Criminal Justice Review

Staff support of agency mission is an accepted axiom in organizational research. This analysis examined staff attitudes toward reentry preparation in a large prison system. Analysis examined whether local conditions at different prisons had an impact upon average views about the importance of reentry efforts. The study also investigated whether local conditions across prisons mediated differences between custody and treatment staff evaluations of reentry importance. Multilevel models demonstrated that average levels of reentry importance did vary across prisons, but the gap between custody and treatment staff evaluations was consistent across prisons.

Limited scholarly attention has been devoted to an understanding of ideology in criminal procedure cases decided by appellate courts. This study focuses on U.S. Supreme Court outcomes and develops a measurement of ideological divisiveness in the voting patterns of the justices for the decisions announced for the 1994–2014 terms of the Court. The analysis approaches the issue of ideological divisiveness in voting patterns through development of a Case Ideology Divisiveness score that is a weighted measure of vote divisiveness (the average justice deviation from the majority opinion) and depth of divisiveness (the number of unique concurring and dissenting opinions filed). The score is reported for criminal procedure, civil rights, First Amendment, and due process cases. The analysis then examines the score for 16 categories of criminal procedure case types and reports mean comparison data. Trends and implications are discussed.

The framework of the new penology will be applied to reveal how the contemporary objectives of incarceration have functioned to alter the role of Canadian provincial correctional officers (COs). Specifically, changing policy and legislation toward a more punitive agenda shape the daily operations of correctional facilities and how COs interact with those in their custody. Rehabilitative initiatives of any kind appear to be pushed aside, as the new or intensifying challenges associated with the growing prisoner populations and changing penal discourses are addressed. Semistructured face-to-face interviews were conducted with Canadian provincial COs and data from these interviews were analyzed to explicate the ways in which the new penology has reshaped COs’ employment in part due to their obligatory adherence to increasingly punitive managerial directives including an increased reliance on using disciplinary segregation. Findings suggest officer strain is impacted by their lack of agency and decision-making capabilities in light of these occupational changes. Our findings also evince that although COs work in a too often negative environment, many believe in the rehabilitative potential of incarceration and, further, oppose the use of segregation.

Little is known about the social correlates of serial rape or about trends in offending across time and space in the United States. Furthermore, the limited serial rape scholarship that exists was largely generalized from small, captive samples. The current study aims to amplify our understanding of serial rape by pursuing three fundamental objectives. First, guided by theory and research we propose a new, more precise, and comprehensive conceptualization of serial rape. Next, we draw from media representations of serial rape published in five major American newspapers from 1940 to 2010 to develop an offender social profile and to identify patterns in attack style. Our analysis of a broad and diverse sample of serial offenders described in media accounts (N = 1,037) produced the following profile estimates—age: 27 years; race/ethnicity: African American, 46%; Caucasian, 29%; Latino, 19%; Asian, 5%. Most offenders were employed in unskilled or semiskilled occupations and the most common attack strategy was the surprise approach (47%). Finally, our data allow us to estimate and interpret historical trends as depicted in media accounts. Our analysis revealed low levels of serial rape in newspaper accounts during the 1940s to 1950s, followed by a steady increase (with periodic decreases) leading to a peak in 1991. This peak is followed by a steady and dramatic decline from 1992 to 2010.

Focus groups help researchers obtain rich, experiential data in order to increase our sociological and psychological understanding of human interactions. In this study, I used qualitative data obtained from two focus groups, comprising 13 participants from the Ghanaian community, to understand Ghanaian immigrants’ personal experiences with and perceptions of the police in the United States. The rise in immigration from sub-Saharan Africa means that these immigrants’ views of and experiences with the police will become increasingly important to successful policing in local communities across the United States. The results of this study point to the need for U.S. police to employ procedural justice and distributive justice in their dealings with Ghanaian immigrants. These immigrants also believe that both their skin color and foreign accent pose a disadvantage when dealing with police. By addressing these concerns, the U.S. police would gain the trust and cooperation of the Ghanaian immigrant community. The policy implications of the findings are discussed.

Do gun control laws reduce violence? To answer this question, a city-level cross-sectional analysis was performed on data pertaining to every U.S. city with a population of at least 25,000 in 1990 (n = 1,078), assessing the impact of 19 major types of gun control laws, and controlling for gun ownership levels and numerous other possible confounders. Models were estimated using instrumental variables (IVs) regression to address endogeneity of gun levels due to reverse causality. Results indicate that gun control laws generally show no evidence of effects on crime rates, possibly because gun levels do not have a net positive effect on violence rates. Although a minority of laws seem to show effects, they are as likely to imply violence-increasing effects as violence-decreasing effects. There were, however, a few noteworthy exceptions: requiring a license to possess a gun and bans on purchases of guns by alcoholics appear to reduce rates of both homicide and robbery. Weaker evidence suggests that bans on gun purchases by criminals and on possession by mentally ill persons may reduce assault rates, and that bans on gun purchase by criminals may also reduce robbery rates.

In this article, we review and analyze the criminal justice–related decisions of the 2015 term of the U.S. Supreme Court. We also provide a summary of the Court’s voting patterns and opine authorship. Twenty-two of the Court’s 76 decisions touched on criminal justice. There were significant decisions involving the exclusionary rule, search incident to arrest, the death penalty, and sentencing.