PARENTS AND DRUGS REVISITED: SOME FURTHER EVIDENCE IN SUPPORT OF SOCIAL LEARNING THEORY*

Social control and social learning theories suggest divergent relationships between attachment to parents and children's drug use when level of parent drug use is considered. Social control theory proposes a uniformly negative relationship between children's drug use and attachment to parents whereas social learning theory proposes that the relationship is affected by parental drug use. The relationship between attachment to parents and children's drug use was investigated for each of three groups of low, moderate, and high parental drug use through estimation of a latent variable structural model of attachment to family on children's tobacco, alcohol, and marijuana use. Results indicate that attachment to parents related inversely, but with different magnitudes, to children's drug use for youths whose parents use drugs at low or moderate levels. No significant relationship exists between attachment to family and children's drug use for youths whose parents are relatively high-level users. Neither ethnicity nor sex affected these findings. The implications of these results supporting social learning theory are discussed.     

PROBLEMS AND STRATEGIES IN GAINING RESEARCH ACCESS IN POLICE ORGANIZATIONS

“Access” is conceived of as involving passage through two gates: one manned by the top-level authority figures of the organization, and the other by the proposed subjects of one's study. Within this framework, informal contacts, contingent acceptance at successive organizational levels, and self-selection are identified and discussed as the factors most central to an understanding of our successful access into three police organizations and our failures to gain access to two police organizations.     

SOCIALIZING THE LEGAL PROFESSION: Can Redistributing Lawyers' Services Achieve Social Justice?

Redistributing laywers' services is a principal focus of efforts to reform contemporary legal systems. Such reforms generally attempt to modify the market distribution in oneof two ways: by subsidizing lawyers for the unrepresented, or by rendering lawyers unnecessary through deprofessionalization. This essay analyzes the contribution that redistribution could make to social (rather than formal) justice by extrapolating the consequences of the greatest conceivable redistribution: a socialization of the profession that would withdraw lawyers from those who presently purchase lawyers' services, while simultaneously subsidizing lawyers for the unrepresented. It then turns to the political prospects forsocialization. Concluding that socialization appears either feasible nor likely to attainsocial justice if it were possible, the essay reflects on the implications of continued pursuit of reformist goals.     

THE IMPACT OF FAMILY STRUCTURE AND QUALITY ON DELINQUENCY: A COMPARATIVE ASSESSMENT OF STRUCTURAL AND FUNCTIONAL FACTORS*

Despite the plethora of studies of broken homes, multivariate studies comparing the effects of the broken home and other theoretically relevant measures of the quality of family life are rare. This study examines the family structure versus family function issue by testing the comparative effects on self-reported delinquency of family structure and jive measures of family function. Five types of delinquency are considered. The data were obtained from a 1980 survey of 152 high school students in a small midwestern town. Item analysis and data reduction techniques were employed to construct six family quality indices and jive delinquency indices. Two types of family structure were examined: presence of both biological parents in the home v. other and single- v. two-parent homes. Multivariate analyses controlled for the effects of age and gender. Bivariate tests of the relationships between broken homes and delinquency were not significant, except for a moderate relationship between broken homes and status offenses. In addition, a bivariate relation between single-parent homes and delinquency was observed for status offenses only. Other forms of family dysfunction all were significantly related to overall delinquency and to status offenses. Moreover, several measures of family quality evidenced significant bivariate relationships to property offenses. violent offenses, and drug offenses. The importance of the broken home was further diminished when the direct effects of broken homes and home quality were examined in multivariate tests. Regression equations showed home quality and gender, rather than family structure, to be the more important determinants of delinquency. The family structure coefficient was significant in only 1 of 10 tests, a regression of broken home and home quality on status offenses. Efforts to expand the analysis to identify specific areas of family dysfunction were unenlightening.     

THE PRODUCTION OF CRIMINOLOGY

Criminology—in theory and practice—is a form of cultural production. We are creating a way of understanding and a way of living in the world. Our production, however. is mediated by our location in the class structure. Whether our expressions are critical and reflexive or merely reflections of capitalism is shaped by our ability to think dialectically and by our conscious involvement in the class struggle. We are in Ihe position-intellectually and socially-to think about and act upon the production of a socialist future.     

ELIOT OF HARVARD

Several years ago, I was asked to deliver a mid‐summer lecture to a group of university presidents on the subject of leadership. With the unusual luxury of having some time to prepare, I chose not to reflect upon my personal experiences, but to seek inspiration from history. Initially, I planned to draw lessons from the work of the greatest of my Yale predecessors, as well as several presidents with distinguished records at other institutions. The more I read, the more convinced I became that one leader stands above all others in the history of American higher education. He, alas, was not a Yale man.