Arnold Binder

The Violent Police-Citizen Encounter

While the emphasis in this article is on physical force by police officers, the perspective adopted is one of a transaction affected by police characteristics, citizen charac teristics, and their interactions in a given setting. The violent police-citizen encounter, moreover, is considered a develop mental process in which successive decisions and behaviors by either police officer or citizen, or both, make the violent outcome more or less likely. The emphasis upon mutual con tributions in the encounter carries policy implications that have not always been carefully considered in the past.

The badge and the bullet : police use of deadly force

It may seem ironic to conclude a study of police use of deadly force with surprise that more people are not shot by police. Yet, Scharf and Binders observation typifies the insights in their excellent book, The Badge and the Bullet. Their assessment of the complexity of the issue, organizaton and examination of the contextual causes and effects and the realism of proposed solutions distinguish this as an outstanding volume. Contemporary Sociology This excellent book provides a serious discussion of a highly controversial issue ...exceedingly well written, with significant anecdotal episodes to capture and hold reader interest. Destined to become the standard work in its subject area ...highly recommended to students of human behavior, especially students in police science and criminal justice, sociology, psychology, and the law ...also recommended to concerned police practitioners and others who are involved in policy-making decisions regarding the police. Choice

Experiments as reforms

Newspapers, magazines, and television news reports recently have presented features indicating that police departments throughout the United States have adopted arrest as the primary mode of intervention in cases of misdemeanor wife abuse. There have been several recent societal events that have motivated the police to move in that direction, the most significant of which may be the research results reported by Sherman and Berk. But those results are not convincing enough to a critical reviewer to provide the kind of anchoring one expects in a force motivating national change. That failure to convince stems from problems of external validity, aberrations that occurred in the execution of the research, questionable statistical interpretations, and a failure to consider a broad array of related social effects produced by the arrest process.

Restrictions on statistics imposed by method of measurement: Some reality, much mythology

Practically everyone who has been exposed to a course or a textbook covering research methods in the social sciences realizes that there are four scales of measurement widely referred to in the field: nominal, ordinal, interval, and ratio. As a result of that exposure, he or she may be concerned about using appropriate statistics when a given scale is at hand. Some anxiety, for example, may result from the mere thought of using a t-test with ordinal data. This article discusses the origins and philosophical bases of arguments regarding scale-statistics relationships; points out misconceptions and fallacies in certain of these arguments; and emphasizes that in the overwhelming majority of cases in the social sciences, most particularly in criminology and criminal justice, researchers may use statistics without concern or anxiety regarding scale properties.

Deadly Force in Law Enforcement

Recent stories appearing in newspapers from cities like Los Angeles, Columbus, Oakland, and Birmingham make it abundantly clear that fatal police shootings have ramifications that extend far beyond the usual concern for fatalities. The justification for taking a human life is presented in historical, philosophical, and legal terms, with particu lar attention to current codes and recent court decisions that simulta neously justify and control police shootings. Various issues of control are further highlighted in discussions of the dilemma inherent in ad ministrative (departmental) regulation of shooting, given the complex decision process leading to a shooting incident. To illustrate the status of empirical knowledge regarding police shooting, the incidence of fatalities among blacks is analyzed. The analysis leads to the conclu sion that the high mortality rate of blacks in police shootings seems to result primarily from community characteristics, such as the high general rate of violence in the inner cities, rather than from a tendency among police to treat blacks and whites differently solely because of race. But, overall, the data available for decision making are slim, and the need for research is great.

Community Restitution for Juveniles: An Approach and Preliminary Evaluation

Restitution to victims ofjuvenile offenders is based upon the principle of holding an individual responsiblefor his or her actions. Recently several juvenile restitution projects have been established as a result of disenchantment with traditional rehabilitation programs and the increasing interest in victims of crimes. This article reviews the major theoretical premises of this kind of program and concentrates on a description and preliminary evaluation of the Community Restitution Project in Orange County, California. The evaluation shows several promising features of this project in handling nonviolent juvenile offenders. Finally, several suggestions for increasing the effectiveness of the restitution program are presented.

AN EXPERIMENTAL APPROACH TO DRIVER EVALUATION USING ALCOHOL DRINKERS AND MARIHUANA SMOKERS

An experimental procedure was used to evaluate the effects of marihuana smoking and various levels of blood alcohol upon several components of the driving task. To gain certain advantages of the epidemiological method in the experimental setting, subjects were recruited from bars and parties where they had been drinking alcoholic beverages or smoking marihuana in a manner and amount that was customary in the context. It was found that performance decrement increased with blood alcohol content, that differences in performance found under alcohol were in evidence among the same subjects in non-alcohol trials, that marihuana produced performance decrement but apparently to a much lesser degree than alcohol, and that experimenters could predict the motor performance of the drinking subjects by observation of their behavior just prior to the experimental run.

The Kennedy-Johnson Years, Social Theory, and Federal Policy in the Control of Juvenile Delinquency

The programs implemented under the social policy of the Kennedy-Johnson administrations included, as substantial components, those aimed at the prevention and control of juvenile delinquency. Influential in determining operational directions for the delinquency programs were theories particularly prominent during the 1960s-opportunity and labeling. From the perspectives of long-lasting results and continuity of policy, the approaches were not successful. There would seem, however, as much reason to question the modes of execution of theorems as the adequacy of theories to account for the failures.

Juvenile diversion and the constitution

The juvenile justice system has been a product of interaction between legal and socio-medical forces since its inauguration near the end of the last century. While the socio-medical forces have, for the most part, been dominant over the years, concern for minimum legal standards has been a conspicuous part of the picture since the years 1966 to 1967. The result is serious attention to due process and fundamental fairness in court processing, and low tolerance for abridgement of such rights in the interests of attaining the social goal of rehabilitation. The question arises as to how early in the procedural chain for juveniles various due process rights should enter. Some have argued that important due process rights should be components in the process leading to probation, and even police, diversion. The central argument of this article is that broad directives regarding due process in diversion are inappropriate. Indeed, analysis of actual and potential losses of freedom associated with diversion decisions leads to the general conclusion that very few diversion programs require usual procedural rights. Moreover, a survey of case law indicates that there is little reason to expect that the procedural protections enunciated by the U.S. Supreme Court so strongly in the 1960s will be extended by the courts to police (or probation) decisions on diversion in the 1980s.

The Juvenile Justice System: Where Pretense and Reality Clash

(a) Lawrence was 15 when he was charged with murdering two Î brothers in his neighborhood: Kenneth Elliott, 11, and Ronald ] Elliott, 12. Lawrence tied up Kenneth, castrated him and stabbed him twice in the heart. Then he cut off the boy’s head, which he left about 50 feet from the body. He also admitted killing Ronald, whose body was never found, in similar fashion. Like all other offenders in juvenile facilities in Texas, Lawrence was released from prison when he turned 18 [Time, 1977: 18].