Police,courts, and corrections: Experiences of procedural injustice among Black adults

Racial disparities and a corresponding lack of trust have been documented within the criminal legal system. In response, criminal legal system actors have sought to strengthen the legitimacy of their agencies. However, legitimizing these agencies can be problematic. Some argue that the current criminal legal system continues the legacy of slavery and Jim Crow as Blacks are disproportionately policed and incarcerated. As a framework, procedural injustice can offer a unique backdrop and interrogate ways in which the criminal legal system engages in delegitimizing actions that provoke noncompliance and enable social control. Using a procedural injustice lens, this study examines how justice-involved Black adults experience mistreatment by justice system actors. Semistructured interviews were conducted with 84 Black adults in Newark and Cleveland. Study findings offer a comprehensive account of how participants experience procedural injustice as arrestees, defendants, and incarcerated persons. More specifically, participant narratives describe deliberately antagonistic, abusive, and dehumanizing treatment by justice-system agents—often depicted as racially motivated. Participant accounts also describe this mistreatment as occurring in a context of coercion and powerlessness and as being institutionally sanctioned. Implications for the preservation of racial hierarchies, research, practice, and community psychology are discussed.     

Comparisons of rats' choice behavior among three different radial-maze tasks

The present study compared rats' behavioral changes on three tasks on the radial-arm maze. In the free-choice task (0Fo/8Fr; no forced choice/eight free choices), rats performed efficiently with the simple response pattern of sequential adjacent-arm choices. In the two forced-choice tasks (3Fo/5Fr and 5Fo/3Fr), rats performed as efficiently as 0Fo/8Fr but showed no particular response patterns. The frequency of arm investigation was the highest in 5Fo/3Fr, and was higher in 3Fo/5Fr than in 0Fo/8Fr. The probability of correct rejection, avoiding re-entry to visited arms after investigation, was also higher in 3Fo/5Fr and 5Fo/3Fr than in 0Fo/8Fr. These results suggest that the rats could adjust their behavior to the task demands.     

Factors in childhood that predict later criminal behavior

A follow-up study was conducted on the aggressive and delinquent behavior of an original sample of 220 pupils of two age groups. The subjects were 7 and 9 years old in 1978 when they were interviewed for the first time. The present paper focuses on predictors of the subjects' aggressive and criminal behavior in adolescence and in young adulthood. Four different groups of variables were chosen as possible predictive factors: 1) parental aggression, punitivity, and attitudes of rejection toward the child, 2) previous acts of aggression by the subjects, 3) the viewing of violence on television during childhood, and 4) aggressive, indifferent, and delinquent behavior in adolescence. Physical aggression in adolescence and the number of arrests and traffic violations in young adulthood were used as dependent variables. The analyses established that for the male subjects, the best predictor of physical aggression in adolescence was previous aggression, whereas for the female subjects the best predictor of physical aggression in adolescence was previous viewing of violence on television. The number of arrests in young adulthood was best predicted for the male subjects on the basis of previous aggression and viewing of violence on television. The best predictors of the number of arrests in young adulthood for the female subjects were, apart from previous aggression and viewing of violence on television, also aggressive and delinquent behavior in adolescence as well as parental aggression, punitivity, and attitudes of rejection. The results emphasize the importance of the atmosphere of socialization in childhood and previous aggressive behavior as significant predictors of physical aggression in adolescence and criminal behavior in young adulthood. © 1996 Wiley-Liss, Inc.     

Evolution and the nonlegal equivalent of aggressive criminal behavior

Within the framework of modern evolutionary theory, arguments are reviewed that the nonlegal equivalent of aggressive criminal behavior may have evolved by natural selection among mammals, particularly primates, as part of their overall approach to reproduction. If so, the commission of aggressive crimes (or their nonlegal equivalent) by humans, and even efforts to prevent fellow social group members from being victimized by aggressive crimes, may also be partially explainable in natural selection terms. The plausibility of this deduction was explored, first, by specifying the three elements that a human act must have to be regarded as an aggressive crime. Summarily, these were that (1) injury to a victim must be a likely result of the act, (2) the act must be intended, and (3) the act must elicit negative responses from those witnessing it. The primate behavior literature was examined for evidence that some behavior of nonhumans met all three conditions. Affirmative results were obtained. Therefore, while further research is in order, human aggressive criminal behavior, as well as human efforts to control it, seem to have close parallels in other primates. This would be consistent with the notion that aggressive criminal behavior (along with its condemnation by fellow group members) is part of a social system produced and sustained by natural selection.     

Informed consent and the use of placebo in poland: Ethical and legal aspects

The concept of informed consent was one of the most fruitful ideas that deeply changed the relationships between physicians and their patients from paternalism to respect for the personal autonomy of subjects needing professional medical care. The great progress in medicine, also involving the pharmaceutical industry, has created an increasing need to perform different clinical and experimental trials. The evolution of clinical research in the last decades has influenced strongly the design of these studies. One of the most important changes in this field has been the use of placebo groups in double-blind controlled studies. The controversies have involved not only the use of placebo when standard or proven treatment was available, but also some specific problems concerning the procedure of obtaining informed consent in such trials. This paper briefly presents the evolution of informed consent in Poland as well as different ethical and legal problems concerning informed consent and the use of placebo controls in clinical trials. An earlier version of this paper was presented at an international conference, “Placebo: Its Action and Place in Health Research Today,” held in Warsaw, Poland on 12–13 April, 2003.     

Longitudinal associations of cognitive ability,personality traits and school grades with antisocial behaviour

This study investigated the role of adolescents' cognitive ability, personality traits and school success in predicting later criminal behaviour. Cognitive ability, the five‐factor model personality traits and the school grades of a large sample of Estonian schoolboys (N = 1919) were measured between 2001 and 2005. In 2009, judicial databases were searched to identify participants who had been convicted of misdemeanours or criminal offences. Consistent with previous findings, having a judicial record was associated with lower cognitive ability, grade point average, agreeableness, and conscientiousness and higher neuroticism. In multivariate path models, however, the contributions of cognitive ability and conscientiousness were accounted for by school grades and the effect of neuroticism was also accounted for by other variables, leaving grade point average and agreeableness the only independent predictors of judicial record status. Copyright © 2011 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

《周易正义》的刑罚适用原则探源

在严格区别《周易》、王弼《周易注》及《周易正义》三者不同思想的基础上,厘清《周易正义》所蕴含的法律思想是《周易正义》法律视角研究的当务之急。作为《周易正义》法律思想的表征体系,《周易正义》中的刑罚适用原则可简述为:区分故意与过失原则、轻刑原则、重刑原则。这些原则的形成有其特定的哲学基础。     

Criminal thinking patterns, aggression styles, and the psychopathic traits of late high school bullies and bully-victims

This study explored the current psychological characteristics and criminal behavior history of individuals who retrospectively reported being bullies, bully-victims, victims, or controls (i.e. neither victims nor bullies) during their last 2 years of high school. College students (n = 960) completed measures of criminal thinking, aggression, psychopathy, and criminal behavior online. We predicted bullies and bully-victims would demonstrate the highest scores for criminal thinking, proactive aggression, psychopathy, and have the most criminal infractions. Bullies and bully-victims had significantly higher scores on criminal thinking, aggression, psychopathy, and criminal behaviors than victims or controls. Additionally, men were significantly higher in criminal thinking, aggression, psychopathy, and had more criminal acts than women. There were no gender by bully group interactions. Logistic regression analyses differentiated bully-victims from bullies. Bully-victims tended to be male, higher in criminal thinking, and higher in reactive aggression. In addition, bully-victims were distinct from victims, showing higher criminal thinking and higher proactive aggression.     

Police Overestimation of Criminal Career Homogeneity

Police presumptions about criminal career trajectories have been little studied. The exploratory study reported here involved 42 police staff of varying rank and experience. Participants were asked to complete a questionnaire that asked them to predict the type of offence that an individual with a specified prior record would most probably commit next. Participating police personnel substantially overstated the homogeneity of criminal careers, that is, the nature of prior offences determined their prediction of their next offence more than available official data would deem reasonable. An incidental finding was that officers who rated the probability of further offending highest were also those who thought criminal careers most specialised. The implications for operational police decision‐making were discussed and held to be profound. Copyright © 2013 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.