Foreword: The Political Geography of Race Data in the Criminal Justice System

Several months ago, there was a heated discussion on CrimProf, the listserv for criminal law professors, about the disproportionate representation of minorities in the criminal justice system. Few participants in this online discussion contested the reality that racial and ethnic minorities, especially African Americans, make up a far larger percentage of those arrested and incarcerated than should be expected from their percentage of the country\u27s total population

Evaluating Future Dangerousness and Need for Treatment: The Roles of Expert Testimony, Attributional Complexity, and Victim Type

In the current study, we explored the effect of risk-assessment testimony, attributional complexity, and victim type on participants’ perceptions of the dangerousness of a sexually violent person and his need for treatment. Participants read details of a hypothetical sexual assault of a female minor and of an adult. Expert testimony of his risk assessment consisted of clinical opinion versus structured-clinical judgment (SCJ) versus actuarial assessment. Participants perceived clinical-opinion and SCJ testimony as equally influential when forming judgments of future dangerousness. In the context of treatment, however, participants relied on actuarial testimony when judging potential for risk. In addition, attributional complexity (AC) moderated perceptions of sexual risk. Overall, results point to the need for continued refinement of assessment techniques when determining dangerousness and need for treatment

The European Added Value of a Directive on Combatting Violence Against Women: Annex 2 Economic Aspects and Legal Perspectives for Action at the European Level

The paper investigates the economic cost of violence against women for the EU and compares the costs of action and inaction. Violence against women is estimated to cost the EU EUR 226 billion each year, including EUR 45 billion for services and EUR 24 billion in lost economic output. The costs of preventive measures are substantially less than the cost of the violence

Discovery-led refinement in e-discovery investigations: sensemaking, cognitive ergonomics and system design.

Given the very large numbers of documents involved in e-discovery investigations, lawyers face a considerable challenge of collaborative sensemaking. We report findings from three workplace studies which looked at different aspects of how this challenge was met. From a sociotechnical perspective, the studies aimed to understand how investigators collectively and individually worked with information to support sensemaking and decision making. Here, we focus on discovery-led refinement; specifically, how engaging with the materials of the investigations led to discoveries that supported refinement of the problems and new strategies for addressing them. These refinements were essential for tractability. We begin with observations which show how new lines of enquiry were recursively embedded. We then analyse the conceptual structure of a line of enquiry and consider how reflecting this in e-discovery support systems might support scalability and group collaboration. We then focus on the individual activity of manual document review where refinement corresponded with the inductive identification of classes of irrelevant and relevant documents within a collection. Our observations point to the effects of priming on dealing with these efficiently and to issues of cognitive ergonomics at the human–computer interface. We use these observations to introduce visualisations that might enable reviewers to deal with such refinements more efficiently

Procedural Justice: A systematic literature search and technical report to the National Policing Improvement Agency

The Research, Analysis and Information Unit (RAI) of the National Policing Improvement Agency (NPIA) have identified ‘the procedural justice thesis’ as an important development in policing research with plans to replicate US research in a UK context. To facilitate their research agenda, the Centre of Excellence in Policing and Security (CEPS) at Griffith University developed a comprehensive search strategy and conducted a methodologically rigorous systematic literature search of procedural justice between April and June, 2009. Twenty-two keywords were identified and searched on six electronic databases and two library catalogues

Legitimacy and the Exercise of Institutional Authority: Motivating Compliance with Student Conduct Codes

abstract: Perceptions of legitimacy are an important antecedent of rule-abiding behavior. However, most research on the link between legitimacy and compliance has focused on legal authorities (i.e., police, courts, and corrections). To help fill this gap, the present study investigates the relationship between students' perceptions of the legitimacy of institutional authority and compliance with a code of conduct in a university context. This study uses cross-sectional data from pencil-and-paper surveys administered to 517 individuals 18 years and older that were enrolled in 12 undergraduate classes at a large southwestern university. Results from the multivariate regression models show that procedural justice judgments are associated with perceived legitimacy. The evidence also supports the link between legitimacy and compliance in that the former is inversely related to students' behavioral intentions to cheat on an exam. However, legitimacy was not significantly associated with plagiarism. Overall, findings support the application of the process-based model of regulation to the university context in regards to academic misconduct. In addition to contributing to the process-based model literature, this study emphasizes the utility of the process-based model as a guide for the development of fair processes, in order to reduce the prevalence of student academic misconduct.Dissertation/ThesisMasters Thesis Criminology and Criminal Justice 201

The Interrelationship between Alaska State Law and the Social Systems of Modern Eskimo Villages in Alaska: History, Present and Future Considerations

Yup'ik and Inupiat villages in Alaska (the territory and the state) experienced a process of legal socialization that was strongly influenced by serious constraints in the allocation of resources. These constraints resulted in legal socialization into what was in essence a second legal state system and provided an opportunity for cultural autonomy by Eskimo villages, even though this de facto situation did not recognize these groups as sovereign tribes. The actual implementation of a single full-blown legal system in village Alaska in the mid-1970s has resulted in a loss of control and serious efforts by Alaska villages to reinstitute village law ways as tribal legal process.Eskimo Villages in Alaska - Communities of Resilience and Change / Who are the Eskimos? / The Early Period / Western Legal Socialization: Early Agents of Change / Late Territorial and Early State Period / Critical Factors in the Oil Boom and Land Claims Era and Their Bearing Upon the Relationship Between Social Structure and Law / The Process of Legal Change During the Claims Settlement Decade / The Local Option Law and its Rationale / Juvenile Matters / Tribal Governments - The Next Step? / Bibliograph

Assessment and case conceptualization in sex offender treatment

The assessment of sexual offenders consists of the systematic collection of clinically relevant information in order to detect clinical phenomena or problems and to provide clear treatment targets. The result of this process is a conceptual model, or case formulation, representing the client&rsquo;s various problems, the hypothesized underlying mechanisms, and their interrelationships. The focus of this article is on the importance of psychological assessment and case formulation in the rehabilitation and management of individuals convicted of sexual offences. First, we make a number of general points about the importance of evidence based assessment and clinical reasoning in case formulation. Second, we review key elements of contemporary sexual offender theory that highlights the heterogeneity evident among sex offenders and the implications for case formulation and treatment planning. Third, we discuss the role of case formulation for risk assessment and management. Finally, we illustrate our major points with a brief case study and conclude with a brief consideration of the value of case formulations.<br /

Responsibility for implicit bias

Research programs in empirical psychology from the past two decades have revealed implicit biases. Although implicit processes are pervasive, unavoidable, and often useful aspects of our cognitions, they may also lead us into error. The most problematic forms of implicit cognition are those which target social groups, encoding stereotypes or reflecting prejudicial evaluative hierarchies. Despite intentions to the contrary, implicit biases can influence our behaviours and judgements, contributing to patterns of discriminatory behaviour. These patterns of discrimination are obviously wrong and unjust. But in remedying such wrongs, one question to be addressed concerns responsibility for implicit bias. Unlike some paradigmatic forms of wrongdoing, such discrimination is often unintentional, unendorsed, and perpetrated without awareness; and the harms are particularly damaging because they are cumulative and collectively perpetrated. So, what are we to make of questions of responsibility? In this article, we outline some of the main lines of recent philosophical thought, which address questions of responsibility for implicit bias. We focus on (a) the kind of responsibility at issue; (b) revisionist versus nonrevisionist conceptions of responsibility as applied to implicit bias; and (c) individual, institutional, and collective responsibility for implicit bias