The Attitudes Toward Prostitution Scale: preliminary report on its development and use

The Attitudes Toward Prostitution Scale (ATPS) assesses the beliefs of men who purchase sex from prostitutes. Items for the ATPS were administered to a U.S. multisite sample of 1,001 men who had been arrested for soliciting an undercover police officer and subsequently referred to a psychoeducational program. Principal axis factor analysis was conducted, and it yielded three valid factors: Social/Legal Support of Prostitution, Beliefs About Prostitutes, and Family Values Related to Prostitution. Scale-item reliability was assessed with Cronbach's alpha on a second independent sample of 74 men, which offered data to support ATPS internal consistency and reliability. Based on these results, scale scores were standardized for practical use in research and clinical applications, and interpretation norms were established for a population of men who buy sex. A brief case example illustrates the practical use of the ATPS for assessment and intervention planning for customers of sex workers.     

Women and Men in Jail: Attitudes Towards and Experiences of Domestic Violence

This study explores the pre-arrest domestic violence victimization and attitudes towards domestic violence reported by women and men confined in a Midwestern metropolitan jail. Results indicated that women in the jail sample had more fear for the safety of battered women than men in the jail sample. Women in jail were more likely than men in jail to view the legal system as a deterrent to domestic violence. Logistic regression models were constructed to explore associations between jail detainees’ pre-arrest experiences of domestic violence and their gender, age, education, race, parental status and other violent victimizations. The variables associated with pre-arrest domestic violence victimization were being a woman, a parent, a victim rape and a victim of threats with a deadly weapon.     

The Seriousness of Crime Revisited: Have Attitudes Toward White-Collar Crime Changed?

Social commentators have often observed that the public is indifferent to white-collar criminality. However, the growing attention that white-collar crime has received in recent years raises the possibility of changes in the public's perceptions of such violations. By replicating Rossi et al.'s survey in 1972 of the seriousness of 140 offenses, the present research presents data indicating that white-collar crime has increased in seriousness more than any other offense category, but that it is still viewed as less serious than most other forms of illegality. When different types of white-collar crime were analyzed, we found considerable variation in ratings, with high a degree of seriousness attributed to offenses involving physical harm. Further, while all categories of white-collar criminality increased in seriousness, attitudinal changes have been particularly apparent toward two types, Violent and Corporate Price-Fixing.     

Construing Motive in Videotaped Killings: The Role of Jurors' Attitudes Toward the Death Penalty

Death-qualified jurors are generally able to impose the death penalty, whereas excludable jurors are generally either unable or unwilling to do so. A long line of research studies has shown that the former are more likely than the latter to convict criminal defendants. Ellsworth (1993) argues that jurors' attitudes toward the death penalty predict verdicts because they are embedded in a cluster of beliefs and theories about the criminal justice system. Her studies show that jurors interpret ambiguous conduct based on these belief structures. The present study examines the possibility that death penalty attitudes also influence jurors' conceptions of criminal intent. We showed mock jurors the filmed murder of a convenience store clerk and examined the inferences they drew from this evidence. Jurors who favored the death penalty tended to read criminal intent into the defendant's actions and jurors who opposed the death penalty were less likely to do so. These data provide further explanation of the conviction-proneness of death-qualified jurors.     

Democratic Accountability and National Parliaments: Redefining the Impact of Parliamentary Scrutiny in EU Affairs

Abstract:  The question of strengths and weaknesses of national parliaments in EU affairs, one of the most salient in the debate on the democratic legitimacy of the EU, is generally answered by assessing formal parliamentary powers which can influence their governments' EU policy. Such an evaluation, however, is flawed: Formal mandating rights are usually incompatible with the overall logic of parliamentary systems, which explains why most national parliaments make very little use of them. Even more importantly, it unduly reduces parliamentary functions to the legislative or policy-making function. Drawing on agency theory, it will instead be argued that the functions of public deliberation and of holding the government publicly to account are at least as important and therefore need to be included in a redefined concept of parliamentary strength. In particular, the article proposes a distinction between two different elements of accountability—monitoring and political scrutiny—which recognises parliamentary majority and opposition as two distinct agents of the electorate.     

Attitudes Toward the Police: A Comparison of Canadian and American Adolescents

The present inquiry is an attempt to determine the attitudes which adolescents in Canada and the United States have toward the police and the determinants of these attitudes. In addition to providing a diverse sample of youths from two countries, each with unique policing structures and policies, the study represents the first attempt to assess the attitudes twoard the police held by a sample of Canadian adolescents. The sample for the inquiry consists of 869 youths from a rural Rocky Mountain State and three West Coast cities in the United States and 1200 youths from a major metropolitan area on the West Coast of Canada.

To assess the attitudes which adolescents hold toward the police in their respective countries and areas, a 16–item Likert scale was employed along with a series of questions eliciting a variety of social-biographical, experiential (type and extent of contacts with police) information as well as the prestige rating of the police. Analysis of the data indicates that the majority of adolescents in both countries have positive attitudes toward the police, regardless of the type of police force (Canadian RCMP, Canadian Municipal, U.S. Sheriff, U.S. Municipal) they are policed by. In addition, none of the social-biographical variables in either sample contributed significantly to the attitudes which were held toward the police, nor were certain juveniles more likely to have more negative experiences with the police. Rather, the primary determinant of juvenile attitudes toward the police in both countries seems to be the type of contact which the adolescent had with the police. The findings have significant implications for the police literature and police operational policy which are discussed.     

Unfamiliarity and Procedural Justice: Litigants' Attitudes Toward Civil Justice in Southern China

While procedural justice has been regarded as a distinct and essential factor shaping litigants' views on civil justice, few studies have focused on China, a country with a unique legal tradition and frequent legal reforms. Drawing on surveys and interviews with litigants in a basic‐level court in Southern China, this study examines attitudes toward the civil justice system. Echoing several existing studies from China, our mixed methods analysis confirms that their views are dominated by outcomes—litigants with favorable outcomes are more likely to be satisfied, while those with unfavorable outcomes are more likely to be dissatisfied. Their unfamiliarity with the operation of the system constitutes a major reason for the dominance of substantive outcomes in their evaluations of the system. Many cannot distinguish between process and outcomes, nor do they feel control over the process. Moreover, they are dissatisfied with the process because it fails to meet their often‐erroneous expectations. Our results do not necessarily challenge the importance of procedural justice, but they do suggest that China may be different. Litigants' perceptions of justice and fairness are situated and shaped by specific contexts.     

Global and Neighborhood Attitudes Toward the Police: Differentiation by Race,Ethnicity and Type of Contact

This study focused on a series of hypotheses regarding residents’ attitudes toward the police: (1) residents’ attitudes toward the police are better represented by a two-dimensional model that differentiates global perceptions of the police from assessments of the police in the respondents’ neighborhood; (2) the structure of residents’ attitudes toward the police is different for Whites, African Americans, and Latinos; (3) direct experiences with the police in the respondents’ neighborhood will be more strongly associated with the respondents’ assessment of police in their neighborhood than global perceptions of the police; and (4) the influence of direct experiences with the police will be stronger for African Americans and Latinos than for Whites. Results based on structural equation modeling offer strong support for the need to differentiate between global and neighborhood perceptions of the police. The underlining measurement structure of attitudes toward the police was similar for Whites, African Americans, and Latinos. However, the relationship between global and neighborhood attitudes was stronger for African Americans and Latinos. Negative contact with the police was associated with both negative global and neighborhood assessments of the police. Non-negative contact was associated with positive neighborhood perceptions of the police; however, only when it occurred within the neighborhood. The influence of direct experiences with the police (both inside and outside the neighborhood) was similar for Whites, African Americans, and Latinos.     

Criminal Records and Employment: A Survey of Experiences and Attitudes in the United States

Ban-the-Box (BTB) legislation, which bans employers from asking about criminal history records on the initial job application, is arguably the most prominent policy arising from the prisoner reentry movement. BTB policies assume: 1) most employers ask about criminal records, and 2) inquiries occur at the application stage. However, we lack reliable information about the validity of these assumptions or about public attitudes towards criminal background checks, which limits our understanding of the potential scope of this innovative policy. Using survey data from a national probability sample, we estimate that in the past year, over 31 million U.S. adults were asked about a criminal record on a job application. According to our survey, virtually all of the criminal record inquiries occurred at the application stage, highlighting the potential of BTB. However, we also found that the public is sharply divided on whether to prevent employers from asking on applications, as per BTB.     

Public Protests, Private Lawsuits, and the Market: The Investor Response to the McLibel Case

The tendency of English libel law to protect reputation at the expense of freedom of expression makes the United Kingdom a potentially attractive forum for retaliatory lawsuits against individuals and organizations who lobby or campaign against the interests of large companies. The most prominent recent example of such a lawsuit was the so-called 'McLibel' case, in which McDonald's Corporation sued protesters who had distributed anti-McDonald's leaflets outside some of the company's restaurants. The case is often cited as evidence that the risk of unfavourable publicity generated by retaliatory libel actions is a strong deterrent to using the libel laws to silence public opposition to corporate activities. This article uses a technique widely employed in financial economics research, the 'event study' method, to investigate whether the unanticipated bad publicity attracted by the McLibel case had a negative financial impact on McDonald's, such that future retaliatory lawsuits might be deterred.     

Democracy and Press Freedom in Zambia: Attitudes of Members of Parliament Toward Media and Media Regulation

In Africa, colonial rule, followed often by one-party rule, resulted in the creation of authoritarian press systems. The political climate usually required journalists to align themselves with the government as propagandists rather than serve as watchdogs to inform the public. To rule Zambia, Kenneth Kaunda established a government based on a political philosophy he called Humanism, a form of African democratic socialism that valued the community over the individual and defined the role of the press as a tool for national development. Colonialism, Kaunda's Humanism and general resource scarcity have shaped the perspectives from which Zambians view press freedom. Multi-party elections in 1991 produced a democratically elected government and brought increased freedoms for the media, but the values shaped by the experiences of the elected leaders in Zambia are also important to understanding the Zambian system of press freedom. This paper quantitatively investigates support for the press and press freedom among members of the newly democratized Zambian Parliament. Regression models show that perceptions of media accuracy and fairness are not indicators of press support. The article speculates that Zambia's leaders may have to experience intergenerational value changes to overcome the past if they are to view press freedom from a more libertarian perspective.     

Naming Names: The Impact of Supreme Court Opinion Attribution on Citizen Assessment of Policy Outcomes

The manner in which political institutions convey their policy outcomes can have important implications for how the public views institutions' policy decisions. This paper explores whether the way in which the U.S. Supreme Court communicates its policy decrees affects how favorably members of the public assess its decisions. Specifically, we investigate whether attributing a decision to the nation's High Court or to an individual justice influences the public's agreement with the Court's rulings. Using an experimental design, we find that when a Supreme Court outcome is ascribed to the institution as a whole, rather than to a particular justice, people are more apt to agree with the policy decision. We also find that identifying the gender of the opinion author affects public agreement under certain conditions. Our findings have important implications for how public support for institutional policymaking operates, as well as the dynamics of how the Supreme Court manages to accumulate and maintain public goodwill.     

The Impact of Legal Education: An In-Depth Examination of Career-relevant Interests, Attitudes, and Personality Traits Among First-Year Law Students

This article examines in detail patterns of change in career-relevant interests, attitudes, and personality characteristics among first-year students in one law school. The data presented suggest that a single entering law school class can be viewed as a varied group in terms of career plans and potential behavioral styles. Moreover, immersion in the law school environment may accentuate this initial variability. Although some studies have suggested that, overall, first-year law students experience a drop in law interests, including interests in altruistic and "socially conscious" career activities, the methods of analysis used in this study suggest alternative interpretations of some aspects of such changes. In addition, the author believes these methods shed greater light on the overall process of professional development in law school.     

Parliamentary questions in the European parliament: Representation,information and control

Parliamentary questions and the membership of the European Parliament have both remained under‐researched. This article redresses the deficit by using a content analysis of written questions to analyse the behaviour of MEPs. Since tabling a question is one of the last formal rights of the backbencher, the study of parliamentary questions may be regarded as a particularly useful tool for increasing our knowledge of the way that MEPs understand their role as representatives. First the formal rules, function, and importance of parliamentary questions are explained. The following dimensions of questions are analysed: the questioning activity of MEPs, party groups, and national delegations; the issues MEPs raise in their questions, and the territorial dimension of the questions.     

Legislative Bellwethers: The Role of Committee Membership in Parliamentary Debate

Political parties and legislators use legislative debates to establish their reputation, challenge rivals, and engage in coalition management, among many other tasks. Yet, existing theories on parliamentary debates have abstracted away from the need for information and expertise, which are costly to acquire. Drawing on the “informational” perspective on legislative organization, we address this problem by arguing that party leaders use committees as training arenas for their backbenchers. They task their assigned members with acquiring specific expertise and then rely heavily on those members during the corresponding debates. We turn to the Portuguese legislature, from 2000 to 2015, to discuss how saliency, government dynamics, and party size affect the use of experts. We test this theory using a novel approach to classify speeches that leverages the texts of legislation as training data for a supervised approach.     

Attitudes Toward Electronic Monitoring: An Exploratory Analysis Among Criminal Justice Students in Bosnia and Herzegovina

The purpose of this research study is to examine attitudes associated with the use of electronic monitoring as a criminal justice sanction in Bosnia and Herzegovina. Utilizing self-reported survey data from 57 graduate students enrolled in a criminal justice policy based course at the University of Sarajevo, students’ attitudes toward electronic monitoring are assessed. Specifically, students’ personal views about whether electronic monitoring meets the sentencing goals of deterrence, incapacitation, retribution, rehabilitation and reintegration are evaluated. Perceptions of the cost-effectiveness of electronic monitoring and the appropriateness of electronic monitoring as a sentence for specific offender types are also examined. Finally, the influence of student socio-demographic characteristics on opinions are also assessed. As a whole, students surveyed appear to support the use of electronic monitoring for juvenile offenders and offenders awaiting trial. Additionally, respondents do not view the conditions associated with electronic monitoring as all that negative or obtrusive. Implications from these findings, as well as limitations and suggestions for further research are discussed.