Returning to Delinquency: Factors Effecting the Survivorship of Juvenile Shoplifters

This article examines a program designed to provide a family court with a means of lessening the probability that youths on probation for shoplifting will return to criminal behavior. A single staff member within the family court screened possible participants, all of whom were defined as first-time shoplifting offenders and had been assigned to formal or informal probation. Each individual was invited to participate in a four-hour clinic, during which time the realities and possible consequences of shoplifting were explained. If they were able to successfully complete six months of supervised probation, then only the administrative record remained; the conviction itself was expunged. Over a period of nine months, a total of 154 juveniles were invited; however, only 100 actually took part in all facets of the program. A total of 30 clinic attendees and 14 nonparticipants were excluded from the present analysis, owing to missing data, or the fact that at the time of follow-up, they were legally classified as adults. The prior and subsequent court contacts of 110 subjects are reviewed. While less than 3% of either group had subsequent shoplifting arrests, nearly 26% of the program group and 35% of the nonparticipants were rearrested. Factors associated with long-term success and failure are examined. Possible reasons for these observations are discussed, with specific grounding in the shoplifting literature and the concepts of juvenile diversion and “net-widening.”     

The fair process effect and procedural criteria in the resolution of disputes between intimate same-sex friends

This series of studies extended procedural justice research to the informal domain of dispute resolution in intimate same-sex friendship. The first study identified the types of disputes that occur between friends and the concerns that friends have when choosing dispute resolution procedures. Seven dispute types and 11 procedural criteria were found relevant to dispute resolution in friendship. Study 2 assessed the importance of procedural criteria for resolving several dispute scenarios. As expected, ratings of criterion importance were affected by subject and disputant sex. Females rated four criteria as more important than did males, and one criterion was rated as more important in disputes involving a male and a female than in disputes involving two females. The importance of procedural criteria was also influenced by the type of dispute, but this effect was qualified by an interaction with the dispute version. It was suggested that the importance of procedural criteria is generally defined by the context of friendship and specifically defined by the dispute topic. In Study 3, the relations among subject sex, traditional fairness variables, and criterion-based measures of process control were examined. Consistent with studies in other domains, process control predicted procedural justice, and decision control predicted distributive justive. Moreover, the hypothesized fair process effect emerged as a function of speed, a criterion-based measure of process control.     

Mediating science-intensive policy disputes

Public policy disputes involving complex scientific issues usually entail conflicts not only over those scientific issues, but also over the distribution of gains and losses. The presence of scientific or technical dimensions to a dispute should not be allowed to mask underlying distributional considerations. On the other hand, science-intensive disputes require special attention. Merely resolving distributional conflicts without incorporating the best scientific judgment will produce unwise and potentially dangerous results. The usual adversarial approach that characterizes the handling of such disputes by agencies and courts is less than ideal for creating an understanding of scientific evidence or the resolution of scientific differences. A process of mediation, already applied in a number of significant cases, offers strong promise as a superior approach.     

Will the law come running? The potential role of "brain fingerprinting" in crime investigation and adjudication in Australia

A major feature of the Australian criminal justice system is that jurors assess witness credibility and are the ultimate finders of fact. Recognising the occasional fallibility of humans in detecting truth and deception, the jury's function may be assisted by highly regulated expert evidence about a variety of scientific techniques. A recent scientific development has been the invention of "brain fingerprinting" (BF) by Dr Larry Farwell in the United States. Brain fingerprinting measures brainwave functioning to detect awareness of crime-relevant information in order to distinguish between guilty and innocent suspects. This article considers whether BF could be used for crime investigation and adjudication in Australia. By examining the rules of expert evidence and the principles relating to "novel scientific evidence", the admissibility of BF in the various Australian jurisdictions is evaluated. The utility of BF in criminal investigations and counter-terrorism initiatives is also canvassed. The authors conclude that, at the present time, it is unlikely that expert testimony on BF will be admitted in Australian criminal trials. However, the technique potentially offers other benefits to the criminal justice system, thereby warranting its consideration as a "criminal and investigative tool of the future".     

Cognitive-behavioral rehabilitation for high-risk violent offenders: an outcome evaluation of the violence prevention unit

Rehabilitation programs for adult violent offending are still novel, and few published studies examine the recidivism outcomes of those who complete such programs. This study describes a New Zealand prison program for high-risk violent men. The program is intensive and cognitive behavioral. Preliminary outcome data are presented for three indices during 2 or more years of follow-up: nonviolent reconviction, violent reconviction, and subsequent imprisonment. In comparison with untreated offenders, treated men were less likely to be reconvicted of a violent offense, and those who were took longer to fail. There was also a 12% difference in favor of the treated men on the two other indices, nonviolent reconviction and reimprisonment. The authors conclude that the program shows early promise and that further evaluation with a larger sample of treated men will be important in clarifying whether the program is having a differential impact on violent versus nonviolent offending.     

Labor market policy: A comparative view on the costs and benefits of labor market flexibility

I review theories and evidence on wage‐setting institutions and labor market policies in an international comparative context. These include collective bargaining, minimum wages, employment protection laws, unemployment insurance (UI), mandated parental leave, and active labor market policies (ALMPs). Since it is unlikely that an unregulated private sector would provide the income insurance these institutions do, these policies may enhance economic efficiency. However, to the extent that unemployment or resource misallocation results from such measures, these efficiency gains may be offset. Overall, Scandinavia and Central Europe follow distinctively more interventionist policies than the English‐speaking countries in the Northern Hemisphere. Possible explanations for such differences include vulnerability to external market forces and ethnic homogeneity. I then review evidence on the impacts of these policies and institutions. While the interventionist model appears to cause lower levels of wage inequality and high levels of job security to incumbent workers, it also in some cases leads to the relegation of new entrants (disproportionately women, youth, and immigrants) as well as the less skilled to temporary jobs or unemployment. Making labor markets more flexible could bring these groups into the regular labor market to a greater extent, at the expense of higher levels of economic insecurity for incumbents and higher levels of wage inequality. © 2011 by the Association for Public Policy Analysis and Management.