‘They are not my people’: Barack Obama on lobbying and lobbyists

This article traces the development of Barack Obama's sometimes ambiguous and sometimes antithetical attitudes and relationship to lobbyists. During his childhood in Indonesia, his stepfther was a lobbyist for a US oil company. Obama engaged himself in what many would consider to be lobbying in his career as a ‘community activist’ in Chicago. As an Illinois state senator, he befriended lobbyists and enjoyed poker and basketball games with them, in addition to raising about two thirds of his campaign finance from big business, unions, and political action committees. In the US Senate, Obama involved in ethics reforms that curbed the influence of lobbyists. His presidential campaign rhetoric was hard‐hitting, often decrying the irresponsibility of lobbyists while he had a number of lobbyists in key positions in his campaign team. On his first full day in office, President Obama signed an executive order restricting lobbyists from working in his administration. He later banned registered lobbyists from having personal meeting with officials about economic stimulus projects. Both these pledges have, however, had unforeseen or unwelcome consequences. More recently, Obama decided to ban lobbyists from membership of federal advisory panels but continues to meet frequently with favored lobbyists and corporate executives behind closed doors. The article questions whether Obama's history in this area adds up to a coherent or principled track record or whether it simply relates a series of inconsistent and political decisions. Copyright © 2013 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Preventing Crime is Hard Work: Early Intervention,Developmental Criminology,and the Enduring Legacy of James Q. Wilson

Objective

The late James Q. Wilson (1931-2012) was a prolific scholar and made many important contributions to the field of criminology. Less well known, however, is that Wilson was a great advocate of early prevention of delinquency and later offending. This essay examines this aspect of Wilson's overall contribution to criminology.

Materials and methods

Narrative review of Wilson's research and writings on early crime prevention and developmental criminology.

Results

Three key events delineate Wilson's long-lasting support for early crime prevention: his 1983 "Raising Kids" article with its special focus on family-based prevention; his help to initiate and champion developmental and longitudinal research on offending in the 1980s and 1990s; and his influential writings and behind-the-scenes work on early prevention throughout the 1990s and 2000s.

Conclusions

Wilson played an important role in advocating for early crime prevention. Without question, this is part of his enduring legacy to the field of criminology.     

The Effects of Dog-Training Programs: Experiences of Incarcerated Females

Dog-training programs (DTPs) in prisons have grown increasingly popular throughout the United States, but very little is known about their effects on both prisons and their participants. Furthermore, with increasing rates of female imprisonment, the demand for programs that address the needs of female offenders is high. Using interview data from female offenders, program coordinators, and prison staff (N = 27), this study examined the effect of DTPs on how female offenders experience prison. The present study found that DTP participation alleviated the pains of imprisonment that women offenders face, including problems in psychological and emotional health, motherhood, transferable skills, security, trust, and serving time. An assessment of which female offenders appear to benefit the most is outlined, and the broader implications of these findings are discussed.     

Measurement bias in self-reports of offending: a systematic review of experiments

Journal of Experimental Criminology - Self-reported offending is one of the primary measurement methods in criminology. In this article, we aimed to systematically review the experimental evidence...     

Early prediction of violent and non-violent youthful offending

Conclusions Violent and non-violent offending can be predicted more accurately than is generally believed. It is not difficult to identify a high risk category of people at age 8–10 who have an elevated probability (three or four times that of the remainder) of becoming offenders. This identification can be based on either antisocial behaviour or a deprived background or both. Depending on the prevalence of offending, the false positive rates may be high or low, but the odds ratio is a better measure of predictive efficiency. Overall, the early prediction of offending in the Cambridge study was quite impressive.     

An experimental study of sentencing by magistrates

A pilot study was carried out with 23 magistrates to develop a sentencing severity scale. An experiment was then conducted with 168 magistrates deciding sentences for simulated cases in 56 groups of three. The results showed that sentences were more severe when offenses were more serious, when offenders had a more serious criminal record, when offenders were male, and when offenders were of higher social status. The age of the offender, the race of the offender and victim, the plea, the prevalence of the offense, and whether breack of trust was involved, did not have significant effects on sentence severity. A comparison between real and simulated sentencing decisions showed that they were similar, and a comparison between individual and group decisions showed that the group decisions were more likely to be relatively severe than relatively lenient.This research was completed while Mr. Kapardis was supported by a Social Science Research Council studentship.