THE CASCADING EFFECTS OF ADOLESCENT GANG INVOLVEMENT ACROSS THE LIFE COURSE*

The short‐run deleterious effects of gang involvement during adolescence have been well researched. However, surprisingly little empirical attention has been devoted to understanding how gang involvement in adolescence influences life chances and criminal behavior in adulthood. Drawing on the life‐course perspective, this study argues that gang involvement will lead to precocious transitions that, in turn, will have adverse consequences on the fulfillment of adulthood roles and statuses in the economic and family spheres. Moreover, problems fulfilling these conventional roles are hypothesized then to lead to sustained involvement in criminal behavior in adulthood. Using data from a sample of males from the Rochester Youth Development Study, results from structural equation models support the indirect link between gang membership and noncriminal and criminal outcomes in adulthood. Specifically, gang involvement leads to an increase in the number of precocious transitions experienced that result in both economic hardship and family problems in adulthood. These failures in the economic and family realms, in turn, contribute to involvement in street crime and/or arrest in adulthood. Implications for the criminal desistance process are discussed.     

Comparing NOMINATE and IDEAL: Points of Difference and Monte Carlo Tests

Empirical models of spatial voting allow us to infer legislators' locations in an abstract policy or ideological space using their roll‐call votes. Over the past 25 years, these models have provided new insights about the U.S. Congress, and legislative behavior more generally. There are now a number of alternative models, estimators, and software packages that researchers can use to recover latent issue or ideological spaces from voting data. These different tools usually produce substantively similar estimates, but important differences also arise. We investigated the sources of observed differences between two leading methods, NOMINATE and IDEAL. Using data from the 1994 to 1997 Supreme Court and the 109th Senate, we determined that while some observed differences in the estimates produced by each model stem from fundamental differences in the models' underlying behavioral assumptions, others arise from arbitrary differences in implementation. Our Monte Carlo experiments revealed that neither model has a clear advantage over the other in the recovery of legislator locations or roll‐call midpoints in either large or small legislatures.     

Northern Democrats and Party Polarization in the U.S. House

Abstract: Over the last 25 years, there has been a steady increase in party voting in the U.S. House, with much of this increase attributed to changes in the South. We argue that changes in the North are also important. Democrats now win a higher percentage of elections in the North, and a larger percentage of the congressional party comes from the North. Northern Democrats became steadily more liberal in the 1980s and 1990s, which increased the liberal record of the entire party. We examine two factors in the rise in liberal voting in the North. First, Democrats now win more seats in urban, lower‐income, nonwhite districts that tend to generate liberal voting records. Second, there has been an increase in the number of districts that tend to produce liberal‐voting Democrats. Together, these changes have resulted in more liberal Democratic Party voting and greater polarization between the parties.     

Justice Without Borders: Human Rights Cases in U.S. Courts

In 1980 the Second Circuit Court of Appeals broke with years of legal tradition and ruled that human rights victims could sue their oppressors in federal court—even if the alleged violations occurred outside the country. This court based the extension of its authority on a provision of the 1789 Judiciary Act now referred to as the Alien Tort Claims Act (ATCA). ATCA cases present a unique opportunity to study judicial behavior in the face of separation of powers interests, traditions of judicial restraint, sovereign immunity defenses, and an active internationalist movement to extend human rights guarantees worldwide. Combining legal analysis with quantitative methodology, I find that U.S. federal courts are slowly accepting an internationalist approach to human rights, and that interest groups are largely driving this transformation. Sovereignty concerns and judicial ideology are not conditioning case outcomes, but party resources and separation of powers issues are.     

Public Approval ofU.S. State Legislatures

The determinants of public approval for state legislatures have not received much attention, but one important finding is that more professionalized legislatures experience lower levels of public support. We argue that this result is an artifact of limited data and problematic model specifications. Analyzing a large national survey sample, we demonstrate that the negative relationship holds primarily for conservatives and to a lesser extent for moderates but not liberals. Additionally, we find that legislative approval in states with term limits and ballot initiatives is no different than in states without these institutions.     

Justice by Other Means: Venue Sorting in Parole Revocation

We consider the factors that shape venue sorting, the process by which a legal case can be handled through different organizational arrangements with distinct procedures, institutional cultures, and sanctioning constraints. The empirical area for our investigation of venue sorting is California's parole revocation system, in which parolees accused of new crimes can be returned to prison by either criminal courts or the parole board. We find that seriousness of the alleged offense partially predicts the venue through which parolees are sanctioned. However, venue sorting is further explained by decision makers' perceptions of parolee threat, as well as concerns about organizational efficiency and legitimacy. We conclude by discussing how these findings may relate to the general phenomenon of venue sorting across a range of legal situations.