Editor: Dr. Miki Vohryzek-Bolden CSU-Sacramento
From The
President
Martha-Elin Blomquist
Southern Oregon University
Welcome new and returning WSC members to another year of activities
and connections. For personal and professional reasons, I am very
pleased to serve as President of the WSC for 1999-2000. This
Association has provided me with a receptive and supportive group of
colleagues with whom to share my work over many years. I look forward
to carrying on a tradition, established by my predecessors, of making
the WSC an intellectual and inspirational "home" for professionals in
the West who practice, teach, or research in the fields of
criminology, criminal justice, and social justice. My first official,
and pleasant, duty to the membership is to reflect on the highlights
of our 26th Annual Conference, held February 25-28 at the Oakland
Marriott Hotel and Convention Center, and to share some of the WSC
Executive Board's activities and goals for the upcoming
year.
Thanks to the Executive Board
under the leadership of Barbara Bloom as President and Marilyn
McShane as Program Chair, and to all of the participants, for making
our 1999 conference a wonderful success. Some 120 people gathered at
the Oakland Marriott to put our minds to and share our scholarship on
the conference theme, "The Challenges of Crime and Justice in the New
Millennium." Hotel staff made our stay comfortable with excellent
food service and meeting room space. From the A.J. Topper Room, where
we held our luncheons and Presidential Reception, we were able to
enjoy 180 degree vistas of the Bay Area skyline. Mother Nature even
cooperated by giving us sun and warm temperatures by day and fabulous
sunsets at dusk.
To me, our 1999 conference
exemplified what makes the WSC a unique and hospitable regional
professional association. I'd like to use my reflections on the
conference to illustrate what I see to be the hallmark qualities of
the WSC.
Best of the West
We bring together the "best of the west" when it comes to the
diversity of our professional affiliations and disciplines, and the
quality of work members produce with respect to scholarship,
research, teaching, and the delivery of programs and services.
Conference participants come from academic settings, policy
environments, research/think tanks, private nonprofit service
agencies and public service agencies. They offer a breadth of
expertise from the disciplines of criminology, sociology, criminal
justice, public policy, government, women's studies, urban and public
administration, social ecology, law, mental health, social works,
library science, corrections, geography, and computer science. The
geographic areas from which they come are equally broad. A large
contingent comes from California; almost all of the CSU campuses were
well represented at this year's conference, with Bakersfield, San
Jose State, Hayward, Stanislaus creating a notable presence with
several new or returning participants; U.C. campuses were also
represented. A number of presenters came from other corners of the
Western region as well: British Columbia, Hawaii, Guam, Texas,
Oregon, Nevada, Arizona, Colorado, Nebraska and Washington,
D.C.
The WSC welcomes and encourages scholars and practitioners at all
points in their careers to share their work and knowledge. So it was
that at our 1999 conference we had a wonderful array of panel
presentations and discussions informed by the work of undergraduate
and graduate students, new, mid career and senior level professional
academics from such universities as U.C. Berkeley and Simon Fraser
University, and state and federal policy experts sat alongside and
exchanged perspectives with newcomers to the fields of criminology
and criminal justice. Practitioners from youth and adult, state and
federal corrections departments, mental health departments, public
health departments, county probation departments, law enforcement
departments, and school districts made presentations that illustrated
or countered theories, constructs, and policies proposed by their
more academic colleagues.
During the Conference, sharing and contrasting knowledge occurred in
many ways. Formal presentations utilizing the most sophisticated
quantitative methods and technologies such as those in the crime
mapping and crime analyses panel and the electronic media panel could
be found in between panels that offered more informal and audience
inclusive exchanges such as the dialogue in the Author Meets Critic
session and The Berkeley School of Criminology Retrospective. And of
course there were the ongoing personal exchanges outside the meeting
rooms, at the Conference social functions including the sponsored
breaks, the luncheons, the Presidential Reception and the Student
Party (and let's not forget inside the restrooms!). Throughout,
participants enjoyed the spontaneous and welcomed moments that WSC
conferences create to support one another's efforts, to learn more
about issues of mutual interest, and to find opportunities for
collaboration and ways to stay in touch for future projects and
papers.
Our Defining
Issues
To what issues and concerns
did this unique group of professionals direct our diverse knowledge
and experience? With the lead offered by Elliott Currie in his
opening remarks, "Reflections on Crime and Criminology at the
Millennium," conference participants committed ourselves to the tasks
of what I believe are at the heart of what the WSC is about:
acquiring and sharing cutting edge knowledge, critically examining
knowledge and practice, and advocating on behalf of the ignored
voices in debates about fairness and justice. Elliott reminded us of
some of the very disturbing and pervasive trends in oppressive and
repressive crime control methods that mark American practices at the
end of the 20th century. He called those of us who are makers and
testers of knowledge about these practices to pursue the responsible,
ethical, and humanitarian use of this knowledge. As we move into the
next millennium, Elliott challenged us to take our knowledge of crime
and justice into the realms of advocacy and activism.
This challenge and our particular abilities to meet it appeared in
various forms and phrases throughout the conferences. The WSC has two
important traditions: to join scholarship with social and political
action on behalf of ignored, undervalued, or oppressed voices and
perspectives, and to use scholarship and action to unveil the
realities as well as the possibilities of justice. Several panels
were specifically oriented to issues of crime and justice as they
affect various groups and populations -children, youths, low income
persons, women, families, ethnic and racial minorities. Many other
panels included individual presentations that incorporated
marginalized groups and perspectives in discussions of such topics as
law and courts, evaluation, theory, drugs, victims, and
policy.
Coming together at our annual conferences reminds us of the special
skills WSC members bring to the field of criminological scholarship
and advocacy: Evident in panels and presentations throughout the 1999
Conference were WSC's hallmark of being at the forefront of critical
analyses of current practices and policies. This year panelists
shared critiques of such practices as "Three Strikes Legislation,"
the "Drug War," "Megan's Law," the privatization of prisons, and
overuse of psychotropic drugs with female inmates. In addition, our
members are noteworthy for their work in the design and use of
cutting edge technology. These contributions to the field of
criminology appeared this year in panels that described GIS mapping,
and electronic communication in research strategies, data analyses,
and teaching techniques. Our membership also has uncanny prescience
about problems as well as solutions before they become mainstream;
WSC conference presentations on innovative and progressive solutions
often become harbingers for directions and interventions studied by
others. This year, ongoing or new attention was brought to such
directions and intervention as restorative justice, drug courts, and
residential treatment programs for pregnant and parenting female
offenders.
In sum.....
With me, this year's Board is directing its energy and attention to accomplishing three goals: increasing student awareness of and involvement with the WSC, expanding the visibility and influence of members of color within WSC leadership positions and conference activities, and serving the needs and interests of practitioners with respect to opportunities for professional development.
The current Board reflects the Association's strengths, its diverse
geographic, disciplinary, and institutional affiliations. Executive
members come from throughout the Western Region and from various
settings and departments: academia, research entities, and agencies
affiliated with corrections, law enforcement, counseling and human
resources. I appreciate the opportunity to work with this dedicated
group; as professionals, they bring a range of knowledge, experience,
skill, and talents to their tasks; and as friends and colleagues,
they bring energy, humor, and heart.
With the assistance of the Executive Board, I look forward to
promoting what I see to be the unique hallmarks of the WSC as I have
outlined in this article: our diversity, our critical/analytical
perspective, the quality and integrity of the work of our members,
our accessibility and the support we offer to individuals at all
career stages, and our commitment to both knowledge and advocacy.
Indeed, these several essential traditions and distinctions help to
create the WSC's special niche in the fields of criminology and
criminal justice: We provide a forum for acquiring, exchanging,
testing, and applying knowledge; we serve as a conscience in the
field for imagining, defining and using theories and methods, and we
promote voices and perspectives ignored or undervalued in debates
about crime and justice. As we take up the challenges of crime and
justice in the next millennium, please feel welcome to contribute
your interests, ideas, abilities, and resources to helping the WSC
carry on these important traditions and distinctions.
The Center for the Study and Prevention of Violence (CSPV) at the
University of Colorado - Boulder and the Office of Juvenile Justice
and Delinquency Prevention, Office of Justice Programs, U. S.
Department of Justice, have entered into a cooperative agreement to
provide training and technical assistance over a two year period to
50 community organizations and program providers to implement
Blueprints for Violence Prevention programs.
CSPV has identified ten exemplary programs, called Blueprints
programs, which meet a very high scientific standard of program
effectiveness. The criteria include a strong experimental or
quasi-experimental research design; evidence of significant
prevention or deterrent effects on violence, delinquency, substance
use, or pre-delinquent aggression; replication at multiple sites; and
a sustained effect beyond one year of treatment.
The standard for program selection is very high. At this time, ten Blueprints programs have been identified that span the infancy through high school developmental stages. They target a wide variety of youth, including whole populations of youth (universal programs), at-risk youth (selected programs), and youth requiring treatment (indicated programs). Books are available from CSPV with in-depth descriptions of these programs, and one-page overviews of each program are on the CSPV website. The programs are briefly described below:
1. Prenatal and Infancy
Home Visitation by Nurses - nurse home visitation program for
at-risk pregnant women designed to improve parenting skills and
enhance children's development
2. Promoting Alternative Thinking Strategies - promotes
emotional and social competence of elementary school children
3. Bullying Prevention Program - reduces bully/victim problems
among primary and secondary school children
4. Big Brothers Big Sisters of America - mentoring
program for children from single-parent households
5. Life Skills Training - school-based drug prevention program
for junior/middle school students
6. Midwestern Prevention Program - community-based drug
prevention with a junior/middle school drug component as the hub of
the intervention
7. Quantum Opportunities Program - educational incentives
program targeting ninth grade students and designed to increase
graduation rates and college attendance through an intense, four-year
intervention
8. Functional Family Therapy - behavioral-based family therapy
for at-risk, conduct disorder, and adjudicated youth
9. Multisystemic Therapy - family ecological systems approach
which targets serious, violent, or substance abusing juvenile
offenders
10. Multidimensional Treatment Foster Care - places serious
and chronic juvenile offenders with foster families who provide close
supervision, fair limits, consistent consequences,and a supportive
relationship.
Training and Technical Assistance: Training and technical
assistance will be provided to a total of 50 program sites desiring
to implement one of the Blueprints programs. CSPV will contract with
each Blueprints program designer to provide the technical assistance
over a two-year period.
Technical assistance will
consist of all necessary training, up to three trouble-shooting site
visits per year, and phone consultation. CSPV will conduct a process
evaluation at each site to monitor the quality of the implementation
to determine if the program is reaching the target population and
evaluate whether the program is being fully implemented as designed.
Please note that this grant does not include funds for the cost of
the program itself.
Selection Process: Sites will be selected on a first-come,
first-serve basis; however, all sites must be selected prior to July
31, 1999. Eligibility will be determined through a General
Application, a Blueprint-specific Application, and a feasibility site
visit. Sites should strive to return a General Application as soon as
possible so that CSPV is aware of all interested sites.
For more information on Blueprints programs and the Training and Technical Assistance grant, please contact:
Center for the Study and Prevention of Violence
Institute of Behavioral Science
University of Colorado at Boulder
Campus Box 442
Boulder, CO 80309-0442
303.492.1032
blueprints@colorado.edu
http://www.colorado.edu/cspv/blueprints
Kristen Jensen, Northern
Arizona University, Criminal Justice Department (August 1998)
On Veterans Day, 1987, John Brewer murdered his fiancé and her
unborn child. Surrendering at the scene and throughout the
investigation, Brewer's continued cooperation with authorities was
indicative not only of his death wish, but of his underlying border
personality. On March 3, 1993, Brewer was the second person executed
in Arizona since the state's resumption of capital punishment.
Through archival research and interviews with the principle parties,
the legal, political and social contexts of this case are explored to
better understand the death penalty and its use today. A critical
element of this study is the role that the media played and the force
of mass communication in drawing public support for this execution.
It is argued that Brewer's death wish together with popular support
for capital punishment, converged to facilitate his death.
Bekki L. Riggan, California
State University, Sacramento, Division of Criminal Justice (Fall
1997)
The literature is filled with
descriptive, anecdotal and conceptual accounts of the successes and
failures associated with providing substance abuse treatment to
offender populations. However, the substantial body of literature in
this field is primarily concerned with programmatic aspects and
outcome measures. Many correctional policy researchers argue that
specific program elements are often less predictive of program
success than the attributes of the implementation process and
organizational setting. Although the body of implementation-related
literature is growing, studies that critically describe and evaluate
implementation issues encountered in designing and administering
substance treatment programs for offenders are still limited.
This thesis provides a case study
analysis of the key implementation issues encountered by county
probation and substance abuse staff in their collaborative effort to
develop and administer a treatment in lieu of incarceration program
for offenders. This study reviews both justice and treatment
literature pertaining to collaborative efforts of this nature, and
includes a discussion of the environmental characteristics - or
preconditions - recommended for successful program
implementation.
Research methodology includes a
review of pertinent journals and texts dealing with the developmental
history of substance abuse treatment in corrections. Data sources
include written documentation, program evaluation materials, and
in-depth interviews with program staff, administrators, and program
evaluators. In addition, the author was able to draw upon firsthand
experience as an associate of a private consulting firm specializing
in program evaluation.
Based on the findings, it appears
that the success of program implementation remains to a large extent
dependent on the environment in which it takes place. Differences in
philosophies, goals and practices of the criminal justice and
substance abuse treatment agencies can interact to create a policy
environment characterized by conflict, frustration and confusion.
Policy developers should expand their responsibilities to include
assessing the environmental characteristics, or pre-conditions in
which a program will be implemented. If indicated, they should then
take corrective measures to bring these characteristics as close to
the ideal as possible to enhance the likelihood of effective program
implementation.
Elizabeth Anne Humphrey,
California State University, Sacramento, Division of Criminal Justice
(Fall 1998)
There are over eleven thousand
public-sector law enforcement agencies in the United States. As
populations continue to increase, so will the demand for law
enforcement personnel. In recent years, police departments have been
struggling with the scarcity of eligible recruits, particularly
females and minorities. Some departments are looking into career
education programs as a way to expand recruitment efforts. In 1988,
the first law enforcement magnet program at the high school level was
created. John F. Kennedy High School's Academy of Criminal Justice
and Community Service in Sacramento is one of these career magnet
programs.
The purpose of this thesis was to
provide a descriptive study of Kennedy High School's program from the
perspective of the participants and the director of the academy. In
addition to a review of related literature, a survey questionnaire
was administered to all of the students in the academy. Ninety-five
of the one hundred nine students enrolled in the academy during the
1997-98 school year completed the survey that consisted of
fixed-alternative and open-ended statements. A semi-structured
interview of the academy director was also conducted in order to
gather information regarding the objectives of the program
The findings of this study reveal that not only is John F. Kennedy High School's Academy of Criminal Justice and Community Service meeting its stated recruitment goal, the students are also demonstrating a knowledge of the intended material. In all but one of the six subject areas, at least half or more of the students indicate an understanding of the material. Furthermore, the program meets its students' expectations and each student lists at least one benefit they have received as a result of participating in the program.
Our heartfelt thanks are extended
to all of our sponsors: Center for Criminal Justice Research,
California State University, San Bernardino; College of Social and
Behavioral Sciences, Northern Arizona University, Flagstaff, Arizona;
Wadsworth Publishing; Copperhouse Publishing Company; and College of
Applied Sciences and Arts, San Jose State University.
The Western Criminology Review seeks to enhance communication between society members and encourage them to share their ideas with others in the international world of criminology and criminal justice. Our first volume addresses significant issues in the field, such as the theory and practice of restorative justice, the efficacy of daytime curfews, the potential of animated, three-dimensional crime mapping models for research and theory, and others.
WSC members and friends of WSC can help out with the journal by
making themselves available to review manuscripts submitted for
publication consideration. To be placed in the reviewer pool, mail or
e-mail your name, a brief biography and areas of specialization to
Pat Jackson, WCR Editor, Criminal Justice, Sonoma State
University, Rohnert Park, CA 94928; or fax it to (707)664-3920.
For web surfers, an online form is available at http://wcr.sonoma.educ/Inquiry.html.
You can e-mail Pat at
wcr@sonoma.edu.
Recipients of the Western Society of Criminology Fellow Awards 1998-99
Elliott Currie University
of California, Berkeley
Dorie Klein Public Health Institute
Julie Stewart Families Against Mandatory Minimums
Terrence Hallinan San Francisco District Attorney
The Paul Tappan
Award:
For Outstanding Contributions to the Field of
Criminology
James Austin, George
Washington University
The Joseph D. Lohman
Award:
For Outstanding Service to the Western Society of
Criminology
Cheryl Maxson, University of
Southern California
Linda Humble, Federal Defender's Office
The June Morrison - Tom Gitchoff Founders Award:
For Significant Improvement in the Quality of
Justice
Ellen Barry, Legal Services for Prisoners with Children
President's Award:
For Contributions to the Field of Criminology and Positive
Influence on the Current President's Career
Austin Turk, University of
California, Riverside
Barbara Owen, California State University, Fresno
The Executive Board of the Western
Society of Criminology, on behalf of itself and all of the members of
the association, wishes to express thanks and appreciation to all of
the individuals and groups who supported the 1999 annual conference
in Oakland with their sponsorship of different events. We realize
that without your ongoing supports of our organization, we would not
be able to maintain a reasonable dues structure while still providing
the membership with a newsletter, a journal, and an exciting and
intellectually engaging annual program.
The 2000 Western Society of
Criminology Annual Meeting is scheduled for February 25-27, 2000 at
the Kona Surf Resort in Kona, Hawaii. The theme of the Conference is
"Diversity
and Justice." Please
contact Dr.Cynthia Rienick, Associate Research Analyst, San Diego
Association of Governments, Criminal Justice Research Division, 401 B
Street, Suite 800, San Diego, CA 92101-4231. Phone (619)595-5361
or Fax (619)595-5305.
President:Martha-Elin Blomquist -
Blomquist@sou.edu
Secretary/Treasurer:Judith Embree - jae@calweb.com
Newsletter Editor:Miki Vohryzek-Bolden - vohryzek@csus.edu
Journal editor:Pat Jackson - jackson@sonoma.edu
WSC Webpage: http://www.sonoma.edu/cja/wsc/wscmain.html
Membership Information - contact:
Secretary/Treasurer:Judith Embree - jae@calweb.com
or Membership Chair:
Kim Rossmo - kim_rossmo@city.vancouver.bc.ca