How Many Offenses are Really Committed per Juvenile Court Offender?

This article compares juvenile court petitions and self-reported offending between ages 13 and 17 for 506 boys followed up in the Pittsburgh Youth Study. There were 2.4 self-reported offenders for every petitioned offender, and 80 self-reported offenses for every petitioned offense. The prevalence of self-reported offenders stayed constant with age, but the prevalence of petitioned offenders increased with age. Conversely, the individual offending frequency stayed constant with age according to court petitions but increased with age according to self-reports. Therefore, prevalence and frequency did not vary similarly with age, and did not vary similarly in self-reports and court records. With increasing age, more and more of the self-reported offenders were formally petitioned, but they were formally petitioned for fewer and fewer of their offenses. The probability of an offender being petitioned to court increased with the number of offenses that he committed, but the probability of each offense leading to a court petition decreased with the number of offenses committed. There was little overlap between self-reported and official chronic offenders. It is concluded that researchers should always measure both self-reports and official records in studying offending, and that the juvenile court should seek to intervene earlier in delinquency careers.     

Students' Fear After Columbine: Findings from a Randomized Experiment

On April 20, 1999, the most deadly act of school violence in the United States occurred at Columbine High School. Public perceptions and media accounts suggested that fear of victimization at school greatly increased after Columbine. The actual response is unknown. The 1999 School Crime Supplement to the National Crime Victimization Survey provides a unique opportunity to study Columbine's effect on students' fear. Experimental conditions were approximated by the NCVS sampling design that randomly allocated the 12- to 18-year-old student-respondents to pre- and post-April 20 groups. Contrary to expectations, students were only slightly more fearful after Columbine. An initial explanation for this finding is explored. As little is known about fear following highly publicized incidents of extreme violence such as Columbine and the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001, this research provides an essential foundation for further study and theoretical development in this largely-ignored area of fear.     

Speedy trial and the legal process

The role of speedy trial in state proceedings is empirically investigated for defendants in criminal homicide (N=444). Employing multiple regression techniques, an assessment is made of the relationship between the length of time involved in defendants' legal processing, their sociolegal status, and the final dispositions awarded by the court. The findings show that blacks and jailed defendants are processed more swiftly than their white and bailed counterparts. The consitutional guarantee of speedy trial also appears to be a state resource, in that cases adjudicated promptly result in higher conviction rates than those which are delayed. This is especially so for defendants who are not released on bail, and may be attributed to the prosecutorial success that accompanies the availability of witnesses whose memories are unclouded by time and the existence of a social climate that calls for retribution. While not related to postponement in the present study, it is suggested that the efforts of counsel in obtaining delay may become increasingly important with the adoption of the new federal guidelines.     

The adolescent experience of pregnancy and abortion: A developmental analysis

Discernible trends in the largely inconclusive survey-oriented literature on adolescent pregnancy and abortion suggest that demographic idiosyncracies or neurotic predispositions are the significant correlates of illegitimacy. An in-depth study of a homogeneous population of 13 unwed pregnant adolescents suggests a strong developmental determinant. The experience of pregnancy and abortion is heavily determined by the stage-specific conflicts of early, middle, and late adolescence. From an analysis of interview and projective materials, three clinically and statistically significant patterns of the experience and motivation for pregnancy emerge, one for each of the three adolescent substages. It is suggested that similar developmental paradigms could be applied to a wide range of adolescent issues.This paper is based on a dissertation written in 1972 at the University of Michigan.Received Ph.D. from the University of Michigan. She is presently working at the University of Michigan Health Service as a psychologist. She plants to continue studies of problems connected with feminine adolescent development.     

Regulation,consultation and divergent community views: the case of access to ART by lesbian and single women

In the many countries which have some form of regulation of ART, a public consultation of some sort is a frequent feature of either the process leading up to regulation or of the regulatory mechanism itself. Not surprisingly, widely divergent views on the moral and political acceptability of ART are expressed during such consultations. And while such diversity of opinion is to be expected, and some even argue welcomed, in pluralist liberal democratic societies, it is often unclear how these divergent community views are and ought to be fed into the opinion-forming and decision-making processes of governments or the bodies that advise them. This article discusses first why regulation of ART may be justified, even when there is radical moral disagreement in the community, and why public consultations should play a central role in the work that advisory bodies undertake in making regulatory recommendations to government. Then, it both proposes and justifies a method for dealing with the contradictory moral views expressed by interested parties during the consultation process. To illustrate this method, the example of the attempt by single and lesbian women to access donor insemination services and ART is used.     

A population at risk: civil commitment of substance abusers after Kansas v. Hendricks

In its 1997 decision, Kansas v. Hendricks, the U.S. Supreme Court radically changed the face of civil commitment. In finding the Kansas Sexually Violent Predators Act constitutional, the Court liberalized the first constitutional requirement for involuntary commitment from "mental illness" to a much broader "mental abnormality" standard, without correspondingly restricting the second requirement of dangerousness. The decision essentially authorizes states to civilly commit a broad range of individuals without sufficient due process protections. This Comment explores the possibilities for expansion of civil commitment in the wake of Hendricks. It argues that the holding was unjustifiably broad, focusing in particular on the potential danger facing substance abusers. In conclusion, it offers several suggestions for mitigating the potential misuse of this dangerous precedent.