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Highland, R. A., & Dabney, D. A.
Drug dealer motivation is traditionally attributed to individual greed or social structural pressures resulting from poor social conditions or blocked opportunities. To date, few scholars have seriously considered that underlying personality characteristics might shape an individual's decisions to participate in the illegal drug market. This paper builds upon the tenets of Adlerian Individual Psychology in an effort to document stable lifestyle attributes or human personality characteristics in a sample of 100 known drug dealers. Respondent scores on the Basic Adlerian Scales for Interpersonal Success - Adult Form Inventory (BASIS-A) reveal that the drug dealers exhibit lifestyle profiles that differ from those of the normative and other non-criminal samples but approximate those observed in samples of known criminals. A call is made for a broader theoretical approach and empirical research agenda that more fully explores the linkage between developmental and environmental factors that contribute to crime and drug market participation.
Brown, B., & Benedict, W. R.
This study provides an analysis of survey data on student fear of gangs and gang-related crime at school obtained from Hispanic high school students who reside in an area with a predominantly Hispanic and large immigrant population. Consistent with prior research on fear of crime, regression analyses of the data indicate that acculturation, gender, and victimization are significantly correlated with fear of gangs and/or fear of gang-related crime. Specifically, the analyses indicate that youths with limited acculturation are more fearful of gang-related school violence than well acculturated youths, that fear of gang members and gang-related theft is higher among females than among males, and that students who have been victimized are more concerned about gang-related victimization than are students who have not been victimized. The data also suggest there may be temporally and geographically specific dimensions to the relationship between victimization and fear of gang-related crime. The theoretical, methodological, and policy implications are discussed.
Jones, S., & Harrison, M.
Criminal defendants are under no obligation to testify on their own behalf and doing so can lead to deleterious outcomes. Specifically, if the defendant has a criminal record, the prosecution can introduce this into evidence in an effort to impeach the defendant's testimony. Yet, failure to take the stand and proclaim one's innocence arouses suspicion among jurors that may influence verdicts. In this study, we manipulated whether the defendant testified or not. In those instances where he did testify, we varied whether he had (1) no criminal record, (2) a criminal record for a similar offense, or (3) a criminal record for a dissimilar offense. Results indicated that mock jurors who adjudicated the defendant guilty were influenced by the defendant's failure to take the stand. Furthermore, mock jurors were more likely to render guilty verdicts when they perceived the defendant as less trustworthy, more aggressive, and less credible (as a witness). However, in no instance were these decisions and perceptions related to the manipulations. This suggests that mock jurors were suspicious of the defendant regardless of whether or not he testified, or whether he had a criminal record.
Barber, L. K., Grawitch, M. J., & Trares, S. T.
Research on managing emotions as part of one's job (emotional labor) primarily focuses on emotional regulation strategies for displaying positive emotions. However, police work imposes the need for negative emotional expression for law enforcement (force-oriented duties) in addition to positive emotional expression for community service (service-oriented duties). We tested an adaptation of the predominant two-factor model of emotion regulation strategies (deep acting versus surface acting) that differentiated between positive and negative emotional expression. Factor analyses revealed that a three-factor structure (surface acting, service-oriented deep acting, and force-oriented deep acting) provided the best fit. Hierarchical regression showed that only surface acting predicted increased emotional exhaustion. Force-oriented deep acting (but not service-oriented deep acting) was the only predictor of job involvement.
Fradella, H. F., & Vogel, B.
Scholars have long engaged in an intellectual struggle to define the relationship between law and morality, a task that is especially complex when examining criminalization. To date, however, the so-called Hart–Devlin debate on the social control of morals through criminal law has been largely theoretical. This study empirically examines the link between perceptions of morality and corresponding views on criminalization on 11 low-consensus deviant behaviors, including drug offenses, victimless sex offenses, and criminal traffic offenses. Moreover, it examines the relationship between perceptions of law and morality on personal conduct that violates both social norms and criminal law. The analyses find strong support for an empirical link between conceptualizations of that which is perceived as immoral and that which is perceived as warranting criminal sanction for drug and traffic offense, but not for consensual sexual conduct. The analyses also support the proposition that morality appears to be a stronger mediator of deviant behavior than the law.