Showing papers in "Journal of Criminal Law & Criminology in 1972"

Higher Education and Policemen: Attitudinal Differences between Freshman and Senior Police College Students

Abstract: There is a general assumption that education in its broadest perspective will have some effect in enhancing the capabilities of police to handle their progressively more complex role.l Among the tangible consequences of this faith has been the establishment of the John Jay College of Criminal Justice, a four year senior mstitution of higher learning offering a broad curriculum to members of the law enforcement community. This institution, founded in 1964 at the City Unisrersity of New York, has been functioning for a sufficient period of time to utilize it as a model in assessing some of the consequences of higher education upon policemen who have been its students. The present study sought to examine one facet of the impact of college education: differences along certain attitudinal dimensions between freshmen and senior police college students. Smith, Locke and Walker2 have pointed out that

Optimal Selection of Police Patrol Beats

Abstract: Dr. Phillip S. Mitchell is a Law Enforcement Consultant and an Associate Professor of Quantitative Methods at California State University, Fullerton, California. He is active in consulting, research, and teaching in the areas of mathematical programming and public systems modeling. Dr. Mitchell is an associate member of the International Association of Chiefs of Police and serves on the Research & Development Task Force of the California Council on Criminal Justice.

Current Practices in the Use of Psychological Testing by Police Agencies

Abstract: The National Advisory Commission on Civil Disorders (1968) in its report to the President concerning the role of the police pointed out that there existed a need to weed out those individuals in the law enforcement field who displayed signs which indicated that their personal prejudices would interfere with the proper administration of their duties. It was indicated that the mere testing of individuals on their ability to answer questions pertaining to grammar, mathematics, and local ordinances was not sufficient by itself to perform this important task. Some agencies in addition to administrating examinations of the type noted above also use an oral interview to assess the character of applicants. The Commission criticized this procedure because it considered the oral interview too subjective a method of testing an individual's qualities. This type of test was considered insufficient to recognize unsuitable individuals because of the difficulty in developing valid and reliable oral tests. In addition, this type of examination was looked at as a means of utilizing political influence to sway the interviewer's judgement. The Commission recommended that there should be some other method of screening applicants in addition to the methods currently in use. It was pointed out that the current procedures were insufficient by themselves to eliminate those candidates that have personality disorders or other similar defects. It was recommended that police agencies use trained personnel, psychologists and psychiatrists, to conduct interviews with police applicants. It was also recommended that each candidate be subjected to a battery of psychological examinations in order to determine whether a particular candidate was qualified for police work. This concept is not new. For years police administrators have been aware of the need to eliminate those individuals who were emotionally unsuitable for police work. It was first proposed by Terman (1917) to use mental and scientific testing techniques in the selection of policemen and firemen. Terman administered the Stanford Revision of the Binet-Simon Intelligence Test. Terman felt that the testing of general intelligence was the most important factor, aside from moral integrity, in determining the fitness of an applicant for police or fire work. Kates (1950) conducted a study with twentyfive volunteer New York City patrolmen to ascertain the personality traits possessed by policemen. He was of the opinion that an individual with certain personality characteristics, just short of a thoroughgoing psychotic disorganization might be attracted to and satisfied with an occupation because his personality traits were compatible with its demands. He tested this group to find out if this type of relationship existed in police work. He also postulated that there would be a relationship between personality and adjustment or maladjustment in the emotional sphere with interest and satisfaction in the occupation. Kates administered the Rorschach Test and the Strong Vocational Interest Blank. As a result of the Rorschach Test he found that the degree of maladjustment of policemen was slightly but insignificantly greater than that of biologists and slightly but insignificantly smaller than that of routine clerks. He concluded that policemen probably, as a whole, demonstrated as many signs of maladjustment as may be found in other groups. The policemen that were tested showed a high level of job satisfaction although there was no relationship between this and job interest. Kates correlated the results of the Rorschach and the Strong Vocational Interest Blank tests and concluded that there was a significant relationship between job satisfaction and maladjustment. Finally, Kates pointed out that policemen with high police interests tended to be markedly introversive, to have adequate ability to accept their own strivings and outlook as mature,

Inmate Rights and Prison Reform in Sweden and Denmark

Abstract: Sweden's Osteraker prison outside of Stockholm is a walled, maximum custody facility for 195 prisoners. Confined in Osteraker are men who have committed serious crimes, such as homicide, robbery, and sale of narcotics; recidivists who did not "profit7' from terms in open institutions;1 and men who escaped from open institutions or did not return from home leaves. This prison was the site, in early 1971, of unprecedented bargain-

Crime in Denmark--A Statistical History

Abstract: Denmark's population numbers less than five million persons. In most respects the population may be characterized as homogeneous; there exist no minority group conflicts. The main part of the population lives in towns, 28% in the capital and 31% in other towns in 1960. Only 41% of the population lives in rural areas. Apart from a considerable movement of persons from rural districts to urban districts population mobility is low. Denmark is often termed a welfare state. The social welfare and security system provides maternity care, free meals for needy children, home help service, relief to orphans, child welfare and sickness insurance, pensions for disabled persons, and aid to people suffering from chronic diseases. Denmark's different forms of poor relief include unemployment insurance, old age pensions, relief to widows and widowers, and subsidies for funeral

Organizational Aspects of Internal and External Review of the Police

Abstract: The issue of civilian complaint review boards for incidents involving citizen grievances against the police has continued unresolved for over a decade. While most of the acrimonious debate has been carried on at the municipal level, Presidential commissions, the FBI, and many national organizations have contributed arguments and recommendations at one time or another.l Nevertheless, the debate has had to thrive mainly on ideology, rhetoric, and opinion, for few cities have experimented with civilian review boards, making data difficult to obtain. There i5 one city, however, that did have an operating civilian review board for a suicient length of time to permit an analysis of its activities. For about ten years (1958-1969), the Mayors of Philadelphia appointed a group of prominent citizens to the Philadelphia Police Advisory Board (PAB) that had a mandate to accept citizen complaints about alleged police misconduct.2 At the same time, the Philadelphia Police Department's Police Board of Inquiry (PBI) continued to hear cases that involved citizen complaints, although the bulk of its activity centered on intemally generated disciplinary cases. Data on both these

The Advantages of the Scanning Electron Microscope in the Investigative Studies of Hair

Abstract: Lynn Ellen Verhoeven is a member of the staff of Alpha Research & Development, Inc., Blue Island, Illinois where she is engaged in Scanning Electron Microscopy research in biological, physical and chemical fields. After receiving her B.A. degree in the field of biology and chemistry Miss Verhoeven received training in Transmission Electron Microscopy at Loyola University, Stritch School of Medicine, Hines, Illinois and continued work at the University of Illinois Medical School in pathology and virology research as well as work in forensic pathology. She is a member of the Midwest Society of Electron Microscopists, State Microscopal Society of Illinois and the Electron Microscopy Society of America.

Prisoners' Rights to Medical Care

Abstract: prisoners' rights, including the right to medical care, is reflected not only in the statutes3 and tort law4 of most states, but also in the recent erosion of the "hands-off" doctrine. In its tersest legal formulation, "the hands-off doctrine represents a denial of jurisdiction over the subject matter of petitions from prisoners alleging some form of mistreatment or contesting some deprivation undergone during imprisonment." 5 This lack of subject matter jurisdiction has no statutory basis but is instead a judge-made limitation. Underlying the doctrine is an assessment that the deprivations prisoners complain of are necessary conditions of imprisonment. A more important basis for the hands-ofE doctrine is a profound reluctance by the courts to interfere with prison administration. Part of this reluctance is the fear that judicial interference would create a flood of litigation and

Problems in Identification of Methylenediony and Methoxy Amphetamines

Abstract: V. R. Sreenivasan, Ph.D., is staff Spectroscopist, Chicago Police Crime Detection Laboratory, Chicago, fllinois. He joined the laboratory staff in 1968 and has been engaged in the analysis of narcotics, hallucinogens, dangerous drugs, paints and other materials encountered in forensic problems. Dr. Sreenivasan is a member of the American Chemical Society, The American Academy of Forensic Sciences, and Applied Spectroscopy. This paper was prepared for presentation during a meeting of Crime Laboratory Chemists in August 1970.

Increases in Crime: The Utility of Alternative Measures

Abstract: Reported increases in offenses known to the police in the United States for the years since 1958 suggest that the United States crime rate has increased dramatically in recent years, with the rate for 1967 being double that reported for 1958.1 Interpretation of this sharp rise in the crime rate is complicated by a number of factors, but primarily by the sparseness of national data with which the trend may be compared. More complete and more comparable arrest data, for example, would provide an additional series with which "offense-known" trends could be compared. Periodic victim surveys might also provide independent confirmation of the trends reported by the FBI, as might systematic and reasonably complete records from the juvenile and adult courts in the United States. But for all practical purposes only offense-known data is available. The use of offenses known to the police as an official government index of crime in the United States began in 1930 when legislation was enacted permitting the Division of Identification and Information in the Department of Justice (later the FBI) to adopt a plogram developed by the International Association of Chiefs of Police. In the