A Criminological Fly in the Ointment: Specialty Courts and the Generality of Deviance

ABSTRACT

Specialty courts—such as drug courts, mental health courts, or domestic violence courts—tend to assume, either implicitly or explicitly, that particular groups of offenders have unique problems that can be best met with specialized case processing. Put simply, specialty courts assume that offenders themselves are specialists when it comes to offending. There is, however, a criminological fly in the ointment. The problem is that criminological theory and research have long demonstrated that offenders tend to be generalists and that they rarely specialize in any given form of misbehavior. Accordingly, the authors argue here that the notion of the “generality of deviance” presents a problem for the potential effectiveness of specialty courts because they are likely operating on a faulty set of ideas about offending behavior. The authors offer strategies for moving forward to better integrate the notion of the generality of deviance into specialty courts: in particular, embracing a rehabilitative philosophy and adopting well-documented correctional treatment approaches such as cognitive-behavioral interventions and the risk-need-responsivity model. They conclude by highlighting the risks associated with granting system efficiency a position of privilege among the multiple goals of corrections.     

Emotional Intelligence and Criminal Behavior

A large body of research links criminality to cognitive intelligence and personality traits. This study examined the link between emotional intelligence (EI) and criminal behavior. One hundred Egyptian adult male offenders who have been sentenced for theft, drug dealing or murder and 100 nonoffenders were administered the Bar‐On Emotional Quotient Inventory (EQ‐i). The offenders had lower levels of EI than the nonoffenders. In addition, EI varied as a function of the types of offenses. Namely, it decreased in magnitude with crime severity (lowest for murder, higher for drug dealing, and highest for theft). These results converged with the direct/ indirect aggression theory suggesting that indirect aggression requires more social intelligence than physical aggression. Forensic intervention programs should therefore include EI training, especially when violence is involved.     

A THRESHOLD MODEL OF COLLECTIVE CRIME

The group nature of offending has been recognized as an inherent characteristic of criminal behavior, yet our insight on the decision to engage in group crime is limited. This article argues that a threshold model offers broad appeal to understand this decision. After discussing the basis of this model and its applicability to collective crime, we offer one example of the kind of research that could stem from this model. Specifically, by using survey data from 583 university students, this study asked respondents to self‐report thresholds for group theft and destruction of property. By experimentally manipulating characteristics of the hypothetical scenario used to measure thresholds, we investigated both the individual‐ and situational‐level correlates of these self‐reported thresholds. The discussion considers the results that emerge from a Tobit regression model and offers suggestions for future research that would provide further refinement of the threshold model.     

Police and the War on Women: A Gender-Linked Examination Behind and In Front of the Blue Curtain

The war on women was a term coined during the 2012 election cycle that referred to attempts to pass legislation that would limit women's rights, from control of women's bodies (with a particular focus on birth control, abortion, and the aftereffects of rape) to equal pay for women and their rights in the workforce (M. E. Gilman, 2014 Gilman, M. E. (2014). Feminism, democracy, and the “war on women.” Law & Inequality, 32, 1–30. [Google Scholar]). One arena in which evidence of such a war's impact on women may be assessed is behind and in front of the blue curtain of policing. To what extent, then, does policing reflect culture that supports and facilitates a war on women? We review arrest trends for female offenders, discuss police responses to crimes against women, and examine policies and practices that may improve understanding of the criminal justice system's role in this war. We find evidence of changes in police perspectives, actions, and policies toward women as perpetrators and victims of crime. Specifically, at the same time that police undertook more aggressive enforcement efforts against certain types of female offenders, resulting in trends for women that were often the reverse of those for men, there was an absence of similar attention to laws and policies protecting women as victims.     

Renewing the Commonwealth—A Reform Agenda for a New Secretary-General

A new Secretary-General is to be elected at the Malta Commonwealth Heads of Government Meeting in November 2015. He—or she—must be a change agent, thought-leader, motivator and manager. This article gives a brief overview of this important position in global affairs and underlines the need for realistic but effective leadership. It sets an agenda for the new Secretary-General, especially in addressing the issues of violent extremism, terrorism and migration.     

An integrated case formulation approach in forensic practice: the contribution of Occupational Therapy to risk assessment and formulation

Forensic services focus on risk reduction and extol the value of multidisciplinary working. Due to the complex relationship of personality disorder and risk, a multidisciplinary approach to risk assessment, formulation, management and reduction is essential. Occupational Therapists provide a unique perspective; however, current literature pertaining to the contribution of Occupational Therapy is negligible. This paper aims to initiate discussion of the value of Occupational Therapy contributions to risk assessment and formulation with personality disordered offenders. A new approach is described that integrates occupational adaptation and multiple sequential functional analysis to provide a structured framework for Occupational Therapy risk assessment and formulation. A single case report is presented to demonstrate the advantages of the approach for identifying offenders’ strengths and difficulties, predicting risk of reoffending, identifying offence paralleling behaviour and informing and evaluating efficacy of intervention, thereby supporting the aims of forensic practice settings to assess, manage, treat and reduce risk.     

Explaining Young People’s Involvement in Online Piracy: An Empirical Assessment Using the Offending Crime and Justice Survey in England and Wales

Abstract

The Internet has been widely acknowledged as facilitating many forms of youth offending. Existing research has identified important drivers of young people’s involvement in online crime, yet this has overwhelmingly relied on school or college samples. As such, it tells us little about those young people that have left the formal education system—a group who are more likely perpetrators of juvenile crime more generally. Focusing on young people’s involvement in online piracy offenses, our analysis draws on data from a nationally representative survey of England and Wales to better understand the dynamics of involvement in online crime across the population. We assess the potential overlaps between online and offline offending, the role of differential association and deviancy neutralization techniques in shaping offending behavior, as well as the protective effect of strong family support networks in reducing involvement in piracy. We find that illegal downloaders tend to be young, male, and have a higher number of delinquent friends. We also find that many of these offenders do not confine their offending to online spaces, with involvement in offline property offenses also high among this group.     

Refining and Resolving the Blur of Gault for Juvenile Capital Offenders in Texas: A World without the Juvenile Death Penalty

Texas's approach to juvenile capital offenders has been profoundly lacking any balance of the interests of accountability and rehabilitation. Texas has employed adult transfer for juvenile capital offenders with potential life imprisonment and possible parole in 40 years and determinate sentencing to adjudicate capital offenders in juvenile court, yielding a maximum sentence of 40 years in prison. Legislative initiatives in the 1990s to curtail parole have led to only 22 percent of violent offenders receiving early release while serving an average of 61 percent of their sentence. Aggravated offenders, including youth capital offenders, serve at least 80 percent of their total incarceration time. Notably the Texas framework does not effectively allow for offenders whose acts were the product of either an undeveloped or disabled mental capability to be punished appropriately and distinctly from those who possess psychotic or antisocial tendencies—or adult offenders. This deficiency is worsened as a result of the recently passed legislation SB.60, which establishes that juvenile capital offenders must receive the sentence of life without the possibility of parole upon conviction. Texas can create a more precise approach with three modifications: (1) centralize all youth capital adjudications to a criminal court, (2) effectuate separate imprisonment and enhanced educational programs for the first ten years of incarceration, (3) implement a “soft-ten” sentence where after the initial ten years of imprisonment the presumption for release favors the offender unless the state establishes that additional time is needed; this determination is primarily based on a complete psychological assessment of the offender.     

Generality, continuity, and change in offending

A number of criminological theories make either implicit or explicit predictions about the empirical relationship between prior and future offending behavior. Some argue that time-stable characteristics such as criminal propensity should account for any positive correlation between past and future criminal behavior for all individuals. Others contend that the positive association between offending behavior at different points in time are partly causal and partly spurious. Still others anticipate that different patterns will emerge for different groups (distinguished by their ciminal propensity) of individuals. Using a longitudinal data set comprised of 848 training school releasees, we test various hypotheses emanating from these different theoretical perspectives. The results indicate that (1) both stability and change have causal implications for one's offending behavior and (2) with but one exception, these effects do not vary between high and low criminal propensity groups.