Perceptions of Work-Life Balance Among Military Law Enforcement Personnel and their Spouses

The purpose of this study was to examine the extent to which military law enforcement agents and their spouses shared similar perceptions of work-life conflict and organizational support. One hundred seventy Special Agents in the Air Force Office of Special Investigations and their spouses participated in the study. Survey results revealed that Agents and spouses shared very similar views regarding the Agents’ work-life conflict and organizational support. Agents had slightly more positive views of supervisory support than their spouses did. Agents perceived somewhat more work-to-family conflict, and considerably more family-to-work conflict than their spouses thought they did. Both Agents and their spouses perceived greater support for work-life balance from immediate supervisors than from the organization as a whole. Implications for managing work-life conflict are discussed.     

Variables influencing sentencing severity: Intercourt differences in Connecticut

Studies of criminal-court dispositions have traditionally aggregated courts along political and geographic boundaries. This article suggests that courts should be analyzed individually, even within the same jurisdiction, as a means of increasing the explanatory capacity of the variables involved. Further, it is contended that intercourt differences are a result of organizational influences operating within each court.     

Problems of reliability and validity in criminal justice research

Reliability and validity are critical standards of scientific inquiry. This analysis directs attention to problems of reliability in data collection and to problems of validity in measuring two key criminal justice variables: the offense and the sentence. The discussion and empirical analysis indicate that reliability of official information sources in criminal justice cannot be assumed. Furthermore, there is evidence to suggest that the criterion of validity is even more elusive. This elusiveness is demonstrated in the operational definition of criminal offense, an important predictor variable, and in attemps to operationally define the criminal sanction, i.e., the disposition of charges against convicted defendants. These considerations suggest that research in the sentencing area may not be directed to the subject at hand and that research results should be interpreted with “scientific” caution.     

Perceived Criminal Threat from Undocumented Immigrants: Antecedents and Consequences for Policy Preferences

Drawing on the group threat perspective, this paper examines the perception of criminal threat from undocumented immigrants and its relation to both contextual measures of threat and public support for enhanced controls against undocumented immigrants. With data from a national telephone survey of non-Latino adults (N?=?1,364), we estimate the predictors of perceived criminal threat as well as the effects of perceived threat and other factors on immigration policy preferences. Results indicate that political ideology and education are the strongest predictors of perceived criminal threat. Perceived criminal threat has the greatest influence on support for more punitive controls and partially mediates the effects of race, education, political ideology, and contextual threat on these control preferences. Future social threat research should consider the inclusion of perceptual threat measures instead of relying solely on contextual indicators of threat. In addition, contextual threat should be explored more often in dynamic, rather than static, terms.     

AGE,GENDER, AND THE CRIME OF CRIMES: TOWARD A LIFE‐COURSE THEORY OF GENOCIDE PARTICIPATION*

This article asks whether genocide follows the age and gender distributions common to other crime. We develop and test a life‐course model of genocide participation to address this question using a new dataset of 1,068,192 cases tried in Rwanda's gacaca courts. Three types of prosecutions are considered: 1) inciting, organizing, or supervising violence; 2) killings and other physical assaults; and 3) offenses against property. By relying on systematic graphic comparisons, we find that the peak age of those tried in the gacaca courts was 34 years at the time of the genocide, which is older than the peak age for most other types of crime. We likewise find that women were more likely to participate in crimes against property and comparatively unlikely to commit genocidal murder. Symbolic–interactionist explanations of crime suggest people desist from crime as a result of shared understandings of the expectations of adulthood. We argue that this process may be turned on its head during genocide as participants may believe they are defending their communities against a perceived threat. Thus, in contrast to other criminological theories suggesting that people must desist from crime to be accorded adult status, some adults may participate in genocide to fulfill their duties as adult men.     

Superficial Survey Choice: An Experimental Test of a Potential Method for Increasing Response Rates and Response Quality in Correctional Surveys

Objectives

Drawing on prior theoretical and empirical work on survey participation, this study develops one potential method for increasing response rates and response quality in correctional surveys. Specifically, we hypothesize that providing inmates with a superficial survey choice (SSC)—that is, a choice between completing either of two voluntary surveys that are actually differently ordered versions of the same questionnaire—will increase their motivation both to participate in a given survey and to respond thoughtfully to the questions asked therein.

Methods

We test the effectiveness of this method by evaluating its impact on unit nonresponse, item nonresponse, and answer reliability. To do this, we analyze experimental data from a recent survey of male inmates incarcerated in a medium security, private prison.

Results

Findings indicate that the overall response rate is higher among inmates who are provided a survey choice. In addition, the evidence shows that the SSC method increases the percentage of individual items completed, the number of demanding questions completed, and the reliability of reported responses.

Conclusion

The results from the analyses are consistent with the hypotheses that motivated this study and suggest that the SSC method holds promise as a tool for correctional researchers.     

Family-of-origin characteristics and current family relationships of female adult incest victims

Past and present family relationships of a group of female adult incest victims were examined. The sample consisted of 40 women who were, at the time of assessment, in treatment for childhood experiences of incest. The majority of these women viewed their families-of-origin as generally unhealthy in regard to various dimensions of autonomy and intimacy. Current relationships with their families-of-origin were characterized by less intimacy and more intimidation, triangulation, and fusion than a normed group. Some of these patterns were also evident in the families-of-procreation of these women, including greater triangulation and less spousal intimacy. The subjects also perceived their families-of-procreation as disengaged, controlling, less active in events outside the family, conflict-ridden, and lacking in organization and emotional expressiveness. Finally, based on a circumplex model, a significant number of families-of-procreation were in the extreme range of family functioning.     

Developments in medical law in the United Kingdom in 2005 and 2006

This article highlights and summarises the key developments in medical law in the jurisdictions of the United Kingdom in 2005 and to April 2006. Topics are mental health and mental capacity, data protection, freedom of information and the impact on health data, the Human Tissue Act, genetic research databanks, Human Fertilisation and Embryology Act--Review of the legislation, consultations and related case law, developments in embryo and embryonic stem cell research, clinical trials and human subject research, medical futility, and physician assisted dying.     

Exploring sentencing in three European cities

This research represents the results of a sentencing study conducted in three cities in Europe. The cities were chosen because they represent widely varying judicial philosophies. The question addressed is: do different formal legal attitudes impact sentencing behaviors? Data come from a randomly selected set of cases acquired from one judge in each of the three cities. The results indicate that, as in the United States, extra‐legal variable play a lesser role than legally relevant criteria in determining sentences. Contextual factors are also important as the models for explaining the variations in sentencing decisions change from city to city. This research continues the line of investigation which points to the need for a more thorough sample of sentencing decisions so that generalizations about the relationship between ideology and courtroom behavior can be made across countries.