Nature and consequences of dismissals: Implications for public safety and crime prevention in criminal courts in America

The role of dismissal as a major case disposition in criminal courts in America has been largely neglected in empirical studies to date, despite long-lasting questions about its nature and important implications for justice goals. This paper is a first attempt to fill in this gap.

Purpose

Drawing on untested assumptions about a possible dismissal-reoffending connection, the paper proposes a public safety framework for examining the nature of dismissals and their consequences for the community. Under this perspective, dismissal is a function of defendants’ risk attributes and contributes to subsequent public safety threat.

Methods

To test these hypotheses, predictive and causal analyses were conducted on an 800-case sample of criminal defendants in one large urban American jurisdiction, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. Cases were sampled at the first judicial stage and followed as a cohort for one year to record disposition and post-disposition outcomes.

Results

The findings indicate that defendants’ risk attributes contribute to the explanation of dismissal and that dismissal in itself adds to the probability of subsequent offending.

Conclusions

The findings raise questions about the justice system goals, particularly deterrence and have important policy implications for the processing and disposition of criminal cases in American jurisdictions.     

Spirituality: A development taboo

Spirituality is central to many of the daily decisions people in the 'South' make about their own and their community's development, including that of whether or not to participate in risky but potentially beneficial social action. Despite its importance, development literature and development practices have systematically avoided the topic of spirituality. This avoidance results in inferior research and less effective programmes, and ultimately fails to provide participants with opportunities to reflect on how their development and their spirituality will and should shape each other. The author offers some possible explanations for this and suggests ways in which to address spirituality in development theory and practice.     

Preemption, Unilateralism, and Hegemony: The American Tradition?

Historian John Lewis Gaddis has found precedent for the current war on terror in early American history, arguing that the British burning of the capitol in 1814 had an impact on defense policy similar to the terrorist attacks of 9/11, leading to an emphasis on preemption. In basic respects, Gaddis restates the consensus among diplomatic historians that the early republic's foreign policy focused on preemption, unilateralism, and hegemony. But these depictions of early American diplomacy conflate separate eras and ignore an opposing tradition that was more moderate and principled. They are not without some truth, but their imperious sway in histories of our country needs to be checked and balanced.     

Premature or stillborn? – The recent challenge to the Digital Economy Act

The High Court has recently delivered judgment on the judicial review of the Digital Economy Act 2010 (DEA) and the draft Costs Order¹ on application by BT and Talktalk.² Mr Justice Kenneth Parker rejected the application on all but one ground (one aspect of the cost sharing arrangement). See: The Queen on the Application of British Telecommunications Plc, Talktalk Telecom Group Plc v The Secretary of State for Business, Innovation and Skills [2011] EWHC 1021 (Admin), Judgment of 20. April 2011.     

The Shifting Roles of State Budget Offices in the Midwest: Gosling Revisited

Almost a decade ago a study of three midwestern states revealed a variety of budget office orientations, ranging from a control to a policy emphasis, including a state in transition from one to the other. This article revisits these states to examine their current orientations and whether different office orientations influence the role of budget analysts in the budgetary process. The results suggest that another stage should be added to Schick's 1966 framework to account for the evolution of some state budget offices to a policy orientation.