No abstract

Research has generally supported the effectiveness of restorative justice (RJ) programs on a number of outcomes; however, little research has examined the effectiveness of variations in the intervention. This study examined several variations of an RJ program for juvenile offenders, including direct mediation, indirect forms of victim/offender mediation accomplished without direct victim/ offender contact, the use of community panels (i.e., with community representatives when no direct victim was available), and a group who received only minimal interaction with RJ staff. Results supported the effectiveness of a number of variations in program implementation. Implications for future research and potential improvements to the RJ model are discussed.

This study used telephone surveys from 350 randomly sampled Philadelphians to examine whether attributing crime to individual and environmental causes predicted support for punitive and progressive policies, respectively. This study also investigated whether Blacks and Whites differed in their preferred crime responses, and whether race interacted with crime attributions to predict preferred policies. Finally, this study explored whether biological attributions predicted support for policies. Linear regression analyses revealed: (1) individual crime attributions predicted support for punitive response policies; (2) environmental crime attributions predicted support for progressive policies; (3) Blacks more strongly supported progressive policies; (4) race significantly interacted with crime attributions to predict support for progressive policies; and (5) attributing crime to biological causes was unrelated to either policy type.

The largest protests in U.S. history occurred during summer 2020. Despite being overwhelmingly peaceful, some property damage, looting, and violence transpired. This study used Wave 68 of the American Trends Panel, collected by the Pew Research Center 10 days after Minneapolis police murdered George Floyd, to test whether: (1) Black people are less likely than white people to oppose Black Lives Matter (BLM); (2) compared to white people, Black people perceive individuals who use protests as a pretext for committing crime to comprise a smaller proportion of the overall protest movement; and (3) opposition to BLM mediates some or all of the relationship between race and perceptions of the degree to which people who use protests as a pretext to commit crime comprise the overall protest movement. Results from generalized ordered logistic regression analyses confirmed that, compared to white people, Black people were less likely to oppose BLM and perceived the summer 2020 protest movement to have contained fewer opportunistic individuals looking to commit crime. Pathway analysis results showed that BLM opposition fully mediated the relationship between race and how much of the overall protest movement participants thought consisted of individuals using protests to commit crime.

The racial gradient hypothesis of comparative conflict theory predicts Black people perceive the greatest social injustices, followed by Latinx and white people, respectively. This study used nationally representative data collected prior to George Zimmerman’s arrest to examine whether racial groups (Black, Latinx, white) differed in their perceptions that Zimmerman was guilty of a crime against Trayvon Martin. Logistic regression results revealed Black participants were 98% more likely than white participants to perceive Zimmerman as guilty. Latinx perceptions of Zimmerman’s guilt did not significantly differ from those of Black or white participants. Findings suggest some Latinx individuals may not fully appreciate how the same U.S. racial hierarchy that harms Latinx communities also works to produce anti-Black violence.