James C. Hackler

The Willingness to Intervene: Differing Community Characteristics

This paper deals with two questions: 1) under what conditions will people intervene to help someone else and 2) what community characteristics promote or hinder these conditions? Small group laboratory studies suggest that the presence of others hindered rather than promoted a willingness to intervene. Other research shows that factors which encourage communication are related to the willingness to help someone or respond to an act of deviance. This study attempts to apply some of these ideas to 12 areas in the city of Edmonton, Alberta. Generally, increased interaction within a community was related to a willingness to intervene and to other predicted variables. However, the pattern differed in “stable” and in “unstable” communities. While the predicted model may be appropriate for stable neighborhoods, the dynamics in communities with greater mobility may call for an alternate explanation.

Attitudes Toward Delinquency by Court Officials: Comparisons Between North America and Europe

When attitude questionnaires are translated from one language to another it is difficult to interpret responses for the purpose of cross cultural comparisons. This study attempts to compare attitudes of juvenile court officials in Vienna and Boston by rank ordering equivalent roles along various attitudinal dimensions. In Vienna, judges, police, state attorneys, and lay judges usually have a more “conservative” outlook than probation officers and youth officials, but these attitudes do not fall neatly into a punitive-permissive continuum. In both Vienna and Boston the structure of the system and the way officials perform their roles are related to attitudes, but it is not clear whether the performance of certain roles leads to the adoption of particular attitudes or holding certain attitudes leads to a search for specific roles.

The Dangers of Political Naivete and Excessive Complexity in Evaluating Delinquency Prevention Programs.

Abstract The current demand for the assessment of programs designed to modify delinquent behavior may actually decrease the likelihood of achieving important long range goals. This article argues that the traditional experimental-control group procedures used in the evaluation of delinquency prevention programs are rarely successful, generate strains which have negative consequences, create hostility toward attempts to gain knowledge, and fail to create superior programs in the future. Furthermore, complex programs increase the likelihood of stress more than simple ones. If sophisticated research skills were directed toward the analysis of data gathered from larger numbers of cases and from more readily available data sources, many of these negative consequences could be minimized. The final theme is that the way in which findings are reported should be treated as an important factor in its own right. Objective, “hard-nosed” assessment may in fact damage promising projects without altering ineffective but entrenched programs.