The Impact of Negative Publicity on Police Self-legitimacy

High-profile events involving police use of force in various cities throughout the US and internationally have garnered enormous media coverage and demonstrated the importance of police-community relations. To date little empirical attention has focused on how such events may negatively impact police officers. Using survey data from 567 officers, this study considers whether perceptions of negative publicity are adversely related to officers’ sense of self-legitimacy (i.e. the confidence they have in their authority). Findings revealed officers who felt less motivated as a result of negative publicity expressed less self-legitimacy. However, the degree to which officers felt their job had become more dangerous as a result of negative publicity was not significantly related to self-legitimacy. These findings increase our understanding of the sources of self-legitimacy and reveal that negative publicity surrounding law enforcement presents a unique challenge to officers’ confidence in their authority, which can have important implications for the community.     

Religious Motivated Hate Crimes: Reporting to Law Enforcement and Case Outcomes

Relative to non-bias motivated crimes, hate crimes have much graver consequences for victims and their community. Despite the large increase in religious hate crimes over the past decade relative to all other hate crime, little is known about these types of crimes and the factors associated with both reporting to law enforcement and case outcomes. Utilizing the National Crime Victimization Survey and National Incident-Based Reporting System datasets, this study examines the relationship between victim, offender, and incident characteristics on reporting to law enforcement and case outcomes. Most religious hate crimes are not reported (41.3 %) in part due to perceptions of law enforcement’s perceived response. Of the violent incidents that are reported, the vast majority do not result in the arrest of an offender (22.2 %). Whereas only a small number of variables related to the seriousness of the offense are associated with both reporting and arrest, these exhibited large effect sizes.     

Citizenship Status and Arrest Patterns for Violent and Narcotic-Related Offenses in Federal Judicial Districts along the U.S./Mexico Border

Media reports routinely reference the drug-related violence in Mexico, linking crime in communities along the Southwest U.S. Border to illegal immigrants. The primary purpose of the current research is to examine whether the media assertions can be supported. Logistic regression models were run to determine the impact of citizenship on the likelihood of disproportionate arrest for federal drug and violent crimes, along the U.S./Mexico border. In arrests for homicide, assault, robbery, and weapons offenses, U.S. citizens were disproportionately more likely than non-citizens to be arrested. The only federal crime where non-citizens were disproportionately more likely to be arrested than were U.S. citizens was for marijuana offenses. Results of the current study challenge the myth of the criminal immigrant.     

The third sector, user involvement and public service reform: a case study in the co-governance of health service provision

The ‘modernization’ of British public services seeks to broaden public sector governance networks, bringing the views of third sector organizations, the public and service users (among others) to the design, management and delivery of welfare. Building on previous analyses of the contradictions generated by these roles, this paper draws on longitudinal qualitative research to enunciate the challenges faced by one third-sector organization in facilitating service user influence in a UK National Health Service (NHS) pilot programme, alongside other roles in tension with this advocacy function. The analysis highlights limits in the extent to which lateral governance networks pluralize stakeholder involvement. The ‘framing’ of governance may mean that traditional concerns outweigh the views of new stakeholders such as the third sector and service users. Rather than prioritizing wider stakeholders' views in the design and delivery of public services, placing third sector organizations at the centre of governance networks may do more to co-opt these organizations in reproducing predominant priorities.     

“My Child is Shy and Has No Friends: What Does Parenting Have to Do with It?”

Accumulating evidence suggests that parents may react differentially to children based on their children’s temperament, children’s gender, and the interaction of these factors. Furthermore, parents’ differential reactions to their children have direct implications for their children’s social success. The present study assessed the moderating influence of mothers’ and fathers’ psychological control on the relationship between shy temperament and peer exclusion in grade five children (n = 153; 57% female), an age during which peer connections are particularly salient. Teachers reported on children’s shyness and peer exclusion, and children reported on parents’ psychological control. Regression analyses showed fathers’ psychological control to be associated with greater peer exclusion for males. Both mothers’ and fathers’ psychological control were associated with peer exclusion for shy females. Results suggest the importance of parents considering how psychologically controlling behaviors may work in concert with their children’s gender and temperament in influencing peer connections during the adolescent transition.     

Comparison of glass fragments using particle-induced X-ray emission (PIXE) spectrometry

A procedure has been developed to analyze the trace element concentrations in glass fragments using particle-induced X-ray emission (PIXE) spectrometry. This method involves using accelerated protons to excite inner-shell electronic transitions of target atoms and recording the resultant X-rays to characterize the trace element concentrations. The protocol was able to identify those glass fragments that originated from different sources based on their elemental analyses. The protocol includes specific approaches to calculating uncertainties and handling measurements below the level of detection. The results indicate that this approach has increased sensitivity for several elements with higher atomic number compared with X-ray fluorescence methods. While not as sensitive as laser-ablation or inductively coupled plasma mass spectrometry methods of dissolved samples, it is entirely nondestructive and entails a much simpler sample preparation process that may be used to presort glass fragments for more comprehensive elemental analysis. As such, the technique described may have a niche role in forensic glass analysis.     

Motives and methods for leaving the gang: Understanding the process of gang desistance

Purpose

This study examined the process of leaving the gang. Gang membership was conceptualized in a life course framework and the motives for why and methods for how one leaves the gang were analyzed.

Methods

Data were gathered from a sample of 84 juvenile arrestees in Arizona, all of whom left their gang. Motives for leaving the gang were organized into factors internal (push) and external (pull) to the gang, while methods for leaving the gang were organized into hostile and non-hostile modes of departure. Motives and methods were cross-classified and their correlates were examined, notably in relation to gang ties—persisting social and emotional attachments to the gang.

Results

Push motives and non-hostile methods were the modal responses for leaving the gang. While it was not uncommon to experience a hostile departure from the gang, most former gang members reported walking away without ritual violence or ceremony. This method was conditional on the motive for departure, however. None of the individuals leaving the gang for pull or external reasons experienced a hostile departure. While gang ties persisted regardless of motive or method, retaining such ties corresponded with serious consequences.

Conclusions

A life course framework is capable of organizing similarities between leaving the gang and desistance from other forms of crime and deviant groups. The process of gang desistance is consistent with asymmetrical causation. Due to limited attention to this process, a typology is introduced as a basis for understanding leaving the gang in relation to desisting from crime.     

The effect of low self-control on perceived police legitimacy

Objective

The process-based model has influenced policing research for a number of years, but the role of individual differences on procedural justice judgments and perceived police legitimacy has received limited attention. The current study fills a void in the literature by examining the effect of low self-control on individuals’ procedural justice judgments and perceptions of police legitimacy.

Materials and Methods

The study uses a sample of young adults and estimates a series of OLS regression models to determine the effect of low self-control on the process-based model of policing.

Results

The findings demonstrate that low self-control is associated with unfavorable procedural justice judgments. In turn, procedural justice mediates the effect of low self-control on perceived police legitimacy. Low self-control, however, is also shown to condition the effect of procedural justice on legitimacy. Specifically, the effect of procedural justice on legitimacy becomes weaker with reduced levels of self-control.

Conclusions

These findings suggest that studies should account for self-control in process-based policing research and police policy should consider the impact of individual differences when implementing process-based strategies.     

Courts' misplaced confidence in psychiatric diagnoses

In considering psychiatric evidence, criminal justice systems make considerable use of labels from official psychiatric classificatory systems. There are legislated requirements for psychological and/or behavioural phenomena to be addressed in legal tests, however medico-legal use of the current categorical diagnostic frameworks which are increasingly complex is difficult to justify. The lack of validity in large domains of the present classificatory systems is now more openly acknowledged, prompting a critical rethink. Illustrative examples include post-traumatic stress disorder, various personality disorders, and dissociative identity disorder. It follows that the Courts' faith in the present categorical classifications (e.g., DSMIV and ICD10) is misplaced and may be ultimately unhelpful to the administration of justice.     

Abolishing Some More Obsolete Crown Prerogatives

The Crown had many prerogatives (privileges) which other legal and natural persons did not have, due to the pre-eminent role of the sovereign. Some of these the Crown delegated to its subjects. That is, it franchised them, in return for money. In modern times??with the sovereign only having a formal role??it needs to be considered whether these Crown prerogatives should pass to the control of Parliament. Also, where they are obsolete, their abolition. A previous article has argued for the abolition of many obsolete prerogatives relating to the military. This article argues that the prerogatives of the Crown to levy pontage (a toll for the building, and repair, of bridges) and murage (a toll for the building, and repair, of town and city walls for defensive purposes) should be abolished. So too, the right of the Crown to waifs (stolen goods cast away by a thief in flight) and estrays (animals wandering in any manor or lordship whose owner is unknown). Also, that the prerogative of the Crown to unmarked mute swans in open water be restricted to the Thames??where it is only presently exercised. Finally, this article argues for the abolition of the palatinates of Lancaster, Chester and Durham??since the prerogatives once given to them by the Crown have now reverted to the same??and for the abolition of various long obsolete prerogatives given to the Cinque Ports.