Give an overview of the article and what it says about diversity in law enforcement agencies. Why is the article important, especially during these times in our country’s history? What made you feel different about law enforcement after reading the article? Where in the criminal justice system do you feel diversity is most important, i.e. courts, corrections, policing, etc.?

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Conversations about diversity carry a lot of weight in any industry

Read the passage that is attached to this email. After reading, please answer the following questions, IN ESSAY FORM.

Give an overview of the article and what it says about diversity in law enforcement agencies.
Why is the article important, especially during these times in our country’s history?
What made you feel different about law enforcement after reading the article?
Where in the criminal justice system do you feel diversity is most important, i.e. courts, corrections, policing, etc.?
How should law enforcement agencies create a culture where everyone feels accepted?
Besides criminal justice, what other organizations would benefit from this article?

Identify and discuss one argument in opposition to capital punishment. Note that the argument must be based on more than just personal opinion. Cite some information which backs up that argument.

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Capital punishment

Identify and discuss one argument in opposition to capital punishment.
You do not need to agree with that position. Also, note that the argument must be based on more than just personal opinion. Cite some information which backs up that argument. (Do this whether you agree with that particular position or not.)

Obviously, social science data is best.

According to the interview with Dr. Bonta, in what ways do criminological theories of crime and psychological theories of crime fundamentally differ from one another? What sorts of factors does Dr. Bonta’s theory of crime focus on and what sort of approach does he advocate for when deciding whether a theory has merit?

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Module 03: Reflection Assignment 3: Criminological Versus Psychological Theories of Crime

Shelley Brown: So, let’s talk about theory, specifically. So, criminology has a long history of producing a number of theories about criminal conduct. So, before we talked about psychology’s perspective and ultimately your perspective on why crime happens. What do students need to know about criminological theories of crime?

Jim Bonta: Well, there’s a couple of things about that. One is, and I tend to say, instead of criminological theory, I tend to say sociological criminology. Because in the early history of series in criminology, all the theory building was done by sociologist.

Shelley Brown: OK.

Jim Bonta: And so they come with a specific view of what accounts for behavior. And their view, in general, especially in the earlier theories, tend to be the cause of crime is rooted in the sociology, the larger community context. It’s rooted in socioeconomic status, coming from a disadvantage part of society, the lower fringes. That was their view. And the psychological approach is very different in the sense that the focus is on the individual.

Shelley Brown: Right.

Jim Bonta: The person, their feelings, their thoughts, their behaviors, whereas the sociological criminologist are interested in the social system, the social structure, and how that could affect behavior. Now, the problem, and this came through quite forcefully in earlier editions of the psychology of criminal conduct. The problem is that when you start looking at the evidence, that data. Is the root of crime in social structure? Is it because you’re poor, that you’re from a racial minority? The evidence, there is some evidence for it. But, it’s not particularly strong. And it’s not as strong as compared to psychological factors.

Shelley Brown: So, what kind of evidence?

Jim Bonta: Well, for example, the common one is socioeconomic status, the idea that if you come from the poor disadvantaged neighborhoods, you have a high likelihood of engaging in criminal behavior. And this ties back to the earlier question about what makes a good theory? You know rationally, you look at this and you say, gee this kind of makes sense. You know, when you’re poor and your disadvantaged, you’re up against a wall, you’re frustrated. How are you going to get ahead? You know, and criminal behavior is one way of doing it.

But what’s missing here is the empirical evidence. So, people have done reviews of the literature. The earliest is Tittle, Villemez, and Smith. And what they found was there is a very small correlation between socioeconomic status and criminal behavior. And this really challenges criminological theories, because it’s at the root of their theories.

But the evidence, and there have been subsequent studies after that, do not find this class crime link. It’s there. But, if you’re looking at correlation coefficients, it might be 0.05.

Shelley Brown: very small

Jim Bonta: Very small

Shelley Brown: Are there any circumstances when it was ever larger, the correlation between socioeconomic status and crime?

Jim Bonta: In the original study, Tittle, Villemez, and Smith, they found a large correlation, in the very earlier studies, when it was officially reported crime.

Shelley Brown: OK.

Jim Bonta: OK? And their interpretation of that is, it’s not because you’re poor. Because a self-report criminal behavior data was consistent, no change over time. But, official? Yes. And they thought it was because of differential police court processing.

Shelley Brown: Which is a very different thing than socioeconomic status being causally related to crime, right?

Jim Bonta: Yup.

Shelley Brown: Very different

Jim Bonta: Yeah. And you know, what I want to say about sociological criminology is, there have been great contributions from them. But, their contributions are from a different level, right? For example, what we just talked about, the police, official processing kind of issue.

So, they have made contributions, important ones. But my view is their contributions are just one piece of the puzzle. They’re insufficient to explain all criminal behavior. You know, there are many, many poor people who do not engage in crime. How do you explain that?

Shelley Brown: Right. I think that’s a nice segue into your theory of criminal behavior. You said earlier, psychology, right, we’re all about the psychology of criminal conduct. It’s all about understanding individual differences.

Jim Bonta: Yes.

Shelley Brown: So why is it that not everybody who live in the same poor [Inaudible] neighborhood, not everybody turns out to be a criminal. So, fundamentally, psychology is all about the individual differences, whereas sociology is looking more at, sort of, group characteristics like race

Jim Bonta: Group differences.

Shelley Brown: Sex, location in society, per se. So, the psychology of criminal conduct, what I do want to mention, everyone out there, Dr. Bonta has been a co-author. There is this book that you must read. It’s called The Psychology of Criminal Conduct.

It was first published in 1994?

Jim Bonta: 94.

Shelley Brown: 1994?

Jim Bonta: Yes.

Shelley Brown: OK, 1994, and it was published by the late Dr. Andrews and Dr. Bonta. We are now, you are releasing the fifth

Jim Bonta: Sixth.

Shelley Brown: Oh, my word, the sixth edition. It’s going to be available any time now, I hear. So, you’re into the sixth edition, The Psychology of Criminal Conduct, where you have outlined many things about corrections, the theory of crime, and how to assess, and how to intervene, and it’s very empirically-driven.

What I want to talk about is, we’ve talked about the sociological perspectives on crime. So now I want to talk about your theory on crime, which in your book you call a general personality and cognitive social learning theory, general personality cognitive social learning theory of criminal conduct.

Jim Bonta: That’s a mouthful.

Shelley Brown: That’s a mouthful. Remember that though, folk. That’s an important mouthful to remember. So, what do students need to know about your theory? What’s your theory of crime?

Jim Bonta: Well, there’s a couple of big takeaways in the theory here. The first is that criminal behavior is a learned behavior. You are not born criminal.

There is nothing magical that happens in the social structure that will make you criminal, but you learn it. And you learn it according to the well-established principles of learning, whether it’s classical conditioning, operant conditioning, vicarious learning, watching models. Through that, you learn that.

That’s how we learn to ride a bicycle. That’s how we learn to play golf, not in my case. I’ve never mastered it.

But anyways, it’s the same principles. And that comes back to the generality, right? If the principles are the same in learning criminal behavior, they apply to women learning criminal behavior, they apply to sex offender learning their deviant behavior, so on, and so forth.

Now the other big takeaway, and this has implications for practice, is that you have to think of learning occurs in a social context. That’s the social learning part of this. And what are some of the major social contexts?

It’s in the areas of school and work. It’s in the areas of family, marital relations, your friendship patterns. So, in the theory, we will talk about what we call the central eight risk need factors. And the argument we make in the book, and we’ve been making this argument for many, many years is that those central eight risk need factors are general.

They apply to different offenders subgroups. We have criminal history. We have education, employment, family marital, substance abuse, so on, and so forth.

Shelley Brown: OK, so a general theory of crime. So, we know where you stand, that one size fits all? I mean, there’s a lot of, I’ll let you elaborate, but there’s a lot of debate. There’s a lot of people that write about the need for specific theories to explain sexual offending, to account for the overrepresentation of Aboriginals people in our institutions, women. So, what’s your thought on that?

Jim Bonta: Well, first of all, what’s the evidence? What is the real evidence for it? So you look at one of the derivatives of the theory, the application arm is what we call the risk need responsivity model, and when you look at, for example, the level of service instruments, a risk need assessment instrument, which is an off shoot of the risk need responsivity model, people have, for example, and you’re well aware of this, look at that risk need instrument that taps into the central eight risk need factors, and in a large meta analysis by Paula Smith and her colleagues, it works. It predicts female-offending behavior.

You look at sex offenders. There’s meta analysis on the treatment of sex offenders. If they fall the risk need responsivity principle, it works. You raise the issue of aboriginal offending. You look at some at the LS level of service studies, they seem to work with aboriginal offenders.

Now why are they overrepresented in our populations? That’s more a sociological question than a psychological question. The facts are that we know they’re more likely to be unemployed. There is more prevalence, higher prevalence, of substance abuse, family dysfunction. That’s the facts.

So, the question is why do we have this group of people in our society having more of these risk need factors.

Shelley Brown: So, they’re elevated on the Central Eight.

Jim Bonta: Yes.

Shelley Brown: And why is the ultimate sociology, question for the sociologist.

Jim Bonta: Now I love it when, you know, critics come from whether they’re feminist scholars or from wherever because it challenges the theory. And sometimes we can learn from it. But the argument that there are specific factors, risk factors for women, or there are specific risk factors for aboriginal offenders, show me the money.

Where’s the data? And I haven’t seen it. And sex offenders is an interesting one. And here is where you can take the central the risk factors. For example, one of them is pro-criminal attitudes.

You can become more specific on how you measure pro-criminal attitudes according to the offender population. So, with sex offenders, instead of asking is it all right to steal, which they tend not to, you may ask the question is it all right to abuse this child?

Shelley Brown: So, the overarching constructs, the central eight, they apply across all groups. It’s just how we operationalize them and how they may manifest themselves differently in different populations.

Jim Bonta: Yes, and I think we need to do some tweaking with special groups. Working with female offenders, I understand where the feminist scholars are coming from. I used to work as a clinical psychologist.

Shelley Brown: That’s right.

Jim Bonta: And when I would do counseling with the female offender, it really strikes you quite loudly that they are stressed out. They’re worried about their children. They’re worried about their intimate relationships.

Female offenders, maybe I’m wrong, but they appear to be more relationship-oriented than the male offender.

Shelley Brown: And can the RNR model, so where does that fit in the risk need responsivity model?

Jim Bonta: What I was leading up to is that when you see this and this jumping out at you, it’s a natural inclination to focus your attention on those factors and forget about the central eight risk need factors. And if you’re a theory builder, you’ll look at this, it’s a fact, and people start to try to build a theory around those aspects.

And that’s fine, but show me the evidence that being depressed or highly anxious or worrying about your children, past traumas, show me the evidence that they predict, at least some way, and hopefully, as well as the other central eight risk need factors. Haven’t seen it yet. Maybe it’s coming.

Shelley Brown: There’s a few studies out there, but that’s an interview for another day. Thank you very much.

 

Read this interview and answer the following questions.

According to the interview with Dr. Bonta, in what ways do criminological theories of crime and psychological theories of crime fundamentally differ from one another?

What sorts of factors does Dr. Bonta’s theory of crime focus on and what sort of approach does he advocate for when deciding whether a theory has merit?

Based on the interview with Dr. Gendreau, what would you say the value is of capturing dynamic risk factors in risk assessments of offenders (e.g., what value do they bring, over static risk factors, for treatment providers or probation officers)?

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Module 04: Reflection Assignment 4: Shelley and Dr. Paul Gendreau Discuss Risk Assessment

Shelley Brown: Hello, everybody. Welcome, Criminal Behavior class out there. I’m here with Dr. Paul Gendreau. Welcome. Thank you for taking the time to chat with me and the students and share your wisdom with us.

Right now, I have one question for you. And I want to know if you have anything to say about the principles of risk assessments.

Paul Gendreau: Not a great deal.

[Laughter]

Shelley Brown: Well, that’s short. That’s a short segment.

Paul Gendreau: Here it is.

Shelley Brown: Maybe we can define risk assessment first.

Paul Gendreau: Sure we can. It’s important to, well, I mean, first of all, you have to ask, why is this individual committing crimes? Why are they in trouble with the law?

What are those characteristics that the individual, on a personal level and their past, bring to the table? So risk assessment tries to include all of those variables that have been found to be predictive of criminal behavior.

Shelley Brown: Got it.

Paul Gendreau: They can go from static variables, which you can’t do anything about it, because they’re part of the history, such as a previous record, and so on and so forth, family factors. And they can go to presently what the individual thinks, such as anti-social attitudes and values.

So those are what are called “risk factors.” And some factors are not predictive of criminal behavior. And so they shouldn’t be part of a risk assessment

Shelley Brown: Got it.

Paul Gendreau: unless you’re looking at some specific factors in an individual that may be unique to them.

Shelley Brown: OK, students, risk factors, and a number of the risk factors that Dr. Gendreau noted, they should be familiar to you by now. And they fall within the central eight. OK. All right, so we know what risk factors are now. And we’ve talked about risk assessment. So, comments.

Paul Gendreau: Well, certainly, when it comes to the ego, I’m not a shrinking violet always. So I think the classic study that came out, and I recommend people take a look at it, because it still gets cited a lot, is in 1996 in Criminology, where Claire Goggin and I generated a huge meta-analysis.

Shelley Brown: That’s right.

Paul Gendreau: Don Andrews was involved in it in helping us support this kind of inquiry through Carleton University when I was at UNV. And there, the importance of that meta-analysis was that it, previously, when people were trying to assess offenders, they would take a look at it only a very few variables, such as your age, your number of probations you had in the past, whether you ever went to prison, and so on and so forth.

And psychological factors such as attitudes and values were denigrated. And this reflected, in part, a war that was going on in criminology versus psychology.

Shelley Brown: Disciplines engaged in warfare?

Paul Gendreau: Oh my god. It is, more comments on that later. So the importance of this initial work back in ’96 was to say, hey, look, those factors in an individual’s background, their beliefs, and so on and so forth, are as important a predictor of criminal behavior as static factors and previous history.

Why is that important? Because if these needs, criminogenic needs, are a predictor of criminal behaviors as well as static factors, then we can do something about changing the offender.

And that’s where your work and others have come in to place because if you can get an individual and you can find out what level of anti-social attitudes and values there are, assuming they are reasonably high, you can try to change those values and monitor whether these changes, whether getting worse or better, lead to less recidivism.

And so this particular article, I think, laid the groundwork for it. And it was sort of the starting point. So in kind of a way, it was a meta-analysis that was similar to the classic Andrews, Bonta, Gendreau, Collin, Zinger paper, which was an important signpost for finding a direction as to how we’re going to develop better interventions.

Right now, to me, it seems straightforward. There’s a debate, I guess, in the literature, saying, that the measures that are used, that have been developed to assess risk, are biased by race. That’s a current, big debate now.

And there’s a lot of debate about, well, what may be the best measure, the most accurate one? I was involved on that in a deliberate attempt to get controversy going in a debate about the PCL versus the LSI. And some people

Shelley Brown: So maybe I can just interject. PCLR, the Psychopathy Checklist Revised tool used to measure psychopathy, psychopathic personality behavioral traits. And the LSI, Level of Service Inventory risk needs assessment tool, to assess these risk factors we’ve been talking about.

Paul Gendreau: And there’s also a debate over cutoffs. How high a risk should an individual be if you want to intervene in them? And that’s a sliding scale as to where you should put the cutoff scores.

It’s very much like if you’re selecting job candidates and I’m moving over into the Hunter and Schmidt job selection area. You establish a certain criteria that, in some ways, it can sound sort of cruel. Well, if you get a certain point or less, that it depends. It’s almost like getting admission to university if you have a certain GPA.

Shelley Brown: So if you’ve got a scale, you’ve got all these items, all these risk factors, and you’re interviewing the offender, the person in front of you. And you score them. And you get a score.

And maybe it goes from 0 to 40. And the higher you score, the more risk you are, the more riskier you’re deemed if we let you out of prison.

And the issue is cutoff. I might get 25. Dr. Gendreau might get a 26. Maybe the policy in a given person is that 25 is the cutoff, right?

25 and below, you’re going to minimum, nice, cozy prison environment. 26 and above, poor Dr. Gendreau here, he’s spending the next five years in solitary confinement 23 hours a day. So that’s the issue of cutoffs on these risk tools.

Paul Gendreau: And there’s ways of dealing with it. We have what we call the “override principle,” where you can say, well, even though this person is not high enough, we think there’s other aspects to it. And maybe we should include them. So you try to have humane discretion involved in these things.

As for the best measure, there have been a number of articles. One was with Campbell, French, two colleagues of mine and myself in 2009, comparing predicting violent behavior and a variety of measures. And many of them are relatively indistinguishable. They’re very close.

So then your choice has to be from the point of view of rehabilitation, of changing an offender, of measuring change, which obviously, you’re very much on top of, you should have a measure that has a number of what we call “criminogenic needs.”

You can certainly put in previous history, previous probations, age at first getting involved in an offense. But you should have a number of items that target attitudes and values at the present time.

So therefore, you can then case manage. Because if you’re a probation officer or you’re a therapist running a program, you have to manage that case, have to develop the treatment that will target those values, anti- social values, and then measure change and see if the program is working.

So the LSI, to me, is a highly useful measure and our preference, rather than measures that are sort of fixed.

Shelley Brown: OK. So, for the students out there, in closing, what do you think’s important for them to know? I’m just thinking for the students that might choose a career in corrections as a parole officer, psychologist. What’s an important message for them regarding risk assessment? What’s one thing?

Paul Gendreau: Well, use it.

Shelley Brown: Use it. Yes.

Paul Gendreau: And in that way, you can guide your decisions empirically. In that way, you have a intellectual defense for your policies. So if something turns out badly with your probationer, as it sometimes will, then you can say, well here’s what I did.

The existing science is far from perfect. But I have a rationale for doing what I did in the management of individuals. So that’s why you should be using these measures of measure change.

Shelley Brown: OK. Here that? If you’re working in the field in corrections one day, use these risk assessment tools, regardless of what your gut may be telling you. All right, thanks very much for that.

Paul Gendreau: You’re welcome.

 

Read this interview and answer the following questions.

Based on the interview with Dr. Gendreau, what would you say the value is of capturing dynamic risk factors in risk assessments of offenders (e.g., what value do they bring, over static risk factors, for treatment providers or probation officers)?

How did end up in corrections? Was his career path what you expected?

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Module 05: Reflection Assignment 5: Shelley and Gendreau Discuss Dr. Gendreau’s Career Path

Shelley Brown: Welcome, everyone. I’m here with Dr. Paul Gendreau to get his insights on a number of issues germane to correctional treatment. We’re going to start, though, with one important question. I need to know, and the students want to know, how you first get involved in corrections.

Paul Gendreau: Well, that’s a long story, but it’s one of my favorite topics because it was an interesting trip. And I think now things are more programmed as to how you get involved in an area. But when I was a youth, that is a teenager in the ’50s, how anything happened to me was not anything of my own intention.

It was sort of like a Sliding Doors. Remember that famous movie? You walk down this street instead of that street, something happens. And that changes the direction in your life and also family. So after I graduated from Fisher Park High, and it took me two years to get through a grade 13 with about a 57% average, I wasn’t too sure what I wanted to do.

So for no particular reason, well, I thought I’d go on to the university and at least get a BA. And a back in those days, universities were taking just about any living body unlike now where you have to be almost an A or A plus student to get anywhere. And so Ottawa U, I majored in basketball and golf. I played on the basketball team with Alex Trebek. You should know this, students may not know who he is, but Jeopardy. And I was also captain of the golf team. And I also took a few courses.

And by the way, one of my inspirations was that I went to high school with Paul Anka. Now, maybe no one, you wouldn’t even remember who Paul Anka is.

Shelley Brown: Oh, I do. He’s got a street named after him in Ottawa.

Paul Gendreau: Good. Good show. So after I got my BA, then I had to decide what to do with my life. And one direction I could have gone into, and I sometimes regret it, is in radio. I was interviewed at CFRA to join the group there. And I thought, well, I always wanted to be a disc jockey.

And I pursued that kind of career later on in life when I was an academic and I used to have a jazz and blues show. The other was to go into the golf business in some way or maybe continue on in some directionless kind of way. So I decided after my BA to carry on. And it was mainly through the engineering of my father. He was Deputy Commissioner of Corrections in Canada. That’s the old Canadian Penitentiary Service which I should note, and I always like to make this point, the Canadian Penitentiary Service consisted of a General Gibson, my father, another chap, an accountant, and four secretaries. And they ran the whole system.

Now, that’s almost sort of laughable these days. So my father engineered through nepotism my becoming an intern in the Kingston area. And I started out at Kingston Penitentiary in 1961. And I was assigned to the psychiatric unit. And as I got more training there, some of my clients, again, I’m living in the past, but one of my clients was William Boyd, the famous bank robber in Canada. The other was Steven Truscott, who you might remember was finally exonerated and so on and so forth.

And during those early internship era, Don Andrews joined the crew, about a year after I started. And Don and I worked together. We had many discussions about things. And we sort of reinforced each other.

And after getting my doctorate, I then took my first academic job at Trent University. And guess what my specialty area was? Well, you’d never know. Classical eyelid conditioning. Because back then

Shelley Brown: So what is that exactly?

Paul Gendreau: You see, you’re even asking the question. That’s how arcane that area was. But it’s a way of conditioning, using classical or instrumental procedures. And you can find it possibly in the little fine print in any introductory psych in the experimental learning area. And I was going to become a pure experimental psychologist.

Shelley Brown: So some Pavlovian-based stuff?

Paul Gendreau: Yeah. And comparing

Shelley Brown: Classical conditioning?

Paul Gendreau: Yeah. One of the big issues at the time, hope I’m not inducing narcolepsy here. But one of the big issues at the time was, is there a difference between classical and instrumental conditioning? And so I was involved in that research area. And while at Trent, I somehow fell back into the corrections area.

I vowed after my early experience in corrections that I wanted to leave the field behind. And then, a fellow called Tom Surridge, a PhD in experimental psychology, was Director of Research at the Interior Ministry of Correctional Services. And he said, would you like to come aboard as a researcher and do all kinds of interesting things? So I left this esoteric experimental area of research in learning and got back into corrections.

And from then on, my career stayed in the field. And I left Trent after four years, went into the Interior Ministry of Correctional Services as a clinician administrator and so on and so forth.

Shelley Brown: And the rest is history.

Read this interview and answer the following questions.

How did Dr. Gendreau end up in corrections?

Was his career path what you expected?

Name and describe each key prison theory discussed by Dr. Gendreau. Describe why prisons in and of themselves do not actually reduce crime. What does Dr. Gendreau’s think about solitary confinement (also known as segregation)? Is he for it? Is he against it?

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Module 01: Reflection Assignment 1: Interview with Dr. Gendreau about Prison System

Shelley Brown: Hello, everyone in criminal behavior world. Thank you, Dr. Gendreau, for being here today. It’s my pleasure to have you here to share some insights about prisons. So apparently, you’ve been doing lots of publishing recently on prisons specifically. Do you want to tell us about that?

Paul Gendreau: I’d love to. Do we have two or three hours? I can give a Fidel Castro like speech on this stuff.

Shelley Brown: I know you can.

Paul Gendreau: OK.

Shelley Brown: Five minutes.

Paul Gendreau: Here we go. Well, I started out as a prison psychologist. And it’s where my heart has always been. And at the end of my career here, I seem to be more deeply involved in it than ever. I just find prisons fascinating environments. And maybe I’m living in the old days.

When I worked at Kingston Penitentiary it was a, what an intriguing place it was. You had your psychiatric unit classification department. The physical structure of the institution was interesting in terms of its architecture. It was almost like out of an old movie set.

We had a big musicians dorm. And being interested in music, we’d have quite a few guys there that were good jazz players and stuff. And we had very good baseball teams and outsiders would come in. In one way I was just there during the good years but, I guess, because there was a riot shortly after I left. But the whole mix was fascinating, the way it was run, and the inmates’ committees, and how decisions were made, working in the psychiatric unit.

Shelley Brown: What’s an inmate committee? I don’t think many students would know what an inmate committee is.

Paul Gendreau: These would be senior inmates, mainly by reputation and status, who would be consulted by the warden in regard to various sorts of issues. I’m not too sure if they exist anymore.

Shelley Brown: They do. Yeah, they do.

Paul Gendreau: But the nature of the men on the committee was interesting and how they would try to present their issues and finesse things, and how the administration would try to deal with them to keep the institution functioning in a relatively safe way. It was politics, of course, but it was fascinating.

And there was a lot of movement in those institutions too, whereas now we have many institutions where they’re just locked down and they have sort of Soviet Treblinka kind of designs, which are totally uninteresting, whereas these old institutions had an incredible amount of character. Having said that, I was recently in another country where they had these old classic institutions. And they were just terrible in terms of their hygiene, and so on, and so forth. But any case, the dynamics of an institution.

And for the students, there are three major theories of how an institution functions. One is a deterrence perspective that comes from an economic view that if you go to an institution, it can be punishing, it can make you straighten up and fly right. It’s a humiliating experience, and the last thing you want to do is ever go to that institution again or get involved in crime because you don’t want to go back to a prison. This view has been modified a little bit by economists who would argue that, well, if you’re in a prison, there is an optimal period of time where you should be in a prison that would have a deterrent effect. And by a deterrent effect, you would be, so-called, rehabilitated.

Shelley Brown: Reformed.

Paul Gendreau: And it’s again based on that simple-minded economic view that if the cost is severe enough, you will behave. As a matter of fact, the deterrence view has no empirical credibility whatsoever, despite sometimes various governments espousing the fact that it is a deterrent. There have been a number of meta analysis, and I think one of the first was ours, Paula Smith and Claire Goggin in 2002, that it showed that, in fact, whether you spent more or less time in a prison, or you were put in the community or went into a prison, there was no deterrent effect. In fact, there was a slight increase in crime of several percentage points.

Shelley Brown: So, deterrence is a form of punishment, right?

Paul Gendreau: Yes, it is. And it’s based on the simple-minded notion that prison sounds like an unpleasant place, and so you should not want to be there. Some economists have argued that, well, prison is such a common experience that so many individuals, and particularly within the African-american context in the US, that it’s no longer much of a punishment if many people have had experience with it.

But it should be a punishment for low-risk offenders who have the most to lose. These are individuals with families and a job to go back to, and it should be punishing to them. So for example, Conrad Black kind of example. But meta analysis indicate that no matter how you look at, and much more research has to be done, clearly a policy of incarcerating people for longer periods of time slightly increases recidivism.

Shelley Brown: It has no impact at all on reducing crime.

Paul Gendreau: No impact.

Shelley Brown: It makes things worse.

Paul Gendreau: And there’s a number of reasons for that, but

Shelley Brown: For another day.

Paul Gendreau: For another day. But clearly the policies that we embarked upon in Canada, the ones they’ve had in the US, have made the situation less safe for the community, yet it’s been very saleable because fear of crime is such a powerful motivator in public policy.

The other approach is the schools of crime. Now that make sense. Yeah, you go to prison and you’re going to, who are you hanging around with? Just a bunch of other criminals. And you’re going to become much worse. For any students who are interested in the topic, I recommend a 1980 article in Psych Bulletin by Bucktel and Kilmann, which is a classic. It’s almost never cited any more, but it’s a wonderful work.

Shelley Brown: I’m sorry, who?

Paul Gendreau: Bucktel and Kilmann.

Shelley Brown: OK.

Paul Gendreau: I’m glad to provide you the references if you ever use them in class.

Shelley Brown: I’m going to write that down and put it on the website.

Paul Gendreau: And this view comes from a sociological chronological perspective And it also comes from the work of developmental psychologists, like Patterson, many, many years ago. This theory has partial validity. It’s a very useful theory. And it indicates that individuals who are adversely affected by prison life, in terms of recidivism rates, are low-risk offenders.

And that makes sense from the point of view of any social learning theory or, in criminology, a differential association model, which was once an operant conditioning model. But they don’t say that, to protect the profession of criminology, and that is that low-risk offenders going into institutions where they are associating with high-risk offenders, the high-risk offenders generally call the shots. And when you associate with somebody, even though you’re leery of doing that, it’s going to have an effect.

Shelley Brown: It makes you worse.

Paul Gendreau: It makes you worse.

Shelley Brown: Schools of crime.

Paul Gendreau: So, it’s a school of crime. But it’s not a school of crime for high-risk offenders. I mean, they already have their PhD in crime before they ever get to prison. They’re A-plus students.

Shelley Brown: These are undergrads. Low-risk offenders are like undergrads.

Paul Gendreau: Yes.

Shelley Brown: Being trained by the PhDs.

Paul Gendreau: That’s right. Something like that. So the school of crime theory is an important one. And as a matter of fact, if I had one policy only to advocate in the criminal justice system, it’s divert low-risk offenders from prison. Put them on probation, far, far cheaper. Keep them out of the hands of high-risk offenders. That’s the only thing you could do. You’d have a huge cost savings and reduce crime by, I think, several percent.

The third theory is a Canadian born theory. Actually, it came out of criminology at one time. But it is two psychologists in Canada, Frank Porporino and Ed Zamble. Zamble is retired. Frank Porporino lives in Ottawa, as a matter of fact.

Shelley Brown: I did my PhD with Zamble, Dr. Zamble.

Paul Gendreau: OK. And it’s a psychological deep freeze theory. And it’s a powerful theory because many people don’t cotton on to it or ever even think about it, that, look, prisons aren’t, in theory, run in a somewhat ethical way that follows the Geneva Convention of rules. Prisons are just there, as it were. The behavior you see in prisons is the behavior you saw before the individual offender ever got into prison. The individuals that cope badly in prison, do poorly, are ones that showed bad coping mechanisms well before they got there.

Shelley Brown: So, they’re just importing what they already have.

Paul Gendreau: Importing. Thank you. Importation theory, I just forgot the name of it. And so this is a powerful theory that has a lot of credence to it. It doesn’t apply to everybody. And it’s due to Zamble and Porporina for their excellent work in that regard.

Another way of asking about the fact, can anything be done positively in prisons, we produced, Sheila French and I, a meta analysis in Criminal Justice and Behavior in 2005 showing that if you apply the principles of R&R to prison behavior, and we looked at programs that might reduce misconducts in prison. And we found that, in fact, the R&R theory works in terms of reducing misconduct, which is important for the safe and humane running of institutions. It shows the viability of the R&R model to a prison setting.

It also shows that misconduct behavior in prisons is a proxy. It’s a good facsimile of recidivism in general. So those individuals you see in prison who are acting out and being difficult and, as it were, committing crimes within the prison setting are ones that are going to have high recidivism rates when they are released.

The big issue I have here is that

Shelley Brown: Big final issue about prisons.

Paul Gendreau: Yeah. Who’s going to do this necessary research to look at these models in prison? And again, I’m living in the old days. I was fortunate enough to work at a time when you could work in prisons and do this kind of research. And now more and more prisons are becoming a closed shop. I hear comments that it’s almost impossible to access prisons to do the necessary kind of research. People who are interested in doing research, like myself and others, don’t exist in prisons. The prison psychologists have other things to do, and so on, and so forth.

And so now we have people doing research in prisons who have never been in a prison themselves. In a sense, they’re trying to do the best they can. But they’re armchair quarterbacks. And you have to work within the prison to get the necessary data that we were able to when we had lots of psychologists who had an empirical bent to generate that information. So, it’s a fun area, exciting kind of theories.

Shelley Brown: So, lots of good nuggets regarding prisons. So, students, three important theories of prisons, why they’re supposed to work. First one is deterrence theory. Put people in jail, put them in longer, they won’t do crime when they get out, but the research doesn’t support that.

Second perspective is that prisons are schools of crime. So, if you put low-risk offenders in with those high-risk offenders, you’re actually going to make those low-risk offenders worse. Prisons are a school of crime. They’re not actually going to deter people. If you put lower risk people in, you’re going to actually make themw worse, make them better criminals.

And the last one was this notion of a deep freeze. People go into prison with what they’ve got, the problems that they’ve got, and they just are frozen in time. That prison isn’t doing anything to change and rehabilitate. R&R works in prison to the same extent it does outside. It reduces prison misconducts. And it is getting a little more challenging, perhaps, to do research in prisons. It’s not insurmountable, but more challenging.

So how about solitary confinement. Do we have a two-minute sound bite?

Paul Gendreau: A two-minute soundbite?

Shelley Brown: A two-minute sound, what do students need to know about solitary confinement and what the current political climate and/or debate is, research debate. It’s we shouldn’t do it, or we should do it. What do you think? Is it a

Paul Gendreau: Well, first of all, the view that solitary confinement produces the dramatic effects that many people say they do is not based on much evidence. It’s based on ideology.

Shelley Brown: So, the evidence that people say it has detrimental effects to that health and well-being is

Paul Gendreau: Strong limitations as to how that prison is run.

Shelley Brown: OK.

Paul Gendreau: It is really a complex matter. All of these publications are coming out now by ourselves and our own research group, Bob Morgan at Texas A&M and ourselves here. And so I almost sort of dumbfounded as to how to close a conversation on it because there are so many things to say, but then I would produce a [? confused ?] message. So all I can say is that you have supplied all of the references and the material, and they can be presented and gone over in class.

Shelley Brown: Do you know what? I think we can put out maybe one of your most recent publications on segregation.

Paul Gendreau: By the way, we have a dual replicating meta analysis coming out in an APA journal in the next month that outlines all of the minefields and the issues. And we’ll leave it at that.

Shelley Brown: OK. So I’m closing the main point to take away about segregation. Jeez, can we even summarize in

Paul Gendreau: Well, I’ll summarize it

Shelley Brown: In a minute.

Paul Gendreau: this way. When you see disruptive behavior, disturbing behavior, in institutions, it’s more how people are treated by their captors. And there’s an interaction, because some of the people in segregation or some inmates are not nice people. And their interaction with their guards can be explosive. And that causes a problem, much more so than the physical conditions of their incarceration, if they meet general humane standards that we’re supposed to meet. All bets are off when you have the pelican days where people are denigrated and they’re locked up under conditions that you’d see in a prisoner of war camp.

The other point of view is that we underestimate how many individuals do adjust to solitary and do very well. Now, that’s another complex argument. But that’s not an argument for using segregation. We’re on record, Jim Bonta and I, way back in 1984, that people, if they go into segregation, should be monitored carefully, at least every two weeks, that they should not be there for more than 30 days, and that the use of solitary confinement is a lazy way of running a prison. And there are some very promising ways of making the situation better. But there are a few individuals that may need continuous, as it were, dosage of very close control because they are so violent.

Shelley Brown: So, students, in summary, solitary confinement, this is a great area to do future research in and policy development, is how I’ll leave that.

Paul Gendreau: And by the way, our own government has cut down the use of solitary substantially.

Shelley Brown: They have, indeed.

Paul Gendreau: But I won’t get into the reasons why that is, but we’ve written about it elsewhere.

 

Read this interview and answer the following questions.

Name and describe each key prison theory discussed by Dr. Gendreau.

Describe why prisons in and of themselves do not actually reduce crime.

What does Dr. Gendreau’s think about solitary confinement (also known as segregation)? Is he for it? Is he against it?

Should some issues be left up to individual states, which level of government should address specific issues, is there a problem with individual states having differing laws on an issue? Should the President address these issues with executive orders? Should the Courts weigh in with interpretations on these issues? Should the Court mandate these issues as Federal issues and take decision making away from the states?

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ROLE OF WE THE PEOPLE

ROLE OF FEDERALISM
In your initial post address: should some issues be left up to individual states, which level of government should address specific issues, is there a problem with individual states having differing laws on an issue?

Should the President address these issues with executive orders?

Should the Courts weigh in with interpretations on these issues? Should the Court mandate these issues as Federal issues and take decision making away from the states?

Is the Principle of Limited Government truly important and necesssary? Does The principle of limtrd government work properly if decison are made nationally instead of by the individual states?

WE THE PEOPLE
post your thoughts about the notion of government being “of the people”. Reflect on the latin phrase, E Pluribus Unum and look at the information in reference to the ethnic groups in the United States.

Do you agree with this notion? what does We the People mean to you? Do you think America has been or is a government of the people? Do you think the United States has been is or will be a reflection of the latin phase E Pluribus Unum, One from Many?

Discuss how restorative justice may be affected because of biological factors, psychological factors, and sociological factors. Show how you could incorporate the use of restorative justice while at the same time ensuring the other goals of the system, including punishment and rehabilitation, were addressed.

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Restorative justice within the system

Looking in a biblical context, and considering all involved within the criminal justice system, evaluate the use of restorative justice within the system in an about five page (1250 words in body) final paper.
To achieve maximum points for content and analysis, the following elements need to be thoroughly addressed.
Focus on how restorative justice may be different based on the type and severity of the crime committed.
Consider how restorative justice may be different based on race, class, gender, and media influence.
Discuss how restorative justice may be affected because of biological factors, psychological factors, and sociological factors.
Show how you could incorporate the use of restorative justice while at the same time ensuring the other goals of the system, including punishment and rehabilitation, were addressed.
Reflect on how the use of restorative justice influences and affects the various individuals involved in the criminal justice system, including but not limited to, law enforcement, court officers, corrections officers, victims, and defendants.

What is the column total for Caucasian? What is the column total for African American? What is the row total for Denver County? What is the row total for El Paso County? What is the row total for Pueblo County? Are race and originating jurisdiction significantly dependent? How do you know? What is the final chi-square value? How many degrees of freedom are there for this chi-square table? What is the value for the 0.05 significance level and 2 degrees of freedom on the Chi-Square Distribution Values Chart?

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Data analysis in criminal justice

Assignment Overview Unit 3 – Individual Project
Criminal justice agencies often gather large quantities of variables to be used in descriptive analyses. That is, to help describe situations, populations, and so on. For instance, the Department of Corrections collects data on inmates. Variables often include crime type, race, gender, originating jurisdiction (where they were convicted), education level, and many others.
These data are often captured categorically rather than numerically. For instance, education level might be captured by simply identifying the name of the highest grade an offender achieved, such as high school diploma or GED, Bachelor’s degree, Associates degree, and so forth. Similarly, race data are most often captured by recording the label of the race the offender belongs to, such as Caucasian, African American, Asian, Native American, Pacific Islander, and so on. These labels have no inherent numerical value because they are simply categories. Thus, they are categorical variables.

You cannot use traditional statistical analysis to investigate relationships between categorical variables because they are not numbers. Instead, you would use nonparametric tests, such as the chi-square test of independence. You will use this test to investigate the data below.

This assignment has 2 steps.

Step 1: Watch both of the following videos regarding chi-square analysis:
• Filling Out Frequency Table for Independent Events • Contingency Table Chi-Square Test

Step 2: Calculate chi-square using the data in the table below, this Chi Square Example Handout, and the Distribution Values Chart that go with this IP.
Using the Chi-Square Example Handout and the Chi-Square Distribution Values Chart as guides to figure the calculations, calculate chi-square for the following data:
Originating JurisdictionCaucasianAfrican American Denver County 16 3 El Paso County 4 6 Pueblo County 6 15

Then, answer the following questions about your results:
1. What is the column total for Caucasian?

2. What is the column total for African American?

3. What is the row total for Denver County?

4. What is the row total for El Paso County?

5. What is the row total for Pueblo County?

6. Are race and originating jurisdiction significantly dependent? How do you know?

7. What is the final chi-square value?

8. How many degrees of freedom are there for this chi-square table?

9. What is the value for the 0.05 significance level and 2 degrees of freedom on the Chi-Square Distribution Values Chart?

10. Do you reject or accept the null hypothesis that states, “Originating Jurisdiction and Race are not significantly dependent (they are independent)”?

Individual Project

1. What is the column total for Caucasian?

2. What is the column total for African American?

3. What is the row total for Denver County?

4. What is the row total for El Paso County?

5. What is the row total for Pueblo County?

6. Are race and originating jurisdiction significantly dependent? How do you know?

7. What is the final chi-square value?

8. How many degrees of freedom are there for this chi-square table?

9. What is the value for the 0.05 significance level and 2 degrees of freedom on the Chi-Square Distribution Values Chart?

10. Do you reject or accept the null hypothesis that states, “Originating Jurisdiction and Race are not significantly dependent (they are independent)’?

Submit your assignment.
For assistance with your assignment, please use your text, Web resources, and all course materials.

References
Khan Academy. (2017a). Contingency table chi-square test [Video file]. Retrieved from https://www.khanacademy.org/math/statistics-probability/inference-categorical-data-chi-square-tests/chi-square-tests-for-homogeneity-and-association-independence/v/contingency-table-chi-square-test
Khan Academy. (2017b). Filling out frequency table for independent events [Video file]. Retrieved from https://www.khanacademy.org/math/statistics-probability/inference-categorical-data-chi-square-tests/chi-square-tests-for-homogeneity-and-association-independence/v/frequency-table-independent-events

Choose any ethical dilemma in criminal justice that you find interesting. Briefly discuss the dilemma that you chose. Persuade the audience to see the dilemma from your point of view using research to support your stance.

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PowerPoint presentation

This writing project will consists of you creating a PowerPoint presentation on the topic listed below. You must have at least 5 credible resources cited in your PowerPoint as in-text citations. You must also include a reference citation slide in APA format. You must also have a title slide in APA format. Your presentation must have a minimum of 12 slides not including a title slide, an abstract slide and a reference slide.

For this project, you may choose any ethical dilemma in criminal justice that you find interesting. In the first part of the project you will briefly discuss the dilemma that you chose. Then you will persuade the audience to see the dilemma from your point of view using research to support your stance. You will use the recording feature in your PowerPoint to present your presentation; this will allow you to add your voice or any additional audio to your presentation.