Police criminal charging decisions: An examination of post-arrest decision-making

Scholars have encouraged studies of police decision-making to move beyond the arrest decision into research that broadens the understanding of police behavior. The criminal charge placed by officers against offenders is largely an untouched area of study. Examining criminal charging decisions goes beyond simple dichotomous decisions, such as arrest, but instead explores the area of police leniency or punitiveness. Randomly constructed vignettes describing a domestic violence incident were given to officers from four agencies. Officers indicated the criminal charges they would likely list against an offender if they were to make an arrest. Serious criminal charges were often supported by additional, but less serious, charges. Victim injury and an uncooperative offender were related to the decision to charge a misdemeanor offense. There was a significant negative relationship between the number of charges listed and more experienced officers and officers working in smaller agencies. The implications of this study and directions for future research are discussed.     

From Contestation to Autonomy: The Staging and Framing of Anti-Hanson Contention

The rise of Hansonism provoked a campaign of demonstrations, rallies, marches and walkouts. This movement was frequently received within the media as violent, disruptive, and illiberal. However, I argue that anti-Hanson contention represented a noteworthy form of active citizenship. It contested the presence of the One Nation Party, undermined the ideological claim that Hanson represented 'ordinary' Australians, and garnered substantial publicity. The anti-Hanson campaign was concerned not only with the staging of dissent in public space, but with how that dissent was framed within the public sphere. Reflecting these public dynamics, the anti-Hanson movement moved over time from a reliance on contestational gatherings, that directly opposed the One Nation Party in physical space to autonomous gatherings, that attempted to create separate spaces of anti-racist politics. Ultimately, therefore, the campaign can be understood as a flexible, democratic and self-reflexive form of political mobilisation.     

A tale of three cities: Crime and displacement after Hurricane Katrina

When Hurricane Katrina struck New Orleans in August 2005, it greatly disrupted both the physical and social structures of that community. One consequence of the hurricane was the displacement of large numbers of New Orleans residents to other cities, including Houston, San Antonio, and Phoenix. There has been media speculation that such a grand-scale population displacement led to increased crime in communities that were recipient of large numbers of displaced New Orleans residents. This study was a case study of three cities with somewhat different experiences with Katrina's diaspora. Time series analysis was used to examine the pre- and post-Katrina trends in six Part I offenses (murder, robbery, aggravated assault, rape, burglary, and auto theft) to assess any impact of such large-scale population shifts on crime in host communities. Contrary to much popular speculation, only modest effects were found on crime. Social disorganization theory was used to frame both the analysis and the interpretation of these results.     

Positivism, Idealism and the Rule of Law

The modern lawyer operates within a conception of law as a bodyof rules. To confront the law of contract, of torts, or of property,is to familiarize oneself with an intricate set of rules. Suchfamiliarity is not yet legal scholarship, much less legal practice.For in order to use the rules as lawyers use them, the rulesmust be contemplated and considered, and the relationship betweenthe different rules must be understood. Because the intellectualprocesses involved in handling the rules exhibit a high degreeof sophistication, those intellectual processes may themselvesbecome the subject matter of philosophical argument. Thus wemay regard jurisprudential theories as embodying differing understandingsof the processes of handling legal rules; and we may conceiveof legal theory as the attempt to grasp the moral significanceof rules as a foundation for social order. This essay shalloffer some thoughts on the relationship between the rule oflaw, considered as a moral ideal, and the notion of rules asthe principal means by which legal order is manifested.     

Crisis occurrence and resolution in patients with severe and persistent mental illness: the contribution of suicidality

Assertive community treatment appears to have limited impact on the risk of suicide in persons with severe and persistent mental illness (SPMI). This exploratory prospective study attempts to understand this observation by studying the contribution of suicidality to the occurrence of crisis events in patients with SPMI. Specifically, an observer-rated measure of the need for hospitalization, the Crisis Triage Rating Scale, was completed at baseline, crisis occurrence, and resolution to determine how much the level of suicidality contributed to the deemed level of crisis. Second, observer-ratings of suicidal ideation, the Modified Scale for Suicide Ideation, and psychopathology and suicidality, Brief Psychiatric Rating Scale, were measured at baseline, crisis occurrence, and resolution. A self-report measure of distress, the Symptom Distress Scale, was completed at baseline, crisis occurrence, and resolution. Finally, the patients' crisis experiences were recorded qualitatively to compare with quantitative measures of suicidality. Almost 40% of the subjects experienced crisis events and more than a quarter of these events were judged to be severe enough to warrant the need for hospitalization. Our findings suggest that elevation of psychiatric symptoms is a major contributor to the crisis occurrences of individuals with SPMI; although the risk of suicide may have to be conceived as somewhat separate from crisis occurrence.     

Disparate Measures: Public Managers and Performance-Measurement Strategies

Over the past two decades, many studies have investigated the scope and significance of performance measurement in public organizations. Nonetheless, there is more to learn about the challenges facing public managers who want to measure organizational outputs and use the feedback to improve performance. Specifically, managers are often faced with redundant measures of the same output, each of which may be preferred by a different political principal or stakeholder. Furthermore, a manager's choice of measures can have serious consequences for both the estimation of agency problems and the success of programmatic solutions. We test these assertions in an analysis of educational organizations in Texas. We find that managers' assessments of organizational performance and decisions regarding solutions depend on the choice of performance measures.     

An experimental comparison of question forms used to reduce vote overreporting

Via telephone, a national probability sample of 1464 respondents randomly received one of three question versions of a voter turnout question in the months of December, January, and February, following the November 1998 Congressional elections in the United States. The long version form contained memory cueing techniques and face-saving response options, the short form, modeled after the 2000 American National Election Studies (ANES) question, included only the face-saving response options, and the standard form, modeled after ANES questions used before 2000, included neither. The long form led to significantly lower reported turnout in comparison to both the short and standard forms, indicating that the long form successfully reduced vote overreporting in comparison to the other question versions.     

The Scary World of Online News? Internet News Exposure and Public Attitudes Toward Crime and Justice

Objectives

A substantial body of literature indicates that certain forms of media consumption may increase anxiety about crime and support for social controls. However, few studies have examined whether Internet news consumption is positively associated with such attitudes. The void is significant given the public’s increasing use of online news sources. This study addresses this research gap.

Methods

We draw on data from four national surveys conducted between 2007 and 2013, which collectively include interviews with more than 13,000 Americans. Using OLS and logistic regression, we assess the relationships between exposure to traditional and online media and perceptions of victimization risk, support for punitive crime policies, and views about police powers.

Results

Consistent with prior work, we find positive relationships between exposure to traditional forms of media—television news and crime programming—and anxiety about victimization and support for harsh crime policies. In contrast, Internet news exposure is generally not associated with anxieties about crime or support for getting tough on criminals. However, there is evidence of an interactive relationship between political ideology and Internet news exposure.

Conclusions

The results provide little support for cultivation theory in the context of Internet news consumption. We discuss the import of our findings, and suggest new lines of research to explore the correlates and the effects of exposure to online news sources.