Gordon Hawkins

Abstract: "Getting tough on crime" has been one of the favorite rallying cries of American politicians in the last two decades, and "getting tough" on repeat offenders has been particularly popular. "Three strikes and you're out" laws, which effectively impose a 25-years-to-life sentence at the moment of a third felony conviction, have been passed in 26 states. California's version of the "three strikes" law, enacted in 1994, was broader and more severe than measures considered or passed in any other state. Punishment and Democracy is the first examination of the actual impact this law has had. Franklin Zimring, Sam Kamin, and Gordon Hawkins look at the origins of the law in California, compare it to other crackdown laws, and analyze the data collected on crime rates in Los Angeles, San Diego, and San Francisco in the year before and the two years after the law went into effect. They show that the "three strikes" law was a significant development in criminal justice policy making, not only at the state level, but also at the national level. They conclude with an examination of the trend toward populist initiatives driving penal policy. The importance of the subject and the stature of the authors make this book required reading for policy analysts, criminal justice scholars, elected officials, and indeed any American seeking to know more about "get-tough" criminal sentencing.

Abstract: This book has three main aims: the first is to show that what separates the USA from other countries is not crime rates but lethal violence. Crimes like burglary and theft are a part of modern urban life worldwide; shootings and stabbings are not - they are particularly American. Why is this so? Secondly , the book seeks to clarify the causes of violence by looking at the proximate causes of deadly violence - guns, violence in the media, drugs and the tradition of lethal violence are all examined. The concluding section of the book concerns the prevention of lethal violence as a priority issue. The authors discuss a range of anti-violence alternatives from change in the criminal law to social and physical environmental factors and social values and attitudes.

Abstract: Two of the nation's foremost criminal justice scholars present a comprehensive assessment of the factors behind the growth and subsequent overcrowding of American prisons. By critiquing the existing scholarship on prison scale from sociology and history to correctional forecasting and economics, they both reveal that explicit policy changes have had little influence on the increases in imprisonment in recent years and analyze whether it is possible to place limits effectively on prison population. ""The Scale of Imprisonment" has an exceptionally well designed literature review of interest to public policy, criminal justice, and public law scholars. Its careful review, analysis, and critique of research is stimulating and inventive." "American Political Science Review " "The authors fram our thoughts about the soaring use of imprisonment and stimulate our thinking about the best way we as criminologists can conduct rational analysis and provide meaningful advice." Susan Guarino-Ghezzi, "Journal of Quantitative Criminology " "Zimring and Hawkins bring a long tradition of excellent criminological scholarship to the seemingly intractable problems of prisons, prison overcrowding, and the need for alternative forms of punishment." J. C. Watkins, Jr., "Choice ""

Abstract: The new penology argues that an important new language of penology is emerging. This new language, which has its counterparts in other areas of the law as well, shifts focus away from the traditional concerns of the criminal law and criminology, which have focused on the individual, and redirects it to actuarial consideration of aggregates. This shift has a number of important implications: It facilitates development of a vision or model of a new type of criminal process that embraces increased reliance on imprisonment and that merges concerns for surveillance and custody, that shifts away from a concern with punishing individuals to managing aggregates of dangerous groups, and that affects the training and practice of criminologists.

Abstract: Research and media reports have established the continued pervasiveness of academic dishonesty among students on America's college campuses [12, 13, 22, 25, 26, 33, 46]. While some colleges have responded with academic integrity classes and increased efforts to convince reluctant faculty members to report student cheaters [13], there is a renewed interest in the concept of "community" as an effective foundation for campus governance. For example, the Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching's special report, Campus Life: In Search of Community, concludes, "What is needed, we believe, is a larger, more integrative vision of community in higher education. . . . a place where individuals accept their obligations to the group and where well-defined governance procedures guide behavior for the common good" [10, p. 7]. Derek Bok, in Universities and the Future of American, echoes this theme: [U]niversities need to consider the larger campus environment beyond the classroom. An obvious step in this direction is to have rules tha t prohibit lying, cheating, stealing, violent behavior, interference with free expression, or other acts that break fundamental norms. Such rules not only protect the rights of everyone in the community; they also signal the importance of basic moral obligations and strengthen habits of ethical behavior [5, pp. 84-85]. Bok offers the honor code as perhaps the most effective approach in matters of academic integrity, but acknowledges that, "the pervasive competition for grades; the size, diversity, and impersonal nature of many large universities; their lack of any honor code traditon; and the wide-spread distaste for accusing one's classmates" combine to work against such an approach [5, p. 87]. Although the honor code traditon dates back over a century, the viability of such codes on today's campuses is open to some question [12]. Small, relatively homogeneous campuses have generally given way to large, culturally diverse institutions which lack any apparent sense of community or common purpose among students other than getting a credential and a job. Despite the fundamental nature of this question, there is a surprising paucity of empirical research which addresses the effectiveness of honor codes. the study discussed here attempts to help fill this gap by comparing academic dishonesty in colleges that have honor codes and those that do not. The few studies that have addressed the effectiveness of honor codes [7, 9] have generally considered code effectiveness independent of context. We believe that it is important to acknowledge and understand the complexity of the social systems within which honor codes are embedded and the fact that other contextual factors may be as important or more important than the existence of an honor code by itself. Thus this study extends beyond previous work by studying the effectiveness of honor codes within a more complex social context. Honor Codes in Context Academic Dishonesty Depending on one's definition of academic dishonesty, the data collection methods employed, and other variables, prior studies report that anywhere from 13 to 95 percent of college students engage in some form of academic dishonesty [12, 17, 20, 21, 26, 30, 31, 42]. A major dichotomy that separates these prior studies is the level of analysis. One stream of research has focused on individual differences though to be predictive of cheating behavior, such as gender [45], grade point average [1, 22,], work ethic [15], Type A behavior, competitive achievement-striving [35], and self-esteem [44]. In contrast, other studies have concentrated on the institutional level of analysis and examined such contextual factors as honor codes [7, 8, 9], faculty responses to cheating [26], sanction threats [33, 42], and social learning [33]. Although the "individual differences" approach helps to understand individuals' predispositions to cheat, the findings are not particularly useful to the university administrator searching for effective institutional responses to issues of academic dishonesty. …

Abstract: Situational prevention seeks to reduce opportunities for specific categories of crime by increasing the associated risks and difficulties and reducing the rewards. It is composed of three main elements: an articulated theoretical framework, a standard methodology for tackling specific crime problems, and a set of opportunity-reducing techniques. The theoretical framework is informed by a variety of "opportunity" theories, including the routine activity and rational choice perspectives. The standard methodology is a version of the action research paradigm in which researchers work with practitioners to analyze and define the problem, to identify and try out possible solutions, and to evaluate and disseminate the results. The opportunity-reducing techniques range from simple target hardening to more sophisticated methods of deflecting offenders and reducing inducements. Displacement of crime has not proved to be the serious problem once thought, and there is now increasing recognition that situational measu...