CRIMINAL PROPENSITIES,DISCRETE GROUPS OF OFFENDERS,AND PERSISTENCE IN CRIME*

Criminal propensity theorists argue that the causes of variation in offending behavior can be traced to variation in one or more causal traits. Other theorists contend that there is actually more than one type of offender and that more than one causal mechanism operates to explain offending behavior. In this article, some of the implications of these two positions are considered. Then, their congruence with recidivism data from a cohort of post-age-16 North Carolina institutional releasees (N = 848) is assessed, The analysis focuses specifically on whether the correlates of offending persistence are similar across two categories of individuals: those who experienced their first adjudication at an early age and those who were first adjudicated at a later age. In support of both positions, some similarities and some differences in the correlates of persistence were discovered. The differences, however, were only evident when the threshold for late first adjudication was set to age 12. When this threshold was raised to higher ages, the differences disappeared.     

Proposals for Improving GPRA Annual Performance Plans

The Government Performance and Results Act process is now well embedded in the departments and agencies, and it is now timely to consider ways to improve the value of agency plans and reports, both to the Congress and to agency managers. This article offers several recommendations about how Annual Performance Plans can be made more valuable.     

PRETRIAL RELEASE AND BAIL DECISIONS

This study examines the relative effects of a number of legal and extralegal factors on (1) the decision to release on recognizance and (2) the decision on amount of money bail. Social science research on these issues has been sparse compared to that on other phases of the criminal justice process. Findings from a regression analysis show that the first step of the bond disposition process, the recognizance decision, is influenced by several factors. The demeanor of defendants in open court is the most important. Net of other influences, good demeanor increases the probability of release on recognizance by 34.8%. In cases where recognizance is denied, only two variables are related significantly to the amount of money bond. Net of other influences, a felony offense (as opposed to a misdemeanor) increases predicted bail by $2300, and poor demeanor increases the predicted bail required by $1600.