Policing the Poachers in a Western State: Game Wardens and the Use of Discretion

Game wardens are specialized law enforcement officers responsible for enforcing hunting and fishing laws designed to protect wildlife resources. While performing their duties they encounter a variety of wrongdoers that range from first time offenders to those who are chronic violators of the law. Little research exists on the use of discretion by wildlife law enforcement officers, or their attitudes toward offenders. This study took a qualitative approach to data collection and examined the use of discretion by game wardens in Montana and their perceptions of habitual poachers. Factors that were associated with the use of discretion included intent of the violator, seriousness of the offense, and age of the violator. The majority of wardens in the study expressed negative opinions toward violators that were chronic offenders. Findings contribute to our understanding of law enforcement attitudes and decision making.

An exploratory network analysis of hot people and places

There is a growing body of evidence that suggests police can be more effective in addressing crime and disorder when they focus on hot people and/or hot places -- those people and places disproportionately driving crime and disorder. I examine the connections between hot people and hot places by considering micro places (street segments and intersections) and people as nodes in an interconnected network. Specifically, I examine whether hot people tend to have a finite set of locations they congregate, and whether hot places have unique profiles of chronic offenders. The end goal is to identify if observed patterns can help police combine targeted enforcement of hot people and hot places in one overarching strategy.

The costs of Indigenous and non-Indigenous offender trajectories

Reducing Indigenous overrepresentation in the criminal justice system is justified on both social justice and economic grounds. We developed an innovative costing framework and estimated direct criminal justice system unit costs based on critical cost drivers. These estimates were applied to offender trajectories, modelling offences of all individuals registered as being born in Queensland during 1983–1984 (from ages 10 to 31). Separate trajectory models were developed for Indigenous and non-Indigenous Queenslanders in the birth cohort to enable separate cost estimations for these groups. Findings identified over one-half (53%) of the identified Indigenous cohort and 16 percent of the non-Indigenous cohort had moderate to chronic offender trajectories. Because of the high levels of recontact and sanction seriousness and length, Indigenous offenders were on average more costly. These findings emphasise the high cost of current criminal justice system responses to Indigenous and chronic offenders in particular and the need to consider innovative and more cost-effective approaches to reduce offending by individuals in these groups.

Offender interviews: implications for intelligence-led policing

PurposeIntelligence-led policing (ILP) involves the analysis of data to inform the development and implementation of strategic actions aimed at more efficiently reducing crime. The purpose of this paper is to examine how chronic acquisitive offenders – a focus of ILP – respond to police patrol, and how this knowledge can be turned into actionable strategies to reduce crime.Design/methodology/approachInterviews were conducted with 137 chronic offenders who had multiple convictions for burglary, robbery and/or vehicle crime. The interviews involved the collection of both qualitative and quantitative data, including responses to situational crime vignettes.FindingsWhen encountering police patrols, criminals were initially more likely to displace (e.g. committing crime elsewhere and/or later in the day) than to desist from offending. Some of the conditions under which police patrol was most effective were identified, including offenders’ fear of being recognized by officers. Repeated thwarted crime attempts appeared to be most impactful, with even the most chronic offenders becoming “worn down.”Practical implicationsThe profiles of top offenders should be systematically disseminated to front line officers to augment the effectiveness of police patrol and minimize the possibility of crime displacement.Originality/valueOffender interviews are a valuable source of information but they have been underutilized within an ILP framework. This research illustrates how offender interview research can inform and support the role of police in preventing crime.

The Accuracy of the Violent Offender Identification Directive Tool to Predict Future Gun Violence

We evaluate the Violent Offender Identification Directive (VOID) tool, a risk prediction instrument implemented within a police department to identify offenders likely to be involved with future gun violence. VOID uses a variety of static measures of prior criminal history that are available in police records management systems. The VOID tool is assessed for predictive accuracy by taking a historical sample and calculating scores for over 200,000 individuals known to the police at the end of 2012, and predicting 103 individuals involved with gun violence (either as a shooter or a victim) during 2013. Despite weights for the instrument being determined in an ad hoc manner, the VOID tool does very well in predicting involvement with gun violence compared with an optimized logistic regression and generalized boosted models. We discuss theoretical reasons why such ad hoc instruments are likely to perform well in identifying chronic offenders for all police departments.

Comparing the criminal careers and childhood risk factors of persistent, chronic, and persistent–chronic offenders

There have been few efforts to conceptually and empirically distinguish persistent and chronic offenders, despite the prominence of these concepts in the criminological literature. Research has not yet examined if different childhood risk factors are associated with offenders who have the longest criminal careers (persistent offenders), commit the most offences (chronic offenders), or both (persistent–chronic offenders). We address this gap using data from the Cambridge Study in Delinquent Development. Poverty, poor school attainment, and family stress had a pervasive impact on all forms of offending in correlational analyses. Longer criminal career durations were associated with fewer childhood risk factors than was the case for chronic offenders. Chronic offenders were significantly more likely than persistent offenders to experience many environmental risks in childhood. When controlling for all other risk factors, hyperactivity and parental separation uniquely predicted persistent offending, while high daring and large family size uniquely predicted chronic offending. Our analyses point to the need for responses based on a philosophy of “proportionate universalism,” where universal multisystemic crime prevention strategies that benefit all children incorporate program components that are known to influence the unique risk factors for both persistent and chronic offending.

The Politics of Benchcraft: The Role of Judges in Mental Health Courts

Mental health courts (MHCs) offer community-based treatment in lieu of criminal prosecution for chronic offenders with psychiatric disabilities, and MHC judges enjoy expanded powers to achieve the court's objectives. Because scholars know little about how judges transition into a new occupational role in the problem-solving courtroom, this ethnographic study of four MHCs in the United States focuses on how judges learn to orchestrate their responses to treatment noncompliance in this novel court setting. The goal of this article is to examine the professionalization of MHC judges and the emergent craft of therapeutic adjudication. To achieve this goal, I investigate judicial strategies for motivating, questioning, and defending participants accused of wrongdoing. I conclude that the art and practice of problem-solving justice requires judges to rise to the larger institutional challenges embedded in the alternative courtroom, a process I call the politics of benchcraft.

The Exploration of Risk and Protective Score Differences Across Juvenile Offending Career Types and Their Effects on Recidivism

Despite an abundance of research on serious and violent juvenile offenders, few studies have linked juvenile offending career categories to juvenile court risk assessments and future offending. This study uses juvenile court referrals and assessment data to replicate earlier categorizations of serious, violent, and chronic offenders; to examine risk and protective score differences across these categories; and to assess whether risk and protective score constructs differentially predict adult criminality across these offender categories. Based on a sample of 9,859 juvenile offenders who aged out of Connecticut’s juvenile justice system between 2005 and 2009, we found that (1) our categorization of juvenile career types mirrored earlier work, (2) comparing risk and protective factors across and within juvenile career types identified distinct patterns, and (3) the juvenile risk and protective assessment subscales were not predictive of adult arrests for chronic offenders but were predictive for nonchronic juvenile career types.