Studies in Crime and Justice - Böcker

Anticorruption reforms provide political cover for public officials, but do they really work? This text seeks to show how the proliferating regulations and oversight mechanisms designed to prevent or root out corruption seriously undermine the ability to govern. Over the last century, the authors argue, society has become enmeshed in alternating cycles of corruption and reform. Governments attribute the absence of scandal to existing regulations, and see their reoccurrence as proof of the need of additional laws. Using the anticorruption efforts in New York City to illustrate their argument, the authors seeks to deomonstrate the costly inefficiencies of pursuing absolute integrity. They assert that by constraining decision makers' discretion, shaping priorities, and causing delays, corruption control - no less than corruption itself - has contributed to the contemporary crisis in public administration.

Anticorruption reforms provide political cover for public officials, but do they really work? This text seeks to show how the proliferating regulations and oversight mechanisms designed to prevent or root out corruption seriously undermine the ability to govern. Over the last century, the authors argue, society has become enmeshed in alternating cycles of corruption and reform. Governments attribute the absence of scandal to existing regulations, and see their reoccurrence as proof of the need of additional laws. Using the anti-corruption efforts in New York City to illustrate their argument, the authors seeks to deomonstrate the costly inefficiencies of pursuing absolute integrity. They assert that by constraining decision makers' discretion, shaping priorities, and causing delays, corruption control - no less than corruption itself - has contributed to the contemporary crisis in public administration.

Despite lethal explosions of violence from within and critical assaults from without, it seems certain that prisons will continue to exist for the foreseeable future. Gordon Hawkins argues that certain key issues which attend the use of imprisonment as a penal method must be dealt with realistically. Beginning with a discussion of the ideology of imprisonment and the principal lines of criticism directed at it, Hawkins examines such issues as the prisonization hypothesis (the theory that prisons serve as a training ground for criminals), the role of the prison guard, work in prisons, and the use of prisoners as research subjects for medical experiments. He also deals with the prisoners' rights movement and its implications for the future of prison administration. Hawkins not only makes specific recommendations for reform, he also carefully appraises the barriers which obstruct their implementation. "Hawkins devotes a large portion of this relatively short book to a discussion of some of the really crucial policy activities that tend to stifle meaningful reform and then goes on to tell how at least some of these policies can be altered. . . . The book concludes with a chapter devoted to a discussion of impediments to change that should be required reading for all serious students of penology."—Choice "Hawkins has added a much needed down-to-earch analysis of prison. . . . This is not a pessimistic book. It is a realistic book. It avoids the pitfall of utopian and single-factor solutions to an extremely complex problem."—Graeme R. Newman, Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science

Stateville penitentiary in Illinois has housed some of Chicago's most infamous criminals and was proclaimed to be "the world's toughest prison" by Joseph Ragen, Stateville's powerful warden from 1936 to 1961. It shares with Attica, San Quentin, and Jackson the notoriety of being one of the maximum security prisons that has shaped the public's conception of imprisonment. In Stateville James B. Jacobs, a sociologist and legal scholar, presents the first historical examination of a total prison organization—administrators, guards, prisoners, and special interest groups. Jacobs applies Edward Shils's interpretation of the dynamics of mass society in order to explain the dramatic events of the past quarter century that have permanently altered Stateville's structure. With the extension of civil rights to previously marginal groups such as racial minorities, the poor, and, ultimately, the incarcerated, prisons have moved from society's periphery toward its center. Accordingly Stateville's control mechanisms became less authoritarian and more legalistic and bureaucratic. As prisoners' rights increased, the preogatives of the staff were sharply curtailed. By the early 1970s the administration proved incapable of dealing with politicized gangs, proliferating interest groups, unionized guards, and interventionist courts. In addition to extensive archival research, Jacobs spent many months freely interacting with the prisoners, guards, and administrators at Stateville. His lucid presentation of Stateville's troubled history will provide fascinating reading for a wide audience of concerned readers. ". . . [an] impressive study of a complex social system."—Isidore Silver, Library Journal

In this ambitious interdisciplinary study, James B. Jacobs provides the first comprehensive review and analysis of America's drunk driving problem and of America's anti-drunk driving policies and jurisprudence. In a clear and accessible style, he considers what has been learned, what is being done, and what constitutional limits exist to the control and enforcement of drunk driving.

With wit and intelligence, Leo Katz seeks to understand the basic rules and concepts underlying the moral, linguistic, and psychological puzzles that plague the criminal law. "Bad Acts and Guilty Minds ...revives the mind, it challenges superficial analyses, it reminds us that underlying the vast body of statutory and case law, there is a rationale founded in basic notions of fairness and reason...It will help lawyers to better serve their clients and the society that permits attorneys to hang out their shingles."--Edward N. Costikyan, New York Times Book Review

Drunken driving is the most serious crime likely to be committed by an adult. Each year in the United States it is responsible for approximately 20,000 fatalities, more than 500,000 arrests, and millions of violations. It involves a wider variety of social classes and economic strata than any other major violation of the law. Only recently, however, has the problem of alcohol and traffic safety received attention as a public policy issue. Social Control of the Drinking Driver lays the groundwork for a much needed integration of methods, principles, and priorities. Law, criminology, biology, psychology, sociology, economics, public policy—the disciplines concerned with the problem of drinking and driving are many and varied, and research crosses national boundaries as well. It is not surprising, therefore, that an integrated general perspective has not yet emerged. Drawing on fourteen specialists and surveying the situations in nine countries, this book presents a comprehensive statement of current knowledge about drunken driving and its control.

This book reveals how modern strategies of punishment - and, by all accounts, their failure - relate to political and economic transformations in society at large. Jonathan Simon uses the practice of parole in California as a window to the changing historical understanding of what a corrections system does and how it works. When parole first emerged as a corrections strategy in the 19th century, work was supposed to keep ex-prisoners out of trouble. What followed was a rehabilitative strategy, where the clinical expertise of the parole agent replaced the discipline of the industrial labour market in controlling criminal deviance. Today, Simon argues, as the economy has virtually locked out an entire class, rehabilitation has given way to mere management. The result is an escalating cycle of imprisonment, destabilization, and insecurity. No improvement in the current penal crisis can be expected until we better understand the relationship between punishment and social order, which this book explores in theoretical, historical, and practical detail.

This book reveals how modern strategies of punishment - and, by all accounts, their failure - relate to political and economic transformations in society at large. Jonathan Simon uses the practice of parole in California as a window to the changing historical understanding of what a corrections system does and how it works. When parole first emerged as a corrections strategy in the 19th century, work was supposed to keep ex-prisoners out of trouble. What followed was a rehabilitative strategy, where the clinical expertise of the parole agent replaced the discipline of the industrial labour market in controlling criminal deviance. Today, Simon argues, as the economy has virtually locked out an entire class, rehabilitation has given way to mere management. The result is an escalating cycle of imprisonment, destabilization, and insecurity. No improvement in the current penal crisis can be expected until we better understand the relationship between punishment and social order, which this book explores in theoretical, historical, and practical detail.

Diane Vaughan reconstructs the Ohio Revco case, an example of Medicaid provider fraud in which a large drugstore chain initiated a computer-generated double billing scheme that cost the state and federal government half a million dollars in Medicaid funds, funds that the company believed were rightfully theirs. Her analysis of this incident—why the crime was committed, how it was detected, and how the case was built—provides a fascinating inside look at computer crime. Vaughan concludes that organizational misconduct could be decreased by less regulation and more sensitive bureaucratic response.

"Delinquency in a Birth Cohort is a turning point in criminological research in the United States," writes Norval Morris in his foreword. "What has been completely lacking until this book is an analysis of delinquency in a substantial cohort of youths, the cohort being defined other than by their contact with any part of the criminal justice system." This study of a birth cohort was not originally meant to be etiological or predictive. Yet the data bearing on this cohort of nearly ten thousand boys born in 1945 and living in Philadelphia gave rise to a model for prediction of delinquency, and thus to the possibility for more efficient planning of programs for intervention. It is expert research yielding significant applications and, though largely statistical, the analysis is accessible to readers without mathematical training. "No serious scholar of the methods of preventing and treating juvenile delinquency can properly ignore this book."—LeRoy L. Lamborn, Law Library Journal "The magnitude of [this] study is awesome. . . . It should be a useful guide for anyone interested in the intricacies of cohort analysis."—Gary F. Jensen, American Journal of Sociology "A book the student of juvenile delinquency will find invaluable."—Criminologist