Role Conflict and the Psychological Impacts of the Post-Ferguson Period on Law Enforcement Motivation,Cynicism, and Apprehensiveness

In the wake of high-profile deadly force cases in the post-Ferguson era, a number of negative psychological outcomes have been depicted by law enforcement officers. We examine if negative post-Ferguson outcomes predict current cynicism, motivation, and apprehensiveness. Further, we account for whether role orientations, specifically support for a law enforcement orientation or a community policing orientation, mediate the psychological effects of the post-Ferguson period. Since the law enforcement orientation, exercised through strict enforcement of the law, has been called out of favor in the post-Ferguson area, supporting this role may negatively impact officers via role conflict. The opposite may be observed for those supporting a community policing orientation. We test these arguments using results from an online survey of law enforcement officers in the USA, administered 6 months following highly publicized incidents in Dallas and Baton Rouge where police were targeted and killed. Results showed that post-Ferguson psychological impacts continued to affect current levels of cynicism, motivation, and apprehensiveness. Support for law enforcement or community policing orientation did not mediate the effects of post-Ferguson sentiments. Nonetheless, role orientations played a significant role in predicting current cynicism, motivation, and apprehensiveness and provided support for the theory of role conflict.     

Same Routines,Different Effects: Gender,Leisure, and Young Offending

The current study seeks to extend routine activity theory by examining how gender conditions the relationship between leisure activities and adolescent delinquency. Using OLS regression with a sample of high school students from Toronto (n = 2,209), we find that (1) engaging in more unstructured and unsupervised activities with peers is associated with delinquency more strongly for boys than for girls, but is associated with substance use equally across gender; (2) this pattern is likely due to gender differences in the locations or contexts of leisure activities; and (3) prosocial leisure activities are associated with less delinquency only for boys. In general, routine activity theory appears apt at explaining the substance use of boys and girls, but is less capable of explaining the property and violent offending of girls. We discuss our findings and their implications for the growing body of research extending routine activity theory to explain gender differences in delinquency.     

Alternative Pathways to Violence in Persons with Schizophrenia: The Role of Childhood Antisocial Behavior Problems

Violence in schizophrenia patients may result from many factors besides the symptoms of schizophrenia. This study examined the relationship between childhood antisocial behavior and adult violence using data from the NIMH CATIE study. The prevalence of violence was higher among patients with a history of childhood conduct problems than among those without this history (28.2% vs. 14.6%; P < 0.001). In the conduct-problems group, violence was associated with current substance use at levels below diagnostic criteria. Positive psychotic symptoms were linked to violence only in the group without conduct problems. Findings suggest that violence among adults with schizophrenia may follow at least two distinct pathways-one associated with premorbid conditions, including antisocial conduct, and another associated with the acute psychopathology of schizophrenia.     

Making Austerity Popular: The Media and Mass Attitudes toward Fiscal Policy

What explains variation in individual attitudes toward government deficits? Although macroeconomic stance is of paramount importance for contemporary governments, our understanding of its popular politics is limited. We argue that popular attitudes regarding austerity are influenced by media (and wider elite) framing. Information necessary to form preferences on the deficit is not provided neutrally, and its provision shapes how voters understand their interests. A wide range of evidence from Britain between 2010 and 2015 supports this claim. In the British Election Study, deficit attitudes vary systematically with the source of news consumption, even controlling for party identification. A structural topic model of two major newspapers' reporting shows that content varies systematically with respect to coverage of public borrowing—in ways that intuitively accord with the attitudes of their readership. Finally, a survey experiment suggests causation from media to attitudes: deficit preferences change based on the presentation of deficit information.     

A Forked River Runs Through Law School: Toward Understanding Race, Gender, Age, and Related Gaps in Law School Performance and Bar Passage

Analyses of the National Longitudinal Bar Passage Study (N = 27,478), demonstrate that law schools enlarge entering academic differences across race, age, disability, and socioeconomic origins rather than reduce them, and that academic differences in turn impact bar passage. Such differences cannot be reduced to (1) academic preparation, effort, or distractions; (2) instructional or law school-type characteristics; (3) social class; or (4) acceptance of an elitist legal ethos. Rather, results suggest that (1) women, minorities, and other atypical law students confront stigmatization throughout legal education;(2) for women (entering law school in 1991), this stigmatization is new, rejected, and consequently unassociated with law school outcomes; (3) for minorities, this stigmatization is continuous with prior socialization, making resistance difficult and consequent impact sizable; and (4) for other atypical law students, this stigmatization varies with visibility of difference, as do resistance and impact. Implications for social stigma theory and legal education are discussed.     

Strategic retirements: A political model of turnover on the United States Supreme Court

The president's ability to nominate justices to the United States Supreme Court is one of his most powerful tools for advancing his policy goals. To maximize the use of this tool it is important that he be able to determine how reasonable it is to expect a retirement from the Court during his presidency. Prior research is inconclusive as to whether Court retirements are politically motivated. In this study I develop and test a political model of Court retirements. The results from estimating the model using exponential Poisson regression show there to be an identifiable political element relating to the timing of retirements from the Court.An earlier version of this paper was presented at the 1990 Annual Meeting of the Southern Political Science Association, Atlanta, Georgia.