John M. Klofas

The jail and the community

The importance of jails and their neglect by social scientists are paradoxical themes in the literature on local jails. Although little effort has been made to examine the reasons for the limitations in our knowledge about jails, one possibility is that a consistent context for the research has not emerged. Such a context should help to organize existing studies and give direction to further research. Recent studies by Irwin and Gibbs are suggestive about the value of examining jails in the context of community. This essay uses the community context in reviews of existing studies of the role of the jail, the experience of jail confinement, change and reform in jails, and crowding and the future of the American jail.

Reconsidering Prison Personnel: New Views of the Correctional Officer Subculture

Those interested in the process of change in corrections need concepts which are helpful in understanding prison staff. The concept of a guard subculture is not consistent with existing research on correc tional officers. Instead, viewing officer support for procustodial norms as a shared misconception can provide direction for correctional leadership.

Metropolitan Development and Policing: The Elephant in the Living Room

America has moved swiftly from an urbanized to a metropolitan society. That momentous shift has affected most social institutions, including the police. But contemporary discussions of policing often ignore the objective conditions of concentrated poverty and racial segregation that have accompanied metropolitanization. Those conditions have become the elephant in the living room—obvious but ignored. This paper describes the recent changes in communities and examines their implications for policing.

The Public Health Approach to Illicit Drugs

The public health approach to drug policy has been offered as an alternative to an emphasis on criminal justice. This discussion provides a critical analysis of the public health approach to drug policy. The meaning of the public health approach is considered, as is the assumption that criminal justice and public health are mutually exclusive and that a public health approach will necessarily be more humane. Concerns are raised that the principles of public health will first be co-opted and then subverted by criminal justice, leaving a system based on the worst of both worlds.

Considering Prison in Context: The Case of the People's Republic of China

Despite some evidence to the contrary, imprisonment in the Peoples Republic of China has been characterized as generally humane and rehabilitation-oriented. Cross-cultural comparisons, however, make conclusions tenuous because prison may not have the same precise meaning across national boundaries. This paper describes imprisonment in China and attempts to examine some of the contexts in which it can be considered. Along with humane and treatment-oriented prisons, the Chinese employ a variety of interventions including harsh detention practices, nonjural punishments, and the death penalty. The frequency with which these alternatives are used makes comparisons with American prisons difficult. Understanding is also complicated by the fact that social control practices in China have been shaped by the unique combination of Confucian and socialist ideology and practice. The study of Chinese social control can provide insight into the general problems of conducting cross-cultural research.

Victim Characteristics, Situational Factors, and the Lethality of Urban Gun Violence.

The objective of this study is to hone in on the contextual, social, and individual characteristics that influence lethal outcomes across shootings. Although most criminological research focuses on differential outcomes for gun violence relative to nongun violence, we argue that great insight can be drawn through examining shootings in isolation. We focus on five ways that shooting outcomes vary: the number of shots fired, the number of times the victim was hit, where the victim was hit, the number of victims that were hit, and whether the shooting resulted in a fatality. Building on the adversary effects hypothesis and public health research on the impact of gunshot wound volume and location, we examine the factors that account for variation across shooting outcomes. Our analysis of data from the Rochester Shooting Database suggests that both adversary effects and random factors influence shooting outcomes. In addition, the results also reveal that adversary effects are more important during some stages of a shooting than others. The implications of these findings are discussed.