Narcotics trafficking and the American mafia: The myth of internal prohibition

Numerous books assert that the Mafia long had a prohibition against engaging in narcotics trafficking, either for reasons of morality, or else because of the public stigma attached to drugs. In reality, there are many problems with the belief in voluntary abstention. The mythical nature of internal prohibition, and the far different reality, will be illustrated from the case of Philadelphia, supposedly the base for one of the most powerful and traditional-minded of all the American Mafia groups, the family headed from 1959 to 1980 by don Angelo Bruno. We will attempt to explain the roots of the prohibition myth, both for writers and for the wider public that appears so endlessly enthusiastic about sagas of organized crime. Finally, the paper examines the implications of this myth for policy makers in successive wars on crime.     

Forfeiture and money laundering laws in the United States

Today Europe is faced increasingly with the phenomenon of organized crime, creating problems similar to those the United States faced as early as a decade ago. American forfeiture and money laundering laws provide the state with sweeping powers for use in its efforts to combat organized crime. Although study of these instruments might inspire European lawmakers to adopt similar ones, the instruments themselves carry a societal price tag that cannot be ignored. Classical principles limiting the reach of the criminal law (and the powers of its enforcement apparatus) and in a broader sense the liberal concept of the fragmentary nature of the criminal law have largely been abandoned by lawmakers in the area of organized crime. Thus, modern American forfeiture and money laundering laws have lowered the standards of protection against state intrusion into citizens' basic rights despite the lack of sufficient empirical proof that their investigative and punitive powers are efficient in skimming profits and deterring further crime.     

Women on the edge of crime: Crack cocaine and the changing contexts of street-level sex work in New York City

In this paper, we attempt to examine, engender and contextualize the theses that (i) women's emancipation escalates [women's] crime and violence and (ii) women's drug use escalates [women's] crime and violence, by drawing on ongoing ethnographic fieldwork in relation to women crack smokers and the changing contexts of street-level sex work in New York City. The paper attempts to illustrate how the position of women crack smokers can only be understood by locating their lives, their illicit drug use and their income-generating activities within the context of a specific set of localized socio-economic and cultural developments. We suggest that observations from our research refute the theses that women are becoming more criminal and/or violent in the context of either their consumption of crack cocaine or their alleged emancipation.An earlier version of this paper was presented by the first author at the Joint Meetings, Law and Society Association and Research Committee on the Sociology of Law of the International Sociological Association, Amsterdam, 26–29 June 1991.     

From fiddle factors to networks of collusion: Charting the waters of small business crime

Small business crime has been largely ignored in American criminology; studies of nontraditional crime have focused mainly on corporate crime or on the misdeeds of employees pursuing personal gain. This paper calls for criminologists to redirect their efforts toward the systematic study of small business crime. In particular, it advocates in-depth qualitative studies that explore small business culture and opportunity structures, and that examine the networks of collusion that subvert the legitimate economy. The paper concludes with illustrations from an own story currently being shared with the author by a small businessman who participated for five years in an urban crime network that infiltrated the redistributive economy.     

The state,public policy,and AIDS discourse

The paper probes the deep structure of perceptions of AIDS and the ensuing public policy trends. AIDS has become the latest symbol indexing 20th century conflicts over the family and sexuality and recapitulates some features of early debates over contraception and the control of sexually transmitted diseases. From 1981 to 1983, public talk about AIDS was virtually taboo. Since 1983, the massive proliferation of AIDS discourse has led to the development of an official story common in the press and clear in the presumptions underlying recent state policies in the United States, Canada, and the United Kingdom. These policies have favored state control of sexual speech and education, as well as control of people blamed for HIV infection, while community-based groups have sought to empower people to affirm their sexuality while avoiding viral transmission.     

Holy Mountains and Anti-Cult Ecology: The Campaign Against the Aumist Religion in France

After the homicides and suicides of the Solar Temple (1994–1995), anti-cult movements received an unprecedented degree of public support in France, and a moral panic against cults was generated, eventually producing two parliamentary reports and the establishment of a governmental Mission to Fight Cults. The Aumist Religion, headquartered at the Holy City of the Mandarom, in the French Alps, although comparatively small, became one of the most visible targets and was perceived by anti-cultists, the media, and the government as the epitome of the dangerous cult. The paper examines the history of the Madaron controversies, especially the involvement of government-financed anti-cult organizations and representatives of the ecology movement, and argues that the Aumists' greatest sin is their very visibility.     

Plan and counterplan: Notes on moving beyond the crisis in planning theory

Conclusions In developing a working class perspective of planning theory, I have suggested that neither bourgeois nor Marxist planning theories can incorporate the dissensus tactics that are at the heart of working-class movements. Neither can they deal with the class nature of planning nor the class composition of planners. As the current social, political and economic crisis was forced on capital by the struggles (plans) of the working class, it follows that working-class counter-plans should deepen the crisis so that benefits will accrue to our side. The development of our successful counter-plans will throw their planning theory deeper into crisis. Ultimately, crisis resolution must be on the terms of the (ex-)working class.     

Social justice and legal justice

The main aim of this paper is to challenge the validity of the distinction between legal justice and social justice. It is argued that what we usually call legal justice is either an application of the more fundamental notion of social justice to legal rules and decisions or is not a matter of justice at all. In other words, the only correct uses of the notion of legal justice are derivative from the notion of social justice and, hence, the alleged conflicts between criteria of social and legal justice result from the confusion about the proper relationship between these two concepts. Two views about the social justice/legal justice dichotomy are of particular importance and will provide the focus for the argument: this dichotomy is sometimes identified with a classical distinction between distributive and commutative justice and sometimes with the distinction between substantive and procedural justice.     

Measuring the Convergence/Divergence of “Serious Crime” Arrest Rates for Males and Females: 1960–1995

It is now almost a quarter of a century since Adler (1975) and Simon (1975)stimulated a debate about the convergence of crime rates for men andwomen. The ensuing debate generated literally dozens of papers. Given theexistence of a series that now extends from 1960 to 1995, this papersuggests an appropriate way to examine the convergence hypothesis usingtime series techniques. These techniques take into consideration the effectsof the following factors: (a) random shocks orinnovations, (b) the potentially lasting effects of suchinnovations, and (c) the autocorrelation that time series oftenexhibit. Using time series techniques on annual data, we examine trends inthe arrest rates for males and females for six Part I crimes (homicide,robbery, aggravated assault, burglary, larceny, and motor vehicle theft)for the years 1960 through 1995. We test for convergence, divergence, notrend, and a special condition of equilibrium between series calledcointegration.     

Economics of discriminatory sentencing

The legal and social professions have long been concerned with the problem of whether the fact that those incarcerated in prison tend to be drawn from the ranks of the poor unemployed and low social status is indicative of willful discrimination against the underprivileged. In this paper we apply the traditional analytical tools of economics to develop the conditions required for an efficient tradeoff between the probability of conviction and the length of prison sentence for both rich and poor. We show that the generally accepted approach of equal punishment for equal crimes tends to overdeter the rich and underdeter the poor, which results in a gross overrepresentation of the poor in the prison population. In order to eliminate this overrepresentation, the poor must receive a more severe sentence than the rich for an equivalent crime. This appears to contradict normal definitions of equity and we address this issue. We also show that an increase in the total crime budget when used efficiently must always result in longer sentences but can, under appropriate conditions, require a lower probability of apprehension.     

Selective Incapacitation Revisited

The term incapacitation is an important criminological concept that implies that the offender's capacity to commit new crimes is to be concretely obstructed or reduced through confinement. The purpose of selective incapacitation is to select those particularly prone to violence and to incapacitate them. The paper presents a critical analysis of the risk prediction enterprise. The paper addresses the accuracy of prediction, the ethics of prediction, and in particular the research culture within which research on prediction occurs.     

Public opinion and penal reform in Britain

The author argues that it is very difficult to seek legitimation and support in public opinion attitudes both for reformers and counter-reformers of the penal system. He disputes the very existence of public opinion itself, and stresses that definitions of crime are often based on an emotional conspiracy whereby the parties involved ignore one another's perception: institutions, offenders, victims, the public, and last but not least, criminologists.     

The language of deceit: An investigation of the verbal clues to deception in the interrogation context

We examined the hypothesis that reliable verbal indicators of deception exist in the interrogation context. Participants were recruited for a study addressing security effectiveness and either committed a theft to test the effectiveness of a new security guard or carried out a similar but innocuous task. They then provided either (1) a truthful alibi, (2) a partially deceptive account, (3) a completely false alibi, or (4) a truthful confession regarding the theft to an interrogator hired for the purpose of investigating thefts with a monetary incentive for convincing the interrogator of their truthfulness. Results indicated that only 3 out of the 18 (16.7%) clues tested significantly differentiated the truthful and deceptive accounts. All 3 clues were derived from the Statement Validity Analysis (SVA) technique (amount of detail reported, coherence, and admissions of lack of memory). Implications for credibility assessment in forensic interrogations are discussed.     

Reducing and preventing organised crime: An evidence-based critique

Theory and practice in crime prevention and crime reduction have developed and changed significantly, but attention has been focused largely upon conventional forms of crime (especially street crime) and upon situational approaches to their reduction. Drawing on research with a variety of relevant organisations across Europe, this article explores the possibilities of developing more effective crime reduction strategies in respect of organized crime, an area in which (despite important exceptions, particularly in relation to financial regulation), law enforcement rather than prevention has continued to dominate the thinking and the practical responses of the police and other relevant agencies. It illustrates the difficulties of evaluating prevention in the many areas in which data quality on crime levels and their organisation are poor, but also gives examples (mainly financial crime) where private sector data quality are good enough to demonstrate effectiveness. It differentiates impact on crime from impact on the organisation of crime, and between market crimes involving voluntary vice and predatory crimes involving direct harm to victims, concluding that current performance indicators for enforcement agencies may need substantial revision if the focus shifts to organised crime reduction.     

Psychology,law, and the black community

Summary The present paper presented key applications of psychology and the law to the black community, embracing both civil and criminal law and legislation. The breadth of its focus preluded a more in-depth treatment of other areas relevant to black people which include issues related to psychiatric emergencies and involuntary hospitalization, child custody, and right-to-treatment litigation in prison and mental health facilities. In focusing attention on these applications and areas for activity, hopefully, I have not presented an unrealistic depiction of a responsive, socially sensitive, legal system capable and willing to exercise its powerful tools in the interest of the black community. To the contrary, there is considerable literature that identifies the historic role of the legal system in the enactments of laws to institutionalize and cement slavery, its failure to aggressively protect constitutional and civil rights of blacks, in imposing penalties differentially to blacks and whites in the criminal justice system, and more recently, conspiracies of law enforcement officials to deprive blacks of basic civil rights (Bell, 1975; Burns, 1973; Higgenbotham, 1973). The legal system, rather than being an effective instrument for justice and positive social changes, has often been a major source of racism. Thus, any meaningful attempts by lawyers or behavioral scientists in the interest of black people cannot ignore the racism that is embedded in the fabric of the legal profession and the behavioral sciences. Particular aspects of the law with significant social-psychological dimensions are: the cultural inertia, the archaicness of the law due to its roots in English common-law, historic and contemporary racism, conservatism associated with the principle of stare decisis, judicial elitism, and the substitution of administrative and judicial discretion for overt racism. Thus, in order for the legal system, or the field of psychology, to be reponsive to the needs of blacks and other oppressed groups, they must eradicate racism and injustice in their own ranks.Traditionally law has functioned as the hand maiden of the propertied class in our society. So it was to be expected that lawyers in the legislative halls, lawyers on the bench and lawyers in the executive branch of government would combine their talents to perpetuate by law this peculiarly American doctrine of racism predicated upon a claimed color inferiority.     

Interviewing Preschoolers: Comparisons Of Yes/No and Wh- Questions

This study investigated the influence of question format on preschool-aged children's errors, their response accuracy, and their tendency to say I don't know when given non-misleading questions in a neutral, unbiased context. Children (3 to 5 years old) participated in a craft-making session that included a staged accident with two experimenters differing in gender and appearance; the environment also had several distinctive features. One week later children were interviewed about actions, participants, and environment; questions were yes/no format with the veridical response yes (yes questions), yes/no format with the veridical response no (no questions), and specific wh- format questions. Question format substantially influenced children's responses: they were most likely to make errors if asked no questions, and were unlikely to answer either yes/no question with I don't know. In contrast, children spontaneously and frequently said I don't know to wh- questions about content they did not recall (environment), but not about content that was well recalled (actions). Implications of question format for reliability of eyewitness testimony by preschoolers are discussed.     

How to Develop More Effective Policies Against Crime: Some Reflections on Drugs and Crime Research in an International Context

This paper offers some reflections on how to develop more effective policies against crime, drawing on more than 10 years of research experience on the international drug problem. The paper begins by trying to illustrate the so-called justice gap in the world, and explain why an institution such as the United Nations has a comparative advantage in closing that gap. It then details four lessons that the author has learnt from his own personal experience as head of research in the United Nations International Drug Control Programme, now called the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime: (i) measure, count, and keep counting; (ii) publish or perish, either in inter-governmental default, or in public hysteria; (iii) limit the dangers of committing the euphemistic fallacy; and (iv) divorce research and policy, because research is policy-dependent; make research policy-relevant, and re-marry it to policy. Finally, the paper tries to show how these lessons can be applied in related areas and used as good practice in research on crime.     

Do trials have real winners?

Conclusion In this paper, narrative coherence has been looked at as an institutional strategy in anticipation of the verdict rather than in retrospect of the crime or charge. The analysis of binary notions has been instrumental in the reconstruction of the coherence between the narrative(s) and the theoretical outcomes of the criminal trial. As the abstraction and polarisation of narrative versions focus on the achievement of professional consensus, the verdict, which is almost always based on the selection of a binary option does injustice to any narrative which is unfolded in the court-room. Whether the defendant is acquitted or convicted, therefore, does not make him a winner or a loser, as his personal experience is abducted and institutionalised for the facilitation of smooth institutional decision-making.     

When Are People Persuaded By DNA Match Statistics?

The way in which statistical DNA evidence is presented to legal decision makers can have a profound impact on the persuasiveness of that evidence. Evidence that is presented one way may convince most people that the suspect is almost certainly the source of DNA evidence recovered from a crime scene. However, when the evidence is presented another way, a sizable minority of people equally convinced that the suspect is almost certainly not the source of the evidence. Three experiments are presented within the context of a theory (exemplar cueing theory) for when people will find statistical match evidence to be more and less persuasive. The theory holds that the perceived probative value of statistical match evidence depends on the cognitive availability of coincidental match exemplars. When legal decision makers find it hard to imagine others who might match by chance, the evidence will seem compelling. When match exemplars are readily available, the evidence will seem less compelling. Experiments 1 and 2 show that DNA match statistics that target the individual suspect and that are framed as probabilities (i.e., The probability that the suspect would match the blood drops if he were not their source is 0.1%) are more persuasive than mathematically equivalent presentations that target a broader reference group and that are framed as frequencies (One in 1,000 people in Houston would also match the blood drops). Experiment 3 shows that the observed effects are less likely to occur at extremely small incidence rates. Implications for the strategic use of presentation effects at trial are considered.     

Commentary on Seagrave and Grisso: Impressions of the State of the Art

Seagrave and Grisso (2001) questioned the clinical-forensic utility of tests designed to assess juvenile psychopathy. They discussed potential problems with such tests and some avenues for future research. We agree with the points made by Seagrave and Grisso, but believe their critique did not go far enough. The state of the art with respect to the assessment of juvenile psychopathy is like an Impressionist painting: fine from a distance;but the closer you get, the messier it looks. We conclude that although tests of juvenile psychopathy measure something, it is impossible to be sure at this time they are actually measuring psychopathy.