Publication Type: Conference Paper/Unpublished Manuscript
Review Method: Peer Reviewed
Abstract: The initiative process is unique from the traditional legislative process in that initiatives are intended to provide a direct (rather than indirect) link between public policy preferences and policy outputs. Because of this, it is often assumed that initiatives, once approved by a majority of voters, are simply transformed into meaningful and uniform policy change. We examine the implementation of California’s Substance Abuse and Crime Prevention Act (Proposition 36), which encourages county law enforcement officials to place “non-violent” drug offenders charged with simple drug possession into drug treatment programs rather than incarcerate them. Using aggregate data drawn from California’s 58 counties, we ask how county-level contextual variables explain several policy outputs associated with Proposition 36. Results indicate counties’ ideological dispositions affect how they implement the initiative where liberal counties provide more high quality treatment services than do ideological conservative counties. Moreover counties’ where the drug problem is more severe are more likely to provide higher quality treatment to SACPA clients than counties where the drug problem is less severe. Finally, we find that counties that were “tough on drugs” before the enactment of the initiative are more likely to incarcerate individuals for low-level drug possession during the first two years of implementation—effectively disqualifying potential SACPA clients for treatment. Contrary to popular conceptions, results here confirm that initiatives are not uniformly implemented, but in fact, will be manifested in quite different, often unanticipated ways, due to local contextual differences.

Publication Type: Poster
Abstract: Lester Ward (1844-1913),the first president of the American Sociological Association, was also the first American to serve as president of the International Sociological Society and presided over the 5th World Congress of Sociology(1903). He was fluent in English, French, and German and had a working knowledge of numerous languages. Ward communicated with many international scholars and his works were translated into French, German, Polish, Italian, Russian, Spanish, and Japanese. The poster illustrates his connections with such scholars as Tarde, Gumplowicz, Spencer, Marx, Simmel, Posada, Kovalevskii, Durkheim, Ratzenhofer,
Gilman, Frazier, and others

Publication Type: Conference Paper/Unpublished Manuscript
Abstract: Proposition 36 radically changed how the criminal justice system in California deals with drug offenders – from a crime control model to an addiction-treatment model. The law requires eligible drug possession offenders be sentenced to probation with treatment in lieu of jail or prison. The current study examined how the legislation impacted criminal justice agencies and actors in one focus county. This presentation will report on the noticeable and significant impacts of the legislation on law enforcement officers, including high levels of frustration and changes in officers’ arrest practices and exercise of discretion with drug offenders.

Publication Type: Conference Paper/Unpublished Manuscript
Abstract: Previous studies on political tolerance have succeeded in identifying strong individual-level predictors of tolerant citizens. However, this is an area of research that suffers from a serious lack of cross-national models of political tolerance from a macro-level perspective. This absence is particularly notable in that previous comparative studies have shown substantial variation in tolerance levels across countries, yet almost no effort has been made to understand the causes of this variation beyond the use of individual-level variables. In this paper, I fill this gap by demonstrating the impact of aggregate internal threat levels on political tolerance levels across 36 countries after accounting for other leading predictors of this attitude. Using cross-national survey data from the 1995-1997 World Values Survey and multi-level modeling techniques, I show that high levels of societal threat, such as insurgency, are negatively associated with political tolerance. Specifically, I find that individuals in states dealing with insurgency groups are much less likely to tolerate unpopular groups than those without such exposure. My paper demonstrates that the threat environment of a state reverberates to the domestic level by influencing individuals? decision to tolerate.

Publication Type: Conference Paper/Unpublished Manuscript
Abstract: On November 7th, 2000 voters of the State of California overwhelmingly passed Proposition 36, the Substance Abuse and Crime Prevention Act of 2000 (SACPA). This law marked a significant change in California drug policy by mandating treatment instead of incarceration for non-violent drug offenders. Between 2001 and 2005, more than 140,000 drug offenders in California were sentenced to probation and entered treatment as a result of this law. This paper will discuss the impact of Proposition 36 on criminal justice agencies in Orange County, CA. It will examine how drug offender sentencing has changed since inception of the law and discuss ramifications of this change. It will also describe how court calendars and probation caseloads have changed over the past several years and explain how law enforcement, judicial, and corrections agencies have coped with and adapted to the changes which resulted from the passage of Proposition 36.
This current paper is part of a larger study which is currently ongoing and uses a case study approach to understand how Proposition 36 has changed the case processing and sentencing of drug offenders and the agencies tasked with processing and supervising these offenders. The study includes both time-series analyses of multiple case processing and sentencing outcomes and interviews with practitioners to determine the impact of this much-watched legislation. This presentation will report on some of the preliminary results of the study as they pertain to various criminal justice agencies and discuss the implications for practitioners and policy-makers.