Sunday, February 23, 2014

Crime & Delinquency 60(2)

Crime & Delinquency, March 2014: Volume 60, Issue 2

An Analysis of Prisoner Reentry and Parole Risk Using COMPAS and Traditional Criminal History Measures
Sheldon X. Zhang, Robert E. L. Roberts, and David Farabee
The California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation has adopted Correctional Offender Management and Profiling Alternative Sanctions (COMPAS), an actuarial risk- and needs-assessment instrument, as part of its reentry supervision and parole planning procedure. A large-scale 3-year prospective study was conducted to assess the instrument with regard to how well it predicted whether a parolee would be rearrested for (a) any crime and (b) a violent offense. This study followed, for up to 2 years, a total of 91,334 parolees who had been assessed with COMPAS prior to reentry into the community. The instrument achieved an acceptable level of predictive validity in general rearrests with an area under the curve value of 0.70, but its predictive power for subsequent violent offenses fell short of this conventional threshold. Moreover, a parsimonious model using four known risk factors from existing official records (i.e., gender, age, age of first arrest, and the number of prior arrests) performed just as well in predicting subsequent arrests. Findings from this study illustrate the challenges in applying group-based attributes to predict individual criminal behavior and suggest that, although COMPAS has other attractive features such as case management capability, existing official records may offer a lower cost alternative for assessing the risk of reoffending for community reentry purposes.

Preentry Substance Abuse Services: The Heterogeneity of Offender Experiences
Philip R. Magaletta, Pamela M. Diamond, Beth M. Weinman, Ashley Burnell, and Carl G. Leukefeld
Surprisingly little is known about the types of substance abuse services offenders receive prior to incarceration and the differences in demographics, criminality and drug involvement between those who received services and those who did not. This study provides estimates of these substance abuse services—treatment, self-help, and psycho education—received by federal offenders before their commitment to the Bureau of Prisons. Estimates indicate that among newly committed offenders, nearly one third (30%) received substance abuse services. Offense category, prior records and histories of violence each predicted service receipt. Also, offenders involved with drugs before incarceration were more likely to have received services as well, but those who used both drugs and alcohol prior to their most recent arrest were much more likely to have received services. Interestingly, gender was only significant when predicting inpatient substance abuse treatment services. Recommendations for training, research, and practice are made.

Reactive Versus Proactive Attitudes Toward Domestic Violence: A Comparison of Taiwanese Male and Female Police Officers
Doris C. Chu and Ivan Y. Sun
Although there has been a growing research interest in examining factors associated with police arrest decisions and victims’ perceptions of the police in handling domestic violence, very few studies have empirically assessed female and male officers’ attitudes toward domestic violence. Using survey data collected from 272 male and female officers from two metropolitan police departments in Taiwan, this research compared male and female police officers’ reactive and proactive attitudes toward handling domestic violence incidents. The findings indicated that male officers were more likely than female officers to support minimum police involvement and to tolerate domestic violence. With regard to proactive attitudes, there was no significant gender difference in officers’ endorsement of proarrest policy and the importance of domestic violence in police work. Implications for future research and policy are discussed.

Evidence-Based Prosecution of Intimate Partner Violence in the Post-Crawford Era: A Single-City Study of the Factors Leading to Prosecution
Jill Theresa Messing
The Crawford v. Washington decision has prompted changes in the way that intimate partner violence (IPV) is prosecuted. This research uses logistic regression to examine the victim, offender, and offense characteristics associated with the decision to prosecute a sample (N = 904) of domestic violence arrestees under an evidence-based prosecution strategy post-Crawford. Documentation of injury and police taking the perpetrator into custody at the scene of the crime have the greatest effect on the decision to prosecute, although the victim’s willingness to assist with prosecution is also a significant factor. Future researchers should seek to replicate these findings, better understand current prosecution strategies, and determine the criminal justice and social service interventions best equipped to combat IPV in the post-Crawford era.

Examining Diffusion and Arrest Avoidance Practices Among Johns
Thomas J. Holt, Kristie R. Blevins, and Joseph B. Kuhns
Research from the rational choice perspective found that some offenders adapt to law enforcement strategies using various tactics to decrease the risk of detection. Few have considered the effect that this has for criminals who engage in high and low visibility offending, as well as the ways in which arrest avoidance practices are communicated between and among offenders. In this qualitative study, the authors explore these issues using a sample of posts from Web forums for the customers of prostitutes in 10 cities in the United States. This analysis finds that johns openly discussed, shared, and used a variety of methods to decrease the risk of arrest as well as informal threats, such as assault or theft. Implications for law enforcement and rational choice theory are also discussed.

Morality, Self-Control, Deterrence, and Drug Use: Street Youths and Situational Action Theory
Owen Gallupe and Stephen W. Baron
Utilizing a sample of homeless street youth, the authors apply Wikström’s situational action theory (SAT) to explaining drug use. The article examines the assertion that morality is the most important factor in explaining crime and that self-control and deterrence are key factors in understanding criminal behavior only at moderate levels of morality. Results reveal that morality has a strong effect on hard but not soft drug use, whereas the impact of deterrence on both forms of behavior is stronger than self-control. The proposed conditioning effects outlined in SAT do not have significant associations with drug use. Implications for the theory and avenues for future research are offered.

Adjusting for Design Effects in Disproportionate Stratified Sampling Designs Through Weighting
Paul E. Tracy and Danielle Marie Carkin
This article validates the necessity of adjusting for the design effects in disproportionate stratified sampling designs through the use of sample weights. Using data from the 1958 Birth Cohort study, we demonstrate that complex sampling designs introduce sampling error and even sampling bias into sample data. Such sample data are a poor representation of population parameters. These design effects can be addressed through the application of sample weights.

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