Examining the empirical relationship between prison crowding and inmate misconduct: A meta-analysis of conflicting research results

Incarceration rates in the United States dramatically increased over the past several decades. This trend has drawn significant academic attention to prison overcrowding and its potential effect on inmate misconduct. The empirical relationship between inmate misconduct and overcrowding, however, is less than clear. To be sure, studies indicating positive, negative, and null relationships can all be found in the literature. The current research subjects this body of literature to a meta-analysis in an effort to: (1) clarify the direction and strength of the relationship between overcrowding and rates of prison misconduct across all studies, and (2) to uncover the degree to which variation in research outcomes can be attributed to methodological differences across studies. Results indicate that prison crowding has little substantive impact on inmate misconduct. Implications of the findings are discussed in detail.     

A Test of Generalizability of the Social Development Model Across Gender and Income Groups with Longitudinal Data from the Elementary School Developmental Period

The social development model (SDM) is a theory of behavior that has proven useful in explaining the etiology of delinquency, violence, and substance use among adolescents as well as early antisocial behavior among pre-adolescents. A further test of the model is its generalizability across population groups. A section of the SDM representing prosocial influences in the etiology of problem behavior was compared for boys and girls and for children from low- and non low-income families using three waves of child, parent and teacher survey data on a sample of 851 elementary school students. Multiple group structural equation modeling was used to assess differences across groups in both measurement of model constructs and hypothesized structural paths between constructs. The results indicate overall similarity in the reliability of measurement models and validity of structural models.     

General systems theory and criminal justice

Criminal justice agencies are organized sequentially — “output” from one agency is “input” to the next — but most scholars argue that criminal justice is not a system in a theoretical sense. In this article, it is argued that general systems theory (GST) reveals important insights into criminal justice structures and functions. Specifically, it is argued that the criminal justice system processes “cases” rather than people, and that the common goal of criminal justice processing is to “close cases so that they stay closed.” It also is argued that processing capacity progressively declines, in that at each system point the subsequent agency cannot input as many cases as the previous agency can output. Each agency therefore experiences “backward pressure” to close cases in order to reduce input to the next agency. Overall, this article highlights that criminal justice agents and agencies are best understood as operating in the context of the larger whole, thus it is concluded that criminal justice is a system in the sense of general systems theory.     

Thyreoglobulin and violent asphyxia

The concentration of thyreoglobulin (tg) was determined for death caused by hanging, strangulation by ligature, and throttling. Cases of sudden death (traumatic aortic rupture, penetrating wounds of the heart) were used for comparison. The mean values in cases of hanging (149.9±202.3 ng/ml), strangulation by ligature (193.1±173.3), manual strangulation (561.6±173.9) are distinguishable from violent acute deaths (23.3±27.6) and living healthy individuals (17.3±16.1). By means of statistical comparisons, significant differences were found between throttling and strangulation by ligature and between throttling and hanging (adjusted P<0.001). In connection with examination of the bodies high tg values can be regarded as a vital reaction in obstructive asphyxia.     

COMMUNITY ACCOUNTABILITY,MINORITY THREAT,AND POLICE BRUTALITY: AN EXAMINATION OF CIVIL RIGHTS CRIMINAL COMPLAINTS*

A growing body of evidence shows that minorities are disproportionately the targets of police brutality, but important theoretical questions about the causes of that inequity remain unanswered. One promising line of research involves structural‐level analyses of the incidence of police brutality complaints; however, existing studies do not incorporate variables from alternative theoretical explanations. Drawing on the community accountability hypothesis and the threat hypothesis, we tested the predictions of two prominent structural‐level explanations of police brutality in a study of civil rights criminal complaints. The study included cities of 150,000+ population (n = 114). The findings reveal that two community accountability variables—ratio percent Hispanic citizens to percent Hispanic police officers and the presence of citizen review—were related positively to police brutality complaints, partially supporting that perspective. Two threat hypothesis measures of threatening people—percent black and percent Hispanic (in the Southwest)—were related positively to complaints, as predicted. The relative degree of support for the two hypotheses is assessed.