QUESTIONS FOR READINGS
This page contains questions to think about while you are reading different chapters in either of Jacobs' books. The questions are organized by book and within book by chapter.
JACOBS GUN CONTROL QUESTIONS NOW ADDED!
JACOBS - DRUNK DRIVING-
What do we learn from Table 1.1 about patterns of alcohol consumption in the U.S.?
Jacobs provides several examples of ways that researchers can "break out" the different types of drinkers in society. For example, on p. 5 he classifies drinkers by the amount consumed. On p. 8 he talks about problem drinkers and the continuum theory. On p. 9 he talks about the 3 stage theory. Which of these classifications are helpful, and in what ways?
What does Jacobs tell us about the alcohol industry? Do you find this convincing?
On p. 7. he provides some information on drinking among high schoolers. What are the patterns?
What does it mean to say that alcohol abuse is not synonymous with alcoholism? (p. 10)
What are the implications of Jacobs' conclusion "Americans are ambivalent on the subject of alcohol"? (p. 13)
What does it mean to say that drunk driving is both a regulatory traffic offense and a criminal offense? (p. 13).
Jacobs suggests that "pressure to punish drunk drivers more harshly conflicts with the widespread view of alcohol abuse as a disease." (p. 14) What are the implications for our ability to reduce the crime of DUI
CHAPTER 6: Defining and Grading Drunk Driving
In the same way that we need to think about how to "grade" the nature of driver's drinking problems, we need to grade the seriousness of drunk driving. This chapter discusses different ways to approach that question.
In general, for defining the crime of drunk driving, there were two legal approaches: before we had breathalyzer tests, and after. How has the availability of these tests changed the legal issues?
What are actus reus and mens rea? (p. 65)
"'Intoxification' does not have a scientific definition. It is a social judgment....It means different things to different individuals and subgroups ... Thus there exists a serious, unavoidable linguistic imprecision in the legal definition of DUI or DWI." (p. 66). What problems does this create for a person defending a particular legal definition?
Jacobs later suggests (p. 69) that how people judge intoxification is likely to link to their own alcohol consumption standards. Do you agree or disagree? What problems does this create from a legal point of view?
What are the "objective" and "relative" standards of intoxification? (p. 67)
What kinds of legal and procedural problems did the vagueness of drunk driving laws lead to prior to the adoption of Breathalyzer test-based standards? (p. 69).
Traditional DUI or DWI laws relied on driver performance of a field test, as reported by a police officer. Jacobs suggests that these tests better address actual risk creation than do the per se laws (p. 70). In short, he is suggesting that the traditional laws provided a better operationalization -- a better set of observed variables -- than the breathalyzer test of per se laws. What do you think?
How do per se laws illustrate that crime "is first and foremost a legal construct" (p. 70)?
How do the per se laws simplify the prosecutor's job?
What would be the advantages and disadvantages of lowering BAC limits? (p. 71).
"The per se laws essentially make a machine test determinative of guilt" (p. 71). Can you think of other areas of criminal justice where the same operationalization is applied?
What are the measurement errors associated with breathalyzer tests? (p. 73). What are the implications for our understanding of "true scores" and "observed scores"? See RMCJ 101-102.
Jacobs argues (p. 77) that current per se laws represent an INFERIOR operationalization of DUI compared to the traditional DWI or DUI. Do you agree or disagree and why?
CHAPTER 7 AGGRAVATED FORMS OF DRUNK DRIVING
In this chapter Jacobs attempts to describe DUI offenses of varying seriousness.
Jacobs suggesting classifying drunk drivers according to two variables: how dangerous their driving is; and how culpable they are (p. 78). Do you think these are the two most important ways that drunk driving episodes differ? In what other important ways do they differ?
How does Jacobs define his category of aggravated forms of drunk driving? (p. 79)
Jacobs discusses a class of offender -- dangerous recidivists (p. 80). What are the problems in OPERATIONALIZING this class of offender -- what benchmark do we use to decide that someone fits?
"Most courts ... have refused to consider felony DWI convictions when applying habitual offender type statutes, on the ground that to do so would be to double bootstrap drunk driving: the offender is being treated as a felon because of a previous DWI midemeanour conviction and as a habitual offender because of the felony DWI conviction. This position reflects wither misplaced sympathy for DWI offenders or reluctance to apply habitual offender statutes." (p. 81). Do you think repeat DWI convictees should be treated as habitual felons?
DUIs that result in injury are treated more seriously in the law -- injury is seen as an aggravating circumstance. The hypothesis is that if injury occurred the driver was or was acting more dangerously, and/or that if injury occurred, the driver was assuming and creating more of a risk to others (p. 83). In what ways does the evidence support this. Do you agree with this evidence?
There is some pressure to treat drunk driving fatalities as murders (p. 87). What are the advantages and disadvantages of blurring these two constructs?
CHAPTER 2: HIGHWAY SAFETY AS A SOCIAL PROBLEM
How many auto accidents are there in the US? How many fatalities? Which way have these statistics been trending the last few years? What specific RATES do folks look at? What do the find when they look at rates by age? What are the characteristics of fatal motor vehicle accidents?
What does Figure 2.1 (p. 18) tell you? What does Figure 2.2 (p. 19) tell you?
What are the problems that arise when we try and interpret the decline in MV fatalities since 1972?
Why do drivers violate traffic laws (p. 23)?
How does Jacobs define an "infirm" driver? What is an "immature and irresponsible" driver? (p. 23)
Jacobs suggests we should separate out low or no-fault accidents from "high fault reckless endangerments." (p. 24) How could police do this with RELIABLE and VALID indicators?
What various social control strategies are available to reduce highway accidents and fatalities? (p. 24 on). What roles do POLICE play in these different strategies?
HOW ARE WE TO DECIDE IF PARTICULAR STRATEGIES HAVE BEEN EFFECTIVE OR NOT?
Is taking drivers' education courses a "treatment" that helps reduce highway casualties?
How effective are license suspensions and revocations? Why?
"The attempt by citizens' action groups to redefine drunk driving as a serious offense and drunk drivers as serious criminals encounters resistance stemming from a deeply rooted social psychology of risk." (p. 26) EXPLAIN
Why can't we say "that intoxication causes X percent of all traffic accidents or fatalities" ? (p. 27)
What are the problems in estimating the magnitude of drunk driving? (p. 29 on)
How are fatal and nonfatal traffic accidents different? (p. 32 on).
What are the limits to the data we have about accidents? What is the FARS and what are its limitations (33 on).
What are the problems with police officers' judgments about whether an accident was alcohol related? (p. 35)
"To draw causal inferences properly it is necessary to have good data on the BAC levels of drivers who are on the same roads at the same time as crash-involved drivers" (p. 37). Why?
What did the Klein and Fell 's study trying to predict driver BAC levels show?
What did the Grand Rapids study show? How was it done? (p. 38 on).
CHAPTER 4: PATTERNS OF OFFENDING
What does Jacobs mean when he says "drunk driving" is not comparable to "drinking and driving"? (p. 43).
Why is the "dark figure" "unknown and probably unknowable"? (p. 43)
What survey questions have been used to get at drunk driving? What are the problems with these? (p. 44 on)
What is a roadside survey? What are all the choices that would go into setting one up? What information would it give you that other approaches would not? (p. 45 on) Why must the compliance rate be high? What problems arise when it is not?
What explains the differences between the 1973 and 1986 IIHS roadway survey results? (p. 46-47)
What DO we know and what DON'T we know about who is the drunk driver? (p. 47 on).
What do we know about DUI recidivism?
In what ways are alcoholic drunk driving and social drinker drunk driving different? (p. 52).
How could we decide how many single-vehicle, alcohol-related fatalities are actually suicides?
How does the theory of simple deterrence work?
In the theory of simple deterrence, cost is a function of what?
What are the assumptions that "lead drunk driving policy toward greater legal threats"?
What are the "features of drunk driving that might make deterrence through legal threats unusually difficult to achieve"?
In the US the risk of apprehension for drunk driving is _______ ?
What factors limit the ability of police to apprehend more drunk drivers?
Do roadblocks work, according to Jacobs?
Do crackdowns have LONG term beneficial impacts?
You are also reading the Hingson Maine study in the original, but you want to be clear about what Jacobs concludes from that study.
What happened in PA when mandatory jail sentences were imposed on drunk drivers?
Why don't fines work to deter drunk drivers? Could they work?
Currently, what are the enforcement problems with suspending/revoking licenses for DUI violations?
Why is community service by itself not an appropriate punishment for DUI?
Why does Jacobs come down AGAINST escalating legal threats for drunk driving beyond current levels?
Can alcoholics and alcohol abusers be screened out of the licensing system? Why?
Jail time for driving without a valid license cannot be imposed because why?
Vehicle forfeiture, popular in drug cases, has not caught on as an anti-drunk driving remedy; why?
Are vehicle impoundment laws often used?
According to Jacobs the key to incarceration is separating the ________ from his/her ________ .
Can mass media campaigns be effective? Why or why not?
What has been the effect of increasing the minimum legal purchase age (MLPA) in various states in the late 1970s and early 1980s? HAS this been helpful? Why or why not?
JACOBS - WILL GUN CONTROL WORK?
Chapter 1
Jacobs suggests there are three distinct problems which are
firearm related: firearm homicides, firearm accidents, and firearm suicides.
Why do we need to think about these as separate problems?
You want to understand how big each of these three problems are (Figure
1.1, p. 5).
How much of a problem are multiple killings?
What does Figure 1.5 tell us about the availability of
firearms as a cause of crime?
What are the benefits of guns?
Chapter 2
You want to understand WHEN each of the following were passed
and what its MAIN points were:
National Firearms Act
Federal Firearms Act
Gun Control Act
Firearms Owners' Protection Act
The Brady Law
The Assault Weapons Ban
How does Jacobs describe the principal Federal policy around gun control?
Chapter 3
In what ways are firearms "entrenched" in American society?
(You definitely need to know how many firearms there are, and how many new
ones are made each year.) How does this make for regulatory difficulties?
In what ways are guns like cars?
Why is the NRA important to policy issues? What are the
grounds of NRA opposition to gun controls?
What does Jacobs mean when he says "The regulation of
weaponry is not just a technical problem?" How and why is the 2nd Amendment
important? (just know the big picture here).
Chapter 4
How did Americans feel about a mandatory waiting period in
the 1990s?
Chapter 5
BASICALLY what does the Brady law do?
What is a "Brady state"
What is "interim Brady"?
What is the NICS?
What are the IMPLICATIONS of U.S. v. Printz (need not know
case details, just the implications).
How does the NICS work? (generally).
Chapter 6
What are the holes in the Brady law?
Chapter 7
Did Brady block retail sales? How much?
Can we infer crime reduction from blocked retail sales? Why
or why not?
Why is the Wright/Wintemute/Rivara study important? How would
you describe the study design?
What was the impact of the Brady law on later changes in the
crime rate? How would you describe the study design of the Ludwig and Cook
study?