QUESTIONS FOR READINGS

This page contains questions to think about while you are reading different chapters in either Jacobs or Kates and Kleck. The questions are organized by book and within book by chapter.

Jacobs

Ch 1
Ch 6
Ch 7
Ch 2
Ch 3
Ch 4

Kates and Kleck
Ch. 1
Ch. 2
53-92
149-257
Ch. 6
Ch. 7
Ch. 8

235-257

Cook and Ludwig

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

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?

"'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 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)?

"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?

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?

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 are the problems that arise when we try and interpret the decline in MV fatalities since 1972?

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?

Is taking drivers' education courses a "treatment" that helps reduce highway casualties?

"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 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 does Jacobs mean when he says "drunk driving" is not comparable to "drinking and driving"? (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).

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?

CHAPTER 1
On p. 5, authors dispute some commonly held notions about problems caused by guns, for example, children killed by guns annually, and the total number of accidental gun deaths. They contrast these points with the positive uses of handguns (p. 6). In their eyes, what are the costs of handguns, and the benefits, and the relative volume of each?
What are the characteristics of gun owners, according to K&K? (p. 9 on). How does this contrast with the popular wisdom? (this would make a good short essay question). How do their findings (p. 10) square with YOUR views of gun owners?
Does their discussion of murderers (12-13) convince you that murderers not handguns are the cause of murder? why?
Authors introduce "media-based conventional wisdom" as a construct (17). What evidence do they provide you that such a construct is warranted?

CHAPTER 2
What pieces of information do authors introduce (32-33) to convince you that "ordinary citizens" are not murderers, and thus that the cause of murder is NOT just that ordinary folks got hold of guns?
They make the case that there are differences between "nondangerous" owners and "dangerous" owners. What indicators do they use to tell if an owner is in one category or another? Do you find this distinction convincing? These two types of owners represent CONSTRUCTS. How yould you go about assuring yourself that these were two different types of owners?
Do you agree with them that "the real need is for the intensive enforcement resources necessary to deter or incarcerate dangerous owners" ? (p. 33).
What would happen if handgun bans resulted in long gunsubstitution in murder incidents? (34). can you see any problems with the evidence here?
Authors mention a study (35) finding that the introduction of liberal carry laws were followed by decline in homicide rates. Can you see how the TIV of regression to the mean (RMCJ 275) might help explain this?
What is the point of Table 2.1 (38)? What do the authors infer from this?

pp. 53-92
Authors introduce the construct "bias on the gun issue" (54) evident in the media. What specific INDICATORS point to this construct, in the authors' views? (Hint: they call these "shaping technologies")
Authors make the case that the media has oversold the construct of "assault rifle availability" (71-78). According to the authors, how has the information been misrepresented?
According to the authors, what are the effects of the "slanted" coverage of the gun issue? (89 on). Do you think the authors establish CAUSAL links between coverage and each of these outcomes? Can you think through, for just one of these outcomes, how you would go about establishing CAUSAL links (do we need to talk about causal links?)

Chapter 6
What is defensive gun use (152); you want to be sure to have a clear definition
What are the advantages of gun ownership as a protection strategy (152-154)? Can you think how you would measure these benefits?
On pp. 154-175 the authors get into a very detailed discussion of DGU. I do not expect you to understand all the ins and outs of the points that they make. But I do expect you to understand the following: * are the estimates from different surveys for DGU similar or different; and if different, different by a little, or by a lot?; * What are some of the reasons the NCVS estimates of DGU are likely to be low?
What are the features of how the "National self defense survey" (175 on) was conducted that make it LESS likely to undercount DGUs? Be specific.
On 178 the authors give very specific criteria for defining a "genuine" DGU. Do you think these criteria are adequate?
Why are the authors' DGU estimates higher than in previous surveys (181). There is an important point here about connections between measurement and rates; what is it?
Authors come up with a fairly high estimate of annual DGUs (181). How do the data from prisoner interviews support this rather high number? (184-185)

Chapter 7
What are some of the problems with getting at civilian legally defensible homicides (CLDH)? (198 on) From a research methods point of view, what are the MAJOR problems with getting at this number (be able to list a couple)?
Are you surprised by the high proportion of NONfatal gun woundings?(202). If you were surprised, how does your personal reaction provide support for the authors' earlier arguments about "misleading" media?
Who is more likely to keep a gun loaded? (203).
How much do owners carry? (204 on)
In what ways do problems with survey methodology create problems for the results on gun carrying reported on pp. 204-205?
What do the data show about effectiveness of gun use for disrupting crime? (210-212)
What are the effects of gun use on avoiding injury related to the criminal incident? (213)
Can you think in SPECIFIC ways the findings immediately above might be limited or misleading?
Black (p. 214) takes apart the idea of "active victim resistance" and shows how that CONSTRUCT needs to be further REFINED. When he did this what did he find? Does this finding have support from another source?

Chapter 8
What are the major features of DGUs? (p. 225, table 8.1)
AUthors note the limits of their data when getting at seriousness of incidents (230). What are some of these limits?
What do the authors make of the high fraction of women reporting DGUs, and how do they explain this away? (234). How does this explaining away highlight the problems with the survey method for these questions?
Questions for 235-257 from K&K
How do the felon reports (237 on) support the survey results?
If you had to sum up the evidence for the deterrence hypothesis, based on both the survey data and the offender data, what would you say?
On p. 239 (top) the authors introduce their logic for "evaluating" gun awareness programs. What are the flaws in the general argument being proposed?
What happened in the Orlando training experience? What was the intervention? What were the results? How do K&K interpret the results? What was Green's interpretation of the crime drop seen?
What happened in the Kansas City program? What was the intervention; what were the results? Was there a "control area" in the Kansas City study? How do K&K interpret the pattern seen?
What happened in Kennesaw (GA)? What features of the locale made it difficult to show a significant drop? What features of the analysis used (and criticised by K&K) also made it hard to show an effect?
What happened with the Evanston and Morton Grove (IL) handgun bans? (247 on). What were the problems with this intervention? What effects appeared? Why do K&K conclude "these handgun ban episodes were consistent with the gun deterrence hypothesis?
With these various "experiments" what is actually going on, according to K&K (bottom 248, top 249).
What conclusions do K&K reach (249, middle) about evaluating quasi-experimental evidence?
What is the point of the discussion about burglary? (249 on).
Of the various policy conclusions raised by the authors (252 on) which ones do you feel are BEST supported by the evidence (be clear about which specific evidence) This would be a great mini-essay question. Which are most weakly supported? Why?