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Full-Text Articles in Criminology

Towards A Psychological Science Of Abolition Democracy: Insights For Improving Theory And Research On Race And Public Safety, Cynthia J. Najdowski, Phillip Atiba Goff Jan 2022

Towards A Psychological Science Of Abolition Democracy: Insights For Improving Theory And Research On Race And Public Safety, Cynthia J. Najdowski, Phillip Atiba Goff

Psychology Faculty Scholarship

We call for psychologists to expand their thinking on fair and just public safety by engaging with the “Abolition Democracy” framework that Du Bois (1935) articulated as the need to dissolve slavery while simultaneously taking affirmative steps to rid its toxic consequences from the body politic. Because the legacies of slavery continue to produce disparities in public safety in the U.S, both harming Black people and the institutions that could keep them safe, psychologists must take seriously questions of history and structure in addition to immediate situations. In the present article, we consider the state of knowledge regarding psychological processes …


Exploring Locus Of Control In Offender Cognition And Recidivism Paradigms, Anistasha Lightning, Danielle Polage Jan 2019

Exploring Locus Of Control In Offender Cognition And Recidivism Paradigms, Anistasha Lightning, Danielle Polage

All Master's Theses

Working with four Washington State county jails to administer surveys to currently incarcerated inmates, we investigated locus of control and beliefs in the likelihood of continued legal involvement as possible antecedents to criminal recidivism. The surveys examined whether there was any connection between legal involvement frequency and the externalization of locus of control. We investigated external locus of control with specific respect to involvement with the law, the prospect of future incarceration, and feelings concerning the overall cause of original and/or sustained legal involvement utilizing the Revised Causal Dimension Scale (McAuley, Duncan, & Russell, 1992). We identified statistically significant interactions …


Clergy Sexual Abuse: Social Science Perspectives, Claire Renzetti, Sandra Yocum Jan 2015

Clergy Sexual Abuse: Social Science Perspectives, Claire Renzetti, Sandra Yocum

Sandra A. Yocum

This book brings together experts primarily from the fields of criminology, criminal justice, law, and social work, but also cultural anthropology and psychology, to analyze clergy sexual abuse from the perspective of their individual disciplines. Contributors examine the latest data and analyses on the scope and impact of clergy sexual abuse, frame the problem in terms of sociological and criminological theories of crime and deviance, explore the social and legal issues the problem raises for the personal and communal life of faith communities, and discuss possibilities for reform, reconciliation, and healing. Covering sexual abuse of both minors and adults, chapters …


Empirical Desert, Individual Prevention, And Limiting Retributivism: A Reply, Paul H. Robinson, Joshua Samuel Barton, Matthew J. Lister Jan 2014

Empirical Desert, Individual Prevention, And Limiting Retributivism: A Reply, Paul H. Robinson, Joshua Samuel Barton, Matthew J. Lister

All Faculty Scholarship

A number of articles and empirical studies over the past decade, most by Paul Robinson and co-authors, have suggested a relationship between the extent of the criminal law's reputation for being just in its distribution of criminal liability and punishment in the eyes of the community – its "moral credibility" – and its ability to gain that community's deference and compliance through a variety of mechanisms that enhance its crime-control effectiveness. This has led to proposals to have criminal liability and punishment rules reflect lay intuitions of justice – "empirical desert" – as a means of enhancing the system's moral …


The Effect Of Mental Illness Under U.S. Criminal Law, Paul H. Robinson Jan 2014

The Effect Of Mental Illness Under U.S. Criminal Law, Paul H. Robinson

All Faculty Scholarship

This paper reviews the various ways in which an offender's mental illness can have an effect on liability and offense grading under American criminal law. The 52 American jurisdictions have adopted a variety of different formulations of the insanity defense. A similar diversity of views is seen in the way in which different states deal with mental illness that negates an offense culpability requirement, a bare majority of which limit a defendant's ability to introduce mental illness for this purpose. Finally, the modern successor of the common law provocation mitigation allows, in its new breadth, certain forms of mental illness …


Mental Disorder And Criminal Law, Stephen J. Morse Apr 2011

Mental Disorder And Criminal Law, Stephen J. Morse

All Faculty Scholarship

Mental disorder among criminal defendants affects every stage of the criminal justice process, from investigational issues to competence to be executed. As in all other areas of mental health law, at least some people with mental disorders, are treated specially. The underlying thesis of this Article is that people with mental disorder should, as far as is practicable and consistent with justice, be treated just like everyone else. In some areas, the law is relatively sensible and just. In others, too often the opposite is true and the laws sweep too broadly. I believe, however, that special rules to deal …


Gene-Environment Interactions, Criminal Responsibility, And Sentencing, Stephen J. Morse Jan 2011

Gene-Environment Interactions, Criminal Responsibility, And Sentencing, Stephen J. Morse

All Faculty Scholarship

This chapter in, Gene-Environment Interactions in Developmental Psychopathology (K. Dodge & M. Rutter, eds. 2011), considers the relevance of GxE to criminal responsibility and sentencing. It begins with a number of preliminary assumptions that will inform the analysis. It then turns to the law’s view of the person, including the law’s implicit psychology, and the criteria for criminal responsibility. A few false starts or distractions about responsibility are disposed of briefly. With this necessary background in place, the chapter then turns specifically to the relation between GxE and criminal responsibility. It suggests that GxE causes of criminal behavior have no …


Predicting Police Discretion: A Traffic Stop Analysis, Andrew Girard May 2010

Predicting Police Discretion: A Traffic Stop Analysis, Andrew Girard

Honors Projects

Examines Donald Black's (1976) theory of pure sociology with data from traffic stops collected over eight months during seventy hours of "ride alongs" with eight different police departments in Rhode Island. Posits that the social structure of each traffic stop is predictable based on observable characteristics of the parties involved and that distance in social space increases the likelihood of a police officer issuing a citation to a driver, while social characteristics similar to that of the police officer reduces the likelihood of a driver receiving a citation. Twenty-one variables throught to impact a police officer's discretion are analyzed. As …


Deconstructing The Psychopath: A Critical Discursive Analysis, Cary H. Federman, Dave Holmes, Jean Daniel Jacob Mar 2009

Deconstructing The Psychopath: A Critical Discursive Analysis, Cary H. Federman, Dave Holmes, Jean Daniel Jacob

Department of Justice Studies Faculty Scholarship and Creative Works

She loved accidents: any mention of an animal run over, a man cut to pieces by a train, was bound to make her rush to the spot. The spectacle of the wounded body has always had its lurid attractions. Coverage of serial killings and graphic accounts of brutal murders by various media is part of our “spectacular” culture fascinated by violence and brutality. The television is often the site where private desire and public fantasy meet, and where the fascination regarding dangerous offenders is initiated and nurtured (Knox, 17–18; Lesser). The convening of the public around scenes of violence represents …