Criminal justice, Administration of

Poorly integrated crime analysis may be a detriment to crime reduction efforts and financial resources. The purpose of this research is to identify deficiencies and successes in crime analysis integration and to understand which agency factors are related. Using the Stratified Model of Problem Solving, Analysis, and Accountability and data from a national PERF survey of police agencies, this study quantifies the levels of production and consumption-based integration disconnect as well as other important agency factors. To determine which agency factors contribute most to integration disconnect, bivariate correlation and multiple regression analyses are used to examine the relationships, while controlling for agency type, centralization, officers per analyst, crimes per officer, and agency size. Findings indicate that production- and consumption-based disconnect are positively related to one another and that passive patrol-analyst interactions, an agency’s analysis integration disconnect.

Over the years, innovations such as community-oriented policing, problem-oriented
policing, and hot spots policing have enabled the police to make substantial crime control and reduction gains. However, empirical research has shown that police occasionally misuse these strategies in practice. One possible solution is the co-implementation of these strategies with crime analysis. Yet, little is known about this relationship in practice. Using national survey data collected by the Police Executive Research Forum in 2008 from a sample of over 1,000 United States police agencies this thesis explores this relationship. Results of bivariate analysis between agency commitment to and integration of crime analysis within operations and the use of innovative strategies revealed positive relationships. Additionally, bivariate analysis between agency use of accountability mechanisms and innovative strategies revealed a strong positive relationship. Multivariate regression analysis revealed the use of accountability mechanisms and commitment to crime analysis as strong positive predictors of police agency innovation.

The judicial treatment of adult male and female criminal
offenders is theoretically and empirically examined in
this paper. After discussing various problems with the
chivalry hypothesis and labelling theory, the two major
explanations of gender disparities, an empirical test
is made to determine the accuracy of both perspectives.
Examining a sample of 543 adult felony cases in Dade
County, Florida, using multiple regression to control
for the effects of relevant legal and non-legal variables
indicated inconsistent differences in treatment by sex
at the levels of negotiations, prosecution, conviction
and sentence. These differences also vary over the three
time periods examined: 1965-1966, 1971, 1975-1976.
Because the findings do not support any existing theory
of the differential legal handling of male and female
offenders, a new, integrated theory is formulated and
set forth.

Restorative justice has come to the forefront of criminal justice discourse with growing interest and support. Despite increasing research and theory in the past decade, a missing link in the research has been a lack of focus on the role of criminal justice organizations in the implementation process. The purpose of this paper is to examine the capacity of organizational literature to inform criminal justice system organizational transformation so that it is consistent with the values, principles and practices associated with restorative justice. The literature review involves an overview of the restorative justice framework, a general presentation of organizational theory, and finally, an articulation of three main categories of organizational literature: bureaucratic, post-bureaucratic, and what is referred to in this thesis as contemporary. This literature analysis contributes to the development of a model for an organization that is consistent with restorative justice and the proposed transition from a bureaucratic organization to a restorative organization. Finally, both evaluative and policy implications for the research findings and proposed model are considered.

Lowi's "arenas of power" theory, one of the most basic policy typologies, was the theoretical foundation for this study. Most public policies can be classified as either regulatory or distributive. Regulatory policy addresses the enforcement power of government. Distributive policy is about providing benefits to selected members of society, financed as a public good. The intention of this study is to comparatively analyze two different police programs. The study stepped back from criminal justice literature to public policy theory, to consider other ways to assess police strategies to reduce crime. Theory was linked to the practice of policing by examining regulatory policy in relation to crime control and distributive policy to crime prevention. The Truancy Reduction Program was selected as an example of regulatory policy/crime control, and the School Resource Officer Program as distributive policy/crime prevention. This is an exploratory analysis, using a quantitative case study methodology. The Broward Sheriff's Office (Fort Lauderdale, Florida) was selected as the case study. The data were drawn from six consecutive school years (1995--2001) of actual documents. The intent was to explore, not establish a causal relationship between the programs and crime reduction, because other major external factors existed beyond the scope of this analysis. The "universal" concepts of effectiveness and efficiency were adapted to create a multi-criteria evaluation of the program outcomes. The central research question essentially asked if one program (and therefore, policy) was more effective and/or efficient than the other. In this study, effectiveness refers to the relationship between program goals and outcomes, while efficiency refers to the relationship between costs and outcomes. To examine effectiveness, the fixed effects pooled time series technique for panel data was employed. To examine efficiency, an efficiency ratio was created to compare program costs against the costs of crime. A relationship was established between each program, crime reduction, and effectiveness and efficiency. The final phase was comparative, employing a multivariate analysis of variance, to determine if one policy was more effective and efficient. The results were inconclusive. The study makes recommendations for future research, discusses implications of the analyses for public administration, and concluding comments.

In this dissertation, a theoretical framework is developed from Camilla Stivers' (2002) argument that images of expertise, leadership and virtue are used to defend public administration's legitimacy in the face of criticisms about the inefficiencies of government and the power wielded by bureaucrats. Stivers argues that these legitimizing and traditional images have historical and cultural roots in ideas associated with masculinity, and that this harms women in the public sector. The realm of policing faced similar criticisms and defended its legitimacy by altering practices, the day-to-day actions of police practitioners. The purpose of this dissertation is to explore the possibility that police practitioners have defended their legitimacy on the same basis as public administrators have done by offering images of expertise, leadership and virtue, which Stivers (2002) claims are deeply gendered. Using Ethnographic Content Analysis (ECA), imagery is qualitatively examined using using Stivers' (2002) descriptions of characteristics, qualitiers, values and actions that she associates with images of expertise, leadership and virtue... Masculine images of virtue portray the police as dedicated and committed professionals who protect the citizenry through laudable programs and initiatives. Masculine images of leadership are less prevalent, but consistently portray the police as controlling and direction-setting visionaries. Alternative imagery patterns include leadership images more aligned with femininity, such as collaboration and cooperation. Throughout the thirty-one years, these patterns of images are observed, despite differences in practices associated with the three paradigms of policing.

In 1956 Darrel Parker was convicted of murdering his wife, with no evidence of his guilt except his own confession. Like Parker, some individuals confess to crimes which they did not commit. These confessions are generally made with a lawyer present when police us deception or coercion. While deception is constitutional, and a permitted police tactic, coercion is not. THis paper distinguished between the two and provides a philosophical framework for determining when deception becomes coercive. While non-coercive deception can lead to false confessions, I do not argue that deception should be banned, as it is a useful tool for police in catching criminals. Instead, I argue that police may deceive suspects, but prosecutors and judges should provide a check by using a three-pronged test to ensure that individuals are not convicted of crimes they did not commit.

DNA profiling is a newly developed technique used by law enforcement agencies in the United States as a form of individual identification to prove whether a suspect is guilty. Due to the fact that it is a newly developed technology there is little legislation to regulate its proper uses and restrictions. Therefore restrictions are largely determined by court decisions as to whether DNA profiling violates constitutional rights. Current decisions in state and federal district courts tend to permit use of DNA profiling without a warrant. These decisions violate principles of privacy guaranteed by the US Constitution as interpreted in pre-DNA fourth amendment cases. By drawing on fourth amendment case law and commentaries, I shall argue that while in some cases no warrant is required for DNA profiling - when it is conducted upon people who have been convicted of a felony - or all other people, a warrant should be required.

There is a debate among scholars regarding how courts should judge defendants caught in government decoy and sting operations. As a retributivist, I believe we should only punish those who are culpable. Following this assumption, I argue that courts should punish entrapped people if they are culpable and that the subjective test, which holds that a defendant is culpable if he was predisposed to commit the crime, should be the standard by which courts judge defendants who claim entrapment. The objective test, which focuses on the propriety of the government conduct, fails to accurately assess culpability because, under this test, the guilt of the defendant depends largely on what the average person would have done under the same circumstances. I also propose that if government conduct reached the level of outrageous, defendants found to be predisposed may claim that the government violated their right to due process.

In 2005, the United States Supreme Court found the execution of juvenile offenders to be unconstitutional, based in part on a "national consensus" against the death penalty for juveniles. The purpose of this project was to demonstrate the flaws in existing methods of measuring public opinion and to determine the correlation between the age of an offender and the sentencing recommendation received. It was the hypothesis of my project that there would not be a statistically significant correlation between the offender's age and sentencing recommendation. To test this hypothesis, I asked 156 Florida Atlantic University students. This method of analysis was considered the best way to accurately determine public sentiment towards the juvenile death penalty, after a thorough review of existing methods revealed significant flaws. My results suggest that there is no correlation between the age of an offender and sentencing recommendations.