DETERMINANTS OF ATTITUDES TOWARD CITY POLICE

This paper reports the results of a survey of attitudes toward police and police service among 273 citizens in 4 neighborhoods in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. Extensive socioeconomic and personal history data were collected for all individuals. Results indicate that personal history. particularly respondents’perceptions of the way in which specific officers have related to them personally in previous encounters, is a more significant determinant of general attitudes towards police than were all socioeconomic variables including race and income. Results thus suggest that positive styles of policing will significantly affect police-community relations, and that police-community relations programs stressing officer-citizen interaction in a law enforcement context will have the highest probability of success.     

TRUTH IN GOVERNMENT AND THE POLITICIZATION OF PUBLIC SERVICE ADVICE

Recent controversies over intelligence in Iraq, to give one example, have raised problems about the politicization of official advice from government, particularly what we are led to believe is factual or ‘objective’ advice. Objectivity is a contested value and the lines are often hard to draw between fact, spin and misrepresentation. Public servants are held to higher standards of objectivity than politicians, a fact on which politicians trade when they seek to attribute assessments of evidence to their officials. The growing openness of government documentation is placing pressure on departmental officials who wish to be both loyal to their political masters and honest in their factual assessments. These issues are discussed with reference to recent Australian experience (and also with reference to the UK Hutton Inquiry into the death of Dr David Kelly.     

Newspaper Coverage of Corporate Price-Fixing

Among the reasons common corporate crimes such as price-fixing lack the "brimstone smell" of common street crimes such as burglary is that newspapers fail to provide frequent, prominent, or criminally oriented coverage of corporate crime. This certainly was true of newspaper coverage of the heavy electrical equipment antitrust cases of 1961. Replicative analysis reveals that this also was true of newspaper coverage of the folding-carton industry antitrust cases of 1976. Reasons for this continued lack of coverage are discussed, including the diffuse harm characteristic of price-fixing, the general lack of recognition that corporations are juristic persons capable of criminal deviance, and the disinclination of large organizations to link other large organizations with criminality.     

DRUG USE AND "HUSTLING" A Study of Their Interrelationships

This paper focuses on the dynamic relationship between daily “hustling” and narcotic use. Through interviews with 30 narcotics users three common patterns of interrelationships are established In addition. a large number of confounding factors which influence the hustling-drug use relationships are described. The paper reveals the complexity of street life and the tenuousness of views which posit a one-to-one correspondence between hustling and narcotics use.     

POLICE INTERVENTION AND THE REPEAT OF DOMESTIC ASSAULT

We use the National Crime Victimization Survey to examine whether domestic violence is less likely to be repeated if it is reported to the police and if the offender is arrested. Our longitudinal analyses suggest that reporting has a fairly strong deterrent effect, whereas the effect of arrest is small and statistically insignificant. We find no support for the hypothesis that offenders retaliate when victims (rather than third parties) call the police or when victims sign complaints. We also find no evidence that the effects of reporting or arrest depend on the seriousness of the offense, a history of violence by the offender or sociodemographic characteristics. Our results suggest that the best policies for deterrence will be those that encourage victims and third parties to report violence by intimate partners to the police.     

LABELING EFFECTS OF FIRST JUVENILE ARRESTS: SECONDARY DEVIANCE AND SECONDARY SANCTIONING

A growing literature suggests that juvenile arrests perpetuate offending and increase the likelihood of future arrests. The effect on subsequent arrests is generally regarded as a product of the perpetuation of criminal offending. However, increased rearrest also may reflect differential law enforcement behavior. Using longitudinal data from the Project on Human Development in Chicago Neighborhoods (PHDCN) together with official arrest records, the current study estimates the effects of first arrests on both reoffending and rearrest. Propensity score methods were used to control differences between arrestees and nonarrestees and to minimize selection bias. Among 1,249 PHDCN youths, 58 individuals were first arrested during the study period; 43 of these arrestees were successfully matched to 126 control cases that were equivalent on a broad set of individual, family, peer, and neighborhood factors. We find that first arrests increased the likelihood of both subsequent offending and subsequent arrest, through separate processes. The effects on rearrest are substantially greater and are largely independent of the effects on reoffending, which suggests that labels trigger “secondary sanctioning” processes distinct from secondary deviance processes. Attempts to ameliorate deleterious labeling effects should include efforts to dampen their escalating punitive effects on societal responses.     

THE EFFECTS OF DIRECTED PATROL AND SELF‐INITIATED ENFORCEMENT ON FIREARM VIOLENCE: A RANDOMIZED CONTROLLED STUDY OF HOT SPOT POLICING

Targeted policing has proven effective in reducing serious crime in areas where it is highly concentrated, but the enforcement mechanisms responsible for the success of so‐called hot spots strategies remain poorly understood. This study evaluates the effects of a 9‐month randomized controlled hot spots field experiment on firearm assaults and robberies in St. Louis, Missouri. Thirty‐two firearm violence hot spots were randomly allocated to two treatment conditions and a control condition. Directed patrols were increased in both treatment conditions, whereas the experimental protocol limited other enforcement activity in one of the treatment conditions and increased it in the other. The results from difference‐in‐difference regression analyses indicate that the intervention substantially reduced the incidence of nondomestic firearm assaults, with no evident crime displacement to surrounding areas, to times when the intervention was not active, or to nonfirearm assaults. By contrast, we find no effects of the intervention on firearm robberies. Less definitive results suggest that the certainty of arrests and occupied vehicle checks account for the treatment effects on nondomestic firearm assaults.     

伙伴关系特征、网络行为与公共性： 有关可持续发展项目绩效的证据

摘要: 本文探索在复杂的可持续发展政策领域内的伙伴关系特征、网络行为与公共性之间的关系。本研究以香港为背景,该城市正在从命令—控制的政策手段逐渐转向对伙伴关系 和利益相关者参与的运用。本文认为,承诺、平等、相互性和信任等网络伙伴关系特征和网络行为会在公共性程度上有所不同,但它们总体上对于可持续发展项目的绩效具有正面的贡献。本研究的数据来自于28个可持续发展的咨询委员会或代表性组织的成员(57%的回应率),最后得到53个可持续发展项目的可用数据。分析结果显示在可持续发展项目中的政府、企业和公民社会成员并不认为在伙伴关系特征与感知到的项目绩效间存在很大的分别,但认为伙伴关系特征与网络行为存在很大的分别。多重回归分析显示信任有助于促进感知到的项目绩效,私人部门和公民社会团体人员的网络行为特征也有相同效果,尽管对于公民社会团体人员来说,网络行为与项目绩效存在负面关系。文章的结论讨论了这些研究结果对于香港以及其他地区的可持续发展项目的意义。