Crime & Delinquency

The "sick" role that was offered in the past by prison psychia trists was rejected by prisoners, who favored the "bad" role be cause it gave them peer group support and an acceptable outlet for their aggressions. The "bad" role has, in turn, recently been supplanted by the increasingly attractive "political prisoner" role, which began among isolated groups of black prisoners and has now spread to all racial and ethnic groups.

Inmates and parolees have begun to organize themselves along ethnic lines for purposes of self-expression. Traditionally correc tion has taken a dim view of ethnic organizations and of most indigenous efforts by inmates or parolees at organizing.

This article presents a historical analysis of police encounters with black people in riot situations.

This article challenges the common assertion by correctional administrators that court decisions impair the effectiveness of correctional programs by restricting the discretion of administra tors. On the contrary, most courts still maintain a "hands off" policy, allowing abuses to continue, to the detriment of the prisoners, probationers and parolees, and the correctional sys tems. Most decisions upholding the rights of prisoners, proba tioners, and parolees are resisted by administrators and have little restraining effect on administrative discretion. The power of administrators is great and, if exercised with sympathy to grievances, would improve rather than impair the effectiveness of correctional services.

This paper is a review of Maryland's Defective Delinquency Law, which identifies a group of chronic criminals who are dangerous to society and provides for their treatment along with, perhaps, their indeterminate detention in Patuxent Institution. Several sections of the law have come under legal attack; among them, the indeterminate sentence provision has been most se verely and most frequently attacked, although it is, from the therapist's point of view, the single most effective tool in the treatment of these men. In recent decisions, all the way up to the United States Court of Appeals, the law has been held to be constitutional, and treatment practices under it have led to one of the lowest recidivism rates in the United States.

Disparate sentencing, whose existence has been confirmed by a variety of studies, has frequently been called a major weakness of the judicial process. A widely applied response to the problem is the indeterminate sentence.

Though the criminal receiver and his crime stand out as sorely neglected by sociologists, psychologists, and criminologists, the burgeoning rate of property theft with its need for the ready market of the receiver makes it clear that the fence has not shrunk before the social scientist's neglect. If anything, it would seem that he has flourished in the dim periphery which the thief's spot light has afforded him.