Henry F. Fradella

Legal, Moral, and Social Reasons for Decriminalizing Sodomy

This article traces the development of sodomy laws and the history of their piecemeal invalidation in the United States. It then presents several arguments for the decriminalization of sodomy laws still in existence, focusing on constitutional law and the inapplicability of the major philosophical justifications for criminal punishment. The article also presents moral and social arguments for decriminalization that are often left out of the debate about the continuing viability of sodomy laws, including their role in perpetuating stigma and discrimination against homosexuals, creating a class of “criminals,” and contributing to the psychological, emotional, and physical abuse of gays, lesbians, and bisexuals.

Depictions of correctional officers in newspaper media: an ethnographic content analysis

The public relies on the media for most of its information about the criminal justice system. Unfortunately, media depictions of justice actors are not always accurate which, in turn, can lead to distorted images about the system and its operations. Using ethnographic content analysis to analyze 489 articles from major newspapers across the United States, this study seeks to discern how correctional officers and the jobs that they perform are portrayed in print media. The results suggest that correctional officers are overwhelmingly portrayed negatively, with 79.6% of the articles in the research sample presenting one of six distinct negative themes. A typology of these themes is explored in detail, along with its implications for societal support for corrections and correctional officers, especially with regard to the media’s potential contributions to officers’ job stress, burnout, and job dissatisfaction.

Latino Youth in the Juvenile Drug Court of Orange County, California

This study examines the factors associated with successful completion of the Orange County Juvenile Drug Court (OCJDC) for 232 (164 male and 68 female) adolescents between the ages of 12 and 17 years. No significant associations were found between graduation status and participants’ age, most serious prior offense, entry offense, primary drug of choice, or secondary drug of choice. While bivariate analyses revealed that Latino ethnicity (especially for females whose parents’ primary language was Spanish) and a lack of family involvement in the drug court programs were both negatively associated with successful program completion, these variables were not significantly associated with the likelihood of graduation in logistic regression models predictive of successful program completion. Rather, a shorter history of substance abuse, a history of prior juvenile offenses, and the presence of co-occurring psychiatric disorders all predicted poor completion rates from the OCJDC program, regardless of gender, ethnicity, or levels of family participation. Implications for policy and practices are discussed.

After the Stop: Exploring the Racial/Ethnic Disparities in Police Use of Force During Terry Stops

Questions surrounding stop, question, and frisk (SQF) practices have focused almost exclusively on racial and ethnic disproportionality in the rate of stops, and whether police are engaged in racial profiling. This near-sole focus on the stop decision has overshadowed important questions about the use of force during Terry stops, resulting in a major gap in our understanding of the dynamics of SQF encounters. The current study addresses this issue through an examination of the nature, prevalence, and predictors of use of force during Terry stops using the 2012 SQF database of New York Police Department (NYPD; N = 519,948) and data from the U.S. Census Bureau. Results indicate that use of force was an infrequent event in NYPD stops (14%), and weapon force was quite rare (.01%). However, hierarchical multinomial logistic regression models show that Black and Hispanic citizens were significantly more likely to experience non-weapon force than White citizens, while controlling for other relevant situational and precinct-level variables. The findings suggest that minority citizens may be exposed to a racial or ethnic “double jeopardy,” whereby they are subjected to both unconstitutional stops and disparate rates of force during those stops. The study highlights the importance of expanding the focus on SQF beyond the racial profiling lens, as questions about the dynamics of police use of force decision-making raise equally important social and legal concerns.

Examining the prevalence and correlates of a ‘senior citizen discount’ in US federal courts

Few studies focus on age as a factor influencing judicial decision-making, in spite of the widespread use of age as a control variable. Although the limited research to have done so is inconsistent, most scholars agree that age may be race- and/or gender-graded in a manner that produces more severe sentences for certain race–gender–age combinations, especially for young males who are Black or Latino. Less consensus exists with regard to whether older defendants are granted more leniency in the sentencing process and, if so, if the effects of older age are also race- and/or gender-graded. The present study examines this question by examining data from the United States Sentencing Commission. The data presented reveal three noteworthy findings. First, a ‘senior citizen discount’ exists insofar as judges afford more leniency in sentencing to older offenders than their younger counterparts. Second, compared to older males, older females were treated with greater leniency by judges. Finally, whereas Latinos 60 and over were treated with greater severity at the stage of incarceration compared to similarly situated Whites, Blacks received shorter sentence lengths on average. These results are analyzed within the framework of the focal concerns perspective.

Supporting strategies for equity, diversity, and inclusion in higher education faculty hiring

Henry F. Fradella takes a long view of diversity’s role in higher education to present some tried and true “best practices” for creating and implementing both formal policies and informal practices that support diverse and inclusive hiring practices. In doing so, he details how higher education has moved over the past forty years from focusing primarily on the heterogeneity of demographic representation to targeting the integration of diverse employee involvement in all systems and processes. Fradella further discusses relevant legal issues in training search committees, recruiting diverse applicant pools, and supporting efforts to foster inclusion in university activities and communications. Finally, he admonishes those who assign insufficient institutional resources for diverse and inclusive hiring practices, arguing that administrators at every rank can effect positive change.

The Hamlet Syndrome

Bringing together legal, literary, and cultural studies, this article builds from a close reading of madness in William Shakespeare’s play Hamlet to some psycho-social theories of malingering and the insanity defense in the modern United States. The basis of these theories is the notion that feigned madness – whether purposeful malingering or a failed insanity defense – often signifies actual madness of a lesser sort. When someone is found to be “faking it,” however, that discovery can result in a widespread assumption of mental health in the person on trial, an assumption that often turns out to be wrong.

Assessing the influence of the Columbine shooting on federal sentencing outcomes

Abstract School shootings are not a new phenomenon in the United States or internationally. In comparison to other acts of violence experienced by youth, such tragedies are uncommon but garner extensive media attention. The Columbine High School shooting received more attention across a broader range of issues than any other school shooting, with only the Sandy Hook tragedy rivaling it for media attention. In the aftermath of the Columbine shooting, public sentiment regarding violence in schools became a central point of contention that bred fear and panic. Given the embeddedness of judges within the larger community context and the effects of community characteristics on sentencing outcomes, we wondered if the Columbine shooting – via moral panic and community upheaval – might have had an impact on judges imposing criminal sentences. To assess the effect of the Columbine shooting on judicial decision-making outcomes, the current study uses United States Sentencing Commission data from 1998 through 2001. In doing so, it contributes to the extant literature concerning the embeddedness of judges within communities and answers recent call for more research on the temporal context of sentencing disparities.