Drug Court through the Lenses of African American Women: Improving Graduation Rates with Gender-Responsive Interventions

Drug courts began in the United States in 1989, and nearly three decades of evidence has shown that drug courts are more effective than other criminal justice interventions at reducing criminal recidivism. There has, however, been a trend in some drug courts where African Americans are less likely to graduate than their White counterparts, which is concerning because evidence has also shown that graduating the program reduces the odds of recidivating. Little is known about African Americans’ experiences in drug court, and this is the first known qualitative study to ask African American women (N?=?8) about the most helpful aspects of drug court that support them in graduating and how the drug court could be more helpful in supporting them to graduate. The women felt that the drug court judge was their advocate and understood the unique challenges they faced with balancing the demands of drug court with motherhood. Conversely, the women felt that they were not receiving effective, gender-responsive treatment for their substance use disorders, which was a barrier to them graduating drug court. The findings are discussed in reference to drug court practice and future research.     

Peer Group Delinquency and Sexual Victimization: Does Popularity Matter?

Though a large body of research has found that peer social network characteristics influence both offending and victimization, relatively little is known about the influence of social network characteristics on adolescent sexual victimization. Attractiveness and sociability largely indicate popularity for teenage females, which in turn leads to earlier onset of dating, greater dating options, and potential risk of sexual victimization—an observation not tested in the criminological and criminal justice literature. We suggest and evaluate 2 competing hypotheses: that popularity within a network insulates females from sexual victimization and that popularity may increase exposure to delinquent others and facilitate sexual victimization. Results suggest that popularity does not have a consistent effect but instead that its role is conditioned by the deviance of the network. Popularity is associated with an increase in the likelihood of victimization when peer deviance is high but with a decrease when peer deviance is low. We further demonstrate that an interaction between a female's own drinking and the proportion of her friends that are male strongly affects her likelihood of sexual victimization. Implications for policy and future research are explored.     

公共服务动机二阶构念的再检视：反映性抑或形成性？——基于我国东中部五个城市调研证据

构念分为反映性构念和形成性构念。关于公共服务动机是形成性构念抑或反映性构念，学术界存在部分共识，即均认为公共服务动机一阶构念是反映性构念，但对于公共服务动机二阶构念是反映性构念还是形成性构念，学界尚存在争论。研究发现，就公共服务动机而言，“一阶反映性二阶反映性构念”在结构方程模型中的预测能力与拟合度均高于“一阶反映性二阶形成性构念”，我国基层公共行政背景下公共服务动机与其一阶潜在变量之间的关系的方向是从公共服务动机到一阶潜在变量，公共服务动机应该被定义为“一阶反映性二阶反映性”构念。公共管理研究者在未来研究中可认真考虑公共管理领域构念的性质以及形成性构念或反映性构念的假设对模型之影响。     

现代公益事业法人治理结构研究

公益事业单位既是中国事业单位集群的主体,也是分类改革后能够继续保留在国家事业序列内的唯一类型。现有公益事业单位虽然在职能目标上符合国家事业的要求,但在组织形态上还需要进一步转变成为"现代公益事业组织"。在法人自治基础上的科学管理是现代公益事业组织的基本要求和基本特征,公益事业单位内部治理模式改革的核心是构建与组织属性相符合的法人治理结构。公益事业单位由于其职能范围的广泛性、组织地位的独立性以及行为目标的公共性,适宜采用"理事会+执行负责人"的法人治理结构,同时还应建立一个由利益相关人广泛参与的共同治理架构。     

Did Drug Courts Lead to Increased Arrest and Punishment of Minor Drug Offenses?

Drug courts were implemented nationwide during the 1990s to expand alternatives to incarceration for individuals with substance use disorders that were charged with nonviolent felonies or misdemeanors. Although these courts were publicized as a facilitator of treatment and alternative to incarceration, researchers and advocates have suggested that this approach may have unintentionally intensified law enforcement focus on casual drug users and individuals with minor substance dependency. The primary objective of this study was to determine whether there is evidence that drug courts systemically increased the arrest and punishment of misdemeanor drug use and possession by conducting a series of panel data analyses among more than 8,000 city and county jurisdictions while controlling for economic, demographic, and nationwide law enforcement trends. Analyses in this study provide evidence that local police increased their attention toward minor drug offenses in jurisdictions where drug courts were implemented across the nation.     

The malleability of attitudes toward the police: immediate effects of the viewing of police use of force videos

Purpose: To examine whether videos of controversial police interventions shape individual opinion and, consequently, if attitudes towards use of force are malleable in the short-term. Methodology: A self-administered survey was conducted among 248 undergraduate students as part of a larger project on attitudes towards police use of force. Two groups of respondents were asked general questions about the police: one group was shown fictional videos of controversial police interventions just prior to completing the questionnaire; the other was not. Findings: Results strongly suggest that videos of police interventions have significant effects on reported opinions about use of force: the group that watched the videos was more likely to report that the police frequently use force. Implications: The wide distribution of images by police organizations might have unexpected adverse effects on public attitudes.     

Justifying violence: legitimacy,ideology and public support for police use of force

Under what conditions do people support police use of force? In this paper we assess some of the empirical links between police legitimacy, political ideology (right-wing authoritarianism and social dominance orientation), and support for ‘reasonable’ use of force (e.g. an officer striking a citizen in self-defence) and ‘excessive’ use of force (e.g. an officer using violence to arrest an unarmed person who is not offering violent resistance). Analysing data from an online survey with US participants (n?=?186) we find that legitimacy is a positive predictor of reasonable but not excessive police use of force, and that political ideology predicts support for excessive but not reasonable use of force. We conclude with the idea that legitimacy places normative constraints around police power. On the one hand, legitimacy is associated with increased support for the use of force, but only when violence is bounded within certain acceptable limits. On the other hand, excessive use of force seems to require an extra-legal justification that is – at least in our analysis – partly ideological. Our findings open up a new direction of research in what is currently a rather sparse psychological literature on the ability of legitimacy to ‘tame’ coercive power.     

Markers of chronic alcohol use in hair: comparison of ethyl glucuronide and cocaethylene in cocaine users

Two direct ethanol metabolites, namely ethyl glucuronide (EtG) and cocaethylene (CE), in the hair of cocaine (COC) users were compared in this study. Hair samples (n=68) were submitted to the determination of EtG (by liquid chromatography-electrospray-tandem mass spectrometry) and of COC and metabolites, including CE (by gas chromatography-mass spectrometry). Quantitative and qualitative results were compared. No quantitative correlation was found between EtG and CE, as well as between EtG and the cocaethylene concentration divided by the concentration of COC and its metabolites (benzoylecgonine and ecgonine methylester, as COC equivalents). Nevertheless, many factors are supposed to affect the amount of the two substances incorporated in the hair matrix, such as the subject's habits in ethanol and COC use, genetic variability in the metabolism of both substances, and the different chemical and physical properties of EtG and CE. When establishing a cut-off of 4 pg/mg for EtG and of 200 pg/mg for CE, 47 samples tested positive for EtG and 41 samples tested positive for CE; 12 samples out of the 47 EtG-positives tested negative for CE (25%), whereas 6 samples out of the 41 CE-positives tested negative for EtG (15%). According to these data, EtG appears to be a more sensitive and specific marker of non-moderate alcohol users than CE.     

Differences in the Validity of Self-Reported Drug Use Across Five Factors: Gender,Race, Age,Type of Drug,and Offense Seriousness

This study expands our knowledge about the validity of self-reported drug use by examining how gender, race, age, type of drug, and offense seriousness interact to affect the validity of self-reported drug use. This study also provides a conceptual framework that can be used to examine the validity of self-reported drug use. Differences in the validity of self-reported drug use are explained by examining differences in underreporting and overreporting. Differences in underreporting and overreporting are then further examined while controlling for differences in base rates of drug use. As shown, whether one controls for base rates of use may drastically affect estimates of underreporting and overreporting. By using hierarchical loglinear, logit, and logistic regression models with the Drug Use Forecasting data, we show that Black offenders provide less accurate self-reports than White offenders. Black offenders do so because they are more likely to underreport crack/cocaine use than White offenders. This difference, however, disappears once differences in base rates are controlled. A Black offender who tests positive is not more likely to underreport crack/cocaine use than a White offender who tests positive. Black offenders are also more likely to overreport both marijuana and crack/cocaine use relative to White offenders. Contrary to the first, this difference is not attributable to a difference in base rates. Methodological and substantive implications of this distinction are discussed. No differences across gender, age, or offense seriousness were found.

侵犯商业秘密罪的实行行为探析

在侵犯商业秘密罪的实行行为中,构成"不正当手段"要求该行为在主观上违背权利人的意愿,客观上具有不正当性;披露的公开化程度不影响该罪的成立;在间接侵犯商业秘密的情况下,其"获取"和"使用"行为与直接侵犯商业秘密情况下的"获取"和"使用"行为存在着差异。