Psychopathy,Conduct Disorder,and Stigma: Does Diagnostic Labeling Influence Juvenile Probation Officer Recommendations?

This study investigated the potential influence of labeling a juvenile as psychopathic. Juvenile probation officers (JPOs; N = 260) rendered hypothetical recommendations based on eight mock psychological evaluations. The evaluations varied the presence of two diagnostic criteria (antisocial behavioral history and psychopathic personality traits) and diagnostic labels (psychopathy, conduct disorder, no diagnosis) in order to distinguish criterion effects from labeling effects. The diagnostic criteria of antisocial behavior had a substantial effect on JPO recommendations (effect sizes .50–.79), while the diagnostic criteria of psychopathic personality traits had a more limited effect. Surprisingly, diagnostic labels had little effect, and there were no appreciable differences between conduct disorder and psychopathy diagnoses. These findings illustrate the importance of distinguishing diagnostic criterion effects from diagnostic labeling effects.     

An Examination of the Influence of Strength of Evidence Variables in the Prosecution’s Decision to Dismiss Driving While Intoxicated Cases

The majority of research examining prosecutorial discretion has focused on legal factors such as the seriousness of the offense or the extra-legal characteristics of the accused including race/ethnicity and gender. The amount of variance explained by court researchers, however, remains quite low. The present study extends previous research examining the primary determinants of prosecutor??s decision to dismiss or fully prosecute focusing on driving while intoxicated cases. We focus on the predictive contribution of the strength of evidence relative to legal and extra-legal variables. The data consist of 2,358 driving while intoxicated cases filed in Harris County, Texas during the first 8?months of 1999. The findings strongly support the inclusion of strength of evidence variables in court research and further suggest their past omission may have attributed significance to spurious relationships.     

Collaborative Institutions in an Ecology of Games

This article seeks to improve our understanding of policy institutions and cooperation by adapting Long's (1958) analysis of the ecology of games to the context of collaborative land use and transportation planning in California. The traditional institutional rational choice analysis argues that collaborative institutions reduce the transaction costs of cooperation among multiple policy actors. The ecology of games framework extends IRC by emphasizing the consequences of multiple institutions and identifies several reasons why collaborative institutions may actually reduce the amount of cooperation in existing policy venues. Analyses of survey data from policy actors in five California regions demonstrate that higher levels of cooperation in collaborative institutions are associated with lower levels of cooperation in other land‐use and transportation planning institutions.     

Federalism: The Lost Tradition?

In the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, many Americanhistorians decided that the accounts by which people in theUnited States understood their past were unrealistic, subjectto romantic distortions, and chauvinistic. Even though somestories were well intentioned, they were false and must be rejected.One well-known example is Parson Weems' story of George Washingtonas a boy cutting down the cherry tree and, when questioned byhis father, saying, "I cannot tell a lie." In the process of"realistic" reinterpretation and muckraking, however, thesehistorians threw out many real babies with the surplus of romanticbath water. A case in point is the tradition of federalism thatshaped American history, permeated the experience of the menwho wrote the United States Constitution, and underlay everyfacet of our social order. The so-called "realists" went toofar and tossed out an important part of the reality that isAmerica. Can the federal tradition be recovered and placed againat the focus of American political thought, or is it a losttradition?     

Revolving Roles in Drug-Related Crime: The Cost of Chronic Drug Users as Victims and Perpetrators

Numerous studies have established a strong connection between the use of illicit drugs and the commission of other illegal activities, including both predatory and property crimes. No study, however, has examined the cost of crimes associated with drug users both as victims and as perpetrators. In the present study, recent data were analyzed from a targeted sample of chronic drug users (CDUs) and a matched sample of non-drug users (NDUs) in Miami-Dade County, Florida, to estimate the incremental cost of crime associated with CDU. Two separate models were employed to estimate (1) the probability of being a victim or a perpetrator of crime and (2) the cost of crime for both situations. The cost measures were transformed to reduce the influence of extreme outliers, and a smearing technique was used to compare the cost of crime for CDUs relative to NDUs. The findings illustrate that criminal activity among CDUs is circular, extensive, and costly. Implications for law enforcement, criminal justice policy, and substance abuse treatment are discussed.     

Police Accountability and the Media

This article explores First Amendment theory and the role of the media in generating police accountability through public understanding of police organizations. We argue that free speech theory can and should look beyond "abridgment" issues and raise questions about the civic responsibility of the press to inform the public about key governmental institutions. The media's concern with crime news, we found, vastly overshadows its coverage of the police us a complex, in-teresting, and expensive governmental agency. Reporting about police institutional patterns and policies contributes more toward fulfilling First Amendment values-not only that of "checking" police excesses, but of facilitating the goal of enlightened citizen participation in local government.
Those who won our independence believed…that public discussion is a political duty; and that this should be a fundamental principle of American government. They recognized the risks to which all human institutions are subject.     

Locating the Issue Public: The Multi-Dimensional Nature of Engagement with Health Care Reform

This research examines in detail the structure of the issue public for health care reform, drawing from extensive, nationally representative survey data tapping general attentiveness to news and public affairs, specific interests in health care issues, and motivations (e.g., personal health and financial conditions) to follow health care reform issues. We furthermore adopt a multi-dimensional approach to defining the contours of the issue public for health care policy, separately studying its cognitive, affective, and behavioral underpinnings. Results indicate only weak interconnections across these dimensions—measured through health care knowledge, holding strong opinions on health care issues, and participation in health-related political activities, respectively—and somewhat different structural and motivational patterns underlying each. Theoretical, conceptual and methodological implications of these findings are discussed.Vincent Price and Joseph N. Cappella are Professors in the Annenberg School for Communication at the University of Pennsylvania, where Clarissa David, Brian Goldthorpe, and Marci McCoy Roth are doctoral students. Gathering of the data reported here was supported by grants to Vincent Price and Joseph N. Cappella from The National Science Foundation (Grant EIA-0306801) and the Annenberg Public Policy Center of the University of Pennsylvania. Views expressed are those of the authors alone and do not necessarily reflect opinions of the sponsoring agencies.