Recent efforts to change the teaching profession and teacher preparation include a number of innovations to use portfolio assessment, value added measures (VAM), accountability metrics and other corporate education reform ideas. These approaches may provoke considerable potential legal consequences. Traditional constitutional and civil rights…

Nonlethal strangulation of intimate partners has substantial direct health effects and is associated with an increased risk of later lethal violence by a partner or ex-intimate partner but can be difficult to prosecute under felony assault statutes. After review of state laws regarding assault, the authors identified 10 states with specific…

Recent meta-analyses of drug-court studies recognized the poor methodological quality of the evaluations, with only a few being randomized. This article critiques the design of the randomized studies from a statistical perspective. Learning points are identified for future drug-court studies and are applicable to evaluations both of other…

The determinants of sentencing are of much interest in criminal justice and legal research. Understanding the determinants of sentencing decisions is important for ensuring transparent, consistent, and justifiable sentencing practice that adheres to the goals of sentencing, such as the punishment, rehabilitation, deterrence, and incapacitation of…

Elizabeth Scott and Laurence Steinberg explore the dramatic changes in the law's conception of young offenders between the end of the nineteenth century and the beginning of the twenty-first. At the dawn of the juvenile court era, they note, most youths were tried and punished as if they were adults. Early juvenile court reformers argued strongly…

This article analyzes the civil commitment models for treating sexually violent predators (SVPs) and analyzes recent civil commitment laws. SVPs are commonly defined as sex offenders who are particularly predatory and repetitive in their sexually violent behavior. Data from policy literature, a survey to all states, and a review of law review…

Analyzes the major proposals for drug legalization and discusses the possible consequences of these efforts if successful. Argues that the legalization of drugs would be an extremely complex undertaking and that most calls for such action do not offer specific proposals. Points out research that supports arguments against legalization of drugs.…

Drug courts routinely rely on the threat of legal sanction to motivate drug-using criminal offenders to enter and complete community-based treatment programs. In light of the high failure rates among drug court participants, what is the effect of the threat of legal sanction on program retention and completion? A quasiexperimental research design…

Discusses potential obstacles involved when interviewing child victims of sexual abuse, including risks of false allegations and the interviewer's difficulty in maintaining true objectivity. Underlines importance of tailoring whole procedure to child's developmental level. Examines Statement Validity Analysis, advocating the need to approach this…

Undergraduate social work and criminal justice students completed 1 of 4 vignettes that were identical with the exception of the age and gender of the vignette's subject. In each vignette, the subject interacted with an opposite-sex 24-year-old waiter or waitress. Following each vignette, respondents answered 20 items relating to the age, gender,…

Presents an evaluative study of adult criminal diversion programs. The results of the study indicate that the diversion programs result in a decline in both the number and proportion of cases fully prosecuted. (IM)

This study is a quantitative analysis designed to compare two groups of factually innocent capital defendants: those who were exonerated and those who were executed. There are a total of 97 cases in the sample, including 81 exonerations and 16 executions. The primary objective of the authors is to identify factors that may predict case outcomes…

Changes in homicide and arrest rates were compared among cohorts born before and after legalization of abortion and those who were unexposed to legalized abortion. It was found that legalized abortion improved the lives of many women as they could avoid unwanted births.

The origin and enforcement of criminal law are central to the sociological study of crime, yet we know relatively little about how the coercive apparatus of criminalization is actualized through prosecutorial and court practices. We use Bourdieu's extension of Weber's analysis of law to develop a perspective on fields of practice, the juridical…

Evaluates criminal justice coverage in on-line, commercially available data bases using both "Hot Topics" and general profiles. Charts show topics covered, periodicals indexed by each data base, and recommendations for which data base to use for various topics; appendixes present indexing terms used by and annotations for selected data…