Prisons or Problem-Solving: Does the Public Support Specialty Courts?

ABSTRACT

Recently, “problem-solving” courts have been developed as an alternative to imprisonment. They are often called “specialty” courts because they process and divert into treatment programs offenders who are seen as different from the general criminal population, such as those with mental health or drug problems, those who are homeless or veterans, and those who engage in domestic violence. Based on a 2017 national survey of 1,000 respondents, the current study examines overall public support for rehabilitation as a goal of corrections and then focuses specifically on support for different types of specialty courts. The analysis reveals that the American public endorses not only the rehabilitative ideal but also the use of problem-solving courts. Further, with only minimal variation, strong support for these courts appears to exist regardless of political orientation and sociodemographic characteristics.     

The legal file

In this essay I examine the criminal defense file. I argue that being a largely neglected “object” of the legal field, upon a close examination, the file discloses its intriguing materiality as what is predicated on the structure of the fold that allows for the objective, virtual, and narrative spheres to overlap in a specific act-object, which, with Gilles Deleuze, I call objectile. A subsequent phenomenological analysis of the legal file as objectile shows how its constitutive features help the attorney shape ordinary matters into plentiful matters, turning the file into a locally designed sign system. Once exposed, this system reveals its relations to the legal system at large, with individual activities, institutional practices, and legal procedures all being a part of a complex manifold that is law.     

Trial and Error – Failing and Learning in Criminal Proceedings

This paper addresses the selective mechanisms by which criminal proceedings produce strong arguments. It does so by focusing on the failing of argument themes (topoi) in the course of criminal proceedings, rather than on their career. In a further step, the notion of failing is bound to learning: different forms of failing point at different ways and places of learning. The study is comparative, relating cases from four different legal regimes (England, USA, Italy and Germany) that are taken from four extensive ethnographic studies in defense lawyer’s firms. We will track down the failures of topoi at three different stages (pre-trial, trial, and deliberation) in our different legal regimes. Failing occurs in all proceedings in various modes and at different stages. We argue that those modes as well as the different stages at which they occur point at the spots in the respective procedures that allow for learning about the inherent conceptions of “good reasons.”     

Ethnicity, gender, and the Level of Service Inventory-Revised

Offender assessment and classification is becoming an increasingly important part of correctional supervision and intervention. Over the last several decades, several different methods and “generations” of offender classification have emerged. Of most value appear to be third-generation, actuarial, dynamic risk/need assessments. With any new correctional strategy, however, there is a need to investigate the use of these risk/need assessments on offender subgroups in order to inform issues, such as reliability and prevalence of criminogenic risk factors. The present study utilized data that were gathered using the Level of Service Inventory-Revised (LSI-R). Results and comparisons of these assessments were investigated and presented for Native American and non-Native American offenders as well as male and female offenders. Discussion of the results, implications, and recommendations for further research are presented.     

Industry/University interaction for simulation-based process improvement

This paper describes an effort by industry and university partners to centralize manufacturing decision making through the development of generic simulation tools. This ongoing, cooperative process improvement initiative between the Industrial and Systems Engineering faculty at the University of Alabama in Huntsville (UAH) and Chrysler’s Huntsville Electronics Division (HED) permits the involved faculty to broaden their experience and technical expertise in electronics fabrication, while the industry partner benefits from the transfer of technical knowledge and advanced analysis methodologies from the university. The focus of the project is the definition of generic electronic manufacturing models that can be easily defined and implemented through common user-oriented interfaces, allowing users who are not familiar with simulation and simulation languages to address the needs of their particular functional areas.