Between the ‘Home’ and ‘Institutional’ Worlds: Tensions and Contradictions in the Practice of House Arrest

In this paper we argue that the theoretical work of Goffman (1961) on “total institutions,” Foucault’s (1977) insights into the workings of disciplinary power, and an account of contemporary forms of punishment and social control in postmodern society (Staples 2000) help us better understand the experiences of those individuals sentenced to house arrest. Based on face-to-face interviews with twenty-three people being electronically monitored in a Midwestern metropolitan area, our analysis identifies three themes that illustrate the ways in which electronic monitoring is experienced as a complex amalgam of what Goffman (1961, p. 13) saw as the distinct “home world” and the “institutional world”. These themes include (1) “Home is Where the Machine Is,” (2) “Producing Docile Bodies,” and (3) “Threat of Sanctions”. We reassert our claim (Staples 1994, 2000) that contemporary forms of social control such as electronic monitoring reflect an ongoing struggle to deal with problems and issues set in motion with the birth of modernity.     

Integrity,culture, and scale: an empirical test of the big bad police agency

Building on Klockars et. al. (2000) analysis of survey data on police agency integrity, this analysis develops an economic model of police corruption within police agencies. Empirical estimates of the economic model are consistent with Klockars et. al. (2000) in that there is no evidence to support the traditional theory that police agency corruption is attributable to the “individual bad-apple.” Independent of other factors, the present analysis shows that police culture fosters corruption. Furthermore, the present analysis shows that incentive structures within police agencies increase the problem of corruption as the scale of police agency operation increases. Policies that would promote higher levels of integrity are considered.     

The unknown depths of political theory: The case for a multidimensional concept of corruption

Defining corruption has proven to be such a difficult challenge that many contemporary analysts pass over the question as quickly as possible. But while definitions are too important to be dismissed as an analytical concern, a single one-dimensional definition that will satisfy all observers will never be found. Rather than proposing yet another definition, this article explores five dimensions of the concept: corruption as social decline, as deviant behavior, as a logic of exchange, as a system of measurable perceptions, and corruption as shadow politic. All help us view corruption within actual social settings; all lend further detail to the sorts of contrasts among concepts and usages that Arnold Heidenheimer explored in his work. In the end one of the most important aspects of the issue is that of trust, which not only helps us understand how corruption functions in actual cases but also underscores the reasons why we must continue to fight it.     

Subjective Strains, Conditioning Factors, and Juvenile Delinquency: General Strain Theory in Taiwan

Agnew’s [Agnew, R. Journal of Research in Crime and Delinquency, 38(4), 319–361, 2001, 2006a, 2006b] general strain theory (GST) argues that subjective strain and objective strain should be distinguished from each other, and that subjective strain should be related more strongly to delinquency. In addition, GST suggests that the strain–delinquency relationship is conditioned by certain conditioning factors, and that research should treat these conditioning factors as a whole, i.e., the individual’s “overall” standing regarding these conditional factors. The present study uses a random sample of Taiwanese adolescents (13–17 years old) to study these two issues. The results suggest that strain as measured in this study is related positively to delinquency; however, subjective strain does not differ from objective strain in predicting delinquency. Additionally, the “overall standing” conditioning factors interact differently with subjective strain and objective strain but in the expected direction.     

Building better science-policy interfaces for international environmental governance: assessing potential within the Intergovernmental Platform for Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services

This article addresses implementation failure in international environmental governance by considering how different institutional configurations for linking scientific and policy-making processes may help to improve implementation of policies set out in international environmental agreements. While institutional arrangements for interfacing scientific and policy-making processes are emerging as key elements in the structure of international environmental governance, formal understanding regarding their effectiveness is still limited. In an effort to advance that understanding, we propose that science-policy interfaces can be understood as institutions and that implementation failures in international environmental governance may be attributed, in part, to institutional mismatches (sic. Young in Institutions and environmental change: Principal findings, applications, and research, MIT Press, Cambridge 2008) associated with poor design of these institutions. In order to investigate this proposition, we employ three analytical categories—credibility, relevance and legitimacy, drawn from Cash et al. Proc Natl Acad Sci 100(14):8086–8091, (2003), to explore basic characteristics of the institutions proscribed under two approaches to institutional design, which we term linear and collaborative. We then proceed to take a closer look at institutional mismatches that may arise with the operationalisation of the soon to be established Intergovernmental Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services (IPBES). We find that, while there are encouraging signs that institutions based on new agreements, such as the IPBES, have the potential to overcome many of the institutional mismatches we have identified, there remain substantial tensions between continuing reliance on the established linear approach and an emerging collaborative approach, which can be expected to continue undermining the credibility, relevance and legitimacy of these institutions, at least in the near future.     

High-Risk Interrogation: Using the “Mr. Big Technique” to Elicit Confessions

Kassin et al. (Police-Induced Confessions: Risk Factors and Recommendation, 2009) provide a detailed and thoughtful analysis of how police interrogation practices might elicit false confessions from innocent suspects. The purpose of this commentary is to provide a brief review of a relatively recent development in Canadian police investigation practice and discuss how this procedure may increase the likelihood of police-induced false confessions. The so-called “Mr. Big Technique” is a non-custodial interrogation tactic wherein suspects are drawn into a supposed criminal organization (actually an elaborate police sting) and subsequently told that to move up in the organization, they must confess to a crime. In this article, we describe this remarkable interrogation technique and discuss issues relevant to the potential induction of false confessions.     

Suggestive Eyewitness Identification Procedures and the Supreme Court’s Reliability Test in Light of Eyewitness Science: 30 Years Later

The U.S. Supreme Court’s ruling concerning suggestive eyewitness identification procedures (Manson v. Braithwaite, 1977, 432 U.S. 98) has not been revisited by the Court in the intervening 30+ years. Meanwhile, scientific studies of eyewitnesses have progressed and DNA exonerations show that mistaken identification is the primary cause of convictions of the innocent. We analyzed the two-inquiry logic in Manson in light of eyewitness science. Several problems are discussed. Ironically, we note that suggestive identification procedures (determined in the first inquiry) boost the eyewitnesses’ standing on three of the five criteria (used in the second inquiry) that are used to decide whether the suggestive procedures were a problem. The net effect undermines safeguards intended by the Court and destroys incentives to avoid suggestive procedures.

作为债之独立类型的法定补偿义务

在公法和社会法领域内,法定补偿义务作为债的独立类型由来已久。但就法定补偿义务可否作为私法上独立类型之债,与合同之债、侵权之债、不当得利之债、无因管理之债等并身而立,民法学界远未达成共识。若从解释论角度出发进行分析,侵权责任法若干条款规定的补偿义务、"分担损失"规则以及"有财产的无民事行为能力人、限制民事行为能力人造成他人损害的,从本人财产中支付赔偿费用"等,都属有关法定补偿义务的规定。它们与民法通则及最高人民法院相关司法解释确认的法定补偿义务一起,构成我国民法中独立类型之债。在我国的责任保险制度尚不发达,社会保障制度还远未健全的背景下,如果法定补偿义务制度运用得当,无疑可在一定程度上济侵权损害赔偿责任制度之穷。     

Devastation in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina as a state crime: social audience reactions

In the 5 years since Hurricane Katrina struck the Gulf Coast, scholars in many disciplines have speculated on the sources of the widespread devastation. While many of these studies have focused on objective evidence of the violation of human rights following Hurricane Katrina, this study reviews the human rights violations and goes a step further by examining social audience reactions (both victims and the general public) to the government’s response efforts. Relying on Green and Ward’s (Green 2009; Green and Ward Social Justice, 27, 101–115, 2000; 2004) human rights/organizational deviance definition, which sees state crime as human rights violations that result from state organizational deviance, we attempt to provide further evidence of this case as one of state crime. This article presents results from binary logistic regression analyses that assess the likelihood of respondents disapproving of the actions of officials from various levels of government after the hurricane using data from a survey of Hurricane Katrina evacuees completed by The Washington Post/Kaiser Family Foundation/Harvard University (The Washington Post/Kaiser Family Foundation/Harvard University 2005) in the weeks after the storm, and data from a special topics ABC News/Washington Post public opinion survey completed in September of 2005 (ABC News/The Washington Post 2006). Key findings in this study include a strong similarity of results across data sets for race, sex, and religion with regards to respondents disapproving responses to the storm devastation at the federal level. A clear majority of respondents in both data sets disapproved of the actions of some level of government, further implying negative audience reactions, and thus the need to recognize the government’s response to Hurricane Katrina as a state crime.     

Toward a clean government in China: does the budget reform provide a hope?

Fighting corruption has proven to be a difficult task in many countries. In this paper, using China as a case study, we argue that a properly designed budgetary institution helps remove many institutional incentives and opportunities for corruption in financial management and regulatory activities of the government. As a result of recent budget reforms, China’s anticorruption effort has shifted from its earlier emphasis on exhortation and periodic crackdowns, which have been found to be ineffective, to the more fundamental issues of institutional incentives and opportunities for corruption. We propose that one consequence of the budget reform is the hope that China’s effort to create a clean government will be advanced. However, there is still a long way to go since it will take time for the new budgetary system to be institutionalized. This study is supported by Sun Yat-sen University 982–2 International Exchange Fund. The authors wish to thank Professor Ting Gong, Professor Stephen Ma, and Dr. Alfred Ho for their assistance and suggestions in editing and refining this essay. We are also grateful to Dr. Oliver M. Rui for his valuable comments. Lastly, we want to thank Dr. Andrew Wedeman for sending us his paper for reference.

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That Was Then, This Is Now, What About Tomorrow? Future Directions in State Crime Studies

Research and theorizing on state crime has come to play an important role in the fields of criminology and criminal justice for understanding the worst of crimes: those of powerful state agencies and agents. Since William Chambliss’ (1989) ASC presidential address, scholars of state crime have made advances in theoretical modeling and analyzing core enactment and etiological factors of crimes of the state (e.g., Barak 1991; Friedrichs 1998; Grabosky 1989; Kauzlarich and Kramer 1998; Kramer and Michalowski 2005; Kramer et al. 2005; Michalowski and Kramer 2006; Mullins and Rothe 2008a, b; Pearce 1976; Ross 1995, 2000; Rothe 2009; Rothe and Mullins 2006, 2008). Nonetheless, the study of state crime still has a long way to go before it ever reaches the magnitude or legitimacy afforded to the study of traditional street crime. It is with this in mind that several leading scholars of state criminality have come together and reevaluated the state of state crime and the ways in which the field must move forward. This kind of inventory, where scholars examine the past, present and future of the field, is not without precedent. For example, almost a decade ago (Ross et al. 1999) explored the difficulty of conducting state crime research and made a series of recommendations on how it could be improved. Nearly 7 years later (Rothe and Friedrichs 2006) re-evaluated the state of state crime and called for more attention to those beyond US crimes of the state and include crimes of globalization and also international controls such as the International Criminal Court (Friedrichs and Friedrichs 2007; Rothe and Mullins 2006; Rothe et al. 2006, 2008). Since that time, there has been substantial movement by scholars of state crime in these other areas, yet, as we note, there still remains key issues that need to be addressed and overcome: it is with this that we again revisit the field of state crime. We wish to thank all of those that contributed to our discussions and thoughts during the American Society of Criminology Roundtable on State Crime I and II, November 2007.

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Interventions for Intimate Partner Violence: A Historical Review

Intimate partner violence (IPV), also known as domestic abuse or relationship violence, has generated a large research literature for the last half-century, particularly in the areas of criminal justice, psychology, and the social sciences. Interventions for victims and perpetrators of IPV have largely been sequestered to separately evolving efforts of law enforcement and the psychotherapeutic community (Chang et al. Women’s Health Issues, 15(1), 21–30, 2005; Dalton Journal of Aggression, Maltreatment & Trauma, 15(1), 59–75, 2007; Dobash and Dobash 2000; Feder et al. 2008; Gerbert et al. Journal of Family Practice, 49(10), 889–895, 2000; Wathen and MacMillan. Journal of the American Medical Association, 289(5), 589–600, 2003). This article presents a brief overview of the historical evolution and development of these discrete perspectives and identifies and assesses current collaborative interventions rooted in these historical precedents. In conclusion, the authors provide a summative discussion of the most current findings of research into IPV interventions, with a particular focus on the changing roles of race and gender in both the criminal prosecution of IPV and services provided to IPV perpetrators and victims.     

Examining legal authoritarianism in the impact of punishment severity on juror decisions

Recent Supreme Court decisions point to an increased reliance on juries to determine a defendant's sentence. Evidence is mixed on whether jurors are more likely to convict when the potential punishment is mild. The current study examined this issue, as well as the impact of legal authoritarianism (LA) (Kravitz, D. A., Cutler, B. L., & Brock, P. 1993. Reliability and validity of the original and revised legal attitudes questionnaire. Law and Human Behavior, 17, 661–677. doi: 10.1007/BF01044688), on jurors’ decisions. An ethnically diverse sample of participants completed the individual difference measure prior to viewing a videotaped, reenacted criminal trial. We manipulated the severity of the punishment the defendant would receive if convicted. Results indicated LA moderated the effect of punishment severity on verdict. Specifically, at higher levels of punishment severity, civil libertarians convicted less, while legal authoritarians convicted more. That is, the severity-leniency effect held for civil libertarians, but not for legal authoritarians. As juries become more responsible for determining a defendant's sentence, attorneys should be aware of the defendant's potential sentence and use voir dire to identify jurors who are higher on LA.     

Translating CPTED into Crime Preventive Action: A Critical Examination of CPTED as a Tool for Active Guardianship

This paper will argue that the effectiveness of CPTED ought to be judged in terms of the extent to which it is successful in facilitating opportunities for active guardianship of places. With this premise in mind, the CPTED component of surveillance will provide the focal point of investigation. Reynald (Crime Prevention and Community Safety: An International Journal, 11(1):1-20, 2009, Journal of Research in Crime & Delinquency, 2010b) demonstrated that supervision or natural surveillance is one of the core dimensions of active guardianship in residential areas. This paper will begin with an illustration of how the CPTED principles are translated into crime preventive action in residential environments by using observational data to get a first-hand look at how CPTED functions in practice. The paper will then go on to combine these field observations with interview data from residents themselves to show the ways in which opportunities for the CPTED component of surveillance are affected, not simply by the design of the physical environment, but also by the context in which the opportunities exist. These results will be used to critically reflect on some inherent conflicts and points of neglect in the relationship between the components of surveillance, territoriality and image/maintenance, as a means of airing some of the conceptual and practical weaknesses that may serve to limit the existing CPTED model.     

Measuring and Explaining Charge Bargaining

Charge bargaining is a potentially important form of discretion in criminal sentencing that is obscured in many studies of sentencing outcomes. Our procedure to measure the difference in sentencing outcomes caused by plea bargain emphasizes the amount, in months, that the sentence length is reduced. Using this measure, we compare prosecutorial discretion across counties in two different states. We conclude that charge bargaining plays an empirically important role in determining sentencing outcomes. Furthermore, we find that measuring the distance (in months of prison time) moved during a charge bargain may provide a very different estimate of the discretion than is given by the rate of bargaining, which is the usual measure used. Although the rate of charge bargaining was higher in the voluntary guidelines state, its impact on sentences was greater in the presumptive guidelines jurisdiction, as predicted by Reitz (1998). We further observe a dramatic difference in predictions from shifting the case characteristics underlying the summary measure. This result reveals that distributional differences (either due to the underlying criminal activity or due to the overall level of severity of punishment) can easily obscure the inferences necessary for understanding the operation of the systems. Our finding of differential charge bargaining in these two jurisdictions should provide a caution when comparing the results of studies of disparity in sentencing across jurisdiction types.

Interaction orders of drug dealing spaces: local orders of sensemaking in a poor black American place

Based on ethnographic data, this essay analyzes the social order properties of a poor urban street, in a small city in the northeast United States, on which drug dealing is the principle occupation. Rather than treating drug dealing as an agent of disorder, we focus on the order properties of drug dealing and the ordered character of the local code of conduct that develops around it. Like Sudhir Venkatesh (American Journal of Sociology 103:82–111, 1997) we examine the interface between drug dealing and the neighborhood. However, in this small urban space the drug dealers are not outsiders, rather, they are long term residents: established insiders who are well integrated into community life. As such their work practices and the requirements they place on behavior in public spaces impact the neighborhood in comprehensive ways. We detail the phenomenon Elijah Anderson called the “code of the street” (Anderson 1999) as a set of practices and social markers, a local Interaction Order (Goffman, American Sociological Review 48:1–17, 1983; Rawls, Sociological Theory 2:136–149, 1987), that furnishes basic day to day sensemaking tools for residents (Rawls 2009). We propose that this order has a constitutive character that furnishes stable expectations (Garfinkel 1963, 1967) for meaningful social action and identity in the neighborhood. In a context of industrial decline and urban poverty, drug dealing careers constitute a major socialization factor, that touches everyone here—especially children.     

Intimate Partner Violence Control Scale: Development and Initial Testing

Although control has long been considered central to understanding intimate partner violence (IPV), there continues to be a notable lack of validated scales measuring control (e.g., Strauchler et al. Journal of Family Violence, 19(6), 339–354, 2004). The purpose of this study was to develop and empirically validate a brief assessment tool, the Intimate Partner Violence Control Scale (IPVCS), designed to measure control in the context of IPV. Data from a sample of male undergraduate and graduate students (n = 436) were used to examine the scale’s properties. After reviewing theoretical conceptualizations and measurement issues of control, psychometric properties of the IPVCS and results of exploratory hypotheses tests are presented. The availability of a brief and reliable measure of control offers a tool for professionals in the judicial system, for IPV victims’ advocates, and for human services workers in practice settings to adequately assess for control and fills a gap in this area of research and practice.     

Organised Criminals as “Agents of Obligation”: The Case of Ireland

Relying on Brown's (2005a, b) thesis that contemporary shifts in penal policy are best understood as a reprisal of colonial rationality, so that offenders become “non-citizens” or “agents of obligation”, this article argues, firstly, that this framework (with certain important refinements and extensions) finds support in developments in Irish criminal justice policy aimed at offenders suspected of involvement in “organised crime”. These offenders have found themselves reconstituted as “agents of obligation” with duties to furnish information about their property and movements, report to the police concerning their location and, importantly, refrain from criminal activity or face extraordinary sanctions. Secondly, it is submitted that this draconian approach to the control of organised crime is built on false premises; specifically the idea that “organised crime” as such exists and is best controlled through restrictions on the freedom of key groups or “core nominals”.     

Framing innocents: the wrongly convicted as victims of state harm

We adapt the victimology of ‘state harms’ framework outlined by Kauzlarich et al. (Critical Criminology, 10(3), 173–194, 2001) to understand the post-exoneration experiences of 18 death row exonerees. Kauzlarich et al. develop six points of commonality shared by most victims of state crime. Application of this framework to death row exonerees highlights the role the state plays in creating and exacerbating the harms they suffer. This analysis also lays a foundation for further theoretical inquiry into the wrongful conviction of the innocent as a form of state crime.     

Deconstructing Diplomacy: Derridean Political Theory and U.N. Deal-Making

This paper engages in a reading of several Derrideantexts, particularly Spectres of Marx, Politics of Friendship, and The Post Card, inan attempt to divine a coherent Derridean social andpolitical philosophy. It is submitted that such acoherent theory of civil society can be made out, onewhich situates civil relations in national borders andshared history. Such a situation, however, isproblematic for international relations theory andinternational law, which depend a priori onlocating the foundations of civil society in somethingwhich transcends nationalism and shared experience. By engaging in a reading of the Declaration ofFriendly Relations Between States, this paperdemonstrates the apparent incompatibility of Derrideanpolitical philosophy and international law. In theprocess, it explores Derrida's strategy fortransforming the nature of international relations andlaw and, in so doing, identifies the relationshipbetween Derridean theory and the international legaltheory of Arangio-Ruiz.