Other Law Commons^™

Motivation To Reduce Risk Behaviors While In Prison: Qualitative Analysis Of Interviews With Current And Formerly Incarcerated Women, Neetu Abad, Monique Carry, Jeffrey H. Herbst, Catherine I. Fogel

Qualitative Criminology (QC)

"Prison is an environment in which programs can be implemented to change harmful behaviors among high-risk populations. Incarcerated women experience high rates of HIV and other sexually transmitted diseases (STDs), yet little research has examined women’s motivation to reduce risky behaviors during incarceration. In-depth individual interviews were conducted with former and current women prisoners in two North Carolina correctional facilities and analyzed to identify barriers and facilitators of behavior change while in prison. Analyses revealed key motivators of behavior change: Viewing prison as a place to recover from past trauma, removing oneself from negative social networks, gaining access to needed …

Miriam Boeri, Women On Ice: Methamphetamine Use Among Suburban Women, Karen Mcelrath

Qualitative Criminology (QC)

"Some readers fail to read the preface to a book, eager to step inside the chapters. I began with the preface to Women on Ice and then returned to it after I had read the book in its entirety. The preface provides the reader with a brief but important snapshot of Miriam Boeri as an author and one whose family, like so many others, has experienced addiction. These life events shaped her interest in studying people who experience problems with psychoactive drug use. Moreover, authors who share this kind of “private trouble” help to de-stigmatize drug addiction (see also, the …

Barrett, C.J., Courting Kids: Inside An Experimental Youth Court, Avi Brisman

Qualitative Criminology (QC)

"In the late 1980s and early 1990s, the United States witnessed a small increase in youth violence, particularly a rise in gun violence among young African-American urban males. This spike in gun violence was localized and primarily linked to turmoil surrounding the introduction of crack cocaine into many cities around the country—metropolitan areas that were already experiencing crushing economic pressures, unemployment, and decaying neighborhoods. There was no evidence of an overall nationwide surge in “youth crime” or “juvenile crime”—terms that became conflated with serious “youth violence,” which, in turn, became code for “dangerous young black or brown men.” Despite this …

Ronald Weitzer, Legalizing Prostitution: From Illicit Vice To Lawful Business, Tammy Castle

Qualitative Criminology (QC)

"Dr. Ronald Weitzer is considered an expert on the sex industry, having studied prostitution for over a decade. In his latest book, Legalizing Prostitution: From Illicit Vice to Lawful Business, Weitzer provides a comprehensive examination of the myriad dimensions of sex work by drawing on both past research and his own ethnographic field work. Not only does he shatter prostitution myths by using empirical data, but also offers an alternative paradigm for understanding sex work that is theoretically grounded. In addition, he casts a critical eye on prostitution policies in the United States and proposes a “best practices” approach …

Stephanie C. Kane, Where Rivers Meet The Sea: The Political Ecology Of Water, Ashley K. Farmer

Qualitative Criminology (QC)

"Where Rivers Meet the Sea aims to explore how human beings have somehow created an environment that threatens the life-sustaining water systems that are such a natural, and perhaps taken for granted, part of their communities. Exploring rich cultural and historical contexts within two strikingly different South American neighborhoods, Stephanie C. Kane delves into how communities situated along bodies of water interact with and affect the human-water relationship. She pays particular attention to how culture, art, and race are intertwined with politics, crime, and governance."

Forced To Learn: Community-Based Correctional Education, Ron Mottern, C. Amelia Davis, Mary F. Ziegler

Qualitative Criminology (QC)

"Community-based correctional education has received scant attention in adult literacy research yet mandatory education is a growing part of the legal system and is fueled by research that suggests a link between correctional education and lower rates of recidivism. Growth in alternative to prison programs affects local ABE and GED programs. Adults who attend community-based correctional programs as a condition of their probation or parole face many challenges. The purpose of this existential-phenomenological study was to understand the experience of those adults. Findings describe students’ experiences of being forced to attend a GED program. Opening a space for these stories …

Jamie J. Fader, Falling Back: Incarceration And Transitions To Adulthood Among Urban Youth, Kallee Spooner

Qualitative Criminology (QC)

"In her first book, Jamie J. Fader presents an account of a group of young black males attempting to “fall back,” or stay out of trouble, as they return from a juvenile residential corrections facility to their communities in Philadelphia. Prior to the study, Fader spent six years evaluating delinquency programs for the city of Philadelphia and over a year working at a communitybased aftercare program that assisted youth returning to the city from reform schools. Fader gained access and insight to the structure and processes of the juvenile court system, which facilitated her research."

Editorial, Willard M. Oliver

Qualitative Criminology (QC)

Criminal Justice & Criminology have a long history of using qualitative methods in the conduct of research, but to date there has been neither a qualitative journal in criminal justice, nor one in criminology. That has now changed with this first issue of the Journal of Qualitative Criminal Justice & Criminology (JQCJC); and as one leading scholar recently told me, “It’s about time!”

Hearts In The Wasteland: Redeeming The Moral Self In Corrections, Allison M. Hicks

Qualitative Criminology (QC)

"In this article, I examine the emotional culture of prisons as perceived by prison chaplains, a population characterized by conflicting expectations and split loyalties. Expected to enforce institutional rules and punish rule violators, chaplains are also charged with the spiritual rehabilitation of their clients. Greer (2002) argues that prisons represent rich environments for exploring emotion management, being simultaneously emotionally inciting and constraining for those individuals living and working within them. To better understand this duality, I explore chaplains’ interpersonal management of inmates’ emotions. Based on qualitative interview data, I describe some of the assumptions chaplains make about inmates’ emotions and …

Looking Back At Other People’S Money: A Qualitative Test Of Cressey’S Classic Hypothesis Of Trust Violating Behavior, Paul M. Klenowski, Heith Copes

Qualitative Criminology (QC)

"Cressey’s study of trust violators has had a tremendous impact on how criminologists understand white collar offenders. Despite this, few have sought to replicate or validate his findings. The aim of this study is to replicate Cressey’s classic work to determine if it still has practical theoretical value today. To do this, we relied on data collected from 25 male federally incarcerated occupational offenders using semi-structured interviews. The results indicate that there is moderate empirical support for Cressey’s hypothesis when collectively examining all three components of his hypothesis. We found only minimal support for the importance of “non-shareable problems” because …

How Families Of Murder Victims Feel Following The Execution Of Their Loved One’S Murderer: A Content Analysis Of Newspaper Reports Of Executions From 2006-2011, Corey Burton, Richard Tewksbury

Qualitative Criminology (QC)

"Two common assumptions are that family members of murder victims (i.e. co-victims) will achieve closure and perceive a sense of justice following the execution of their loved one’s murderer. Those acting on behalf of co-victims and purporting to represent their best interests often use closure and justice discourses to bolster their arguments in favor of capital punishment in a particular case. However to assume, unequivocally, that family members will view the execution as the last of several steps in the journey to closure and perceived justice is to ignore a significant number of co-victims who may feel differently. Drawing on …

A Formative Approach In Applying A Meta- Ethnography Across The Qualitative Professional Criminal Literature, Douglas J. Wholl, Wilson R. Palacios, John K. Cochran, Christine S. Sellers

Qualitative Criminology (QC)

"This paper aims to introduce and teach readers step-by-step how to conduct a meta-ethnography within the field of criminology. In order to accomplish this, we purposefully selected a very narrow area of study, professional criminals as presented in well-known classic criminological monographs and then further restricted it to a rational choice perspective, a theoretical rubric easily addressed via the meta-ethnography. These limiting decisions were done so that readers would not get lost in the substance of the meta-ethnography. A search of qualitative research monographs and related online bibliographic databases identified a total of 32 research monographs, 6 of which met …

Examining The Decision-Making Processes Of Sex Tourists Using On-Line Data, Thomas J. Holt, April M. Zeoli, Kathleen Bohrer

Qualitative Criminology (QC)

"Criminological research has increasingly focused on the decision- making processes of offenders in order to better understand criminal behavior as a whole. A small body of research has considered how the bounds or limits of offender decision-making are shaped by various factors. In addition, limited research has considered the role of preference and bounded rationality in crimes where long-range planning and careful consideration of options are possible. To that end, this study explores both the factors that influence individual decisions and the way that they interact with preference to shape the decision-making process of sex tourists or individuals who travel …

Van Den Hoonaard, D.K. Qualitative Research In Action: A Canadian Primer, Deborah Landry

Qualitative Criminology (QC)

"Dr. Deborah Van Den Hoonaard has made a distinguished career of applying qualitative methodologies to uncover the rich everyday experiences of marginal populations. Professor Van Den Hoonaard holds a prestigious position as Canada Research Chair in Qualitative Analysis, garnering the respect of her peers for her fieldwork. The savvy experience of a seasoned field researcher unfolds easily in this guidebook, which feels more like a documentary than a methodology textbook. Nodding to the ethnographic traditions of the Chicago School and McGill University (the Canadian version of the Chicago School), her engagement with contemporary approaches is couched in an informed historical …

Louise Westmarland, Gender And Policing: Sex, Power, And Police Culture, Maria D. H. Koeppel

Qualitative Criminology (QC)

"Originally released in 2001, Louise Westmarland’s Gender and Policing has been released with a new publisher. With Routledge’s rerelease of the book, it is necessary to reassess the value of its research in the field of gender and policing to determine if it is still relevant. Throughout the book, Westmarland uses qualitative data to explore gendered themes in United Kingdom police forces. More specifically, her work focuses on whether differential deployment exists in policing based on gender and explores the role of gender within policing culture in several different situations. To analyze possible gendered patterns, Westmarland bases her work on …

“We’Re All Born With Equal Opportunities”: Hegemonic Individualism And Contextual Mitigation Among Delaware Capital Jurors, Ross Kleinstuber

Qualitative Criminology (QC)

"The Supreme Court has ruled that evidence derived from a capital defendant’s life history is crucial for making the reasoned moral judgment that is central to the death penalty’s constitutionality. However, Dunn and Kaplan (2009) suggested that individualism is so embedded in American culture that most people defer to it uncritically, which makes the use of such contextualizing mitigating evidence challenging. Prior studies suggest that capital jurors do not understand mitigation and focus on guilt-related issues when making their sentencing decisions, but they do not examine why this is so. This study extends these prior works by comparing the content …

Geoff K. Ward, The Black Child-Savers: Racial Democracy & Juvenile Justice, Robin D. Jackson

Qualitative Criminology (QC)

"Drawing on biographical details, people’s experiences, and historical documents, Geoff K. Ward examines Black child savers’ efforts and struggles to transform a Jim Crow juvenile justice system into a racially democratic model of juvenile justice. In his first book: The Black Child-Savers: Racial Democracy & Juvenile Justice, Ward describes Black child-savers as concerned Black Americans and their allies who sought racial reform in the juvenile justice system and who intervened on the behalf of Black dependent and delinquent youth. Ward also discusses “the sociocultural origins and organization of Jim Crow juvenile justice as well as the social movement by …

W.E.B. Dubois, The Philadelphia Negro: A Social Study, Howard Henderson

Qualitative Criminology (QC)

"Criminology’s Forgotten Genesis?

Crime is a phenomenon of organized social life, and is the open rebellion of an individual against his social environment. Naturally then, if men are suddenly transported from one environment to another, the result is lack of harmony with the new conditions; lack of harmony with the new physical surroundings leading to disease and death or modification of physique; lack of harmony with social surroundings leading to crime. (DuBois, p. 235) "

Saundra D. Westervelt & Kimberly J. Cook, Life After Death Row: Exonerees’ Search For Community And Identity, Jeanne Subjack

Qualitative Criminology (QC)

"Life After Death Row examines how individuals wrongly sentenced to death adjust to life after their release. The idea for the book arose in 2009, after Westervelt and Cook attended a conference and learned about the different aspects related to wrongful convictions that had yet to be addressed in academia. To gain a more thorough understanding of the events the participants experienced, the authors used life history and feminist methods to conduct their research. Although the current analysis is not necessarily focused on gender, feminist methods are useful here because they can be applied when a researcher “seeks an …

Mass Incarceration At Sentencing, Anne R. Traum

Scholarly Works

Courts can address the problem of mass incarceration at sentencing. Although some scholars suggest that the most effective response may be through policy and legislative reform, judicial consideration of mass incarceration at sentencing would provide an additional response that can largely be implemented without wholesale reform. Mass incarceration presents a difficult problem for courts because it is a systemic problem that harms people on several scales-individual, family, and community-and the power of courts to address such broad harm is limited. This Article proposes that judges should consider mass incarceration, a systemic problem, in individual criminal cases at sentencing. Sentencing is …

Intuition Versus Algorithm: The Case Of Forensic Authorship Attribution, Lawrence Solan

Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.

Law And Justice On The Small Screen, Jessica Silbey

Books

'Law and Justice on the Small Screen' is a wide-ranging collection of essays about law in and on television. In light of the book's innovative taxonomy of the field and its international reach, it will make a novel contribution to the scholarly literature about law and popular culture. Television shows from France, Canada, the United Kingdom, Germany, Spain and the United States are discussed. The essays are organised into three sections: (1) methodological questions regarding the analysis of law and popular culture on television; (2) a focus on genre studies within television programming (including a subsection on reality television), and …

The Icc Prosecutor V. President Medema: Simulated Proceedings Before The International Criminal Court , Pieter H. F. Bekker, David Stoelting

Pepperdine Dispute Resolution Law Journal

On July 18, 2000, as part of the Annual Meeting of the American Bar Association, an all star cast of American and English lawyers gathered in the Common Room of the Law Society of England and Wales in London to simulate oral argument before the International Criminal Court ("ICC"). The fictitious proceedings involved a head of state, President Luis Medema, charged with genocide, war crimes and crimes against humanity. The prosecutors and defense counsel engaged in lively oral argument before the Trial Chamber in the context of three critical issues: (1) jurisdiction of the ICC over citizens of non-state parties; …

Cutting The Cord: Ho'oponopono And Hawaiian Restorative Justice In The Criminal Law Context , Andrew J. Hosmanek

Pepperdine Dispute Resolution Law Journal

Ho'oponopono is a traditional Hawaiian dispute resolution system that has recently experienced a resurgence of interest. The word ho'oponopono literally means to make right. In this system, both the offender and victim participate in a type of guided mediation along with other stakeholders in the offense. Ho'oponopono is different from typical mediations because after the session is successfully completed, the participants figuratively cut the cord of legal and psychological entanglement which binds them - in other words, the dispute is put to rest forever. When victim and offender come to a true resolution of the problem, and jointly make the …

Shame By Any Other Name: Lessons For Restorative Justice From The Principles, Traditions And Practices Of Alcoholics Anonymous , Victoria Pynchon

Pepperdine Dispute Resolution Law Journal

Because the painful experience of shame is believed to deter anti-social and criminal conduct, it has long been a staple of our criminal justice system. Its purpose has been to accomplish moral education about the wrongfulness of the crime and to prevent its occurrence through social and self-disapproval. In criminal ADR or "restorative justice" circles, the beneficial effects of "reintegrative" shame are meant to be accomplished by a "restorative justice conference" or "victim-offender mediation" ("VOMS"). These VOMs bring together victims and their loved ones; offenders and their friends and family; and, caring members of the community for the purpose of …

The Gacaca Experiment: Rwanda's Restorative Dispute Resolution Response To The 1994 Genocide, Jessica Raper

Pepperdine Dispute Resolution Law Journal

Since its rise to power in July of 1994, the Rwandan government has been committed to prosecuting all those accused of genocide. To prosecute the approximately 130,000 defendants, Rwanda has adopted a program called gacaca, based on Rwanda's traditional customary dispute resolution system. The gacaca law provides a reconciliation component that allows defendants to trade confessions of past genocide crimes for indemnification, as well as a prosecution component that holds the most serious offenders accountable in a Western style prosecution in a formal court of law. One of the main goals of gacaca is to end the so-called "culture …

Meet Me On Death Row: Post-Sentence Victim-Offender Mediation In Capital Cases, Rachel Alexandra Rossi

Pepperdine Dispute Resolution Law Journal

Since the 1970's, victim-offender mediation (VOM) has increased in use, most commonly with minor offenses. More recently, VOM has been sparingly applied to serious and violent crimes, including "rape, vehicular homicide, attempted homicide, and murder." Death penalty cases have rarely been the focus of restorative justice or VOM, likely because the victim has died and the offender will soon be executed, and these two parties are traditionally the focus of restorative justice. However, while capital cases involve unique concerns and issues, VOM can still be applied in these cases. The process would only require some modification of the focus and …

Culture In International Parental Kidnapping Mediations, Melissa A. Kucinski

Pepperdine Dispute Resolution Law Journal

Mediating an international parental kidnapping case involves much more than knowing some family law-it involves complex emotions, strict time constraints, multiple nations' laws and policies, intricate international treaties, juggling interpreters, attorneys, government officials, judges, and parents who may be physically located thousands of miles apart, and the blunt reality that you may have no understanding of either parent's cultural customs or the way each will communicate with the other parent or with you. While the "culture" part of the mediation may appear to be the least significant element, it could be key to the success of the mediation. Nonetheless, "culture" …

The Defense Attorney As Mediator In Plea Bargains, Gabriel Hallevy

Pepperdine Dispute Resolution Law Journal

In this article, it will be argued that defense counsel's function in negotiating plea bargains is identical to that of a mediator, seeking to reconcile the positions of the defendant and the prosecution. Within this framework, the plea bargain should be seen as part of the broad conception of Alternative Dispute Resolution (ADR) which first made its appearance at the end of the 1970s. An analysis of plea bargains in the Western world as part of the broader concept of ADR actually shows that it is the defense attorney, rather than the court or the other parties to the issue, …

Negotiating And Mediating Peace In Africa , Nancy Erbe, Chinedu Bob Ezeh, Daniel Karanja, Neba Monifor, George Mubanga, Ndi Richard Tanto

Pepperdine Dispute Resolution Law Journal

Last year, a law review solicited my thoughts about, in their words, pushing the envelope with social justice and negotiating peace in a world dominated by power and violence. Taking their language literally, one must ask how to effectively address contemporary obstacles to ensure that the message and, most importantly, the means of justice are truly delivered to those in need. One answer-which may seem obvious to readers but is actually much too rare in practice-is to work with, empower, and support the conflict work of the community members themselves. This article introduces the plans of five African professionals, demonstrating …