Gordon Waldo

• Florida State University

At the request of the SCJA president this paper addresses five questions. Does criminological research make a difference relative to the death penalty? - If criminological research does make a difference, what is the nature of that difference? - What specific instances can one cite of research findings influencing death penalty policy decisions? Wh...

This study examines the relationship between assessments of the risk of punishment and self-reported involvement in three illegal behaviors in a sample of college-aged respondents. It is found that those respondents who had not yet committed a particular offense were more likely to perceive a greater certainty of punishment than those with experien...

Today, more than 10,000 programs provide services to crime victims across the United States. Despite this large number of programs, however, it is estimated that only a small fraction of the 38 million annual crime victims actually receive services following their victimization. Moreover, most victim services programs are able to provide only limit...

This article provides an overview of the history and context leading to Florida's efforts to implement an evaluation-driven research and associated quality assurance system for its juvenile justice education policies and practices. The Juvenile Justice Educational Enhancement Program began implementing Florida's evaluation research and quality assu...

This article describes two stages of the Juvenile Justice Educational Enhancement Program's pre-, post-, and longitudinal evaluation research. Pilot studies were used to explore how to design statewide research of pre- and postassessment scores and community reintegration outcomes. Preliminary findings suggest that higher performing educational pro...

This article discusses the role of politics in the Juvenile Justice Educational Enhancement Program's effort to use evaluation research data to inform Florida's juvenile justice education policies and practices. Through consideration of the Juvenile Justice Education Enhancement Program's experiences with privatization and the tough love and econom...

During the past decade various victim-witness programs have literally exploded across the United States. However, despite the unprecedented growth in the number ofprograms, available services to crime victims and witnesses remain largely uneven and fragmented. This study provides the first major effort any jurisdiction has made in providing systema...

Perceptual deterrence researchers have used simple cross-sectional correlations between prior behavior and current perceptions to study the effect of legal threats on social control. Such designs are inadequate because they: (1) confuse the causal ordering of perceptions and behavior, and (2) fail to take into account other inhibitory factors in an...

This paper reports on the first longitudinal study to consider the relationship between perceptions of legal sanctions and self-reported criminality. The longitudinal design helps to address the problem of interpreting causal order that traditionally has troubled deterrence researchers using cross-sectional data. Self-reports of unlawful behavior (...

A major limitation of deterrence research has been its almost exclusive concern with objectively measured formal sanctions. This paper examines the relative and cumulative impact of perceived informal as well as formal sanctions upon self-reported marijuana use for 321 randomly chosen university students. Both types of sanction are strongly and ind...

This study is an empirical assessment of the work release program in the Florida Division of Corrections An experimental design was used in which, randomly, 188 persons were assigned to a work release group and 93 to a control group. Follow-up interviews were conducted in the community, and recidivism data were obtained from Division of Corrections...

The "conflict perspective" has generated considerable critical interest in the mechanisms of criminal sanctioning. Among the hypotheses generated by conflict criminology is the proposition that "when sanctions are imposed, the most severe sanctions will be imposed on persons in the lowest social class" (Chambliss and Seidman, 1971:475). This paper...

With few exceptions, empirical tests of deterrence theory have limited themselves to a consideration of crimes that are mala in se, such as homicide or the seven “Crime Index” offenses; and they have been based upon analyses of aggregate data that are available from official sources, such as Uniform Crime Reports and National Prisoner Statistics. I...

Florida law allows a judge the option of withholding adjudication of guilt from defendants who are being placed on probation. For persons accused of a felony, this step affords an opportunity to avoid the stigma associated with the status of “convicted felon.” Social and legal characteristics of 2,419 consecutive felony probation cases are examined...

Research has been acknowledged recently to be an integral part of the correctional system. To place correctional research in its proper perspective, however, we must overcome several myths and misconceptions as well as some misuses of statistics. Among the myths and misconceptions are the following: 1. Other programs are suitable for evaluation; ou...

A questionnaire dealing with attitudes toward the criminal justice system was administered to 626 seventh-grade boys. Guttman scales were developed for 9 attitude dimensions associated with the criminal justice system and the relationship of these attitudes to measures of delinquency potential was examined. All of the associations were negative as...

A questionnaire dealing with attitudes toward the criminal justice system was administered to 626 seventh-grade boys. Guttman scales were developed for 9 attitude dimensions associated with the criminal justice system and the relationship of these attitudes to measures of delinquency potential was examined. All of the associations were negative as...

Data from National Prisoner Statistics and Uniform Crime Reports are used to re-examine the relationship between rates of crime and the certainty and severity of punishment in the states of the United States. Recent research by Gibbs and Tittle using similar data to test deterrence hypotheses are extended in two ways: (l) by examining the relations...

Text (Electronic thesis) in PDF format. Mode of access: World Wide Web. Advisor: Dr. Gordon Waldo, Florida State University, College of Criminology and Criminal Justice. Title and description from dissertation home page (viewed Sept. 19, 2005). Document formatted into pages; contains viii, 49 pages. Thesis (M.S.)--Florida State University, 2005. In...

Thesis (M.A.)--Ohio State University, 1965.

How definitive is the Schuessler-Cressey study of criminal personality characteristics published seventeen years ago? In examining ninety-four further studies in this area, the authors found that seventy-six (81 per cent) reported statistically signifi cant differences between a criminal or delinquent group and matched controls or standardized norm...

Is a lack of identification with social institutions important in the etiology of delinquency? Guttman scales were developed to measure six dimensions of the adolescent's identification with educational institutions: Capacity to Learn, Value of Education, Legitimacy, Teachers—General, Teachers—Personal, and Teach ers—Academic. The findings indicate...