Steven J. Cuvelier

A Large-Scale Multidimensional Test of the Effect of Prison Education Programs on Offenders' Behavior

This study examined the prison behavior and postrelease recidivism of more than 14,000 inmates released from Texas prisons in 1991 and 1992. Comparisons were made between participants and nonparticipants in prison education programs on a variety of behavioral outcomes. The findings suggest that these programs may be most effective when intensive efforts are focused on the most educationally disadvantaged prisoners. Implications for correctional education policy and correctional program research are discussed.

Violence and sexual violence in pornography : is it really increasing ?

Literature and research on the question of the increasingly violent nature of pornography is reviewed. In addition, the paper reports the findings of a content analysis of all cartoons and pictures in Hustler Magazine from 1974 through 1987. Results indicate that sexually violent cartoons and/or pictorials constitute a relatively small proportion of the total cartoons and pictorials. Moreover, no monotonic increase was found in such depictions over the 14-year period examined. In fact, a relatively small and constant proportion of violent and/or sexually violent depictions over this period is reported. These findings are examined in relation to previous research and societal concern about alleged increases in violent pornography as an explanation for increases in rape rates.

Thinking about the Relationship Between Health Dynamics in the Free Community and the Prison

Prison organizations are not isolated institutions, thus social and economic change in the wider society affects their internal dynamics. The authors explore how health conditions within lower socioeconomic segments of the population influence the health characteristics of prisoner admissions, and demonstrate how health conditions within the wider society have major implications for prisoner health care systems. The effects of recent conservative crime control ideologies on institutional health care programs are also examined. The article concludes with the development of a research agenda on prisoner health care issues.

Identifying Risk Factors for Victimization Among Male Prisoners in Taiwan

This study identified risk factors for prison victimization in Taiwan with an application of Western literature and assessed the extent of its applicability in an Eastern context. The sample was drawn from four male prisons located in Northern, Central, Southern, and Eastern Taiwan; a total of 1,181 valid surveys were collected. The results generally support the major findings of the extant Western studies. Crowding, however, was not significantly associated with the risk of victimization in any of the statistical models, which might be related to the different experiences and living conditions in the free community between Taiwanese and American inmates. This study generated clear policy implications, which may reduce prison victimization and engender a greater sense of well-being in the prison environment.

Ceremonial Justice, Loose Coupling, and the War on Drugs in Texas, 1980-1989:

The degree to which the criminal justice system operates as an integrated network of agencies has not been systematically examined. This article illustrates how the police, courts, and corrections systems in Texas adapted to the conflicting demands to increase enforcement of drug laws and punish offenders, on the one hand, and complied with a prison population cap, on the other. Results show that drug arrests remained a small proportion of total law enforcement efforts. The drug war was waged in the courts. Convictions resulted in the incarceration of more offenders. Inmates were released early to maintain compliance with population caps.

The Concentration of Criminal Victimization and Patterns of Routine Activities

Although many repeat victimization studies have focused on describing the prevalence of the phenomenon, this study attempted to explain variations in the concentration of victimization by applying routine activities as a theoretical model. A multivariate analysis of repeat victimization based on the 2005 Taiwan criminal victimization data supported the general applicability of the routine activity model developed in Western culture for predicting repeat victimization. Findings that diverged from Western patterns included family income to assault, gender to robbery, and marital status, family income, and major activity to larceny incidents. These disparities illustrated the importance of considering the broader sociocultural context in the association between risk predictors and the concentration of criminal victimization. The contradictory results and nonsignificant variance also reflected untapped information on respondents’ biological features and psychological tendencies. Future victimization research would do well to integrate measurements that are sensitive to salient sociocultural elements of the society being studied and individuals’ biological and psychological traits.

Chinese police cadets’ attitudes toward police roles revisited

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to examine the relationship between Chinese police cadets’ background, motivations and educational perceptions and their attitudes toward common police roles. Design/methodology/approach – Self-administered questionnaires were collected from 382 Chinese police cadets. Based upon predisposition and socialization theories, personal background, career motivation and attitudes toward education were examined as statistical explanations of cadets’ attitudes toward order maintenance, preventative patrol, law enforcement, and community building as elements of the police role. Findings – Cadets who recognized more value in their practical and academic education also significantly favored the transitional and contemporary police roles (preventative patrol, law enforcement, and community building), which are taught as part of their college curriculum. But educational perceptions had no effect on order maintenance, which is a more historical role, and not emphasized by the polic...

A Limited Capacity to Treat: Examining the Effects of Prison Population Control Strategies on Prison Education Programs

The number of prisoners across the country has increased dramatically throughout the 1980s. Texas is one state that has felt the strain of prisoner population pressures. To keep abreast of demand, more state prison units were built. However, new prisons were soon filled to capacity. This situation forced policymakers to implement a population cap and an allocation formula. To keep the prisoner population within the cap, prisoners were released early and time served declined rapidly over the course of the 1980s. These latter consequences severely affected the ability of the Windham School System to deliver prison education programs. The data showed that one in seven inmates was released prior to taking a vocational certification test. Various policy options are then explored.

Crime reporting behavior and Black’s Behavior of Law

This study seeks to extend the theoretical explanation of victims’ crime reporting behavior to a social-structural framework by partially using Black’s Behavior of Law theory in a non-western context. Black’s theory of law postulated that police reporting varied according to five aspects of social life: stratification, morphology, culture, organization and social control. Drawing on the most recent victimization survey conducted in Taiwan, this study focuses on victim reporting of assault, robbery and larceny. Some findings replicated the expectations proposed by Black’s propositions, but others were contrary to expectations. Female robbery victims reported to the police approximately three times more than males. The plausible reason might involve the notion of relational distance taken from Black’s morphology perspective. It was also found that the severity of infraction was positively related to crime reporting. The coexistence of a strong effect of the variable ‘crime seriousness’ and the statistical significance of Black’s social dimensions might imply that Black’s theory has value in forming the broad social context of social action but is insufficient as an explanation of individual behavior.

Prosecutorial Decision Making in Taiwan: A Partial Test of Black’s Behavior of Law

Most prior studies have examined prosecutorial decision making from cognitive, organizational, and legal perspectives, with few studies applying a broad sociological model. This study attempts to address the gap by using Black’s Behavior of Law as a theoretical framework to explicate prosecutorial behavior. With analysis of aggregate-level data from Taiwan for the period 1973 to 2005, the results partially support Black’s propositions. Organization (martial law) and culture (educational attainment) are significantly associated with the levels of change in prosecutors’ behavior in the directions hypothesized using Black’s model. The remaining aspects of social life, however, do not have an effect on the prosecutors’ decisions during the time frame. The findings suggest that mediating variables, such as the extent of governmental autocracy and control over legislative policy, need to be considered in explaining the behavior of law.