Criminal Justice Review

In order to establish whether a relationship exists between deterrence and moral reasoning, respondents were administered a questionnaire containing a list of possible factors that could account for deterrence, along with a questionnaire measuring their level of moral reasoning within the conceptual framework developed by Kohlberg. Analyses revealed differences between subgroups at various stages of moral development. Results are discussed in terms of research and policy implications.

This paper analyses homosexuality in male prisons and argues that the essentialist approach has dominated research in this area. Essentialists define homosexuality as a static trait and dichotomize sexuality into two categories, homosexuals and heterosexuals. A review of the literature on male homosexuality suggests that an essentialist approach resulted in a paradoxical situation in which researchers were forced to account for "normal" heterosexuals who engaged in situational homosexual behavior while in prison; because the very existence of "situational homosexuality" was inconsistent with essentialist definitions of homosexuality, researchers instead shifted the focus to sexual deprivation and then proceeded to include rape in typologies that purported to address homosexuality. Thus, distinctions between consensual homosexual behavior and rape were blurred. As a result of this conceptual ambiguity and because of paradigmatic changes in the study of homosexuality, there is a tremendous void in the literature on homosexuality in prison. This paper argues that a social constructionist approach would add to our understanding of homosexuality in male prisons.

Until quite recently, histories of imprisonment in America have overlooked women. Prison history has also been limited geographically to institutions in the northeast, and consequently there have been few studies of western prisons. The present historical analysis deals with women who were confined in the Arizona Territorial Prison at Yuma between 1876 and 1909. It extends and expands upon Nicole Rafter's Partial Justice (1990). Specifically, it covers the experience of women imprisoned in western states and territories during the last quarter of the nineteenth century, describes the racial and ethnic diversity of the female prison population along with the accompanying social and cultural differences, and outlines the treatment that women received from male prison officials. It also develops the concept of the western "bad women" within nineteenth-century popular culture to provide further support for Rafter's claim that prisons function to control gender, race, and ethnicity as well as crime.

The present study examines the reliability of self-report data inadvertently collected from 11 adult inmates in a study of a house arrest program. Data were collected with a self-administered questionnaire that was given twice within a four-month period. Correlations of 92 items, divided into categories of "Information," "Expectations," and "Affections," showed wide variation in reliability. Complete agreement on the two occasions was found for only 24 items, which were primarily in the "Information" category. Correlations across the 92 items were also computed for each subject, and these correlations also showed wide variation in reliability. Although no subject gave exactly the same responses on all 92 items, greater reliability was again found in the "Information" category. In addition, 3 of the subjects gave particularly unreliable responses. These results, together with the lack of existing literature on the topic, suggest a need to conduct more research on reliability of inmates in order to develop more reliable measures as well as to detect unreliable subjects.

The role that alcohol plays in facilitating crime is widely acknowledged, and alcohol's relationship to crimes against persons has been well documented. Nevertheless, there have been few systematic attempts to examine the dynamics of what are referred to as alcohol-related crimes (driving under the influence, public drunkenness, disorderly conduct, vagrancy, and liquor law violations). Given that these offenses account for approximately one third of the arrests made annually in the United States, the role of alcohol in these offenses clearly warrants analysis. The present study examines the relationship of alcohol availability in each state, as measured by the prevalence of various types of alcohol outlets, to arrest rates for alcohol-related offenses, controlling for relevant demographic and socioeconomic variables. The results indicate that density and type of alcohol outlets are, indeed, significant predictors of alcohol-related crimes. The findings suggest, however, that outlets have widely varied effects for different alcohol-related offenses. Explanations and policy implications for the findings are discussed.

The 1991 Term of the Supreme Court produced the smallest number of "signed opinion" cases in several decades. Cases in this category are given full review, as opposed to those that are decided summarily and those that are not accepted for review at all. As in previous terms, cases presenting criminal justice and related issues rep t a sificant percentage, approximately one third this term, of the 108 cases having signed opinions. However, there was a notable absence of cases in two of the categories that usually occupy a prominent place in the Revew's criminal justice survey each year: In the 1991 Term, there were no substantive decisions dealing with traditional searches and seizures or interrogations and confessions.