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Although much has been written concerning female delinquency and criminality, little has been forwarded about female copycat crime. Utilizing four data sets from surveys collected over the past dec...

A substantial increase in the number of surveillance camera systems has not delivered the promised deterrent effects or investigative case evidence and their usefulness has been underwhelming. A potential solution to practical camera monitor needs is computer vision (CV)-enhanced camera networks that can provide automated real-time video analysis, quick processing of monitor query-based searches, and accurate summaries of archived video files. The development and testing of four CV algorithms in computer vision laboratories is presented and implications from their possible adoption by security agencies on society are discussed.

A 2006 US copycat crime wave came into being, surged with thousands of crimes committed, and dissipated without substantial news media attention. The development of this early copycat crime meme is traceable to the nature of the crime, “ghost riding the whip,” and the social media and popular music communication channels associated with it. Ghost riding the whip involved traffic violations where drivers exit their cars and dance atop or alongside the moving driverless vehicles. Social media allowed the widespread diffusion of detailed instructions that spread this crime from a single minority community to the middle class within a 3-month period. The study of this copycat crime meme examined four types of data: Google Trends, rap songs, ProQuest news media data, and YouTube videos. The examination of the crime wave suggests how Gabriel Tarde’s 19th-century ideas operate in the contemporary social media era. However, unlike pre-social media-based crime waves that were launched via interpersonal and legacy media communication pathways, for ghost riding, rap songs, YouTube postings, and Google searches spurred its growth. Legacy media were found to be most important during the crime wave’s decline, but not during its diffusion. For this copycat crime meme, social media’s influence flowed in a unique upward and outward pattern and the results raise the research questions as to how social media have changed the dynamics of crime waves and how important legacy media will be in future crime waves.

With the emergence of copycat crime as a criminal justice concern, its prevalence is of current interest. This study estimates copycat crime’s prevalence among an adult non-incarcerated pop...

Surveillance cameras have become a popular response to crime and disorder in urban parks. The literature regarding park surveillance cameras however is sparse and few have examined the impact of park surveillance cameras. This research study examined a five camera police department network in a southern US municipal park. The study measured pre- and post-camera effects on reported crime, calls for service, and park visitor perceptions. Analysis determined that although the surveillance cameras had minimal impact on crime or disorder they were related to park visitor perceptions of the park. A camera surveilled park was seen more positively following police camera installation even though perceptions of the effectiveness of surveillance cameras decreased.

Purpose The growth of police operated surveillance cameras has out-paced the ability of humans to monitor them effectively. Computer vision is a possible solution. An ongoing research project on the application of computer vision within a municipal police department is described. The paper aims to discuss these issues. Design/methodology/approach Following the demystification of computer vision technology, its potential for police agencies is developed within a focus on computer vision as a solution for two common surveillance camera tasks (live monitoring of multiple surveillance cameras and summarizing archived video files). Three unaddressed research questions (can specialized computer vision applications for law enforcement be developed at this time, how will computer vision be utilized within existing public safety camera monitoring rooms, and what are the system-wide impacts of a computer vision capability on local criminal justice systems) are considered. Findings Despite computer vision becoming accessible to law enforcement agencies the impact of computer vision has not been discussed or adequately researched. There is little knowledge of computer vision or its potential in the field. Originality/value This paper introduces and discusses computer vision from a law enforcement perspective and will be valuable to police personnel tasked with monitoring large camera networks and considering computer vision as a system upgrade.

In the 1840s, cheap mass-marketed newspapers raised the relationship among the media, crime, and criminal justice to a new level. The intervening history has only strengthened the bonds, and comprehending the nature of the media, crime, and justice relationship has become necessary for understanding contemporary crime and criminal justice policies. The backward law of media crime and criminal justice content, where the rarest real-world events become the most common media content, continues to operate. In the 21st century, the media present backward snapshots of crime and justice in dramatic, reshaped, and marketed narrow slices of the world. Media portraits emphasize rare crimes like homicide, rare courtroom procedures like trials, rare forensic evidence, and rare correctional events like riots and escapes to present a heavily skewed, unrealistic picture. Significantly exacerbating this long-term tendency are new social media. When the evolution of the media is examined, the trend has been toward the creation of a mediated experience that is indistinguishable from a real-world experience. Each step in the evolution of media brought the mediated experience and the actual personally experienced event closer. The world today is the most media-immersed age in history. The shift to new social media from the legacy media of the 20th century was a crucial turning point. The emergence of social media platforms has sped up what had been a slow evolutionary process. The technological ability of media to gather, recycle, and disseminate information has never been faster, and more crime-related media content is available to more people via more venues and in more formats than ever before. In this new mediated world, everyone is wedded to media in some fashion. Whether through the Internet, television, movies, music, video games, or multipurpose social media devices, exposure to media content is ubiquitous. Media provide a broadly shared, common knowledge of society that is independent of occupation, education, ethnicity, and social class. The cumulative result of this ongoing media evolution is that society has become a multimedia environment where content, particularly images, is ubiquitous in the media. Mediated events blot out actual ones, so that media renditions often supplant and conflict with what actually happened. This trend is particularly powerful in crime and justice, where news, entertainment, and advertising combine with new media to construct a largely unchallenged mediated crime and criminal justice reality. The most significant result is that, in this mediated reality, criminal justice policies are generated. What we believe about criminal justice and what we think ought to be done about crime are based on content that has been parsed, filtered, recast, and refined through electronic, digital, visually dominated, multimedia entities. Ironically, while the media are geared toward narrowcasting and the targeting of small, homogenous audiences, media content is constantly reformatted and looped to ultimately reach wide, multiple, and varied audiences. In the end, the media’s criminal justice role cannot be ignored. Until the linkages between media, crime, and justice are acknowledged and better understood, myopic and punitive criminal justice policies will be the norm.

Due to enhanced audience participation and involvement in content creation and distribution, crime and justice has changed. This change came about with the emergence of new digital social media and...

Based on a survey of 249 incarcerated adults in a county correctional facility, the association between video game play and self-reported copycat crime was examined. Inmate video game players (n 163) and nongame players (n 86) are compared on demographics, personal copycat crime histories, media use, and a set of selected attitudes. The prevalence of copycat crime was not significantly different for inmate video game players than for nonplayers. Within the inmate video game player group, video games were not found to play a substantially different role than other types of media. The typical copycat crime inmate was a male with slightly more arrests who perceived himself as criminally innovate, had fewer real-world crime models, and was more immersed in media. Despite not supporting a unique copycat crime effect from video games or finding a greater risk for committing copycat crimes from game playing, this research offers additional insight into the broader dynamics of copycat crime and the general role of media in copycat offenses. Whatever their form, the media appear to have their greatest criminogenic impact on young and novice offenders and to serve more as crime-forming catalysts than crime-causing triggers.

Copycat crimes have not been identified or measured in a coherent manner. To forward the study of copycat crime, a methodology was developed to empirically score crimes that are suspected of being copycat crimes on a scale from “unsubstantiated” to “substantiated”. The copycat crime measure utilized seven factors culled from the extant literature to differentiate and score a demonstration set of 51 candidate copycat crimes associated with commercial entertainment films. Two examples of analysis and research questions that can be subsequently pursued utilizing the scoring approach are provided. A means of measuring copycat crime will provide interested researchers the capability to examine research questions related to copycat crime trends, media content and copycat crime, social media and copycat crime, and different types of copycat crime.

The social construction of copycat crime exhibits a process in which a new criminological meme developed first as a media construct and subsequently as a criminological concept. How common the sequence where criminologists follow the media in the construction of crime and justice reality is unknown. The examination of the social construction of copycat crime suggested that the media create a new crime and justice construct through increased usage and modification of either newly minted or previously existing phrases that are disseminated as new crime and justice memes. In the case of copycat crime, media usage and public acceptance foreshadowed criminologists’ use of the phrase. A multi-step social construction process is hypothesized. A new construct becomes established and accepted in the public lexicon and popular media content; criminology researchers and practitioners note the increased public interest; renamed and reinvigorated research follows, and successful constructs become validated crime and justice phenomena. Employing the social construction history of copycat crime as a case study, this article details the social construction activities in the public and media spheres that created receptive environments for a unique new criminological construct to be developed. Traced from the inception of its component parts to its birth and adoption, the social construction of “copycat crime” demonstrates a useful methodology for the study of other crime and justice constructions and suggests that the relationship between criminology and the media regarding the social construction of crime and justice be further explored.

Commonly perceived as rare, copycat crime has not been sufficiently studied. In an effort to encourage research, this research note offers a refined estimate of the proportion of offenders and at-risk individuals who report personal copycat crime histories. An analysis of 10 estimates spanning 50 years of self-reported copycat crime prevalence among just under 1,500 respondents was conducted. Collectively, the 10 study estimates indicate that about one in four respondents reported personal copycat crime histories. A random effects model indicated that prevalence estimates vary significantly across studies but effect moderators were not able to be identified. Copycat crime was indicated as a characteristic of a substantial number of offenders and at-risk youth. Copycat crime is deserving of more serious research and a number of associated research questions await attention.

Deliberate firesetting costs our community in destruction to property and lives. Public concern heightens when similar fires occur in a series, raising the specter of copycat firesetting. Difficulties associated with researching copycat crimes in general mean that not a lot is known about copycat firesetting. As an initial step toward filling this research gap, we explore connections between research on copycat crime and research into deliberate firesetting. The intention is to extract salient features from what is known about the phenomena of deliberate firesetting and copycat crime, map them together, and point out shared and unique characteristics. It is argued that a “copycat firesetter” is likely to exist as a distinct subgroup and potentially requiring targeted interventions.

The effect of exposure to media content containing criminal models is unresolved with two perspectives currently competing. One perspective perceives media provided models of crime functioning as direct causes of criminality or as crime triggers; the other sees media crime models serving as crime forming catalysts or as crime rudders. A study of copycat crime provided an opportunity to simultaneously weigh evidence for both models by examining the comparative roles of real world versus media provided crime models. Data obtained from the anonymous surveys of 574 male and female correctional inmates was employed. Results show that individual offenders, particularly young males, exposed to both real world and media crime model sources were at higher risk for copying criminal behaviors. While both real world and media sources contributed to predicting past inmate copycat behaviors, they also interacted significantly. With the additional enhancement of real world models, the media appear to form crime by providing instructional models to inclined individuals. The results did not support strong direct media exposure effects and the model of media as stylistic catalysts for crime was more supported. The media remains best perceived as a rudder for crime more than as a trigger.

An unresolved research question regarding crime and justice policy is the relationship between an individual’s media consumption and their support for punitive and preventive criminal justice policies. The relationship between media, crime, and justice is under-examined in countries other than the United States and Britain and the relationship between media and criminal justice policy support remains less than fully understood in all locales. In response, an examination of a media— policy relationship in a Western democracy not previously studied was conducted. Based on data from an October 2005 national telephone survey of Trinidad and Tobago residents, this study measured support for punitive and preventive criminal justice policies in association with crime and justice media consumption and worldviews. Multivariate analysis showed that, for Trinidadians, support for punitive policies was significantly related to perceiving television crime dramas as realistic and crime news as accurate. For preventive policy support, the same media factors plus the level of exposure to crime dramas on television were significant. Overall, media were found to play similar but not especially strong roles in support levels for both punitive and preventive criminal justice policies.

Developmental research on social influences on adolescents can guide practices aimed to prevent homicidal youth violence. School shootings have repeatedly raised questions about the contributory role of bullying and entertainment violence, how news media publicity might produce copycat crimes, and whether stiffer criminal sanctions might have a deterrent effect. This article presents the thoughts and recommendations of a group of experts on these topics summarizing the current knowledge base. In brief, bullying reduction programs may be a useful early prevention effort. Television and video games with violent themes can encourage aggressive behavior, but these media can be used to teach more prosocial behavior as well. The potential copycat effects of highly publicized crimes might be diminished with more restrained reporting, although more research is needed. Finally, there is substantial evidence that increased criminal sanctions for youthful offenders have not had a deterrent effect.

Although long established, media oriented terrorist events have not been conceptualized or measured in a coherent manner. To forward the empirical study of media oriented terrorism, a measure that can be applied to terrorist events or to terrorist groups was developed and employed to compare terrorist activity for twenty terrorist groups and two hundred terrorist events. The media orientation measure taps into five factors of media orientation and successfully differentiates high from low media orientated events and active and inactive media oriented terrorist groups. The single most important factor regarding any group's individual media orientation level was their base of operation. Terrorist groups that were engaged in regional struggles were found to be less media oriented. Despite the news value of death and injury, the terrorist group with the highest fatality and injury averages ranked ninth in its media orientation score indicating that death and injury was not a necessary indicator of media orientation. Scores further suggest that media savvy well-known terrorist groups did not pursue media oriented activity as a constant strategy.

This exploratory study describes social workers' perceptions of the depiction of the social work profession found in the news and entertainment media. A random sample of 665 MSW social workers who were members of the Florida Chapter of the National Association of Social Workers were surveyed regarding how they felt the profession was depicted in the news and entertainment media on a set of paired adjectives comprising 9 semantic differential scales. Findings showed that these social workers perceived the profession to be depicted negatively in both news and entertainment media. Implications for social work educators are discussed.

An untested hypothesis regarding closed-circuit television (CCTV) is that the use of CCTV surveillance systems causes the loss of informal citizen guardianship activities in camera-surveilled public spaces. This hypothesized effect is empirically tested in two ways. In the first approach, an examination of survey responses between respondents who were aware, without prompting, of a public space surveillance camera system (24.4% of the respondents) and those who were not aware of the cameras is undertaken. The expectation is that preexisting knowledge of the cameras will be associated with attitudes associated with a self-reported reduced willingness to exercise guardianship actions. In the second approach, time series data sets of calls for service in a CCTV-surveilled area and a comparison control zone are examined. Neither method revealed empirical evidence of a degrading of informal citizen guardianship activities following the installation of CCTV cameras.

Although municipal jails consume a significant amount of resources and the number of inmates housed in such facilities exploded in the 1990s, the literature on forecasting jail populations is sparse. Jail administrators have available discussions on jail crowding and its causes, but do not have ready access to applications of forecasting techniques or practical demonstrations of a jail inmate population forecast. This article argues that the underlying reason for this deficiency is the inherent unpredictability of local long-term correctional population levels. The driving forces behind correctional bed need render local jail population forecasts empirically valid only for a brief time frame. These inherent difficulties include the volatile nature of jail populations and their greater sensitivity when compared with prison populations to local conditions; the gap between the data needed for local correctional population forecasting and what is realistically available to forecasters; the lack of reliable lead variables for longterm local correctional population forecasts; the clash of the mathematics of forecasting and the substantive issues involved in the interpretation of forecast models; and the significant political and policy impacts of forecasts on local criminal justice systems and subsequent correctional population trends. The differences between the accuracy of short-term versus long-term jail bed need forecasts means that forecasting local correctional bed need is empirically valid for, at best, one to two years. As the temporal cast is extended, longer-term forecasts quickly become error prone. Except for unique situations where jails exist in highly stable local political, social, and criminal justice environments, long-term forecasts of two years or greater are fatally flawed and have little empirical accuracy. Long-term forecasts of local jail bed needs are useful, though, as policy catalysts to encourage policymakers to consider possible long-term impacts of current decisions, but forecasts should be thought of and presented as one possible future scenario rather than a likely reality. Utilizing a demonstration of a local jail forecast based upon two common empirical forecasting approaches, ARIMA and autoregression, this article presents a case study of the inherent difficulties in the long-term forecasting of local jail bed need. D 2005 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

PurposeTo discuss and review the shift to computer enhanced self‐monitoring CCTV surveillance systems of public spaces and the social implications of this shift.Design/methodology/approachA review of the research and evaluation literature concerning CCTV surveillance systems culling out the history of public space CCTV systems and the concerns associated with first and second generation CCTV surveillance.FindingsThe main difference between first and second generation surveillance is the change from a “dumb camera” that needs a human eye to evaluate its images to a computer‐linked camera system that evaluates its own video images. Second generation systems reduce the human factor in surveillance and address some of the basic concerns associated with first generation surveillance systems such as data swamping, boredom, voyeurism, and profiling. Their enhanced capabilities, though, raise new concerns, particularly the expansion of surveillance and its intrusiveness.Research limitations/implicationsAdditional research is needed to assess CCTV surveillance on a set of social dynamics such as informal guardianship activities by citizens.Practical implicationsThe adoption of computer‐enhanced CCTV surveillance systems should not be an automatic response to a public space security problem and their deployment should not be decided simply on the technology's availability or cost.Originality/valueThis paper provides a concise overview of the concerns associated with first generation CCTV surveillance and how the evolution of computer‐enhanced CCTV surveillance systems will alter and add to these concerns. For researchers it details research questions that need to be addressed. For practitioners and government officials considering the use of public space CCTV surveillance it provides a set of issues that should be considered prior to system adoption or deployment.

Jail crowding is a substantial concern for many local jurisdictions. Although several authors have suggested a system-wide approach to reduce crowding, relatively little is known about how top local criminal justice officials viewthis issue. Using interviews and surveys of criminal justice leaders in a large southern metropolitan county, this study examined perspectives on jail crowding and perceived interagency relationships. Consistent with prior studies, the respondents agreed that jail crowding is a problem and that the consequences of crowding extend beyond the correctional facility. Greater discord was observed on issues of agency responsibility for changing policies to effect reductions in crowding. Findings are interpreted within the context of a “loose coupling” framework of criminal justice organizations.

As scholars of local corrections have noted, jails hold a myriad of inmates for widely diverse reasons. What remains unclear, however, is what purpose or purposes jails are expected to serve. Despite considerable research on the degree of support for various correctional goals, little is known about what goals people want local jails to pursue. Using a survey of local criminal justice leaders in Orange County, Florida, this study examines the preferences policy makers hold regarding the appropriate functions of jails. Our results suggest that these policy makers supported several utilitarian goals but were most supportive of rehabilitation and serving the needs of those with mental health and substance abuse problems. Lesser support was expressed for incapacitation, deterrence, retribution, and detention. The implications of these findings for criminal justice policy and for future research are discussed.

A unique population of juveniles, serious and violent juvenile offenders (SVJOs), has emergedas a public concern. A corollary concern is the effect of the mass media on juveniles. Addressing both issues, an exploratory study of copycat crime and the media's role in copycat crime's generation among a sample of SVJOs is conducted. The study's goals are to measure the prevalence of self-reportedcopycat crime in SVJOs and examine the correlates of self-reported copycat criminal behaviors. Concerning prevalence, about one fourth of the juveniles reportedthat they have attempteda copycat crime. The correlates of copycat behavior include a set of media and peer-related attitudes. Academic and demographic characteristics are not foundto significantly relate to copycat crime. Additional research on specific media, such as video games, as well as offender/nonoffender comparisons is suggested.

Criminal justice Public Information Officers (PIOs) are a unique criminal justice specialty and key gatekeepers in the production of crime and justice information. The findings of a 1998 survey of the Florida PIO professional association members and nonmembers are reported. The results show that a typical PIO is a middle-aged, sworn, college-educated male. PIOs have also shifted away from criminal justice and communication degrees to reflect a broader, more diverse set of disciplines. Comparing association members with nonmembers, civilian PIOs, especially those from larger agencies, concentrate in the state's professional association while sworn PIOs, particularly from smaller agencies, dominate the nonmember ranks. Professional association member PIOs also tend to be assigned a greater range of job tasks and to spend more time on those tasks than the nonassociation members. The results suggest that a civilian/sworn dichotomy reported in prior research remains significant for PIOs and has come to overlap with a professional association member/nonmember division. The implications for criminal justice agencies and for the PIO as a criminal justice career are discussed.

New generation jails represent a fundamental reform to the structure and management style of traditional jails. Evaluations have investigated the effects of this innovation on the internal operations of detention facilities, although no study has yet examined the potential impact of new generation designs on the postrelease criminal behavior of inmates. Using a sample of 600 inmates housed under indirect or direct supervision, the present study began to address this issue. The results suggest that the new generation model does not increase recidivism and may reduce postrelease offending in some situations.

This paper examines the effect of massive media coverage on a judicial system by analyzing 3,453 felony cases tried over a 10-year period. The cases span five years preceding and five years following two heavily covered daycare child abuse trials in Miami, Florida. Significant case-processing shifts provide evidence of coverage “echo” effects, which have been hypothesized to exist in the literature but have not been established empirically. High-profile case publicity echoes are thought to reverberate through judicial systems and to condition them to process similarly charged but nonpublicized cases differently than they would have been processed otherwise. Because they affect nonpublicized low-profile cases, news media echoes expand the effects of news coverage on the judicial system far beyond single high-profile cases. Although a significant echo is found in this study, it does not extend to all possible processing effects. The need to empirically study other media echoes in other jurisdictions is indi...

This study examines the relationship between popular music; specifically, death penalty songs, and aggregate death penalty opinion change utilizing an exploratory time series analysis. An assumption of this study is that the public is made conscious of the death penalty as a salient issue through the popular media, e.g., newspaper stories, magazine articles, movies, television programs, and music. Results of this study support the hypotheses that public consciousness about the death penalty as well as changes in aggregate death penalty opinion are associated with the content of popular media in the form of death penalty songs. As the number of death penalty songs increases in a year, death penalty support decreases two years later. Keywords: Death penalty opinion, capital punishment, media, death penalty songs, music.

On January 16, 1989, a Hispanic Miami police officer shot and killed a black motorcyclist in a predominantly black section of Miami. During the following week, the shooting and its aftermath received extensive newspaper, television, and radio coverage. In criminal justice research, history effects are a common concern but empirical demonstrations are rarely reported. As part of a larger study of police recruits' training and attitudes, the news coverage of this shooting was discovered to have influenced the attitudes of Hispanic recruits: it significantly altered their expectation that police officers would use their weapons while on duty. This effect was not observed in non-Hispanic recruits. This serendipitous finding points to the need for researchers to be alert to threats to validity, particularly as the mass media become more pervasive and more intrusive. Further, it empirically demonstrates the social construction of reality in operation.

Criminal justice public information officers have emerged as a new criminal justice specialty and key gatekeepers in the flow of crime and justice information to news agencies and the public. Despite their gatekeeping role, they have not been examined regarding their specific attitudes, backgrounds, training, or tasks. As an initial step in addressing this deficiency, the results of a survey of Florida public information officers are reported. Public information officers divide into two groups of civilian and sworn officers. Sworn public information officers tend to be males who have educational backgrounds in criminal justice and little or no media-related experience prior to becoming public information officers. Civilian public information officers tend to be females who have educational backgrounds in communications and often have prior media-related experience. Irrespective of these differences, both groups agree about their daily tasks and the skills needed to perform their tasks and on an additional number of attitudes concerning their work. One of the more important differences between sworn and civilian public information officers is in the greater job satisfaction that civilian public information officers hold (despite being generally paid less) when compared with their sworn officer counterparts. Exploration of the difference in job satisfaction reveals that it is associated more with perceptions of a positive relationship with the media, the impact the public information officer feels he or she has in the agency, and their level of education than with either civilian or sworn status. Lastly, the overall results suggest a number of research hypotheses to pursue. Both theoretically and pragmatically of interest is whether a sworn/civilian structural division in the profession results in differences in the gatekeeping function of public information officers. The crucial issue concerns the generation of crime and justice news and whether sworn and civilian public information officers select different crimes or package the same crime differently for news dissemination and public consumption.

Arguably, the relationship between the mass media and the criminal justice system is one of the more important, especially regrading the formation of criminal justice policies and general decision-making in the system.1 Criminal justice policy and decision making are both systematic and individual case level phenomena (Doppelt, 1990). That is, criminal justice policy is ultimately determined by both ad hoc decisions made by criminal justice personnel and offenders regarding individual crimes and cases and by system-wide decisions that affect entire classes of offenses and cases.2 In the area of media and criminal justice, two questions arise. The first, "What is the relationship between the media and criminal justice decision making?," has not been answered with any clarity and leads to a second question, "Despite a significant amount of research and interest, why isn't the relationship better understood?" This essay discusses underlying methodological problems that make deciphering the media and criminal justice relationship inherently difficult. Some of these problems are common issues found throughout the social sciences. However, they are exacerbated in the media-criminal justice area. Other problems are unique to the media-criminal justice relationship and arise due to the existence of unusual media relationships with criminal justice policy and decision-making.

Works which have examined the relationship between economic conditions and the criminal justice system have usually attempted to explain criminality within specific, short term time periods. Conclusions based upon these efforts have been mixed and ambiguous. This present study uses Chicago Police Department variables as indicators of organizational activities and investigates the duration andpersistence of relationships between selected economic conditions andpolice organizational measures. Nearly 100 years of annual City of Chicago data are examined in a two step, lagged, time series regression analysis. The findings show that a persistent historical relationship exists between vagrancy arrests and economic conditions but does not exist between felonylmisdemeanor arrests or number of police employees and economic conditions. This present study suggests supportfor the previousfindings of Chambliss (1964, 1976), Wellford (1974), and Land and Felson (1976), and reveals the necessity of further model development in specifying the historical interaction between the economy and the criminal justice system. Lastly, it points to the value of developing and analysing long term historical data bases.

The history of the development of criminological statistics must examine the emergence of social statistics in general. The theoretical concerns and technical questions raised by early criminologists cannot be isolated from the wider concerns of sociologists and statisticians at work in other fields. This article traces the history and problems of crime and justice statistics through the distinct periods: a “preparatory” phase (1650–1800),and a “conceptualization” phase (1800–1914). In addition, while specifically noting a dependent relationship with the fields of demography and statistics, the separation of criminological statistics as an automous area is considered. The use of criminal justice statistics for comparative and other purposes has come under considerable review and criticism during recent years, and an examination of historical sources and problems serves to increase the understanding and usefulness of these statistics today.

The normative and policy implications of introducing video technologies into the courtroom are analyzed in this work. Examining video misdemeanor arraignments conducted in Miami's Eleventh Judicial Circuit, reveals a dis ruption of normative expectations within the courtroom, especially on the part of public defenders. Such latent consequences suggest that some defendants may not be getting the full benefit of constitutionally guaranteed due process protections. They also suggest an increased depersonalization of courtroom interactions and the possibility of negatively altered perceptions upon the part of courtroom actors and public onlookers. Because these percep tions affect the legitimacy with which courtroom procedures are held, the policy implications of introducing video technologies, along the lines of this study's findings, require careful consideration.

Citizen dispute processing programs are becoming more common in the United States as an alternative to expensive, time-consuming litigation in court. Although no empirical evidence has been presented to date on the effectiveness of this type of mediation program, policy makers are calling for an increase in the number of such programs. This article reports on the results of an outcome evaluation of the Orange County (Florida) Bar Association's Citizen Dispute Settlement Project. The results indicate that complainants, respondents, and hearing officers are generally very satisfied with the hearings. In a three-week follow-up, complainant satisfaction increased, while respondent satisfaction stayed at the original high level. A quasi-experimental comparison of hearing and no- hearing groups of disputants indicated that mediation programs of this type may not be particularly effective for long-term solutions of underlying problems. The implications of these results are discussed for public policy-making and for theoretical refinement of the mediation concept.

Political candidates are frequently identified as being either “law and order” advocates or “soft” on crime; however, the importance of actual arrest and crime levels on election outcomes has not been examined empirically. One particular set of candidates for whom arrest and crime rates might be expected to be predictive is publicly elected law enforcement officials. Using 1976 Florida County Sheriff election data, this article examines the capacity for discriminating between winning and losing incumbent sheriffs by using county arrest and crime data in association with socioeconomic and political information. The findings show that a significant discrimination is obtained (significant = 0.009, canonical correlation = 0.59, and 76 percent of the counties were correctly classified) and that crimes and arrests are significant factors in determining the outcome of sheriff elections. The results indicate that although traditional political factors, such as party affiliation and number of terms in office, and socioeconomic factors, such as income, density, and unemployment rates, do well in discriminating winning from losing candidates, a sheriff-election model must also incorporate crime and arrest information, particularly information on murder and rape.