Los retos de la criminología desde las propuestas utópicas de Lawrence W. Sherman

Crime prevention must take various approaches to deal with the problem of crime. This study will address restorative justice, criminology from health institutions, and criminology from statistics as the three approaches –without being limiting– recommended by Lawrence W. Sherman to prevent crime. The study is descriptive in nature with a documentary approach, taking into account some realities of Nicaragua.La prevención del delito debe tomar diversos enfoques para enfrentar el problema de la criminalidad. El presente estudio abordará la justicia restaurativa, la criminología desde las instituciones de salud y la criminología de la estadística como los tres enfoques –sin ser limitativos– que recomienda Lawrence W. Sherman para prevenir el delito. El estudio es de carácter descriptivo con un enfoque documental, tomando en consideración algunas realidades de Nicaragua

Evidence-Informed Criminal Justice

The American criminal justice system is at a turning point. For decades, as the rate of incarceration exploded, observers of the American criminal justice system criticized the enormous discretion wielded by key actors, particularly police and prosecutors, and the lack of empirical evidence that has informed that discretion. Since the 1967 President’s Commission on Law Enforcement and Administration of Justice report, The Challenge of Crime in a Free Society, there has been broad awareness that the criminal system lacks empirically informed approaches. That report unsuccessfully called for a national research strategy, with an independent national criminal justice research institute, along the lines of the National Institutes of Health. Following the report, police agencies continued to base their practices on conventional wisdom or “tried-and-true” methods. Prosecutors retained broad discretion, relying on their judgment as lawyers and elected officials. Lawmakers enacted new criminal statutes, largely reacting to the politics of crime and not empirical evidence concerning what measures make for effective crime control. Judges interpreted traditional constitutional criminal procedure rules in deference to the exercise of discretion by each of these actors. Very little data existed to test what worked for police or prosecutors, or to protect individual defendants’ rights. Today, criminal justice actors are embracing more data-driven approaches. This raises new opportunities and challenges. A deep concern is whether the same institutional arrangements that produced mass incarceration will use data collection to maintain the status quo. Important concerns remain with relying on data, selectively produced and used by officials and analyzed in nontransparent ways, without sufficient review by the larger research and policy community. Efforts to evaluate research in a systematic and interdisciplinary fashion in the field of medicine offer useful lessons for criminal justice. This Article explores the opportunities and concerns raised by a law, policy, and research agenda for an evidence-informed criminal justice system

Restorative Practices in Buffalo: Building and Rebuilding Community

Restorative practices/restorative justice (RP or RJ) is an alternative approach to our current punitive system of addressing conflict and crime. It is an age-old practice with origins in many indigenous cultures and has become increasingly popular in schools, communities and court systems in recent years. Here in Buffalo, individuals began advocating for restorative justice nearly two decades ago. Since then, many organizations, community groups, and schools have been using the practice to resolve disputes and build relationships

Instrumental Variables Methods in Experimental Criminological Research: What, Why, and How?

Quantitative criminology focuses on straightforward causal questions that are ideally addressed with randomized experiments. In practice, however, traditional randomized trials are difficult to implement in the untidy world of criminal justice. Even when randomized trials are implemented, not everyone is treated as intended and some control subjects may obtain experimental services. Treatments may also be more complicated than a simple yes/no coding can capture. This paper argues that the instrumental variables methods (IV) used by economists to solve omitted variables bias problems in observational studies also solve the major statistical problems that arise in imperfect criminological experiments. In general, IV methods estimate the causal effect of treatment on subjects that are induced to comply with a treatment by virtue of the random assignment of intended treatment. The use of IV in criminology is illustrated through a re-analysis of the Minneapolis Domestic Violence Experiment.

Evaluating the Effectiveness of Mandatory Arrest for Domestic Violence in Virginia

The Commonwealth of Virginia has adopted a series of new provisions, scheduled to become effective, July 1, 1997. These provisions will provide directives for the criminal legal system in response to the issue of domestic violence. One of these provisions, the mandatory arrest of the primary physical aggressor in instances of assault and battery of a family or household member, is a matter of some controversy in Virginia and the nation. This article focuses on evaluating the effectiveness of the mandatory arrest provision in Virginia. The underlying premise of this article is that systematic evidence is different from personal experience, and even professional expertise, and that, in many situations, where systematic evidence exists, it is to be preferred over personal experience and professional expertise. This article suggests that the critical skills and faculties necessary to assess effectiveness in a systematic manner are lacking in the written records on the adoption of mandatory arrest in Virginia. Furthermore, there appears to be no commitment of resources on the part of the Commonwealth of Virginia to collect the systematic evidence necessary to assess whether its new reforms will, in fact, improve the safety of women. This article reviews the origins of the mandatory arrest provisions in Virginia, the logic and evidence presented in its support, and the available scientific evidence about the effectiveness of mandatory arrest as a means to prevent additional harm to the victims of domestic violence. The history of recent reforms in the criminal law relating to domestic violence measure effectiveness in terms of protecting the victims of domestic violence from subsequent harm. If, in fact, the safety of the victims of domestic violence is the goal of the new legal provisions in Virginia, the issues at hand are 1) the extent to which mandatory arrest has accomplished that goal in other jurisdictions and 2) how the citizens of Virginia will know if mandatory arrest has been effective in Virginia