Data Bases • Custom Term Papers • Free Term Papers • Free Research Papers • Free Essays • Free Book Reports • Plagiarism? Links • Top 100 Term Paper Sites • Top 25 Essay Sites • Top 50 Essay Sites • Search 97,000 Papers @ DirectEssays.com • Search 101,000 Papers @ ExampleEssays.com • Search 90,000 Papers @ MegaEssays.com Free Essays • Term Paper Sites • Chuck III's Free Essays • Free College Essays • TermPaperSites.com • My Term Papers • Get Free Essays • Essay World • Planet Papers	Search Lots of Essays Back to Subjects - Mathematics QM QM I chose an article that used deterrence theory to test the use of parole as an effective way to lead to better behavior among incarcerated prisoners. The article is titled “Parole as Institutional Control: A Test of Specific Deterrence and Offender Misconduct” published in The Prison Journal in March of 2000. Many prior studies are mentioned in the article about other sorts of research that have been done involving deterrence theory and some have found positive correlation between some punishments and the reduction of specific misbehaviors. This article is based on deterrence of parole as a way of controlling prisoners that are institutionalized. The sample consisted of 233 prisoners that were granted a parole hearing during offender board review. This study uses the board review instead of the parole hearing itself as the independent variable, to get the sample, because more emphasis is put on the board review than the parole hearing itself because as large chunk of prisoners who are actually granted a parole hearing are paroled. Also, to get the sample the study only took the prisoners that were eligible for a parole hearing for that present period of incarceration so that there was no double counting and only prisoners that were scheduled for review or one year after the review. These were the variables used to get the sample size. The way in which the study was designed was testing the inmate misconduct around the dependent variable, misconduct reports that were received by the individual inmates. The independent variables were actually DUMMY variable one being granted or not granted a parole and the second being preview or postreview. The article does explain that the study did not use random selection for the first independent variable the report may not be correct. The researchers used control mechanisms in the test so that there would not be variations within the group. Since the test was trying to prove that specific deterrence would decrease misconduct after the review board denied parole hearings and an increase in bad behavior for prisoners that were granted parole hearings. The results revealed that time (prereview and postreview) was a big factor having to do with misbehavior of prisoners. “A main effect for time was uncovered, with postreview misconduct reports being significantly greater than prereview reports, F(1, 231)=23.46, p*.001” (Pease,42). This fact did not prove the study’s theory that after reviews behavior would get better, but in fact misbehavior increased after the board reviews. That test was an overall reading, but when looked at in a smaller perspective the test did show that the misbehavior was increased more by the prisoners that were allowed to have parole hearings. “A Time x Decision interaction effect revealed that misconduct reports increased significantly only for those offenders granted parole hearings, F(1, 231)=7.85, p*.01” (Pease, 42). These results show that prisoners that were denied hearings were less likely to misbehave compared to prisoners that were granted hearings, but not significantly. Since the previous study did not show any significant results the researchers realized that since there was a longer period of time in postreview of course there was going to be a higher rate of misbehavior. So the study enforced a division rule that divided the number of reports by the number of months served for the prereview and reports after the board divided by 12 (months) for postreview. Once again there was a problem with study and there was not much variation with the numbers so the study then enforced the rule to square root to fix the outcomes. So now, the test showed an increase in reports received by prisoners that were granted parole. “The analysis failed to reveal any significant main effect; however, a significant interaction effect for Decision x Time was discovered, F(1, 231)=8.89, p*.01” (Pease, 43). The study then controlled age and sentence length within the sample group to try to prove a second hypothesis that with these two things controlled that the results would remain the same and the hypothesis was proved correct. The study then broke down the offenders in to three groups based on how many behavioral reports that were issued to the prisoners. This is like introducing a new variable being which group the prisoner belonged to along with the time factor and the review board’s decision, whether denied or not. The hypothesis was that the most highly rated misbehaved prisoners would be more affected by the denial of parole, but there was no difference that was significantly important between the three different groups of inmates. There was one result that the researchers found to be significant though. “Among those who were denied parole hearings, both high and medium-rate offender had significant decreases in postreview misconduct compared to low-rate offenders whose rate of misconduct significantly increased” (Pease, 43). So this result does not prove the hypothesis, but the results do show that the hypothesis did have the right idea. Refer to Table 5 for these results. To test one more hypothesis the study included another variable, “the average change score” which involves prereview and postreview behavior rates. The hypothesis was that the change in behavior would be greatest for high and medium-rate offenders that were not paroled. This hypothesis was tested with a t-test for each group and the hypothesis was proved correct through this testing. The test shows: In terms of high-rate offenders, the average change score for offenders who were denied parole hearings was -.88 compared to -.38 for those granted parole hearings, which was statistically significant, t(54)=2.57, p*.006. For medium-rate offenders, the average difference between prereview and postreview misconduct for those denied hearings (-.06) was not significantly different from those who were granted parole hearings (-.02). (Pease, 44) This study, to me, does not prove anything great because there were so many variables changed for each separate hypothesis and many of the facts were changed just so they could avoid biases does not seem like very good testing for this type of test. One important point that this test proved was that deterrence theory does work for some and should be enforced to try to decrease the misconduct of incarcerated inmates. Most of the tests that were mentioned in this article we have covered in class except that there was never any mention of what the alpha was which was a little confusing but the hypothesis’s and results were explained in very well within the article which made the number more easy to understand. Pease, Michael, Proctor, Jon L. “Parole as Institutional Control: A Test of Specific Deterrence and Offender Misconduct.” The Prison Journal Mar. 2000: 39+ Bibliography: Word Count: 1102
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