ABSTRACT

We recently published an article in Victims & Offenders in which we argued that: (1) the generality of deviance is real (i.e., offenders rarely specialize in any form of criminal or deviant behavior), (2) specialty courts typically assume – either implicitly or explicitly – that offenders do, in fact, specialize primarily in a particular form of criminal behavior, and (3) that there is thus a mismatch between a well-documented criminological reality and the administrative reality of specialty courts. Lucas recently took issue with our arguments and claimed that specialty courts are well-run, evidence based, and sufficiently flexible to be consistently effective at reducing recidivism, and that our relative pessimism is rooted in our “misinterpretation” of the evidence we cite. We find no merit in either of his arguments and we present here a criminologically-informed and evidence-based discussion of the generality of deviance and specialty courts.

摘要

我们最近在受害者与罪犯中发表了一篇文章在其中我们认为：(1) 越轨的普遍性是真实的（即，罪犯很少专门从事任何形式的犯罪​​或越轨行为），(2) 专业法院通常假设——无论是隐含还是明确地——事实上，犯罪者确实这样做了, 主要专注于特定形式的犯罪​​行为，以及 (3) 因此，有据可查的犯罪学现实与专业法院的行政现实之间存在不匹配。卢卡斯最近对我们的论点提出异议，并声称专业法庭运作良好、以证据为基础且足够灵活，可以始终有效地减少累犯，而我们的相对悲观主义源于我们对引用的证据的“误解”。