Book Review: Alternatives to Criminal Courts
| Published date | 01 December 1986 |
| DOI | 10.1177/000486588601900408 |
| Author | Christine Alder |
| Date | 01 December 1986 |
| Subject Matter | Book Reviews |
286 BOOK REVIEWS (1986) 19 ANZJ Crim
school,
but
who allege
that
doing well is
not
at all
important
are twice as
"strained"
as those doing very well and who at
the
same time think that it is
important
to do
well (the former receive ascore of
"3",
the latter ascore
of
"1").
The
authors have
also followed
the
currently fashionable practice of
not
including
the
zero
order
correlation matrices
upon
which
the
path
analyses
are
based, aprocedure this
reviewer would like to see aggressively discouraged since it robs readers of
the
data
by which simple cross-checking could be accomplished.
There
are
other
matters
of
more
substance which arise with this volume.
The
authors
pursue a line
of
theory development
that
is social psychological
and
emphatically
not
sociological in character. Those unfamiliar with this particular
translation of strain theory, for example, will be surprised
that
the
issue of strain can
be
pursued
without reference to social class. In fact, social class is
not
even included
as a variable within
the
study. Similarly,
the
treatment
of school experience omits
entirely
the
issue of school organization and structure. In some respects,
then,
this
research can be seen as
one
more sign of
the
march of American studies of deviant
behaviour
away from social structural analysis, moving instead down
the
path
of
psychological reductionism.
From
the
methodological point of view, one of
the
costs of
the
use of structural
equation
models is
that
little use is
made
of
the
temporal
data
unique to a
three
wave panel. While we are told
that
prior delinquency is an
important
correlate of
later
delinquency, to this reviewer
there
would seem to be much
more
gained from
these
data
through
the
use of forms of sequential modelling.
There
is, certainly,
much to
commend
in
the
brevity and clarity of
the
path
model approach,
but
one
cost seems to
be
the
loss of important information.
This
book
reports
the
results of a rare
and
expensive study.
The
data
are
derived
from aunique, nationally representative sample. We
hope
that
there
will be many
more
publications from this competent research group.
The
present
work
is an
effective
and
concise test
of
aparticular theory
about
juvenile delinquency
and
drug
use. Serious
students
will find here
both
significant
data
and
impressive theoretical
argumentation.
Melbourne
KENNETH
POLK
Alternatives to Criminal Courts, Tony FMarshall,
Gower
(1985) 310 pp.
Criminologists will find this analysis of criminal justice alternatives avaluable
companion to such recent works as Cohen's Visions
of
Social Control. This
work
differs from
many
recent
more
strictly criminological writings since it gives primary
emphasis to what
are
termed
"non-judicial settlements", of which four
major
forms
are
presented.
The
first consist of what are termed "private sanctions", including
individual self-help schemes as well as corporate sanctions such as those concerning
regulation of employees,
the
control of institutional inmates
(an
interesting
discussion embracing schools as well as correctional institutions),
and
corporate
regulation (both self-regulation
and
regulation of non-members).
In
the
second section,
there
is a solid core of material on forms
of
non-judicial
settlement involving community processes which will be of interest to many readers
of this journal. Included
here
are segments on various forms
of
community
mediation
and
arbitration, including neighbourhood justice experiments.
The
third
form of non-judicial settlement consists
of
those found within public agencies,
including professional arbitration and tribunals.
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