Case Disposition Research Articles

Responding to Crossover Youth: A Look Beyond Recidivism Outcomes

Crossover youth are involved in both child welfare and juvenile justice systems. The Crossover Youth Practice Model (CYPM) promotes collaboration between these systems to inform decision making between the two agencies and better serve these youth. Yet, few outcome evaluations of the CYPM exist, especially those that assess outcomes beyond recidivism, such as case dispositions, case closure, or placement or living situations. This study examined whether the CYPM ( n = 210) decreased recidivism and increased system/case responses and positive outcomes among youth within 9–18 months after the youth’s initial arrest relative to a comparison group of crossover youth ( n = 425) who were arrested 1 year before the CYPM was implemented. Overall, the findings suggest that the CYPM in the jurisdiction under study dismisses or diverts crossover youth more often, closes delinquency cases more often, and leads to more home placements than was previously done in the jurisdiction, but it does not significantly reduce recidivism.

Containing COVID-19 in the Emergency Department: The Role of Improved Case Detection and Segregation of Suspect Cases.

ObjectivesPatients with COVID‐19 may present with respiratory syndromes indistinguishable from common viruses. This poses a challenge for early detection during triage in the emergency department (ED). Over a 3‐month period, our ED aimed to minimize nosocomial transmission by using broader suspect case criteria for better detection and using appropriate personal protective equipment (PPE) for health care workers (HCWs).MethodsAll ED admissions with respiratory syndromes over a 3‐month period were tested for COVID‐19. The sensitivity and specificity of screening criteria in detecting COVID‐19 were assessed. A risk‐stratified approach was adopted for PPE usage in the ED, based on high‐risk “fever areas” and lower‐risk zones. When a case of COVID‐19 was confirmed, surveillance was conducted for potentially exposed patients and HCWs.ResultsA total of 1,841 cases presenting with respiratory syndromes required admission over the study period. Among these, 70 cases of COVID‐19 were subsequently confirmed. The majority (84.2%, 59/70) were detected at ED triage because they fulfilled suspect case criteria. Of these, 34 met the official screening criteria; an additional 25 were detected by the broader internal screening criteria. Over the 12‐week period, the cumulative sensitivity of internal screening criteria was 84.3% (95% confidence interval [CI] = 73.6% to 91.9%), whereas the sensitivity of the official screening criteria was 48.6% (95% CI = 36.4% to 60.8%). Given the broadened internal criteria, the preexisting ED “fever area” was insufficient and had to be expanded. However, there were no cases of nosocomial transmission from intra‐ED exposure, despite extensive surveillance.ConclusionFrontline physicians need to be given leeway to decide on the disposition of cases based on clinical suspicion during an ongoing outbreak of COVID‐19. If a broader criterion is used at ED triage, ED facilities and isolation facilities need to be readied to accommodate a surge of suspect cases. Usage of appropriate PPE is essential in minimizing nosocomial transmission.

Enforcement Malfeasance, Witness Participation, Crime, and Reform

We develop a model wherein a reputation for prosecutorial malfeasance reduces the willingness of witnesses to cooperate with prosecutors. This causes an increase in the crime rate and in wrongly-convicted innocent defendants. Because citizens are taxpayers and may be victims, perpetrators, witnesses, or falsely-accused defendants, they care about the prosecutor’s quality. They update beliefs about this quality based on the disposition of cases. If the prosecutor’s believed quality falls below a threshold, then a majority of voters choose to replace the prosecutor with a challenger, in expectation of reform. We compare the majority’s choice with that of a social planner.

Novel Use of Telemedicine by Hurricane Evacuation Shelters

Introduction: Hurricane Florence made landfall in North Carolina as a Category 1 hurricane on September 14, 2018 causing catastrophic flooding throughout much of eastern North Carolina. Large numbers of evacuees were housed in evacuation shelters established by state emergency management and county governments. The purpose of this study was to evaluate the implementation of a telemedicine service in evacuation shelters to determine whether the presence of telemedicine could alter EMS and ED utilization. Methods: We conducted a cross-sectional study that described the EMS and Emergency Department utilization of patients housed in disaster shelters during a 12 day period following Hurricane Florence. Subjects were those shelter residents in Wake or Orange counties utilizing emergency services. Data were collected from Wake County EMS, Orange County EMS, and RelyMD, the telemedicine service utilized in the shelters. Data included subject demographics, chief complaint, case disposition, telemedicine processing times, and an after-call survey to assess satisfaction and emergency department avoidance rates. De-identified data were compiled into Excel spread sheets. Results: There were a total of 194 combined telemedicine and EMS patient encounters, including 63 EMS transports, 25 refusals, 13 referrals (Wake County EMS), and 93 telemedicine patient encounters. Of the telemedicine encounters, 64 evaluations took place in Wake County shelters and 29 evaluations in the Orange County shelter. Average patient age was 49 years old; 67% were female. Forty three patients (46%) utilized the telemedicine service for obtaining medication refills, of whom 19 (44%) indicated they would have otherwise utilized an ED to refill their medication. Forty patients (43%) indicated they would have otherwise gone to an ED for care had the service not been provided, with the needs of 33 (83%) of these patients successfully managed without evaluation in an ED. Only 9 (9.7%) patients were referred by the telemedicine service to an ED for an evaluation, with 3 (3.2%) being admitted. Conclusion: Our descriptive findings suggest telemedicine can be effectively utilized in a general population evacuation shelter to reduce EMS and ED utilization and address the medical needs of the population. Further studies should be performed to assess applicability to other disaster settings.

Death in Dallas: Sentencing patterns of pre-Furman capital offenders

Whether racial bias is intertwined with capital case dispositions continue to be a matter of contention. In 1972, Furman v. Georgia ruled capital punishment unconstitutional on the grounds of being capricious and arbitrary. To better understand this sociological phenomenon, the current paper examines capital punishment within a historical context. Specifically, the present study is an exploratory examination of county-level data consisting of offenders who received a death sentence between 1923 through 1972. Media accounts from a Dallas newspaper during that time period were also examined. Results indicate that Blacks were disproportionately sentenced to death compared to their White counterparts. Capital sentencing trends at the county level reflect national trends of racial bias that characterized this historical period.

Disposition time and the utilization of prior judicial decisions: Evidence from a civil law country

Court delay frustrates economic behavior. This paper examines the nexus between the case disposition time and the availability of prior court decisions for the civil law. We model litigation as a rent-seeking game, and find that prior court decisions curb strategic behavior in similar cases. Thus, the excessive use of party resources in litigation, such as time, is reduced if prior decisions clarify the interpretation of the law. Using judge-level data, we provide empirical evidence on a potential role of such ‘precedents’ for case disposition time in a civil law country. Our results show that the availability of prior decisions contributes to a significant reduction in disposition time. Moreover, the reduction in the duration of trials becomes stronger when the stock of previous court decisions grows. We conclude that the utilization of prior judicial decisions plays a crucial role for the efficiency of justice also in civil law countries.

Multi-court judging and judicial productivity in a career judiciary: Evidence from Nepal

The rotation of judges across courts of equal seniority is a core, yet understudied, feature of career judiciaries. We examine the consequences of such rotation-induced spreading of judges' yearly court attendance across multiple courts, termed multi-court judging, for judicial productivity at disposing cases. Drawing on judge-level panel data from resource-starved Nepal, where multi-court judging alleviates courts' staffing and case disposition concerns, we find that multi-court judging exhibits a statistically and economically significant negative effect on judicial productivity at case resolution. The uncovered result cannot be explained by selection on unobservables, is robust to adoption of a dynamic panel instrumental variable approach, obtains under alternative model specifications, and survives a series of robustness checks. By identifying a hitherto unidentified cost associated with inter-court transfer of judges, our analysis provides a novel layer of considerations about judicial behavior and performance in career judiciaries.

Acción y representación: indicadores de desempeño de la defensa en una muestra de audiencias de control de garantías en Colombia

The judicial reforms of Latin America have transformed the form and substance of criminal justice administration. However, little is known about its concrete impact in terms of the preliminary disposition of cases and the performance of justice operators. This work contributes to the debate on the “quality” standards in the defense service, through an empirical analysis of a sample of preliminary hearings observed directly and randomly in two cities of Colombia (n=330). In particular, it describes the defendant’s type of legal assistance -public or private- as well as five indicators of service performance: Influence (favorability of the resolution); Visibility (intervention time); Specificity (definition of request), Depth (number of arguments used); and Controversy (use of debate/appeal). Results show that performance of the defense varies across these proposed dimensions and it is less influential when it comes to dealing with violent crimes, and when its performance in the courtroom is less visible, less controversial and more specific. In other words, the likelihood of judicial adoption of the requests made by the defense reflects in part of its own professional performance and case strategy (e.g., intervention time, nature of the request made, and limited use of appeals/debates).

Head and Neck Injuries Associated With Cell Phone Use

As cell phones gain more influence in daily life, they also become potentially more hazardous. Injuries resulting from cell phone use have long been reported largely in the context of driving-related incidents, but other mechanisms of injury have been underreported. To assess the incidence, types, and mechanisms of head and neck injuries associated with cell phone use. Retrospective cross-sectional study using data from a national database of individuals with head and neck injuries related to cell phone use who presented to emergency departments in the United States between January 1998 and December 2017. Incidence, types, and mechanisms of injury related to cell phone use in the US population. A reported total of 2501 patients (1129 [55.0%] female, 795 [38.8%] white, and 772 [37.6%] aged 13-29 years) presented with injuries of the head and neck related to cell phone use; the estimated weighted national total was 76 043 patients (42 846 females [56.3%], 34 894 [45.9%] white, and 29 956 [39.4%] aged 13-29 years). The most commonly reported subsites of injuries in the head and neck region included the head (33.1% of estimated total); face, including eyelid, eye area, and nose (32.7%); and neck (12.5%). The most common injury diagnoses included laceration (26.3% of estimated total), contusion/abrasion (24.5%), and internal organ injury (18.4%). Age group distributions showed that most injuries associated with cell phone user distraction occurred among individuals aged 13 to 29 years (60.3%; Cramer V = 0.29). In addition, those younger than 13 years were significantly more likely to sustain direct mechanical injury from a cell phone (82.1%) than to have a cell phone use-associated injury (17.9%) (Cramer V = 0.305), whereas a cell phone use-associated injury was more likely than a direct mechanical injury to occur among those aged 50 to 64 years (68.2% vs 31.8%; Cramer V = 0.11) and those older than 65 years (90.3% vs 9.7%; Cramer V = 0.29). Cell phone-related injuries to the head and neck have increased steeply over the recent 20-year period, with many cases resulting from distraction. Although the disposition of most cases is simple, some injuries bear a risk of long-term complications. Many of these injuries occurred among those aged 13 to 29 years and were associated with common activities, such as texting while walking. These findings suggest a need for patient education about injury prevention and the dangers of activity while using these devices.

Risk assessment in sentencing and plea bargaining: The roles of prosecutors and defense attorneys.

Research on risk assessment in sentencing has focused heavily on the role of judges. Ignoring the role of other courtroom actors in the sentencing process, however, leaves unexamined the potentially significant effects on judicial decision making of arguments made by prosecutors and defense attorneys at sentencing hearings. Unduly focusing on judges also overlooks the vast majority of sentences arrived at through negotiated guilty pleas. We explored the extent to which considerations of risk are made among prosecutors and defense attorneys when advocating for given sentences in open court or during plea negotiations. We surveyed all prosecutors and defense attorneys in 14 judicial circuits in Virginia and found that most prosecutors and defense attorneys at least "sometimes" explicitly invoked actuarial risk estimates both at sentencing hearings and during plea negotiations. However, defense attorneys were much more likely than prosecutors to be averse to the use of risk assessment in either form of case disposition.

Managerial Judicial Conflict Resolution (JCR) of Plea Bargaining

This article examines the role of the criminal judge in light of the vanishing trial phenomenon and the emergent reality of many doors to process legal conflicts in both the civil and criminal domains. It focuses on judicial conflict resolution (JCR), which is any activity conducted by judges in order to promote consensual disposition of legal cases, in “Plea Bargains Facilitating Days” (moqed) in Tel-Aviv Magistrate’s Court. We conducted quantitative and qualitative analyses of data collected from observations of 717 hearings in 704 criminal cases and found that, on average, 5.55 (SD = 3.62) hearings were required for disposing of a case, and the average duration of a legal proceeding from indictment to closure was 548.55 (SD = 323.17) days. In most of the hearings the judges’ role was confined to managerial-bureaucratic decisions intended to enable the negotiation between the parties. JCR activities occurred in only 16.9 percent of the hearings, and we identified six types of JCR practices in the promotion of plea bargains: narrow and broad facilitation of negotiations between the parties, forecasting the legal outcome, negatively presenting the judicial process, using lawyer-client relations to promote agreement, and using Alternative Dispute Resolution (ADR) techniques. These findings are compared to previous findings on the roles of judges in civil pretrial proceedings, and the more active role of the civil judge in promoting settlements is discussed. We further discuss the possibility of expanding a therapeutic and rehabilitative approach in the framework of criminal JCR during preliminary hearing days, which become today the main door of criminal justice.

Assessing the Efficacy of Alternatives to Incarceration within Seven Federal Districts

Though alternatives to incarceration (ATI) courts have existed in the state system for 30 years, such courts are a relatively new phenomena at the federal level. We assess the impact of participation in an ATI program on a number of outcomes using a quasi-experimental matching design. Results suggest that defendants who successfully completed an ATI program were employed a greater percentage of the days, and received favorable case dispositions and less severe sentences.

Adjudicative Competence and the Criminalization of Intellectual Disability.

Wood and colleagues effectively argue that Title II of the Americans with Disabilities Act applies to securing accommodations for persons with intellectual/disability disorder so that such persons can meaningfully participate in the criminal adjudicative process. This invited commentary further discusses the challenges in identifying, assisting, and fully accommodating persons with intellectual/disability disorder in the criminal justice system. It also highlights ongoing problems with stereotypes within this population, which may affect the outcome of criminal proceedings. This commentary argues that persons with intellectual/disability disorder will likely continue to be treated unequally in the criminal justice system until better supports, treatments, and services are provided in community settings because treatment and placement options are often closely linked with case disposition.

Trato procesal y uso de la detención preventiva en una muestra de audiencias de control de garantías en Bogotá y Cali

Este artículo examina los factores que condicionan el trato y la disposición preliminar de casos penales. Para esto estimamos modelos multivariados basados en la observación aleatoria de audiencias en Bogotá y Cali (N = 330), lo que incluyó la recolección de datos sobre el comportamiento de los jueces, sus decisiones y las características de las personas detenidas. Se demuestra que factores "extralegales", como, por ejemplo, el tipo de defensa o el origen étnico o racial de los procesados, están asociados con la variación en el trato e imposición de la detención preventiva, además de criterios "legales" relacionados con la gravedad de los delitos y las condenas previas.

Arrest and Referral Decisions in Sexual Assault Cases: The Influence of Police Discretion on Case Attrition

Research on sexual assault case attrition spans from the decision of victims to report the incidents and cooperate with police during investigations through the final case disposition in the courtroom. However, few studies have focused on how police discretion influences attrition at the points of arrest and case referral. The current study examines factors of adult sexual assaults reported to the police to determine which legal and extralegal factors were predictive of arrest and which variables were predictive of police decisions to refer cases to prosecutors for consideration. The results of this study showed victim cooperation and evidence significantly predicted arrest and referral, along with variables which measured the seriousness of the case and victim credibility. The findings confirmed both legally relevant and extralegal variables were important considerations during each decision-making point. Implications arising from these results are discussed.

Justice luck in negligence law

U.S. juries possess the power to forgive even obvious negligence and frequently exercise it. Judges and courts facilitate this disposition of cases by regularly affirming juries’ decisions to forgive negligence. This practice creates a problem for corrective justice theories of negligence, which commonly assert that the purpose of negligence law is to repair harm. This reparative purpose is not achieved in the many cases in which juries forgive negligence. In addition, juries impose negligence liability on many acts and omissions that are not wrongs in any moral sense. Negligence liability is best understood, not as a moral system, but as a “stochastic tax.” Someone whose negligence has been forgiven by a jury has experienced “justice luck.”

A Review of Statutes and the Role of the Forensic Psychiatrist in Cyberstalking Involving Youth.

Adolescents are increasingly exposed to Internet-facilitated crime as they spend more time online. The mental health risks and legal consequences for youth involved in cyberstalking are growing areas of concern. The nature of online stalking presents several challenges regarding investigation, fair adjudication, fact-finding, and legislation. Laws governing online stalking behaviors inconsistently reference the age of a victim or perpetrator as a factor for consideration in case disposition. During adjudication, the forensic psychiatrist may be asked to evaluate the victim or perpetrator involved in cyberstalking. This article focuses on the current legal landscape governing cyberstalking behavior involving adolescents, the roles a forensic psychiatrist may assume in this context, and the opportunity to bring a developmental perspective to these cases.

Does video recording inhibit crime suspects? Evidence from a fully randomized field experiment.

In partnership with a small city police department, we randomly informed or did not inform 122 crime suspects that their interrogations were being video-recorded. Coding of all sessions indicated that camera-informed suspects spoke as often and as much as did those who were not informed; they were as likely to waive Miranda at the outset and later; they were as likely to make admissions and confessions, not just denials; and they were perceived no differently by detectives on a range of dimensions. Looking at distal outcomes, we observed no differences in ultimate case dispositions. In terms of policy and practice, results did not support the hypothesis that recording-even when transparent, as required in 2-party consent states-inhibits suspects or alters case dispositions. At least for now, this conclusion is empirically limited to situations in which cameras are concealed and to interrogations that do not involve juveniles, homicides, or drug crimes, which we a priori excluded from our sample. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2019 APA, all rights reserved).

Comment on “‘A Million Dollars in Free Advertising’: Politics and Sex Offense Prosecution in the Wake of Duke Lacrosse”

Comment on “‘A Million Dollars in Free Advertising’: Politics and Sex Offense Prosecution in the Wake of Duke Lacrosse”

Bargaining and Strategic Voting on Appellate Courts

We explore the properties of voting rules and procedures employed by appellate courts in the US. Our model features: (1) a two-stage decision-making process (first over case disposition, then over majority opinion content), (2) dispositional consistency (the new rule must yield the Court's indicated case disposition when applied to the instant case), (3) restricted bargaining entree (only members of the winning dispositional coalition bargain over policy), (4) competitive offers (potentially many competitive majority opinions), and (5) absolute majority in joins (a majority of the court must endorse the rule in the majority opinion if it is to have precedential power). We show that the median judge is pivotal over case dispositions, although she (and others) may not vote sincerely. Strategic voting becomes more likely as the location of the case becomes more extreme, resulting in majority coalitions that give the appearance of less polarization on the court, than is truly the case. The equilibrium policy depends on the composition of the dispositional majority, and generically does not coincide with the ideal policy of the median judge either in the dispositional majority or the bench as a whole. Rather, opinions are drawn toward a weighted center of the dispositional majority but often reflect the preferences of the opinion author.