Reliability and Validity of Prisoner Self-Reports Gathered Using the Life Event Calendar Method

Data collection using the life event calendar method is growing, but reliability is not well established. We examine test–retest reliability of monthly self-reports of criminal behavior collected using a life event calendar from a random sample of minimum and medium security prisoners. Tabular analysis indicates substantial agreement between self-reports of drug dealing, property, and violent crime during a baseline interview (test) and a follow-up (retest) approximately 3 weeks later. Hierarchical analysis reveals that criminal activity reported during the initial test is strongly associated with responses given in the retest, and that the relationship varies only by the lag in days between the initial interview and the retest. Analysis of validity reveals that self-reported incarceration history is strongly predictive of official incarceration history although we were unable to address whether subjects could correctly identify the months they were incarcerated. African Americans and older subjects provide more valid responses but in practical terms the differences in validity are not large.     

An Integrated Model of Legal and Moral Reasoning and Rule-Violating Behavior: The Role of Legal Attitudes

Legal socialization theory predicts that attitudes mediate the relation between legal reasoning and rule-violating behavior [Cohn, E. S., & White, S. O. (1990). Legal Socialization: A Study of Norms and Rules. New York: Springer-Verlag]. Moral development theory predicts that moral reasoning predicts rule-violating behavior directly as well as indirectly [Blasi, A. (1980). Bridging moral cognition and moral action: A critical review of the literature. Psychological Bulletin, 88, 1–45]. We present and test an integrated model of rule-violating behavior drawing on both theories in a longitudinal study of middle school and high school students. Students completed questionnaires three times during the course of 1 year at 6-month intervals. Legal and moral reasoning, legal attitudes, and rule-violating behavior were measured at times one, two, and three respectively. Structural equation models revealed that while moral and legal reasoning were directly and indirectly related to rule-violating behavior among high school students, legal reasoning bore no direct relation to rule-violating behavior among middle school students. The implications for an integrated model of reasoning and rule-violating behavior are discussed.     

Cultural Cognition and Public Policy: The Case of Outpatient Commitment Laws

What explains controversy over outpatient commitment laws (OCLs), which authorize courts to order persons with mental illness to accept outpatient treatment? We hypothesized that attitudes toward OCLs reflect “cultural cognition” (DiMaggio, P. Annl Rev Sociol 23:263–287, 1997), which motivates individuals to conform their beliefs about policy-relevant facts to their cultural values. In a study involving a diverse sample of Americans (N = 1,496), we found that individuals who are hierarchical and communitarian tend to support OCLs, while those who are egalitarian and individualistic tend to oppose them. These relationships, moreover, fit the cultural cognition hypothesis: that is, rather than directly influencing OCL support, cultural values, mediated by affect, shaped individuals’ perceptions of how effectively OCLs promote public health and safety. We discuss the implications for informed public deliberation over OCLs.     

Playing the race card: Making race salient in defence opening and closing statements

Purpose. Researchers have reported that making a Black defendant's race salient reduces White jurors' tendency to find Black defendants guilty ( Sommers & Ellsworth, 2000 ). We examined whether making race salient by including racially salient statements in the defence attorney's opening and closing statements (i.e., ‘playing the race card’) reduced White jurors' racial bias against a Black defendant. Method. We obtained scores on racial attitudes for 151 White college students who participated in an experiment where defendant race (Black, White) and race salience (not salient, salient) were manipulated in a between‐subjects design. Participants read one of four trial stimuli and completed dependent measures. Results. ‘Playing the race card’ reduced White juror racial bias as White jurors' ratings of guilt for Black defendants were significantly lower when the defence attorney's statements included racially salient statements. White juror ratings of guilt for White defendants and Black defendants were not significantly different when race was not made salient. This effect was separate from jurors' level of prejudice (as measured by racial attitudes) as high prejudice participants were more likely than low prejudice participants to find the Black defendant guilty, independent of the race salience manipulation. Conclusion. Our study indicated that an explicit attempt by a defence attorney to ‘play the race card’ was a beneficial trial strategy a defence attorney could use to reduce White jurors' bias towards Black defendants. However, the beneficial effect of such a strategy may not reduce White jurors' bias towards Black defendants for all White jurors.     

Mental reinstatement of context with child witnesses: does it matter whether context is reinstated ‘out loud’?

Abstract

In this study we examined the impact of two types of mental reinstatement of context instructions in facilitating children's recall of a staged event across two stages of development. Specifically, a 2 × 3 factorial design was utilised incorporating two age groups (6- and 12-year-olds) and three interview conditions (standard recall, mental reinstatement where the child was instructed to reinstate the context ‘out loud’, and mental reinstatement without the explicit ‘out loud’ instruction). Overall, mental reinstatement instruction led to more correct and fewer incorrect responses than the standard recall instruction. The effect of mental reinstatement was similar across the age groups and irrespective of whether the child was asked to reinstate ‘out loud’. Beneficial effects of the technique, however, were only evident for cued-recall questions as opposed to free-narrative responses. The implications of these findings and directions for future research are discussed.     

The behavioural consequences of institutional rules: republicans in the US house

The Republicans gained a majority in the US House from the 1994 elections, and upon taking office they rewrote the rules that determine legislative power relations. This paper combines a 1996 attitudinal survey of US Representatives with demographic information, status within the House, and party position to examine the impact of the 1995 rule changes on satisfaction, ambition, and retirement. This paper demonstrates that member reactions to reform are explained jointly by their partisanship and their relative position within their party. Senior members of any party dislike rules making power more exclusive, and dissatisfaction increases the likelihood of retirement.     

The Managed Growth Trickle-Up Theory

My title is designed to elicit warm vibes from the free marketeers as well as from the public controllers. For when devising programs to relate the interests of the poor and the environment, it is as necessary to seek consensus in order to progress as it is in other contexts². The managed growth trickle-up theory is designed to be a response by local and regional governments to move with alacrity in the provision of racially and economically integrated housing. Surely, now that Title I of the Housing and Community Development Act of 1974⁴ is law, localities and regions can no longer blame their segregative practices on bureaucratic HUD bungling. The locus of blame is now not only clearer; failure to integrate housing is also more expensive.     

Seeing White−Female Whiteness and the Purity of Children in Australian,Chinese and British Visual Culture

In this paper, I interrogate the expression and usage of ‘whiteness’ in Australian, British and Chinese visual culture. My approach is through reading local texts with an eye to transcultural systems of meaning, paying particular attention to the ways in which whiteness is used as a doubled category in sexual politics. The paper is formed through the performance of cross-cultural connectivities within an epistemological emphasis on the travelled theorist. The movement between Chinese, Australian and English ethical positions are constitutive of the perspectives expressed here; the perspectives are themselves concerned to look back and into those ethical positions. The performance works towards a recognition of the semiotic systems of power and identity, and therefore of the conditions of theoretical performance itself.     

Citizen participation through mobilization and the rise of political Islam in Indonesia

The idea that populations participate politically outside of the formal mechanisms of a political system and through mass mobilizations is a reasonably accepted part of political science orthodoxy. Since the turn of the last century, in Indonesia, as in other developing countries, populations have mobilized en masse at particular stages of their histories into nation-state building processes, as well as have been mobilized by political authorities seeking to bolster or install their regimes. In the 1960s, Sukarno increasingly sought to mobilize a range of classes and interests behind his presidency and, in 1965–66, Suharto and his military backers organized anti-communist groups behind a systematic campaign to eradicate the Communist Party and remove Sukarno. Throughout the so-called ‘New Order’ period (1966–98), Suharto periodically mobilized groups behind his presidency and against opponents who, in turn, engaged in occasional street demonstrations against the regime. In the mid-to-late 1990s, the opposition leader, Megawati Sukarnoputri became an important rallying point for popular dissent against Suharto and, in 1998, the student movement played a crucial role in street demonstrations which helped bring down the president after three decades of strongman rule. In the post-Suharto period, which has seen the installation of three presidents between 1998 and 2001, mass mobilizations have continued to be a striking feature of the political landscape. President Habibie mobilized pro-government militias against opponents and student demonstrators, who threatened to bring down his regime. The Muslim supporters of Abdurrahman Wahid entered the streets in their thousands to protest the parliamentary impeachment of the president. Radical Muslim groups demonstrated against US military strikes on Afghanistan and against President Megawati Sukarnoputri's initial soft stance on the strikes. Potentially, these kinds of demonstrations could undermine Megawati's presidency. However, parliamentary processes rather than street mobilizations brought the presidencies of Habibie and Abdurrahman to an end while Megawati is still seeing out her term. This article examines the political mobilizations of the late-Suharto and post-Suharto periods and asks whether these mobilizations pose a threat to Indonesia's fragile transition to democracy and to a more stable institutional political process.