HIGH TIMES FOR HATE CRIMES: EXPLAINING THE TEMPORAL CLUSTERING OF HATE‐MOTIVATED OFFENDING

This research explains the temporal clustering of hate crimes. It is hypothesized that many hate crimes are retaliatory in nature and tend to increase, sometimes dramatically, in the aftermath of an antecedent event that results in one group harboring a grievance against another. Three types of events are used to test and refine the argument: 1) contentious criminal trials involving interracial crimes, 2) lethal terrorist attacks, and 3) appellate court decisions concerning same‐sex marriage. The results from time‐series analyses indicate that contentious trial verdicts and lethal domestic terrorist attacks precede spikes in racially or religiously motivated hate crimes, whereas less evidence is found for antigay hate crimes after appellate court rulings that grant rights to same‐sex partners. The model put forth in this article complements prior work by explaining in part the timing of hate crime clusters.     

Deinstitutionalization and Its Impact on Swedish Corrections

The dominant approach in Swedish corrections is to deinstitutionalize as many offenders as possible. This started in the 1960's when Sweden decided that rehabilitation, and secondarily deterrence, would be the overriding goals of its correctional program. This has remained true despite the statistical evidence indicating that the goal of rehabilitation has not been achieved to any significant extent. The dominant belief in Sweden is that prison is harmful and counterproductive when the overall aim is to reintegrate the offender into society.     

THE NEW GOVERNANCE ARRANGEMENTS FOR NHS FOUNDATION TRUST HOSPITALS: REFRAMING GOVERNORS AS META‐REGULATORS

New governance arrangements for NHS Foundation Trusts (FTs) aimed to replace centralized state ownership of acute English hospitals with a new form of social ownership. Under this, trusts would exist as independent public interest organizations on the model of mutuals and co‐operative societies. Assessing the impact of the new arrangements on the management structure of four acute hospitals, we demonstrate that FTs have failed to deliver social ownership and local accountability on this model. We suggest that policy‐makers should re‐frame the governance apparatus associated with mutualism and social ownership in terms of the concept of meta‐regulation. By re‐framing governors as meta‐regulators, regulatory institutions would acquire new powers to steer FTs towards sustainable forms of compliance via non‐coercive, non‐intrusive means.     

ASSESSING MESSNER AND ROSENFELD'S INSTITUTIONAL ANOMIE THEORY: A PARTIAL TEST*

In Crime and the American Dream, Messner and Rosenfeld contend that culturally and structurally produced pressures to secure monetary rewards, coupled with weak controls from noneconomic social institutions, promote high levels of instrumental crime. Empirically, they suggest that the effects of economic conditions on profit-related crime depend on the strength of noneconomic institutions. This investigation evaluates this proposition with cross-sectional data for U.S. states. In brief; the nonlinear models show considerable, indirect support for Messner and Rosenfeld's institutional anomie theory, revealing that the effects of poverty on property crime depend on levels of structural indicators of the capacity of noneconomic institutions to ameliorate the criminogenic impact of economic deprivation. The implications of these findings are discussed.     

A STRUCTURAL MODEL OF DRINKING AND DRIVING: ALCOHOL CONSUMPTION,SOCIAL NORMS,AND MORAL COMMITMENTS*

A structural model based upon data from a random sample of 1,000 U.S. drivers accounted for 56% of the variation in alcohol-impaired driving, with total monthly alcohol consumption as the strongest predictor. Significant contributions of age, sex, peer group values, and preference for beer suggested the operation of socialization to group norms. There was a substantial contribution of personal moral commitment against drinking and driving. However, there was no significant inhibitory influence of legal knowledge and perceived arrest risk. These findings are consistent with Andenaes's view that general deterrence should be more broadly construed to include the moral component as well as the fear component of the law     

POLICE DISRESPECT TOWARD THE PUBLIC: AN ENCOUNTER‐BASED ANALYSIS*

We use observations of police encounters with 3,130 suspects in Indianapolis and St. Petersburg to estimate three influences on police disrespect: how suspects behave, their personal characteristics, and the location of the encounter. Logistic regression models show that suspects' behaviors were the most powerful predictors, but the suspect's sex, age, income, and degree of neighborhood disadvantage were also significant. Minority suspects experienced disrespect less often than whites (statistically significant in the hierarchical analysis controlling for degree of neighborhood disadvantage). These effects are concentrated in St. Petersburg, where the chief had made the suppression of police abuses a visible priority. The findings offer partial confirmation of Donald Black's theory of law.