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Open Access Publications from the University of California

Scholarly Works (26 results)

  • Thesis
  • Peer Reviewed
UC Irvine Electronic Theses and Dissertations (2023)

In November 2014, California enacted Proposition 47 (Prop 47), a drug policy reform measure that re-classified nearly all drug possession crimes as misdemeanors. The current study examines the impact of Prop 47 on drug arrest rates among local municipal police agencies in California. Further, the study utilizes multilevel modeling to analyze how post-Prop 47 drug arrest rates among individual police agencies varied as a function of local community characteristics and organizational legacies of past practice. The results indicate that Prop 47 had little impact on agency-level drug arrest rates outside of a small collection of large, urban cities and cities with large Black populations. Moreover, drug arrest trends in the post-Prop 47 period were largely determined by agencies’ pre-Prop 47 arrest trends, suggesting that path dependency, or organizational inertia, is a key factor for understanding how individual police agencies respond to legal reform.

    Cover page: Police Discretion and Criminal Justice Reform: Proposition 47’s Impact on Drug Crime Arrests in California
    • Article
    • Peer Reviewed
    UC Irvine Previously Published Works (2014)
    In criminal proceedings across the United States, rap music lyrics are being introduced as evidence of a defendant’s guilt. In this article, we draw attention to this disturbing practice, what we call ‘‘rap on trial,’’ and explore its context, describe its elements and contours, and consider its broader significance. We first offer historical context, demonstrating that although the widespread use of rap lyrics in criminal trials may be a relatively recent phenomenon, it resides within a long tradition of antagonism between the legal establishment and hip-hop culture, one that can be traced back to hip-hop’s earliest roots. We then offer examples of recent cases in which rap music has been used as evidence in trials against amateur rappers, almost all of whom are young men of color, in order to illustrate the specific ways that prosecutors present the music to judges and juries, as well as to highlight the devastating effects it can have on defendants. In the final section, we consider the elements of rap music that leave it vulnerable to judicial abuse and the artistic, racial, and legal ramifications of using this particular genre of music to put people in jail. We conclude with recommendations for further research in this area, pointing out specific areas where scholarship would most effectively expose what it means to put rap on trial.
      Cover page: Rap on Trial
      • Article
      • Peer Reviewed
      UC Irvine Previously Published Works (2016)
        Cover page: Community Criminology: Fundamentals of Spatial and Temporal Scaling, Ecological Indicators, and Selectivity BiasCreative Commons 'BY' version 4.0 license
        • Article
        • Peer Reviewed
        UC Irvine Previously Published Works (2014)
          Cover page: Secure or Insecure Communities?Creative Commons 'BY' version 4.0 license
          • Article
          • Peer Reviewed
          UC Irvine Previously Published Works (2014)
            Cover page: 7 Reasons to Abandon the Secure Communities Program
            • Article
            • Peer Reviewed
            UC Irvine Previously Published Works (2022)
            How can we improve the effectiveness of criminal justice reform efforts? Effective reform hinges on shared understandings of what the problem is and shared visions of what success looks like. But consensus is hard to come by, and there has long been a distinction between "policy talk" or how problems are defined and solutions are promoted, and "policy action" or the design and adoption of certain policies. In this essay, we seek to promote productive thinking and talking about, as well as designing of, effective and sustainable criminal justice reforms. To this end, we offer reflections on underlying conceptual and practical considerations relevant for both criminal justice policy talk and action.
              Cover page: How to Think about Criminal Justice Reform: Conceptual and Practical Considerations
              • Article
              • Peer Reviewed
              UC Irvine Previously Published Works (2018)
              Objectives: In criminal cases, prosecutors treat defendant-authored rap lyrics as an admission of guilt rather than as art or entertainment. Do negative stereotypes about rap music shape jurors’ attitudes about the defendant, unfairly influencing outcomes? Replicating and extending previous research (Fischoff Journal of Applied Social Psychology, 29(4), 795–805, 1999; Fried Journal of Applied Social Psychology, 26(23), 2135–2146, 1996; Dunbar et al. Public Policy, and Law, 22(3), 280–292, 2016), the current study begins to address these questions. Methods: Using an experimental approach, participants were presented with music lyrics and asked to make judgments about the person who wrote the lyrics. All participants read the same lyrics but were told they were from a country, heavy metal, or rap song, depending upon the condition into which they were randomly assigned. Again using random assignment, participants were provided with information about the race of the songwriter in a photo of a young man. Finally, participants were tasked with judging the character of the songwriter, including traits such as his violent nature and criminal disposition. Results: We find that writers of violent “rap” lyrics are perceived more negatively than writers who pen identical country and heavy metal lyrics. We also find that songwriter race matters; no differences in judgments were detected between the White and Black songwriters; however, when race information was not provided, participants who inferred the songwriter was Black judged him more negatively than participants who inferred he was White. Conclusions: These findings have implications for racial disparities in the criminal justice system.
                Cover page: Imagining violent criminals: an experimental investigation of music stereotypes and character judgments
                • Article
                • Peer Reviewed
                UC Irvine Previously Published Works (2015)
                Contrary to popular opinion, scholarly research has documented that immigrant communities are some of the safest places around. Studies repeatedly find that neighborhood immigrant concentration is either negatively associated with crime and delinquency or not related to crime and delinquency at all. Less well understood, however, is why this is the case. A critical limitation of existing research is the exclusion of measures that capture the intervening processes by which immigrant concentration influences crime and delinquency. The current study begins to address this gap in the literature. We use data from the National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent Health to examine the relationship between neighborhood immigrant concentration and adolescent violence and to assess the extent to which social capital and personal and vicarious victimization may account for this relationship. Contrary to our expectations, social capital and personal and vicarious victimization do not mediate the relationship between neighborhood immigrant concentration and adolescent violence.
                  Cover page: The Power of Place Revisited
                  • Thesis
                  • Peer Reviewed
                  UC Irvine Electronic Theses and Dissertations (2017)

                  In courtrooms across the U.S., defendant-authored rap lyrics are being introduced as incriminating evidence. Prosecutors describe these lyrics as an admission of guilt. Others, however, fear rap lyrics are being used as evidence because of stereotypes about the genre and the artists associated with it, which may affect trial outcomes. Only a handful of studies have empirically examined concerns about this practice, and these studies are methodologically limited and becoming increasingly outdated. My dissertation involves a set of studies that address these limitations and build upon previous research. In Study 1, which consists of three experiments, I examined the impact of genre-specific stereotypes on the evaluation of violent song lyrics by manipulating the musical genre ascribed to the lyrics while holding constant the actual lyrics. Experiment 1, a direct replication of previous research, found that participants deemed identical lyrics more literal, offensive, and in greater need of regulation when they were characterized as rap compared to country. I found in Experiment 2 that this genre effect was not unique to one set of lyrics and in Experiment 3 that it was not influenced by the race of the songwriter. Findings from Study 2, which used a similar design as Study 1, revealed that the songwriter of the lyrics was viewed more negatively across a number of dimensions when the lyrics were categorized as rap rather than country, punk, or heavy metal. Finally, in Study 3, I examined the adjudicative consequences of using rap lyrics as evidence in a criminal trial. In particular, participants evaluated rap lyrics in two contexts, one of which was a trial, and then provided a verdict for the trial. Results revealed that participants who believe a defendant is guilty were more likely to treat rap lyrics as an admission of guilt compared to when the lyrics were not presented in the trial context, however evaluations of the lyrics did not predict verdict. Ultimately, these findings provide insight into the potential consequences of introducing rap lyrics as evidence at trial.

                    Cover page: Rap Lyrics as Evidence: An Examination of Rap Music, Perceptions of Threat, and Juror Decision Making
                    • Article
                    • Peer Reviewed
                    UC Irvine Previously Published Works (2018)
                    Research Summary: Our study represents the first effort to evaluate systematically Proposition 47's (Prop 47's) impact on California's crime rates. With a state-level panel containing violent and property offenses from 1970 through 2015, we employ a synthetic control group design to approximate California's crime rates had Prop 47 not been enacted. Our findings suggest that Prop 47 had no effect on homicide, rape, aggravated assault, robbery, or burglary. Larceny and motor vehicle thefts, however, seem to have increased moderately after Prop 47, but these results were both sensitive to alternative specifications of our synthetic control group and small enough that placebo testing cannot rule out spuriousness. Policy Implications: As the United States engages in renewed debates regarding the scale and cost of its incarcerated population, California stands at the forefront of criminal justice reform. Although California reduced its prison population by 13,000 through Prop 47, critics argue anecdotally that the measure is responsible for recent crime upticks across the state. We find little empirical support for these claims. Thus, our findings suggest that California can downsize its prisons and jails without compromising public safety.
                      Cover page: Can We Downsize Our Prisons and Jails Without Compromising Public Safety?Creative Commons 'BY' version 4.0 license
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