Criminal Justice System Responses Research Articles

Commercial Transactions in Children: The Case of Ghana.

The current article represents an examination of commercial transactions involving the sale of children in contemporary Ghana. It presents the results of a criminological analysis of 20 cases of commercial transactions in children in Ghana. It describes the sociodemographic characteristics of offenders and victims, victim-offender relationships, offender motivations, public reactions to the phenomenon, as well as the criminal justice system's responses to the crime. The data were extracted from Ghanaian print and electronic presses. The data show that more boys than girls were sold and that the ages of the victims ranged from 1 month to 19 years, although younger, prepubescent children were more likely to be sold than adolescents and younger adults. The results further show that the relationship between the offender and the child victim was a primary one, with parent-child relationships being dominant, followed by uncle-nephew. Pecuniary reasons were the primary motive for the crime, with offenders invariably expressing the need for money to satisfy pressing financial needs or personal enrichment. The data show that offenders were subject to prompt arrest, prosecution, and incarceration. A summary is provided for each of the 20 cases analyzed in the study.

Tendency and Coincidence Model Provisions: An Analysis of the Proposals by the Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse

The Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse was constituted in 2013 to investigate historical and contemporary child sexual abuse committed in various institutional settings. As part of its work, the Royal Commission investigated the criminal justice system's response to offending of this kind. This investigation has included proposing amendments to the rules regulating the admission of tendency and coincidence evidence. The comment will examine the proposed changes to those rules, and the empirical basis for them. It argues that while there is certainly grounds for reconsidering the tendency and coincidence rules, the reforms proposed by the Royal Commission drastically and improperly lower the threshold for admissibility, and do not have a solid evidential basis.

Transforming Aggressive Prosecution Policies: Prioritizing Victimss Long-Term Safety in the Prosecution of Domestic Violence Cases

Until fairly recently, prosecutors' offices around the country ignored domestic violence cases, failing to press charges in the vast majority of situations and dropping charges prior to conviction in many others. In the 1980s and 1990s, however, the battered women's movement made significant efforts to improve the criminal justice system's response. One way that this effort has met with substantial success is that many prosecutors' offices now have adopted aggressive "no-drop" policies for domestic violence cases. In these jurisdictions, cases proceed regardless of the victim's preferences about prosecution, even if she recants her original story and testifies for the defense.

Child Sexual Abuse in Fiji: Authority, Risk Factors and Responses

While child sexual abuse is a problem worldwide, the risk factors for the perpetration of child sexual abuse within Fiji are unique in their relation to the traditional and communal nature of Fijian society. In this article, culturally relevant dynamic risk factors found within contemporary Fijian society are identified and understood alongside static factors contributing to abuse. Although there have been recent changes to sexual offence legislation and traditional criminal justice system responses to victims of sexual abuse, state-sanctioned responses continue to maintain victimising practices. Equally, the relative rural isolation means many Indigenous Fijian (iTaukei) communities continue to use customary restorative justice practices that may marginalise the rehabilitation of victims and offenders for the communities' benefit. However, a culturally specific amalgamation of traditional criminal justice and customary restorative responses may help to create more holistic protection for survivors of child sexual abuse in Fiji.

Violencia y esquizofrenia: un análisis clínico-forense

In public perception, schizophrenia is often associated with violence. There is a significant association between violence and schizophrenia, but less than 10% of societal violence is attributable to schizophrenia. Clinicians consider many contributory factors when evaluating the risk of a patient to become violent, including comorbid substance abuse, personality traits, history of violent acts, paranoid beliefs, content of auditory hallucinations, impulsivity, social circumstances, and age and sex. People with paranoid and psychotic symptoms, which can worsen if medications are discontinued, may also be at higher risk for violent behavior. When violence does occur, it is most frequently targeted at family members and friends, and more often takes place at home. The criminal responsibility and the current Spanish criminal justice system's response to violence committed by mentally ill people are examined. Expert evidence plays a very important role in the court in this respect. Challenges for the future are discussed.

Stalking Victims, Victims of Sexual Violence and Criminal Justice System Responses: Is there a Difference or just ‘Business as Usual’?

Based on the qualitative accounts of 26 self-defined stalking victims, this article examines the experiences of stalking victims with regard to the responses they received from criminal justice system practitioners. These experiences are compared and discussed in relation to the responses victims of domestic violence and rape commonly receive by criminal justice system officials. The discussion reveals the way the experiences of stalking victims with criminal justice system officials parallel the experiences of victims of other forms of sexual violence and points out the meaning of these commonalities. The article concludes by assessing the role of the law in improving the treatment of victims by the criminal justice system and problematizing its potential in bringing about social change.

Criminal justice system responses to intimate partner violence: The Italian case

This article presents the results of research carried out in two Italian cities, aimed at analysing the criminal justice system’s response to intimate partner violence. Research data were collected through the content analysis of judicial files concerning offences involving violence against women by a partner or a former partner. From the research, it appears that the Italian penal system tends to selectively de-construct and fragment the acts of violence, rather than to re-construct the facts as they actually took place. In criminal proceedings, the centrality of the woman’s cooperation is unquestionable. However, the ineffective response by the penal agencies could represent an instance of ‘circular causation’ linked to the so-called ‘trained inability’ of penal actors. In order to deal adequately with these issues, specific training is required for criminal justice system practitioners. It also seems necessary to resort to specific tools for risk assessment, in order to ensure the protection of the victim.

Dealing with the unknown: Learning from stalking victims’ experiences

Stalking was first criminalised in the United States in the early 1990s and most recently two stalking offences were introduced in the United Kingdom to deal specifically with stalking behaviour, strengthen the prosecution of stalkers and improve the protection of victims. However, despite growing policy and research attention in the last decade, the available knowledge and understanding regarding the nature and impact of stalking and the needs of its victims are rather limited. As such, this article aims to add to current knowledge by exploring the needs and suggestions of stalking victims based on the in-depth accounts of 26 self-defined victims/survivors of stalking who took part in a study examining the impact of stalking and the criminal justice system responses to victims. Overall, the findings of this study indicate that often stalking victims’ voices are not heard, their complaints are dismissed, their emotional turmoil is not recognised, their needs for support and safety are not properly addressed and therefore while they may be statistically present, in essence they remain ‘invisible’.

The Imprisonment of Women in Southeast Asia: Trends, Patterns, Comparisons and the Need for Further Research

Using extant data, this paper describes and compares trackable variations in the imprisonment of women over the last couple of decades across eight Southeast Asian countries including the following: Cambodia, Indonesia, Vietnam, Thailand, Singapore, the Philippines, Malaysia and Myanmar. Aside from Myanmar, preliminary observations suggest increases in women’s prisoner numbers, rates and share of those incarcerated with growth corresponding but generally outstripping that found for men. Comparatively speaking, Thailand, Vietnam and Singapore ranked highly on measures of women’s incarceration and growth while Malaysia scored at the lower end of the scale. Growth in the imprisonment of women is especially high in Indonesia and Cambodia whereas Myanmar is characterised by the high use of imprisonment for women but minimal growth. Elucidating these results was complicated by a distinct dearth of reliable data and/or regionally specific research pertaining to the imprisonment of women in the relevant nation-states. Limited information available in three jurisdictions (Thailand, Cambodia and Malaysia) suggests that policy changes, alongside shifting criminal justice system responses to particular types of crime, could be driving upward trends and disproportionately impacting on the imprisonment of women. In conclusion, it is argued that there is a pressing need for both country-specific and cross-regional research on the incarceration of women in Southeast Asia.

The Impact of Sexual Assault Nurse Examiner Programs on Criminal Justice Case Outcomes: A Multisite Replication Study.

To address the underreporting and underprosecution of adult sexual assaults, communities throughout the United States have implemented multidisciplinary interventions to improve postassault care for victims and the criminal justice system response. One such model is the Sexual Assault Nurse Examiner (SANE) Program, whereby specially trained nurses provide comprehensive psychological, medical, and forensic services for sexual assault. In this study, we conducted a multisite evaluation of six SANE programs (two rural programs, two serving midsized communities, two urban) to assess how implementation of SANE programs affects adult sexual assault prosecution rates. At each site, most sexual assaults reported to law enforcement were never referred by police to prosecutors or were not charged by the prosecutor's office (80%-89%). Individually, none of the sites had a statistically significant increase in prosecution rates pre-SANE to post-SANE. However, when the data were aggregated across sites, thereby increasing statistical power, there was a significant effect such that cases were more likely to be prosecuted post-SANE as compared with pre-SANE. These findings suggest that the SANE intervention model does have a positive impact on sexual assault case progression in the criminal justice system. Nevertheless, there is still a pressing need for improvement as the vast majority of both pre-SANE and post-SANE resulted in nonreferral/no charges filed.

Exploring stakeholders' perceptions of adult female sexual assault case attrition.

Objective: Previous research has documented both the problem of adult sexual assault case attrition and negative experiences for victims who pursue criminal justice responses. To date, most of this research has focused on calculating attrition statistics or examining juror or justice personnel attitudes. The purpose of the current study was to uncover how views of successes and challenges of criminal justice system responses triangulate across a sample of key stakeholders. Method: Heideggerian hermeneutic phenomenology formed the philosophical underpinning of the methodology and the collaborative approach to data analysis. Semistructured interviews were conducted with 51 professionals including police, prosecutors, victim witness advocates, sexual assault nurse examiners, and crisis center advocates in 1 northeastern U.S. state. Results: Three themes evolved that included the impact of the CSI effect on prosecutorial decisions and jury outcomes, justice and healing as an expectation of the criminal justice process, and inconsistent responses as a reflection of the variability of knowledge and skill among responders across communities. Conclusions: Themes revealed surprising convergence of views despite differing vantage points among stakeholders. Antidotes to case attrition include a coordinated community of responders and victim-centered approaches to justice and healing. The current study showcases a research method that can help bring together often-divergent professional voices around common goals.

An Exploration of Recidivism and the Officer Shuffle in Police Sexual Violence

By examining a decade of newspapers accounts in the Midwest, the current study explores the nature of repeat or recidivist police sexual violence (PSV) in comparison to first-time offending in the characteristics of the offenders, nature of the PSV acts, and the departments and criminal justice system response. Results show that more than 41% of PSV cases are committed by recidivist officers who averaged 4 victims each over a 3-year span of offending. The idea of the officer shuffle is explored in the context of sexual offending by police, indicating that a minority of officers move across jurisdictions maintaining police certification despite allegations of violence and misconduct. Implications explore how policy changes, such as a national reporting system for police sexual offending, would impact problem-prone PSV offending.

Introduction to the Special Issue on Diversion From Standard Prosecution

Over the past two decades, there has been a paradigm shift in how the criminal justice system handles specific types of offenders. The initial impetus for this shift was the long-overdue recognition that standard criminal justice processing was not resulting in meaningful reductions in drug use and criminal recidivism among drug-involved offenders. As a result, courts across the United States began developing specialized dockets designed to address the specific criminogenic risk factors of drug-involved offenders. The advent of drug treatment courts was the beginning of a new generation of specialty courts and other community-based efforts to deal with specific types of offenders. Although these efforts began with a focus on drug-involved offenders, community-based alternatives to standard prosecution were soon developed for other subsets of offenders, including those with mental health problems. Drug courts and mental health courts have received a good deal of attention, but specialty courts are only one type of community-based diversion program. Indeed, there are a range of community-based alternatives to standard prosecution that span the entire criminal justice continuum. In this regard, the Sequential Intercept Model developed by Munetz andGriffin (2006) provides a useful organizing framework. This model describes five points at which standard criminal justice processing can be interrupted (or intercepted) and individuals can be diverted from standard prosecution: (1) law enforcement and emergency services; (2) post-arrest: initial detention/hearing and pre-trial services; (3) post-initial hearings: jails/prisons, courts, forensic evaluations, and commitments; (4) re-entry from jails, prisons, and forensic hospitalization; and (5) community corrections and community support. Each of these intercepts provides an opportunity to intervene with offenders andpotentially break the costly and ineffective cycle of arrest, incarceration, release, and re-arrest that has often characterized the criminal justice system's response to certain types of offenders.This special issue presents the most up-to-date research on diversion from standard prosecution.

Gender inequitable masculinity and sexual entitlement in rape perpetration South Africa: findings of a cross-sectional study.

ObjectiveTo describe the prevalence and patterns of rape perpetration in a randomly selected sample of men from the general adult population, to explore factors associated with rape and to describe how men explained their acts of rape.DesignCross-sectional household study with a two- stage randomly selected sample of men.Methods1737 South African men aged 18–49 completed a questionnaire administered using an Audio-enhanced Personal Digital Assistant. Multivariable logistic regression models were built to identify factors associated with rape perpetration.ResultsIn all 27.6% (466/1686) of men had raped a woman, whether an intimate partner, stranger or acquaintance, and whether perpetrated alone or with accomplices, and 4.7% had raped in the last 12 months. First rapes for 75% were perpetrated before age 20, and 53.9% (251) of those raping, did so on multiple occasions. The logistic regression model showed that having raped was associated with greater adversity in childhood, having been raped by a man and higher maternal education. It was associated with less equitable views on gender relations, having had more partners, and many more gender inequitable practices including transactional sex and physical partner violence. Also drug use, gang membership and a higher score on the dimensions of psychopathic personality, namely blame externalisation and Machiavellian egocentricity. Asked about why they did it, the most common motivations stemmed from ideas of sexual entitlement.ConclusionsPerpetration of rape is so prevalent that population-based measures of prevention are essential to complement criminal justice system responses. Our findings show the importance of measures to build gender equity and change dominant ideas of masculinity and gender relations as part of rape prevention. Reducing men's exposure to trauma in childhood is also critically important.

Responding to Crime Victims with Disabilities: The Perspective of Law Enforcement

This focus group study identified methods and techniques to improve the criminal justice system's response to crime victims with disabilities. Twenty-five city and county law enforcement officers from two northwestern settings participated in focus groups. A police officer co-facilitated the groups. Results indicate increased vulnerability of people with disabilities and explain barriers law enforcement faces in its service to crime victims with disabilities. Researchers, the disability community, and law enforcement need to work together to develop and implement efficient, effective, and realistic methods to improve the response of the criminal justice system to the victimization of people with disabilities.

College Student Perceptions of Criminal Justice System Responses to Stalking

In the current study, a survey was administered to 513 U.S. undergraduate college students from a large east coast university to examine whether extra-legal factors influenced their personal judgments of criminal justice system responsiveness to stalking. MANOVA results indicated that students believed police and prosecutors would not treat analogous cases similarly (this bias was not apparent with judges). College students perceived that prior relationship and target/offender gender would impact arrest decisions, and that target/offender gender would also impact police investigations and the filing of criminal charges. Potential explanations and practical implications of these findings are discussed, as well as directions for future research.

Reducing intimate partner homicides: The effects of federally-funded shelter service availability in California

Over twenty-five years of policy and scholarly attention to the problem of intimate partner violence appears to have generated greater victim safety. Intimate partner homicides, the most serious form of violence between intimates, have been declining for nearly three decades in many contexts, but not all. This study built on a small number of studies that had advanced knowledge about the policy-relevant factors behind the intimate partner homicide decline. The analysis described here utilized a set of county-level data from California from 1987 to 2000 to estimate the effects of shelter-based service availability on race/ethnicity-specific female intimate partner homicide victimization. The study relied on a new measure of service availability in an attempt to overcome limitations with previously used indicators. This analysis did not reveal an effect of shelter-based service availability and criminal justice system responses on changes in female intimate partner homicide victimizations. Reasons for these findings and suggestions for future research are discussed.

The Interrelationship Between Substance Abuse and the Likelihood of Arrest, Conviction, and Re-offending in Cases of Intimate Partner Violence

The nexus between substance abuse and intimate partner violence has been studied in depth. The interrelationship between substance abuse, intimate partner violence, and the criminal justice system response and subsequent offending has not received as much attention. In this article, the authors examine the impact of substance abuse on the likelihood of an officer’s decision to make an arrest, conviction in that case, and subsequent re-offending. The authors find that while official decision-making remains unaffected by the fact that the offender has been drinking and/or using drugs, substance abuse and subsequent re-offending are inextricably interlinked. These findings highlight the need to screen domestic violence offenders for alcohol/drug abuse, and provide offenders manifesting these problems with alcohol/drug treatment in addition to batterer treatment.

Understanding Elder Sexual Abuse and the Criminal Justice System's Response: Comparisons to Elder Physical Abuse

A great deal of research has considered the dynamics of sexual assault and the way that sexual assault cases are processed and handled in the criminal justice system. Most of this research has focused on sexual assault cases involving younger victims. Very little criminological research has considered the dynamics of elder sexual abuse. To fill this void, the current study uses a sample of 127 elder sexual abuse cases and 314 elder physical abuse cases to shed some light on the dynamics of elder sexual abuse and the way the justice system processes these cases. Attention is also given to the way that the processing of elder sexual abuse cases can be distinguished from the processing of elder physical abuse cases. Results show that a wide range of elder sexual abuse cases are committed and these cases are processed differently than elder physical abuse cases. Implications are provided.

Sentencing: The real rape myth

abstract This Focus explores, from a legal feminist perspective, one of several points within the criminal justice system's response to rape victims where discretion is exercised. Although judicial discretion in sentencing is now constrained by minimum sentencing legislation it is evident that the caveat allowing for deviation from prescribed sentences under ‘substantial and compelling circumstances’ has enabled the retention of considerable leeway. This Focus responds to recent criticism leveled at the sentencing of convicted rapists under this legislation. It is argued that the manner in which the judiciary has interpreted and deployed this proviso, reveals not only their institutional resistance to perceived intrusions on the judicial function but also problematic assumptions and prejudices which inform judicial reasoning in sentencing decisions. In particular, judicial reasoning reflects a social construction and legitimation of rape which is best understood as a manifestation of the continued prevalence of ‘rape myths’. The Focus provides a contextual outline of feminist theory relevant to the operations of rape mythology and the legal framework within which perpetrators are sentenced. Analysis of 14 randomly selected sentencing judgments exposes the continued judicial reliance on rape myths. It seeks to highlight the role of sentencing by courts in the maintenance and perpetuation of a criminal justice system that marginalises the experiences of the vast majority of rape victims. This response, it is argued, is inimical to a true recognition of the harm of rape and of the equal position of women and children before the law.