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.”     

A Participant Evaluation of the U.S. Navy Parent Support Program

This study reports on the results of a program evaluation of the U.S. Navy New Parent Support Program (NPSP). NPSP is comprised of two components: center-based parenting classes and home-based visits. Data are presented on: (a) satisfaction with program quality, (b) how well the program met its primary objectives (e.g., helps reduce parenting stress), (c) how well the NPSP met its Reasons for Being (RFBs; e.g., Helps service members concentrate on their job), and (d) program impact on mission-related outcomes (i.e., quality of life (QOL), readiness, and program impact on their decision to remain in the military). Results indicate that parents who take part in both the parenting classes and home-based visits report that the program exceeded their expectations, the program improved their perceptions of their parenting and coping skills, they perceived that the program demonstrated the Navy’s concern for Sailors and their families, and the program enhanced the family’s quality of life. Implications of study findings are discussed.

Regulators and Redskins

We examine the correlation between federal government activity and performance of the capital’s National Football League team, the Washington Redskins. We find a positive, non-spurious, and robust correlation between the Redskins’ winning percentage and bureaucratic output, measured by pages published in the Federal Register. Because the Redskins’ performance is prototypically exogenous, we give this result a causal interpretation and provide a plausible, causal mechanism: bureaucrats must make “logrolling” deals to expand their regulatory power, and a winning football team offers a shared source of optimism to lubricate such negotiations. We do not find the same correlation when examining congressional activity.     

The place of punishment: Variation in the provision of inmate services staff across the punitive turn

Despite the growing literature on the punitive turn, knowledge of how the experience of American imprisonment varied across time and place remains limited. This article begins to fill that gap, providing a nuanced portrayal of variation in the practices of rehabilitation.

Purpose

To examine how one aspect of the rehabilitative ideal in practice—the provision of staff dedicated to inmate services—varied across time and place over the past 30 years.

Methods

The article presents statistics on the inmate-to-staff ratios for inmate services staff (including teachers, counselors, doctors, etc.) between the years 1979 and 2005 for all 50 U.S. states.

Results

The analyses reveal that while there was a substantial decline in the services staff ratio during the 1990s and 2000s, this shift across time paled in comparison to variation across place. Northeastern prison systems, for example, on average maintained higher inmate services staff ratios in 2005 than Southern states in any year. In addition, results suggest state variation is related to differences in prison crowding, inmates’ racial composition, and political cultures.

Conclusions

The findings suggest the punitive turn was more variegated and partial than is often assumed and highlight the importance of exploring state variation in penal practices.     

行政法官在发展社会政策中的作用

<正>行政法官有一种严重的、在一定意义上属于低人一等的情结。①相比于"真正的"法官,他们对自身的地位过度敏感。然而他们在社会中的作用却使其他法官黯然失色。尽管他们的价值常常受到成本—效益(cost effectiveness)的衡量,但最重要贡献却在于社会政策的发展方面。②鉴于行政国家的发展,他们已成为政策发展的关键角色。正如伟大智者詹姆斯·兰迪斯(James Landis)所言:"对行