Showing papers in "Criminal Justice and Behavior in 1974"

The Logic of Simulation in Jury Research

Abstract: For both substantive and methodological reasons, laboratory research into the functioning of mock jurors and juries may not be a useful foundation for the practical understanding of actual jury functioning. Data are provided to demonstrate that changes in the structural verisimilitude ("realism") of a simulated trial can produce systematic changes in juror response. However, the modal verdict in the most realistic simulation was not the verdict in the actual trial upon which the simulation was based. In general, we conclude that researchers should make all efforts to maximize the applicability of their findings by tailoring their methods and means of subject selection more closely to the realities of courtroom practice.

The Female Offender as an Object of Criminological Research

Abstract: The historical development of research approaches toward the etiology of female crimes and the characteristics of female offenders is traced through the correctional literature of the last century....

An Analysis of a Selection Interview Training Package for Predeunquents At Achievement Place

Abstract: chievement Place is a small, family-style behavior modification program for adolescents with behavior problems. The boys placed in Achievement Place by the Juvenile Court have typically had many problems in school. Although their academic performance usually improves as a result of the program, it seems unlikely that many of the boys will be furthering their formal educations once they have completed high school. This fact makes it probable that most of them will at least initially be competing in the unskilled job market to

Violent crime indices among community-retained delinquents

Abstract: VioLit summary: OBJECTIVE: The goal of this article by Andrew was to describe the use of a Violence Index in the study of the extent and degree of violent crime. This index was argued to be a useful tool in evaluation. METHODOLOGY: A quasi-experimental method was employed to study 172 delinquents who were affiliated with the California Subsidy Program. Two studies were performed. Study I examined 116 referrals for psychological evaluation within the program between January 1971 and March 1973. Study II examined 56 referrals within the program between April and November 1973. Cases were excluded when there was incomplete data and, in one case, when the crime was reduced by the court to a non-crime. The mean age of all the youth was 17.78 years. The youth were probationers, assigned to the intensive supervision of this program for difficult probationers in the community, and additionally had to be part of the "troublesome" subgroup of the probationer population. Data were collected from their psychological case files. The Violence Scale was developed in the following way. Four professionals (two probation staff and two clinical psychologists, including the author) involved with delinquency ranked a list of each subject's most serious crime in Study I. These rankings were averaged, and a new rank was assigned to each crime. For Study II, the same four professionals took the table derived from Study I and inserted 9 new crimes that were averaged between them. Scores on the scale ranged from very non-serious (smoking) to very serious (voluntary manslaughter). The hypotheses being tested were 1) males would have higher violence scores, 2) non-Anglos would have higher violence scores, and 3) there would be no differences between the two time periods. ANOVA was used to analyze the data. FINDINGS/DISCUSSION: Males were found to be significantly more violent in Study I (p AUTHOR'S RECOMMENDATIONS: The author concluded that the payoff/risk for keeping the violent delinquent in the community could be improved with improved prognosticating ability. It was also argued that the violence scale could serve as a prototype for future testing; an improvement would be to make the scale a ratio scale rather than an ordinal one. Another improvement, the author suggested, would be the association of psychodiagnostic indices with the degree of violence and identification of "inhibition" and "prevention" variables included. Creation of a pre-violence scale was also advocated. EVALUATION: It is a common fact that prior offending best predicts future offending. This article takes this one step further and creates a measurement of the seriousness of this prior offending. Seriousness of crime measures have been around for many years, but at this time (1974), it is very likely that this study's attempt was one of the pioneers. The sample size, while large enough to support the statistics used, is questionable when it comes to generalizability. The data were taken from a specific program in California; more broad-based study would need to be done to make statements about the violent juvenile population in general. The age of the data should also signify caution. Internal validity issues arise in this study in the following areas: 1) clinical files as a data source would contain an unspecifiable variation in its information given many different professionals write these files, and 2) the use of four persons to create the seriousness measure raises caution about the amount of variation that was encountered and how accurate the measure was. The conclusions about the insignificant increase in female seriousness over the time periods are not supported with literature or other data. In fact, the liberation argument has not been supported by data since its emergence in the early 70's. (CSPV Abstract - Copyright © 1992-2007 by the Center for the Study and Prevention of Violence, Institute of Behavioral Science, Regents of the University of Colorado) N1 - Call Number: F-461, AB-461 KW - 1970s KW - California KW - Survey Instrument KW - Juvenile Violence KW - Juvenile Delinquency KW - Juvenile Crime KW - Juvenile Offender KW - Offender Assessment KW - Delinquency Assessment KW - Delinquency Prediction KW - Crime Assessment KW - Crime Prediction KW - Violence Assessment KW - Violence Prediction Language: en

Personality differences between male and female prison inmates measured by the MMPI.

Abstract: Most of the research on classification of prisoners has been conducted solely with male samples The present study compared MMPI profiles of male and female prisoners Males showed significantly higher means on Hs and D and females on Si and Pa, particularly the Pa2 subscale Both sexes has elevated Pd scales It was concluded that male inmates appear to be more anti-social with neurotic overlays, while the female inmates appear more asocial than anti-social with overlays of greater emotional sensitivity-a finding supportive of a continuation of similar adolescent behavioral characteristics of Hathaway and Monachesi

Perceived Curative Factors in Group Therapy By Residents of a Therapeutic Community

Abstract: The NARA therapeutic community at the Federal Correctional Institution, Danbury, Connecticut, utilizes up to fifteen hours of group procedures weekly, as well as a reward system and an inmate status system. Fifty NARA therapeutic community residents were administered the Yalom 60-item Q-Sort of characteristics of successful therapy patients. Insight-related items were most highly ranked, followed by existential and catharsis factors, respectively. These results were compared to those of Yalom, highest-ranked items were examined, and the implications for understanding therapeutic communities were discussed.

The Child Who Murders: A Review of Theory and Research

Abstract: Moist people are aware of the existence of the child murderer from newspaper headlines; yet, little scientific study has been done on this category of offenders. Much previous research involves the study and diagnosis of children and their case histories and hypothesizes an element or elements common to all the cases in that particular study. Thus far, however, theorists have not agreed upon a single underlying cause or group of causes which could explain and be used to predict all instances of homicide committed by children. It .is not surprising that little attention has been given to the problem when one considers the small percentage of total crime that the very young commit. In 1925, there were .8% murderers per 100 male delinquents (Burt, 1965). A study done in the .

An Escape-Avoidance View of Catharsis:

Abstract: A conceptualization pertaining to the "arousal" reducing concomitants of aggression is presented, along with supporting evidence. The paper suggests that hostility catharsis, when observed, may only be a special case of a more general set of behavioral-emotional learning processes involving the escape-avoidance paradigm. The possible relationships among aggressive behavior, autonomic conditioning, and cognitive processes are discussed. Implications for the treatment and control of problems of aggression are suggested and compared with those emanating from the hydraulic model.

Applied Psychological Research in a Correctional Setting

Abstract: answer questions such as &dquo;How can we select men for work release?&dquo; and &dquo;Should this man be encouraged to take part in the academic or the vocational program?&dquo; he naturally turns to the research literature. Unfortunately, he finds few rigorous data there to guide his answer. Little, if any, systematic research has been reported on how different inmates will respond to or benefit from different programs. The research that is available is often not readily applicable. For example, studies of juvenile delinquents in community-based treatment programs are usually not relevant to the problems encountered with youthful or adult offenders in a penal institution. The psychologist is also an agent of behavior change. However, most of his theories and techniques for changing behavior are based not on empirical investigations of correctional samples but on experience and research with psychiatric

Convicted Felons' Attitudes Toward Theft

Abstract: since Lombroso, psychologists, sociologists, and criminologists have attempted to predict delinquent behavior by means of a variety of paper and pencil tests and similar measures. These include the Activity Vector Analysis (Clarke and Hasler, 1967), the MMPI (Hathaway and Monochesi, 1953), the Porteus Mazes (Porteus, 1945), the Id-Ego-Superego Test (Mangold, 1966), the Rorschach (Ichimura, 1966), knowledge of criminal argot (Gibson, 1966), the Kvaraceus Delinquency Scale and Checklist (Bechtold, 1964; Kvaraceus, 1954), the California Personality Inventory (Gough, 1965; Gough and Peterson, 1952), and a variety of others. All the foregoing are personality tests or other devices in which the purpose of the testing is disguised: an examinee is not likely to suspect that the instrument is designed to measure his or her tendency toward delinquency. Almost all these are °

Physical attractiveness of female offenders: effects on institutional performance

Abstract: Physical attractiveness ratings and five measures of institution performance were obtained for 75 female former residents at a federal youth center. Physical attractiveness was found to be significantly related to the number of town trips and the number of high stigma aggressive and high stigma nonaggressive negative behavior reports. In general, the relationships between the other performance measures and physical attractiveness were in the predicted direction. Some relationships between performance measures and physical attractiveness were affected by race of the resident. Results were discussed in terms of other reported findings on the effects of physical attractiveness.

The War Model in Criminal Justice No Substitute for Victory

Abstract: The criminal justice system operates on a war model. War mentality pervades the entire criminal justice process, determining to an important extent how we treat criminal "enemies." The war model is characterized by identification of enemies and heroes, estimate of the enemy's strengths and weaknesses, development of strategy, development of military weapons and resources, utilization of dishonest language, and establishment of goals and objectives which are designed to produce "victory." We must eliminate the system's distasteful emphasis on force, physical courage, weapons, and the twin concepts of "enemies" and "heroes." Society can no longer afford to wage war either in the trenches or in the streets.

Work Release Programs and Corrections: Goals and Deficits

Abstract: discussion of subjective impressions of work release should be prefaced with statements concerning the philosophy of work release as a rehabilitative process and the objective of such a process. An assumption is that the adjustment from incarceration to freedom is at best a difficult and frustrating experience for the inmate. An inmate who is abruptly released from a custodial environment to one of responsibility and freedom will suffer all manner of culture shock, loneliness, disappointment, and anger that may lead to additional offensive behavior. Consequently, the concept of work release is to provide a step-wise or graduate program wherein the inmate can experience increasing degrees of responsibility and freedom while his vocational and social skills (which suffered atrophy during incarceration) are being strengthened. Work release is conceived as a short-term (i.e., six months or less) process wherein the inmate has available to him the support and structure that he needs in order to effect a successful adjustment to the free world. It is fair to say that the objectives of such a process are to provide an experience for the inmate wherein his vocational and social skills are strengthened, his self-concept is upgraded, and the experiences of failure, rejection, and disappointment

Ex-Offender Employment Policies: A Survey of American Correctional Agencies

Abstract: A survey of the 50 state correctional systems, the District of Columbia Department of Corrections, and the Federal Bureau of Prisons indicated that 44 of the 52 agencies have dropped whatever blanket prohibitions they may have had on the hiring of ex-offenders. Of these 44 agencies, 38 employed a total of 280 ex-offenders at the time of the survey. Slightly more than half the ex-offender employees reported upon held positions such as counselor, teacher, and correctional officer, which involved extensive interaction with the inmate population. The work performance of the ex-offenders was routinely rated as equal or superior to that of non-offender counterparts, with respondents generally advocating more widespread employment of ex-offenders in the criminal justice system.

The Adult Female Offender: A Selected Bibliography

Abstract: This bibliography includes more than 200 articles in French or English that have appeared in specialized journals published in at least one of these two languages, from 1959 to 1974 inclusive. It c...

The Meaning of Research in Social Action: What the Clinical Community Can Expect from Research

Abstract: Research in the social sciences has been traditionally aimed primarily at building knowledge and understanding. The clinician, in contrast, is oriented toward action to deal with social problems. While the roles of researcher and clinician may thus be differentiated’ as distinct endeavors, rational program development may be dependent on collaboration between the two roles. The plan of this paper is to describe ways in which the researcher can offer meaningful help to the clinician. Additionally, since researchers are no more all alike than clinicians are all alike, an attempt will be made to describe characteristics of each group which are important to effective collaboration. Ideally, the researcher can contribute to the goal of rational