Projecting the impact of new sentencing laws on prison populations

Recent efforts at sentencing reform have led to the consideration or enactment of new sentencing structures, including mandatory-minimum sentences, flat-time sentences, and sentencing guidelines. There is a clear need for estimates of the impacts that new sentencing laws would have on sentencing practice and on corrections programs, both as an informational input during legislative debate and as a basis for planning once a particular law is enacted. This study develops a methodology for estimating the impacts of alternative sentencing policies on prison populations. The methodology is demonstrated with an estimation of the impacts on the Pennsylvania state prison system of a mandatory-minimum sentencing bill which was considered by the Pennsylvania legislature.This research was supported in part by SPC No. 568788 funded by the Pennsylvania Governor's Justice Commission. The assistance of the Governor's Justice Commission, the Pennsylvania Association of Probation, Parole, and Correction, the Pennsylvania Bureau of Correction, the Pennsylvania Department of Education, and the Subcommittee on Crime and Correction of the Pennsylvania House Judiciary Committee in providing data and information is gratefully acknowledged. Appreciation is also due to Alfred Blumstein and Patrick Larkey for providing helpful comments on an earlier draft of this paper.     

Hostility and stress as mediators of aggression in violent men

This research investigated hypothesized differences on the Buss-Durkee Hostility Inventory between five groups of men who varied in terms of being violent toward female cohabitants, nonfamily members, or no one, and in terms of marital satisfaction. Other measures, such as stress and childhood abuse data, were employed to interpret the findings. A two-way MANCOVA (group by race) with six sociodemographic covariates revealed significant differences on three Hostility Inventory subscales. The maritally violent men had significantly higher total Hostility than any of the other groups and were significantly discriminable from the other groups. Nonetheless, the beliefs and behaviors of violence-prone individuals overlap to some degree. A cognitive-behavioral model with stimulus variables of life Stressors, intervening variables of hostility and negative stress reactions, and response variables of different forms of aggression served as a framework for interpreting the results.     

Urban homicide: Some recent developments

We examine homicide data from fifty of the largest U.S. cities for the years 1976–1977 and, in particular, compare them to similar data for 1971–1972. The results reinforce earlier predictions that one in seventy urban residents born this decade will ultimately be murdered. However, the dispersion of murder risk as a function of race, sex, and city has apparently dropped considerably in the last few years.