violence in this sample of offenders. Both simplified and more extensive models generated high levels of predictive accuracy that were roughly comparable to logistic regression models but much more straightforward to apply in clinical practice. Jack-knifed cross-validation analyses demonstrated considerable shrinkage in the CART, although the models were still comparable to many other actuarial risk assessment instruments. Logistic regression models were much more resilient to cross-validation, with relatively modest loss in predictive power.     

The Balanced Approach [Revisited]

The authors of the original Balanced Approach, Dennis Maloney, Dennis Romig, and Troy Armstrong, outlined a philosophy of balanced attention to the principles of community protection/public safety, youth accountability, and competency development through individualized assessment and treatment and holding the system accountable to the community and the youth served. A majority of states’ juvenile code purpose clauses reflect this approach, later known as Balanced and Restorative Justice (BARJ). Presented here are excerpts from the 1988 Juvenile & Family Court Journal issue 39 (3) that first presented the Balanced Approach and a brief overview of key features of juvenile justice at the time to lay a foundation for the other articles in this special issue.     

The Criminal Justice Approach: Case Examples

The article presents a special form of a European comparative synopsis. For this case examples have been chosen ranging from administrative or minor (criminal) offences to increasingly serious offences and offenders. In this way it can be comparatively demonstrated how the criminal justice systems studied handle specific cases and whether they do so in a similar or different way.     

回归与突破：我国刑法因果关系在归属层面的厘清

我国传统因果关系理论对因果关系作纯客观定位的同时在判断上混入了一定的规范内涵,这使它在结果归属层面存在含混不清的缺陷,也使它在具体案件处理上缺乏司法适应性。作为欧陆刑法因果关系理论晚近学说的修正的相当因果关系说和危险的现实化理论,都没有在结果归属层面抛弃规范的内容,更没有将刑法因果关系的成立范围局限于客观的层面。并且,尽管修正的相当因果关系说、危险的现实化理论和客观归属论都没能提供完善的结果归属判断标准,但客观归属论在方法论、下位规则等方面对刑法因果关系理论完善具有明显的比较优势。我国传统因果关系理论危机的应对不是一条回归刑法因果关系是纯客观的判断之路,而是一条在借鉴归属层面理论有益素材基础上纳入规范性判断的突破之路。     

Antinomies and the Automobile: A New Approach to Criminal Justice Histories

In the twentieth century, the antinomy of freedom and coercion served as the dominant paradigm for understanding issues of crime and punishment. Roscoe Pound in Criminal Justice in America (1930) and Herbert Packer in The Limits of the Criminal Sanction (1968) described a tension between the values of individual liberty and general security to explain the problems with the justice system and the public's disagreements over their solution. Historians of twentieth‐century criminal law have also adopted this framework to explain causation and change. This essay argues that an antinomic perspective of criminal justice history, while useful, has obscured important historical questions. A focus on social changes, such as the transformations that the automobile brought about in the commission of crimes and police practices, instead of on contrasting values, offers a different account of how proceduralism became inextricably tied to notions of American freedom in the twentieth century. This approach also historicizes the “paradigm of antinomies” and shows how people in the past, like Pound and Packer, mobilized dualistic thinking, which shaped a criminal legal culture based on an antagonism—both real and perceived—between citizens and law enforcement.     

Racial Bias and the American Criminal Justice System: Race and Presentencing Revisited

A controversy within criminology involves the extent to which race affects criminal processing. Investigators on different sides of the issue have relied predominantly on studies of sentencing, leaving largely unexplored the less visible area of presentencing. After a discussion of nine of the most prevalent shortcomings in previous research, this article critically examines the contemporary presentencing literature to ascertain the extent to which a discrimination thesis (DT) receives empirical support. It reviews the findings from 52studies conducted since 1970 that employ multivariate statistical analysis. Special attention is devoted to critiquing the methodological shortcomings of studies that support a nondiscrimination thesis (NDT). The implications of these weaknesses for the race/criminal processing nexus are discussed. This revised version was published online in July 2006 with corrections to the Cover Date.     

Modeling the Distribution of Sentence Length Decisions Under a Guidelines System: An Application of Quantile Regression Models

How should sentencing disparity be assessed when decisions are constrained under a sentencing guidelines system? Much of the debate over the measurement of sentence disparity under a guidelines system has focused primarily on using specific values from within the sentencing grid (e.g., minimum recommended sentence) or on using interaction terms in regression models to capture the non-additive effects of offense severity and prior record on length of sentence. In this paper, I propose an alternative method for assessing sentencing disparity that uses quantile regression models. These models offer several advantages over traditional OLS analyses (and related linear models) of sentence length, by allowing for an examination of the effects of case and offender characteristics across the full distribution of sentence lengths for a given sample of offenders. The analysis of the distribution of sentence lengths with quantile regression models allows for an examination of questions such as: Do offender characteristics, such as race or offense severity, have the same effect on sentence length for the 10% of offenders who receive the shortest sentences as they do for the 10% of offenders who receive the longest sentences? I illustrate the application and interpretation of these models using 1998 sentencing data from Pennsylvania. Key findings show that the effects of case and offender characteristics are variable across the distribution of sentence lengths, meaning that traditional linear models assuming a constant effect fail to capture important differences in how case and offender characteristics affect punishment decisions. I discuss the implications of these findings for understanding sentencing disparitites, as well as other possible applications of quantile regression models in the study of crime and the criminal justice system.     

Criminal Behavior: A Real Option Approach With an Application to Restricting Illegal Insider Trading

Traditionally, criminal behavior is analyzed within an expected utility framework. This paper offers an alternative model to analyze criminal behavior based on real option models. It is shown that all criminal decisions can be analyzed as real options, in a sense that they confer the possibility but not the obligation to commit a crime in the future. The criminal option model is a richer model compared to conventional economic models of crime, because it takes into account four additional variables. As such, the conventional economic analysis of crime is a special case of criminal option models. The criminal option model is then applied to the enforcement of illegal insider trading. Based on the six value-drivers of criminal options, an active management strategy can be developed for the criminal as well as for the legislator.     

Punitive Damages: A European Criminal Law Approach. State Sanctions and the System of Guarantees

It has traditionally been upheld that punitive damages are incompatible with the Constitutions of civil law countries. This paper sustains the opposing thesis and argues their compatibility, of a general nature, with the basic principles of continental European States, and especially with the principles of legality, proportionality and non bis in idem. This opens the way to the enforcement, in Europe, of sentences delivered in the United States of America. However, despite this starting point, the advisability of exporting the model of punitive damages is rejected. The theme is expanded to argue the equivalent nature of the guarantees and limits of all sanctioning activity of the State and those already established in Criminal Law. This would encompass punitive damages and all types of civil sanctions.     

Supervision Intensity and Parole Outcomes: A Competing Risks Approach to Criminal and Technical Parole Violations

Recent scholarship about parole supervision indicates that higher supervision intensity is associated with an increased risk of parole violations. However, parole violations can take many forms—some minor and some serious—and theory suggests that supervision intensity might have differential effects depending upon the type of violation. We use “competing risks” survival models to identify supervision effects on five types of parole violations among 79,082 individuals released from prison in California: absconding, technical violations, drug use, violent offenses, and sexual offenses. We find that supervision effects are strongest for absconding violations. Past sexual offending also triggers significant supervision effects for technical violations, drug use violations, and violent violations. We conclude that parole violation patterns are influenced by parolee behaviors, the amount of attention the state is paying to those behaviors, and official markers of criminal dangerousness that are attached to particular parolees.     

The Automation of Regression Modeling in Osteometric Sorting: An Ordination Approach

This study compares the original osteometric sorting association method with an ordination approach across all combinations of the humerus, ulna, radius, femur, tibia, and fibula. This includes both the original prediction interval and t‐statistic approaches. Standard measurements are utilized in the models with full measurements combined and without length measurements. The sample is the osteometric sorting reference from the Defense POW/MIA Accounting Agency. A full set of performance statistics is provided. Results indicate the ordination approach outperforms the original in the majority of bone combinations. Models with length measurements have more exclusion power than those without. It is recommended for the ordination approach to supersede the original when applied to large commingled assemblages.     

本土化还是国际化:中国刑法现代化的道路选择

考察世界各国法制现代化的历史进程,我们不难发现,不管各国法律文化传统、政治、经济、文化等方面存在着怎样的差异,其实现法制现代化的模式均不外乎以下两种:一种是自觉地渐进模式,以西欧国家现代化的历程为典型代表。其特点是随着现代工业文明的发展和生产方式的改变,社会价值观念、法律制度以及法律体系均自发地而非被动抑或是被迫地发生着相应的变化,没有突变的急风暴雨,也没有传统与现代的激烈碰撞,有的只是传统与现代之间自然和谐的矛盾对立运动,现代化的法制就在这一矛盾运动的过程中悄然诞生。另一种是被动的突变模式,以亚非等后进国家的法制现代化为代表。其特点是一个国家内部并未产生现代化的社会需求,在外来因素的冲击和强大压力下,被迫对本国的法律制度和法律体系进行突变性的改革。这种模式的法制现代化,由于现代化的精神并不是孕育于本国的传统土壤之中,因而现代与传统之间存在着激烈的冲突。其结果是:要么本土化完全拒绝现代化,从而使现代化步履维艰,如     

刑事政策视野中犯罪未完成形态立法模式的理性建构

犯罪未完成形态的立法模式是客观主义犯罪观和主观主义犯罪观在犯罪未完成形态上的立法体现。犯罪未完成形态立法模式不仅决定着犯罪圈的大小,而且征表和反映了国家的刑事政策取向和对不同行为的刑事政策态度。中国现行犯罪未完成形态立法模式的主要缺陷是:刑法总则的立法模式与分则的犯罪构成模式相矛盾;刑事立法对犯罪预备行为处罚的泛化和刑事司法对犯罪预备行为处罚的异化致使罪刑法定原则受到挑战;刑事立法对犯罪未遂行为处罚的主观化不当地扩张了可罚的未遂行为的范围。中国对犯罪未完成形态的立法模式应当进行如下改革:犯罪预备行为处罚的例外化;犯罪未遂行为处罚的客观化;犯罪中止行为认定的合理化。