THE IMPACT OF SENTENCING GUIDELINES ON JAIL INCARCERATION IN MINNESOTA*

Although available empirical evidence suggests that Minnesota's Determinate Sentencing Law has had little effect on prison incarceration, it is still uncertain whether the sentencing guidelines affected jail use. A few recent studies imply that the guidelines have had a positive effect on jail incarceration rates. Accounts have pointed to preexisting trends, more severe sanctioning of repeat property offenders, and judicial concern with prison overcrowding as possible underlying causes of this observed increase. Using longitudinal data and an ARIMA study design, we investigate the validity of these competing explanations. Our findings show that the onset of the sentencing guidelines increased judicial use of the jail sanction beyond the effect of preexisting trends. In addition, the effect of mitigated dispositional departures from the no prison/prison outcome on jail use is salient only when prison population levels are high. This latter finding supports the thesis that judicial concern with prison overcrowding motivated judges to circumvent the guidelines in order to shift the burden of incarcerating offenders from the state to the local level. The policy implications of these results for determinate sentencing reform are discussed.     

African Student at Home

The following address was given before a joint meeting of theRoyal African Society and the Royal Empire Society on June 24.Mr. B. F. Macdona, Vice-Chairman of the Council of the RoyalAfrican Society, took the chair. Miss Trevelyan is adviser tooverseas students at the University of London. She has beenassociated with student welfare work for a number of years,and is also a familiar figure in London musical circles.     

Electoral Registration: Time for Change

Electoral registration is the key building block for the administration of elections. It is the gateway to voting: people cannot vote at elections in the UK if their name is not on the register. In recent times there has been much debate in media and Westminster circles about current arrangements for electoral registration and the related issue of the future of postal voting.
This article presents new research published by the Electoral Commission in September 2005 investigating non-registration and its causes. It reviews the case for reform, considers the current policy debate and outlines some of the challenges involved in maximising registration rates. It summarises the Commission's policy recommendations and the reasoning behind them, focusing in particular on the suggested move from the current household-based system of registration to a system of individual registration     

CYNICAL STREETS: NEIGHBORHOOD SOCIAL PROCESSES AND PERCEPTIONS OF CRIMINAL INJUSTICE*

Studies have found that African Americans are more likely to perceive racial biases in the criminal justice system than are those from other racial groups. There is a limited understanding of how neighborhood social processes affect variation in these perceptions. This study formulates a series of hypotheses focused on whether perceived racial biases in the criminal justice system or perceptions of injustice vary as a function of levels of moral and legal cynicism as well as of adverse police–citizen encounters. These hypotheses are tested with multilevel regression models applied to data from a sample of 689 African Americans located in 39 neighborhoods. Findings from the regression models indicate that the positive association between structural disadvantage and perceptions of injustice is accounted for by moral and legal cynicism. Furthermore, adverse police encounters significantly increase perceptions of injustice; controlling for these encounters reduces the strength of the association between cynicism and injustice perceptions. Finally, the findings reveal that cynicism intensifies the association between adverse police encounters and perceptions of criminal injustice. The results are discussed in terms of their implications for research regarding perceived biases in the criminal justice system and neighborhood social processes.     

Wielding the Power of Popular Sentiment: Woman's Agency in Courtship and the Love Letters of Anna Todd∗

If you want to break [our engagement], and do not like to for fear it would be wronging me, then let the trouble be settled at once. Of course I do admit that it would be wronging me—yes, it would be taking away my love, my life—my whole existence. But I would sacrifice all that if such a proceeding would rid you of all these trials and troubles, and make you happy once again.     

Race in the Andes: Global Movements and Popular Ontologies

Abstract — Race, long discounted in Andean ethnography as relatively unimportant, is a social fact of great salience in the Andes. This essay introduces the articles in the special issue on race in the Andes with an overview of the interrelated intellectual histories of racism in the Andes, Europe and North America, from colonial proto-racism, to the totalising theories of the 19th century, to the heterogeneous 'neo-racism' found in the Andes today, in which both these earlier ideas and contemporary cultural racisms are at home. It concludes with a discussion of an oppositional ideology found in some indigenous communities, in which race is somatic but not biological in origin.     

BEYOND THE RULES: THE EFFECT OF OUTCOME FAVOURABILITY ON RED TAPE PERCEPTIONS

The underlying reasoning of much red tape research is that the level of rule burden, in terms of resources expended at implementing and complying with specific rules, is the main driver of red tape perceptions. In this study we challenge this claim and argue that stakeholder red tape perceptions are also affected by the favourability of the outcome. More specifically, if a certain rule or procedure has a positive outcome for a certain stakeholder, then this stakeholder will perceive lower levels of red tape, irrespective of rule burden. Using a survey experiment (n = 81), we show how variations in red tape perceptions are affected in equal measure by rule burden and outcome. We conclude with a discussion of the implications of our findings for red tape scholars, in particular the need to further understand the relationships between red tape perceptions and rule procedures and outcomes.     

INCORPORATING ROUTINE ACTIVITIES,ACTIVITY SPACES,AND SITUATIONAL DEFINITIONS INTO THE SOCIAL SCHEMATIC THEORY OF CRIME

Simons and Burt's (2011) social schematic theory (SST) of crime posits that adverse social factors are associated with offending because they promote a set of social schemas (i.e., a criminogenic knowledge structure) that elevates the probability of situational definitions favorable to crime. This study extends the SST model by incorporating the role of contexts for action. Furthermore, the study advances tests of the SST by incorporating a measure of criminogenic situational definitions to assess whether such definitions mediate the effects of schemas and contexts on crime. Structural equation models using 10 years of panel data from 582 African American youth provided strong support for the expanded theory. The results suggest that childhood and adolescent social adversity fosters a criminogenic knowledge structure as well as selection into criminogenic activity spaces and risky activities, all of which increase the likelihood of offending largely through situational definitions. Additionally, evidence shows that the criminogenic knowledge structure interacts with settings to amplify the likelihood of situational definitions favorable to crime.