John Dombrink

Chinese Immigrants’ Perceptions of the Police in New York City:

This article examines Chinese immigrants’ perceptions of the police in New York City. It identifies the areas of these immigrants’ concerns related to the interaction with the police. Data are analyzed based on a survey conducted with 151 Chinese immigrants in the boroughs of Queens, Manhattan, and Brooklyn between July and August 2004. The findings include the following: (a) Individuals who had previous contact with police rated police as less favorable, (b) those who rated police as helpful when they called the police for help expressed greater satisfaction toward police, and (c) a strong majority of respondents stated that more bilingual police were needed in the city. In general, the quality of police contact, rather than the quantity of police contact, mattered the most to respondents. Improving the quality of police services, recruiting more bilingual officers, and deepening understanding of cultural differences should enhance immigrants’ satisfaction with the police.

Evaluating health-care needs of the poor: A community-oriented approach

PURPOSE Concern has arisen over the provision of health care for the poor. In a project sponsored by a local community hospital, we conducted a telephone survey to determine unmet health-care needs of low-income families living in Orange County, California, and made recommendations to address those needs. METHODS The survey assessed demographic characteristics and access to medical care of 652 adults and their families. RESULTS In general, we found that the poor (incomes below 125% of the poverty level), the uninsured, and the Latino respondents had lower access measures than the nearly poor (incomes between 125% and 200% of the poverty level), insured, and Anglo subjects. However, insurance status was the strongest predictor of access in this low-income population. Important unmet health-care needs included prenatal care and preventive care. In response to our findings, the sponsoring hospital has instituted new health-care programs to help meet these needs. CONCLUSION This community-oriented approach for improving problems of access to medical care for the poor may be appropriate for other localities.

Dying Right: The Death with Dignity Movement

1. A fate worse than death: Challenging the legal treatment of dying. 2. Death with dignity: the early states, 1991-1992 3. Passage of the Oregan Death With Dignity Act 4. A movement to repeal the Oregan Death With Dignity Act 5. Death with dignity in the Federal Courts 6. Death with dignity on other states 7. Current research on death with dignity

Asian Emerging Crime Groups: Examining the Definition of Organized Crime:

This article examines the definition, structure, and operation of one set of contemporary emerging crime groups-Asian racketeers. The article describes how Japanese, Chinese, and Vietnamese criminal groups differ in their structural forms because of culture, immigration patterns, function, and other factors and analyzes them according to Maltzs 1985 article on defining organized crime.

Red, Blue, and Purple: American Views on Personal Morality and the Law

Progressive Americans could be forgiven for thinking that things had turned screwy-or scary-in 2004. Everywhere one looked after the presidential elections, the Reverend Jerry Falwell, who many thought had flamed out with his uncompromisingly conservative religious positions and ubiquitous media role since the Reagan years, was all over the airwaves. One night, he was explaining to Chris Matthews on MSNBCs Hardball the failings of an ad campaign by the United Church of Christ, a liberal Protestant denomination, that depicted a church open to gays and lesbians-insinuating, according to Falwell and colleagues, that evangelical churches in America were bigoted. Another day he was on Meet the Press debating with progressive evangelical Christian minister Jim Wallis about the role of religion, politics, law, and society.

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.

Book Reviews : People of Chance: Gambling in American Society from Jamestown to Las Vegas. John M. Findlay, Oxford University Press, 1986. 272 pp. cloth

no longer exciting, romantic and lucrative; the criminal realizes that the large theft is only a dream and that prison terms become longer. A new self-concept tells the criminal that his past life was useless and that time is growing short to establish a more satisfying existence. Interest in marriage, a family and steady employment increases; if the criminal achieves these goals and associates with non-criminals, life becomes less stressful. In the final chapter Shover presents the ways in which criminals view their past careers as wasted time and themselves, as stupid or as pushed into crime by external circumstances. A few, the despairing, seek a return to prison where they do not have to make decisions; they cannot adjust to life on the outside. Some feel that prison has been profitable, that they have increased their education or learned skills useful for employment on the outside. But, on the whole, they feel prison has failed to rehabilitate them. Shover discusses certain theories for example, long term effects of stigma and social controls, based on records of young offenders and finds modification is needed. Since Shover reviews the past experiences of his middle-aged subjects, his book has the possibility of suggesting where programs of prevention or correction are needed. These might include programs for free-wheeling adolescents and youth that will give substitutes for the excitement and recreational aspects of early thefts. Programs for inprison rehabilitation should keep the prisoner in contact with the outside