Search results

There are now more than 3,000 drug courts in the US, which aim to promote treatment rather than punishment for nonviolent offenders. While drug courts have been found to be effective in reducing drug use for participants in general, there is less evidence of how well they work for certain groups. In new research Kelly Frailing examines the effectiveness of a drug court for Hispanic participants, finding that the ability to speak Spanish with the judge was rated very highly in terms of services offered by the court.

This book puts forward a comprehensive criminology of disaster by drawing - and building - upon existing theories which attempt to explain disaster crime. Although antisocial behaviour in disasters has long been viewed as a rarity, the authors present ample evidence that a variety of crime occurs in the wake of disaster. Frailing and Harper's explorations of property crime, interpersonal violence and fraud during disaster reveal the importance of methodological approaches to understanding these phenomena. They highlight the need for the application of social disorganization, routine activity and general strain theories of crime in the development of disaster crime prevention strategies. An accessible and detailed study, this book will have particular appeal for both students and scholars of criminology, sociology, disaster studies and emergency management.

This article introduces the remaining articles in the issue.

Disaster sociology has a rich and undeniably valuable history. Among other things, it has revealed much about the behavior of disaster survivors. In recent years, criminologists have turned their attention and the discipline's theories, methods, and data sources to understanding behavior in the wake of disasters and have come to a number of additional and sometimes different conclusions than did sociologists. In this article, we examine property crime in the wake of some recent and high-profile disasters. We find short-term increases in burglary after a number of disasters, ostensibly challenging some long-held notions in disaster sociology. We contend that the use of criminological methods including secondary analysis of extant data to understand behavior after disasters provides a more nuanced and accurate picture of postdisaster behavior and conclude with a call for inclusion of these theories, methods, and data sources in disaster studies more widely.

This article introduces the remaining articles in the issue and emphasizes their focus on disaster research methods.

While the manifestation of therapeutic jurisprudence in specialty courts such as mental health and drug courts has received attention in the literature, there is little scholarship on the manifestation and function of therapeutic jurisprudence in probation settings. This study examines therapeutic jurisprudence in the context of a HOPE-based probation program called Swift and Certain probation. We observed status hearings and surveyed participants on their perceptions of the program for over 2 years. We found that therapeutic jurisprudence was manifested in the judge's liberal use of praise during status hearings, which appeared to be an important part of participants' positive perceptions of him and of procedural justice more generally. It was also manifested, though less directly, in interactions and relationships participants have with their probation officers. We conclude with suggestions for the implementation of therapeutic justice practices in Swift and Certain and similar probation programs.

This article serves to provide background information on Hurricane Katrina and to introduce the content of each substantive article in this issue.

AbstractShortly after Hurricane Katrina's landfall in August 2005 and the reports of rampant looting of businesses in the city, we became curious about the extent of Katrina looting as compared to that after other major storms that hit New Orleans in 1947 and in 1965. Using burglary as a proxy variable for looting, we discovered that the burglary rates in the month before and the month after Katrina were significantly higher than those before and after the other two hurricanes. We then investigated the socioeconomic conditions in the city in an effort to explain these numbers. Population loss and high unemployment rates, coupled with a decline in high‐paying manufacturing jobs and an increase in low‐wage food and hotel service jobs generated severe economic inequality in the city that exacerbated the situation created by Katrina. Our current analysis of the impact of public school desegregation and the oil bust suggests that both events contributed to population loss and the increase in low‐wage jobs prior to the storm. We believe that this type of research can assist in the recovery of New Orleans by providing an understanding of the city's pre‐Katrina social and economic conditions and make clearer which post‐Katrina changes are desirable.

While prosocial behavior is widely observable after disaster, there is undeniable evidence that antisocial behavior also occurs in the immediate and longer term aftermath of disaster. We begin by examining the crime that occurred in New Orleans in the immediate wake of Katrina and the circumstances that facilitated it. We also take a longer term look at one of New Orleans' most intractable crime problems, that of murder. We explore Katrina's direct and indirect effect on murder rates in New Orleans, including innovative law enforcement responses to this crime. We conclude with a discussion of policies and practices relevant to reducing crime in the immediate and longer term wake of disaster that incorporate law enforcement and other initiatives.