James W. Meeker

Women's and men's fear of gang crimes: Sexual and nonsexual assault as perceptually contemporaneous offenses

Perceptually contemporaneous offenses are crimes that are coupled in peoples minds when they express fear. Previous studies have shown that fear of rape predicts womens fears of other crimes. This study examined the differential effects of sexual and nonsexual assault as offenses that may be coupled with specific gang crimes. For both women and men, once physical harm is accounted for by controlling for fear of nonsexual assault, fear of rape explains much less variance than it does when it was included alone. We argue that fear of physical harm, not the sexual intrusion in rape, has the strongest effect on fear for both women and men.

Subcultural Diversity and the Fear of Crime and Gangs

Fear and gangs were two of the most important factors driving crime policy in the 1990s. Policy makers and the media blamed gangs for much of the violence occurring across the nation and for public fear. This article examines fear of crime and gangs in Orange County, California, as measured by a randomized survey of 1,223 respondents conducted in 1995 by The Orange County Register newspaper. The authors find that the factors predicting fear of crime and fear of gangs are different. In addition, they find that concern about subcultural diversity is a strong predictor of both types of fear.

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.

Evaluations of institutional legitimacy and court system fairness: A study of gender differences

Abstract A growing body of literature addresses the relationship between procedural justice and institutional legitimacy, exploring the antecedents of these concepts and their influence on behavior. To date, most of the literature has found little, if any, gender effects. These studies have traditionally conceptualized demographic variables as exogenous terms predicting perceptions of procedural justice and institutional legitimacy. This analysis takes an alternative approach. To explain whether the relationships between experience and evaluations of court system fairness and institutional legitimacy are different across gender, separate models for females and males are analyzed. The models show major gender differences on experience, with indirect court experience the most important for females and direct court experience the most important for males.

Combining Theoretical Models of Perceived Risk and Fear of Gang Crime among Whites and Latinos

Abstract Using path analytical techniques, this study extends social disorganization theory to individual perceptions and examines the combined effects of demographic characteristics, diversity, disorder, decline, and perceived risk on the fear of gang crime among whites and Latinos in Orange County, California. Findings indicate that relationships among the theoretical models are similar for both groups, but effects of some demographic factors differ by ethnicity—indicating an ethnic interactive effect. Specifically, this study, using a more representative sample, supports Lanes (2002) finding that diversity concerns lead to perceptions of disorder which lead to worries about community decline and therefore more perceived gang-related risk and fear.

Do peep shows “cause” crime? A response to Linz, Paul, and Yao

Government regulation of adult entertainment businesses, including peep shows, must be aimed at mitigating adverse secondary effects such as crime. To determine whether San Diego’s regulations meet this Constitutional threshold, Linz, Paul, and Yao (2006) compared police calls-for-service (CFSs) in peep show and control areas. Finding no significant difference, they concluded that San Diego has no legitimate rationale for regulating any aspect of peep shows. We disagree not only with the Linz et al. finding, but also with the logical adequacy of their conclusion. Their finding is a methodological artifact, in our opinion, and their conclusion is a fallacy. Before explaining our opinion, however, we disclose two facts. First, although Linz et al. acknowledged that their article was based on an earlier paper, they did not acknowledge a still earlier report (Linz & Paul, 2002) commissioned by the plaintiffs in a lawsuit (Mercury Books v. City of San Diego, U.S. District Court, Southern District of California, 00-CV2461). This omission does not necessarily invalidate the Linz et al. finding, but the article’s ancestry may be a material fact in judging its “suitability, credibility, and validity for publication” in a peer-reviewed journal (Horton, 2004, p. 821).

Access to justice for the poor and moderate‐income populations: Issues for California Latinos

This article examines the nature of civil legal needs of low‐income and moderate‐income populations, with particular attention to California Latinos. The article presents the existing mechanisms for providing those legal services, and the various barriers to access for those populations. The article uses the example of current and projected ethnic diversity among those populations in California to examine the unique effects of cultural diversity on legal needs and the provision of legal services.

White-collar and organized crimes: Questions of seriousness and policy

The line between organized crime and white-collar crime is often vague, compounding the separate social problems represented by these two types of criminality. This blurring is complicated further by the general assumption that organized criminals pose a more serious threat, thus requiring a stronger sanction than white-collar criminals. The controversy surrounding certain recent crime-control statutes centers around different assessments of the seriousness of both types of criminality. Prior studies of crime seriousness have focused primarily on crimes in general, with some attention to white-collar crime in contrast to ordinary crime. To date, however, no one has examined the differences in perceptions of seriousness between white-collar and organized crime. This paper investigates how occupation and attitudes toward the seriousness of white-collar and organized crime influence attitudes toward policy distinctions between the two, as well as toward the usefulness of various definitions of organized crime.

Fighting for Fees-Drug Trafficking and the Forfeiture of Attorney's Fees

In the past two years since the passage of 1984 amendments as part of the Comprehensive Crime Control Act, government prosecutors have included defense counsel fees as forfeitable assets stemming from drug trafficking and organized crime prosecutions. This development has been described by affected defense counsel as having an “arctic” effect upon their relationships with clients, as an abridgement of Sixth Amendment right to counsel, and as a deterrent to effective lawyering in this field. Prosecutors, on the contrary, have argued that a person can neither purchase a Rolls Royce nor a “Rolls Royce class of attorney” with proceeds of criminality. This paper delineates the issues in this debate, and their genesis, as articulated injudicial opinions; interviews with prosecutors and leading defense attorneys in Los Angeles, Miami, and New York City; published articles; and transcripts of hearings held by bar associations. In addition to the fees issue, similar controversial issues, such as grand jury subpoenas of attorneys and cash reporting requirements placed on attorneys, are addressed. Particular attention is paid to the increased adversariness in this stratum of the criminal justice system, and to the impact these developments have and will have on the quality of justice in major drug trafficking and organized crime cases.