Christy A. Visher

Street Level Justice: Situational Determinants of Police Arrest Decisions.

In this paper we examine variations in police arrest practices. Data collected in 1977 from police encounters with suspects indicate that arrest practices reflect legal and extra-legal factors. The decision to take a suspect into custody is influenced by such features of the situation as the dispositional preferences of victims, the race and demeanor of the suspect, and the presence of bystanders. Furthermore, the seriousness of the offense increases the chances of arrest. Contrary to much existing literature, males and females are equally likely to be arrested. The relevance of these findings to theoretical models of police behavior is discussed and the implications of our analysis for studies of criminal processing in general are considered.

Equity and Discretionary Justice: The Influence of Race on Police Arrest Decisions

This paper examines the degree to which race influences police arrest decisions. Two types of possible racial bias are examined. The first, most often addressed in previous research, is suspect-directed and examines whether blacks are more likely to be arrested than whites. The second type of police bias is victim-directed and examines whether police are equally responsive to black and white victims of crime. We found little evidence of suspect-directed racial bias. Our analysis does indicate, however, that police are more responsive to white victims of crime. The implications of these findings for the equitable administration of justice are then considered.

Predicting Rearrest for Violence among Serious Youthful Offenders

This article presents the results of an analysis of the risk of arrest for a violent crime for a cohort of youthful parolees. The sample consists of 1,949 individuals paroled by the California Youth Authority between July 1, 1981, and June 30, 1982. Results of a multivariate competing hazards analysis suggest that prior criminal history and socioeconomic variables are powerful predictors of both the timing and the charge of first arrest following parole. In comparison to results from a model predicting rearrest for any crime, rearrest for violence is significantly influenced by prior arrests for violence and several family pathology variables, including evidence of family violence and parental criminality. Prior gang involvement and heavy use of alcohol and illicit drugs have little predictive ability for violent recidivism among our sample. The results indicate that prediction of rearrest for violence among a group of serious youthful offenders may be practical if criminal history, institutional behavior, and personal background characteristics are all taken into account.

Employment After Prison: A Longitudinal Study of Former Prisoners

Finding sustained employment is an important component of the transition from prison to the community for exiting prisoners. Anecdotal reports from former prisoners indicate that most individuals experience great difficulties finding jobs after their release. However, little systematic information is available about the employment experiences of individuals released from prison or the characteristics of former prisoners who are successful in locating employment. Using a causal framework, this paper examines the employment experiences of a multi-state sample of former prisoners, and identifies the individual factors influencing the likelihood of employment after release from prison, using data gathered from interviews with prisoners before and at multiple times after release. Findings indicate that consistent work experience before incarceration, connection to employers before release, and conventional family relationships improve employment outcomes after release. Individuals who relapse to drug use quickly after release, have chronic physical or mental health problems, and are older or nonwhite are employed fewer months after a period of incarceration.

Sex and Involvement in Deviance/Crime: A Quantitative Review of the Empirical Literature

Forty-four studies reporting data on the relationship between sex and indicators of deviance/criminality are reduced to a single data base. Contingency tables (1,118) are generated from the extant empirical literature on sex and deviance and comparable statistics are calculated, using instances where the sex-deviance relationship was reported for specific categories of class position, age, data type, year of study, level of family intactness, race, place of residence, and type of offense. The findings from 1,118 instances are summarized, and patterns are discussed. The overall results indicate that the magnitude of the relationship between sex and deviance is contingent on the year the data were gathered, the type of data used, the percentage classified as deviant in a particular table, whether the indicator of deviance is a single behavior or composite index, race, and the specific offense. Moreover, analysis demonstrates that trends in the sex-deviance relationship over time vary by type of data and by population group. (abstract Adapted from Source: American Sociological Review, 1980. Copyright

Life on the Outside Returning Home after Incarceration

With record-high incarceration rates, unprecedented extension of state supervision over individuals leaving prison, and a complex maze of legal barriers to reintegration, more people than ever before are returning home after serving time in prison. These individuals face daunting barriers to successful reintegration. Successful reentry requires strong community support networks and comprehensive services, both of which are lacking in urban areas to which most former prisoners return. Interventions that reflect these principles may hold the greatest promise for success. Yet reentry policies are still quite primitive; researchers are just now beginning to develop an approach to reentry based on evidence of best practices. At this moment, it is critically important that the federal government invest in the development and testing of new ideas and rigorous evaluations to determine which interventions are effective at promoting public safety and prisoner reintegration.

Dimensions of Delinquency: Exploring the Correlates of Participation, Frequency, and Persistence of Delinquent Behavior

Proponents of a “criminal career” perspective argue that there are different dimensions of criminal activity-participation, frequency, seriousness, and duration-and that explanation of these dimensions may require separate explanatory models. Others maintain that different dimensions of criminal activity are realizations of a single underlying propensity toward delinquent or criminal behavior and that a general theory of criminal propensity is sufficient to explain variation in participation, frequency, and persistence of criminal activity. The article discusses theoretical and analytic issues in this debate and presents an exploratory empirical analysis on whether similar or different factors are related to participation in, frequency of, and persistence in delinquency.

Studying the Characteristics of Arrest Frequency among Paroled Youthful Offenders

In recent years, much attention has been devoted to developing appropriate analytical methods to model criminal careers. Largely ignored in this methodological debate is the study of how the criminal behavior patterns of active offenders are related to individual characteristics. This article presents an analysis of the postrelease offending patterns of two cohorts of male youth released by the California Youth Authority in 1981 to 1982 and 1986 to 1987. The focus of the analysis is the frequency of arrest during the first three years following release. Negative binomial models are used to examine the relationship between a variety of factors that have been linked theoretically and empirically to the frequency of offending. Results suggest that measures of individual and geographic characteristics can be used to predict the average arrest frequencies and their variation among paroled youthful offenders. These findings suggest that there may be useful distinctions to be made among offending populations.

Specialization in juvenile careers: Markov results for a California cohort

In this paper, we examine the arrest careers through September 1985 of a highly active cohort of youth paroled by the California Youth Authority in the early 1980s. Our results are in some ways similar to and in other ways different from those reported by other researchers. We find that while adjacent transition matrices appear constant, the same cannot be said for nonadjacent matrices. We reject the first-order Markov hypothesis and find support for specialization in the statistical significance of the forward specialization coefficients. Our results also suggest that, in addition to transitions to the same type of offense, an oscillating pattern of offending is common for our subjects. We also compare the transition matrices of three racial/ethnic and four regional groups. These results indicate differences in the patterns of offending by the racial/ethnic groups in our sample and similar offense-transition behavior in three of the four regions that differs significantly from that of the fourth region.

Prisoner Reentry in the First Decade of the Twenty-first Century

Abstract The last decades of the twentieth century witnessed a rapid buildup of prison populations followed by rapid increases in the numbers of individuals being released back to communities. Entering the twenty-first century, about 1,700 adults were leaving state and federal prisons each day. This article summarizes recent research on prisoner reentry and concludes that while progress has been made in increasing service delivery and improving intermediate outcomes, attaining substantial declines in recidivism may be more difficult than previously imagined.