Wednesday, Jan 23

Systems Analysis is a method of thinking about a problem.  It involves measuring inputs, outputs, and throughputs.  One of the characteristics of a system is that there are parts and they are connected.

1. The Crime Commission's Systems Model (Walker, p 29) is an example.  Jan 21, 2002 NY Times Story: "Tight Budgets Force States to Reconsider Crime and Penalties"
2. The National Drug Control Policy is another example.
3. The Office of Homeland Security is developing a systems model for controlling terrorism.  Earlier efforts are described in White, Chapter 17.
4. Systems models help us to think about the relationship between what we are doing and what we are trying to accomplish.  They are a guide to collecting systematic data that can help in choosing more effective policies

1. Begin by defining an outcome, e.g., reducing homicide rates, preventing terrorist bombings, cutting traffic fatalities.
2. Specify how you would measure your success.  Often this is the Achilles heel of systems analysis.  For example, the Department of Justice's measurement of success in arresting and convicting terrorists.
3. Prepare a diagram listing the Forces for Change on one side, the Forces Against Change on the other
4. Weight the strength of the forces, e.g., on a scale from one to five.
5. This is a simple analysis;  in reality things are more complex since the forces are related to each other.  It is useful as a way of beginning to think systematically.  A key goal is not to leave out any important forces.  Sometimes unexpected events, e.g., "snail darters," can completely derail a project.

An exercise for class today:

1. Divide into groups based on desired outcomes (reducing homicide rates, burglary rates, terrorist incidents, juvenile recidivism, etc
2. Prepare a Force Field Analysis for this outcome
3. Draw it on the board and present it to the class.

Today's discussion will be based on ethical theories summarized in Approaches to Ethical Analysis.
Three ways of thinking.

1. Egoistic Ethics
2. Group Loyalty
3. Moral Codes
4. Feminist Ethics
5. Abstract Principles
1. Deontological Ethics
2. Teleological Ethics
6. Ethics of Terror and Revolution
1. When is armed struggle ethically justified?
1. Abstract principles (deontological)
2. Utilitarian criteria
2. What tactics are ethically justifiable within a justifiable struggle?
1. attacks on civilians
2. torture
7. Pragmatic Ethics:  Analysis of Cases

Wednesday, January 30.

Chapter One in Walker:

• Crime is down significantly in the 1990s, just the opposite of what some experts predicted, e.g., the book Body Count by Bennett, DiIulio and Walters.
• Big question is why?  Can the police take credit?  Would social trends have led to this in any event?
• How about looking further back in history - Microcase data - what explains the trends over longer periods of time?  Why the big turndown in the late 1930s?
• Do we have two crime problems, one that effects the mostly white middle class and another that affects the poor and people of color?  Are the trends the same?
• Race and crime.  Are the police basically "out to get" black Americans?  See Profiling and its Discontents.  The Book Search and Destroy by Jerome Miller. 
• Does it make sense to wage "War" on crime?  What does the "War" metaphor mean?  How about the "War on Terrorism" or the "War on Drugs".
• What is the fundamental difference between "liberals" and "conservatives"  on crime?  The view of human nature - people are basically good (liberal) and need help, vs people, or at least some people, are basically dangerous (conservative) and need to be controlled.  They are "tough on crime" vs "soft on crime".  Generally "tough" wins with public opinion.  But the real question is, which policies are effective.
• University of Maryland report, Preventing Crime:  What Works, What Doesn't, What's Promising, argues that different approaches work in each of seven institutional settings:  communities, families, schools, labor markets, "places" such as crime hot spots, policing and other criminal justice institutions.  What works in one setting is linked to what is happening in the others.  This is a "systems" approach.

Today we will review the chapter  "Disaggregating the Violence Trends" by Alfred Blumstein which is Chapter Two in The Crime Drop in America, on electronic reserve at the Rutgers Library.
The charts we need will be up on the screen, but it would be a good idea to print out this chapter for yourself.  We will answer an in class exercise based on the chapter.

These trends may be changing, see: Homicides Increased in Major Cities, Dec 2001.
 

Monday, February 4 - Policing

Walker talks about "Unleashing the Cops" as a conservative strategy, although it is one that has also been advocated by liberals, specifically by President Clinton who authorized an extra $9 billion in 1994 to hire 100,000 additional officers.  But is this an effective way to fight crime?  This may depend on how the police are used and how well they are trained.  Today we will look at some research on this topic, taken from "Have Changes in Policing Reduced Violent Crime?  An Assessment of the Evidence." in The Crime Drop, on reserve in the library, and from Chapter 5 in Walker.

• The police/population ration in itself does not explain much, it depends on how they are using the police.  Los Angeles police corruption problems.   Follow-up on the Los Angeles case.
• The Kansas City patrol experiment found no effects of number of patrols.  Crime may shift jurisdiction in response to especially heavy patrol.  Newark foot patrol experiment also showed no effect.  Crime trend was already down by the time this policy was put into effect
• Community policing is widely advocated.  There is little evidence on its effectiveness, perhaps because it is too vague a concept to test comparatively.  Generally it includes changes in organizational structures to decentralize decision making and programs to stimulate and foster police-community partnerships.
• Zero-tolerance or quality of life policing.  Not adequately evaluated, empirical support for the underlying theory is weak, may have perilous side effects.  Best evidence of effect is in NYC, but it was implemented together with other changes.  Crime is down and citizens generally like it.  Seems to improve quality of life, but can get bad reactions from people who think it is unfairly applied to them.
• Directed patrols in hot spots.  Reasonably strong experimental and quasi experimental support.  Compstat version emerged after drop in violent crime.  Police Departments are increasing the use of compstat. Compstat in the NYC and Philadelphia Police Departments.
• Firearms Enforcement.  Some quasi-experimental evidence supports it.  Tends to pick up repeat offenders.  Risks disasters such as the Diallo case.   ACLU graphic.
• Retail Drug Market Enforcement.  Moderate evidence that it works, especially when coupled with the threat of civil action against drug property owners.  Began long before the national crime drop.  May have helped with the decline in the crack market, which had a big influence on violent crime
• Problem-Oriented Policing;  targets on problems identified by the community, usually crime "hot spots".  Some evidence to support it.  The other approach is Incident-Oriented Policing. Implemented before national drop.  Often part of community policing.
• Faster response time seems to make a small difference, since police are called to few crimes in progress.
• Detective work is of limited effectiveness unless there are very strong leads.  This is very different from movies and mystery books.
• Repealing the exclusionary rule and Miranda warning would not be likely to have much effect.
• Recent cases of controversies involving police.  Cincinnati; LA 1992 "Rodney King: Riots."    Los Angeles Police Department - LA Times story on routine beatings by police.  A follow-up on the Los Angeles case.   Camden riots in 1971.  Effects on the city.
• Police Responses to the September 11 attacks.  What the FBI is Doing Wrong.   An article from 1994 that predicted the wave of terrorism that peaked with the 911 attacks.  An example of strategic intelligence.

Wednesday, February 6

• Deterrence Theory - Chapter 6 in Walker
• Assumptions:  people are rational actors who respond to positive and negative reinforcement
• But are people informed of penalties?  Of the risks of getting caught and punished?  Risks are low for many crimes.  Apprehension risk in robbery is 14%.  68% of murders are cleared.
• Death Penalty.  Does it deter?  Sellin's method of looking at trends has done better than Ehrlich's multiple regression analysis.  Multiple regression or econometric modeling has failed as a means of resolving causal disputes.  See my paper "Myths of Murder and Multiple Regression."  Excerpts from a longer version of same paper with more graphs. 
• Deterrence and drunk driving:  crackdowns and severe penalties can work, but the effect is often transitory.  See graph on page 110 of Walker.  Risk of apprehension is low, and long term change is difficult.
• Deterring burglars and Robbers.  Survey research found that burglars were not much influenced by the severity of the sentences.  Burglars seem to overestimate gains and act impulsively.
• Deterring Domestic Violence.  Is mandatory arrest a good idea?  Minneapolis Domestic Violence Experiment tested three actions:  arrest, separation and mediation.  Arrest seemed to lead to lower rates of repeat violence.  But replications of the study did not obtain the same results.
• Criminal law has a general deterrence effect, but changing the level of punishment does not seem to make a measurable difference.

• Imprisonment, chapter 7 in Walker.
• Preventive Detention - difficult to predict which arrested offenders will actually go on to commit more crimes.
• Selective and Gross Incapacitation.  Can we select accurately?  Can we afford gross rates of incapacitation?   "Diminishing Returns:  Crime and Incarceration in the 1990s"
• Mandatory Sentencing - can the courtroom work group be made to follow mandatory guidelines?  Are they actually better than sentences meted out by a judge?
• Three Strikes and You're Out.

Monday, February 11

    Rehabilitation:  Chapter 11 in Walker

• Aging is the best rehabilitative tool, we want people to quite crime sooner rather than later
• Principal strategy is reintegration into the community
• Education, training, counseling, drug rehabilitation, are used to facilitate rehabilitation
• Martinson's Report was a literature review of studies of rehabilitation.  He was looking for studies with adequate research methodology.  Most did not have proper control groups, did not specify the treatments used.  His conclusion:  nothing works!
• There are always new programs that claim to work, hard evidence is scarce.  E.g., Transcendental Meditation?
• The University of Maryland Report includes a recent survey of the research on rehabilitation.  It concludes:
• The "Nothing Works" conclusion was overdrawn
• The goal is to figure out how to make it work, formative vs. summative evaluation
• More recent studies show that some things can work: Andrews et al. (1990) conclude that "This pattern of results strongly supports exploration of the idea that some service programs are working with at least some offenders  under some circumstances."
• Some general conclusions:  Criminogenic factors are those  that are directly associated with criminal behavior. Research has revealed some dynamic factors that are also criminogenic:  attitudes, cognitions, behavior regarding employment, education, peers, authority, substance abuse and interpersonal relationships that are directly related to an individual's criminal behavior. Less promising targets for reducing future criminal behavior include increasing self esteem without touching antisocial propensity, or increasing the cohesiveness of antisocial peer groups. While factors such as self esteem many be correlated with criminal behavior, changing them will not necessarily reduce future criminal activities. That is, criminals may have relatively strong self concepts but they may continue to commit crimes. Treatment programs that target such non criminogenic factors will not be particularly successful in reducing recidivism. In order to be successful, treatment must address factors that can be changed (e.g., dynamic factors) and that are directly related to an individual's criminal behavior  (criminogenic).  Case Example: A Drug Rehabilitation Program
• Traditional Rehabilitation Programs
• Diversion - alternatives to incarceration.  Keep especially first-time offenders out of the prison environment, integrated in society.  Half-way houses.  Evaluations have generally shown that diversion programs do not rehabilitate.
• Manhattan Court Employment Project.  Vera Institute Project.  Employment services on theory that lack of jobs caused people to go into crime.  Early evaluation was positive, but later it was discovered that the effect was due to net widening. Less Punitive sanctions applied to people who have better prospects anyway.  Not a true experimental design.  Now folded into CASES.
• Probation - Most widely used "rehabilitation" program.  Keeps offenders in the community.  Much cheaper than prison, $600 a year vs $20,000 for prison.  Evaluations have had failure rates of 65% to 12%.  Results seem to be the same as for those who stay in prison until going on parole.  Little meaningful treatment is involved, usually meet with a PO once a month.  To be effective, it has to be tied into a multidimensional program addressing family, schools, jobs, neighborhood.  Case workers do not have time for this, usually often have 200 to 400 or more clients.
• Parole - Second most prevalent - a transition from prison to society.  Discretionary release vs. post release supervision.  Does not seem to cut recidivism.  Hard to predict who will benefit.
• Boot Camps - popular "new" idea that doesn't seem to work.
• Intensive Probation Supervision - cut the case load.  Evaluations have been negative.  Intense supervision probably does not have much effect.  Some offenders find it more offensive than jail.  Community service, drug tests, home visits, etc.
• Electronic monitoring.  Can be combined now with GPS.  Tends to catch more violations, but evaluation research does not show effectiveness.
• Restorative Justice - a different philosophy.  Communitarian ethos, repair the community, restore bonds.  Meet with victims.  Compensation for victims.  One study in Australia shows is lessened alienation from the system.

• Racial discrimination is the largest issue, although it is thought to be contextual, happening in specific places, rather than systematic.  The structure may have racist consequences even without racist intent on the part of the people running it.  Drug sentencing is an example.  Racial profiling is another controversial issue.

For help with Excel as a graphics tool, check out the University of Canberra's Excel 97 Web Site.  We are going to do several graphics assignments this semester.  They will involve finding data from online data sources, putting it into a graph, and writing an accompanying text.  You may wish to experiment with other graphics software, Excel is far from the best.  However, it is readily available.  For instructions, go through Chapter 7 of the University of Canberra site.

February 20  Review of questions from Exam One.  These questions may be repeated on the final or on subsequent midterms, so the exam questions will not be returned.