Gerald Gaes - Academia.edu (original) (raw)

Papers by Gerald Gaes

The Journal of Social Psychology, 1979

Two forced compliance studies were conducted in which the S&amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;a... more Two forced compliance studies were conducted in which the S&amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;#39;s expectations regarding the situational appropriateness of his behavior were manipulated. In the first study (N = 36 female undergraduates) E indicated agreement or disagreement with the S&amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;#39;s counterattitudinal essay or else did not give an opinion. Although attitude change occurred in the Agree and No Feedback groups, there was none in the Disagree condition. Three conditions were created in the second study (N = 142 male and female undergraduates): Standard Dissonance, Control, and a Model condition in which a confederate told the E his essay did not reflect his real attitude. Attitude change occurred in both experimental groups, but more occurred in the Dissonance than the Model condition. These results are interpreted in terms of impression management theory.

The Journal of Social Psychology, 1989

Journal of Research in Personality, 1978

... IN PERSONALITY 12, 189192 (1978) Unclogging the Bogus Pipeline: A Critical Reanalysis of the ... more ... IN PERSONALITY 12, 189192 (1978) Unclogging the Bogus Pipeline: A Critical Reanalysis of the Cherry, Byrne, and Mitchell Study GERALD G. GAES ... use the bogus pipeline as a technique to elicit "true" attitudes from subjects (Jones Sigall, 1971; Gaes, Rivera, Tedeschi, Note ...

The Journal of General Psychology, 1986

Two experiments evaluated the competing interpretations of cognitive dissonance and impression ma... more Two experiments evaluated the competing interpretations of cognitive dissonance and impression management theories regarding the pill and misattribution studies of attitude change in the forced compliance situation. Attitude change was eliminated when subjects were told about the tension side effects of taking a placebo, replicating the usual effect. Attitude change was also eliminated, however, when subjects took the pill following counterattitudinal behavior. In one condition of the second experiment, subjects were given instructions about tension side effects but were also told that the drug would not affect their moral judgment or behavior. These instructions eliminated attitude change in a standard pill condition. The typical finding of attitude change was manifested in the misattribution/no-excuse condition. The primary and secondary data from both studies provided more support for the impression management interpretation of the standard misattribution manipulations than for a theory of misattribution of dissonance-produced arousal.

Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, 1978

Human Relations, 1980

The impact of first impressions, norms, and opponent's use of power on a target's behavio... more The impact of first impressions, norms, and opponent's use of power on a target's behavior in a conflict situation was investigated. A simulated opponent was perceived as either good and impotent or bad and potent in a mixed motive situation where the rule of interaction was given as a cooperative or competitive one, and the opponent's exercise of unilateral coercive power was either highly credible or not credible. All three factors affected the responses of the subjects. The general principle underlying the results appears to be one of cooperating when first impressions or a salient norm leads to positive expectations for the interaction, but to respond in the most prudent manner possible and according to how the opponent responds when a negative expectation exists for the interaction.

Federal Sentencing Reporter, Sep 30, 2023

Evaluation Review, 2020

Background: Random design experiments are a powerful device for estimating average treatment effe... more Background: Random design experiments are a powerful device for estimating average treatment effects, but evaluators sometimes seek to estimate the distribution of treatment effects. For example, an evaluator might seek to learn the proportion of treated units who benefit from treatment, the proportion who receive no benefit, and the proportion who are harmed by treatment. Method: Imbens and Rubin (I&R) recommend a Bayesian approach to drawing inferences about the distribution of treatment effects. Drawing on the I&R recommendations, this article explains the approach; provides computing algorithms for continuous, binary, ordered and countable outcomes; and offers simulated and real-world illustrations. Results: This article shows how the I&R approach leads to bounded uncertainty intervals for summary measures of the distribution of treatment effects. It clarifies the nature of those bounds and shows that they are typically informative. Conclusions: Despite identification issues, bo...

Crime & Delinquency, 2019

Regional differences in the use of prison are, in part, due to cultures of punishment within Sunb... more Regional differences in the use of prison are, in part, due to cultures of punishment within Sunbelt states. To date, this has been largely studied at the state level, ignoring the smaller geographic areas in which the effects of imprisonment are deeply felt. We employ a novel data set to examine the relationship between prison and region and regional variation in the relationship between concentrated disadvantage and neighborhood imprisonment. We find that region affects neighborhood prison admission rates in unexpected ways, and that the relationship between concentrated disadvantage and prison admissions varies in magnitude by region. We discuss the implications of these findings for better understanding the impact of region and the processes that lead to imprisonment.

Criminology & Public Policy, 2019

Research SummaryPrivate companies manage 8.4% of the U.S. prison population and 5.4% of the jail ... more Research SummaryPrivate companies manage 8.4% of the U.S. prison population and 5.4% of the jail population. On average, the costs and quality of privatized facilities seem to be about the same as publicly operated prisons, but the lack of high‐quality studies limits a strong inference. Although states with increases in prison privatization have lower public‐sector costs, this may be a result of strong cost controls, not of their level of privatization. An increase in recidivism seems to occur for people placed in private facilities. This assertion is based on the findings of several studies in which regression controls are used and on only one study in which a strong counterfactual design is applied. Finally, there is no evidence that prison privatization was responsible for the dramatic growth in incarceration that peaked in 2009.Policy ImplicationsBecause many jurisdictions will continue to use privately operated facilities, it is incumbent on them to create monitoring mechanisms...

Proceedings of the second international conference on Artificial intelligence and law - ICAIL '89, 1989

ASSYST (Applied Sentencing System) was developed so that judges, prosecutors, defense attorneys, ... more ASSYST (Applied Sentencing System) was developed so that judges, prosecutors, defense attorneys, probation officers and other key members of the Federal criminal justice system could easily compute, record, archive and examine the implications of Guidelines promulgated by the United States Sentencing Commission [1].Although ASSYST was not developed using the formalisms employed by most expert system designers, it does meet at least some of the criteria of an expert system [2] and in particular an expert system for legal analysis [3]. ASSYST is a domain specific knowledge representation of the rules for determinate sentencing in the Federal judicial system. It elicits from the user all the information required to make a final determinate sentence. Unlike expert systems which resolve decision conflicts, ASSYST will only suggest tentative solution sets to grouping rules required by Sentencing Guidelines and, in this respect, it is a deterministic rather than a conflict resolving system.ASSYST has been a success. In June of 1988, every U.S. Probation main office received a copy of the software. The response has been very favorable. Officers who have taken the time to learn the system have reported substantial decreases in amount of time spent per case. The software has proliferated throughout the Federal criminal justice system since, as a publication by the Federal Government, it is not copyrightable.In a related paper, Sergot et al. [4] have discussed the formalization of the British Nationality Act in Prolog. In their article, Sergot et al. demonstrated how the language of the statute could be translated into definite Horn clauses which form the basic logic structure of Prolog&#x27;s programming language.The difficulty usually encountered in the logical interpretation of statutes, according to Sergot et al. is that the statute language is often vague. Phrases such as “having reasonable excuse” or “being in good character” are two examples from the British Nationality Act. The Sentencing Reform Act of 1984 [5], the statutory basis for federal sentencing guidelines, also contains many vague phrases. As an example, the enacting legislation requires the U.S. Sentencing Commission to consider the following offender characteristics: mental and emotional condition, community ties, and criminal history. There is no exposition in the statute on any of these factors. It was the responsibility of the Commission and the guideline writers to translate the intent of the legislation into coherent and consistent rules of determinate sentencing. Analogous to Sergot et al., our programming effort attempted to formalize legislative logic, in this case determinate sentencing, into rigorous programming logic. Unlike Sergot et al., our burden was ameliorated by others who transformed the vague language of this statute into the rules of sentencing guidelines.Sentencing guidelines were proposed by Congress to reduce sentencing disparity among federal prisoners and to provide a consistent set of rules to codify characteristics of both the offense and the offender. In the past, judges have had a great deal of latitude in their sentencing decisions. While some would argue that this discretion was necessary in order to treat the individual circumstances of the crime, others have argued that the degree of latitude introduced inconsistent sentencing decisions.This paper does not attempt to resolve the imbroglio between proponents and opponents of sentencing guidelines. Rather it is intended to show how a computer application became an integral component of the continued development of the guideline process.

The Prison Journal, 2002

Most of the empirical research and practically all of the fieldwork conducted on gangs has been d... more Most of the empirical research and practically all of the fieldwork conducted on gangs has been devoted to street gangs. In this article, Bureau of Prisons automated data were used to evaluate the contribution of prison gang affiliation to violence and other forms of misconduct within prisons. The authors also examined a measure of gang embeddedness to see if, similar to street gang research, it can be shown that core members of a prison gang were more likely to commit violent and other kinds of misconduct than were more peripheral members. Both specific and more generic gang indicators were related to violence and other forms of official prison misconduct. A composite measure of gang misconduct represents the threat that particular gangs pose to prison order. The “threat index” is model based and provides a graphical representation of the relative magnitude and heterogeneity of the threat posed by different gang affiliations.

The Prison Journal, 1994

This article reviews prison crowding research. In the first section, the legal, political, and so... more This article reviews prison crowding research. In the first section, the legal, political, and social context of prison crowding is evaluated. The second section explores the relationship between crowding and violence. It is argued that most prison crowding studies do not investigate intervening mechanisms that may account for a relationship between crowding and violence, if and when a relationship is found. Furthermore, it is suggested that one reason for the inconsistency in the results of such studies is that researchers have failed to examine the proximal causes of violence as well as the formal mechanisms prison administrators use to control or limit violence. In the third section, I reexamine the evidence on the most consistent finding in the crowding and health area, that dormitories are associated with higher illness reporting rates than are other types of housing. I conclude that this finding is probably an artifact of selection bias. Furthermore, illness reporting is the r...

The Prison Journal, 1993

This article describes the results of a sentencing legislation and policy simulation conducted to... more This article describes the results of a sentencing legislation and policy simulation conducted to project the federal inmate population. The simulation model was developed in response to a congressional mandate that the United States Sentencing Commission evaluate the impact of its sentencing guidelines on the future federal prison population. In mid-1987 the model was used to project changes in the use of probation and prison length of stay. The model accurately projected the impact of dramatic changes in sentencing structure that increased the federal prison population by 52% in the 4 years since the end of calendar year 1987. The article also discusses the interrelationships between sentencing legislation, sentencing practices, changes in criminal justice resource allocations, prison population “caps,” and the use of an impact model to inform the public policy debate surrounding the use of prison as a sanction.

Punishment & Society, 2002

An examination of the quality of operations at private and public prisons is essential to making ... more An examination of the quality of operations at private and public prisons is essential to making informed decisions about the desirability of using private and public prisons. Previous studies have used survey data collected from staff and inmates to compare prisons based on the proportions or percentages of staff making favorable evaluations of different items. As argued here and elsewhere, the previous studies have been flawed by methodological shortcomings. An approach is demonstrated here that allows for an examination of the aggregate measurement properties of survey items as well as for making comparisons of different prisons. The data are from surveys administered to staff at 96 federal prisons and two private prisons. The results demonstrate that not all survey items can be used indiscriminately to compare prisons, and when comparisons are made, it is essential to control for individual-level and institutional-level factors that are not related to institution performance but...

Justice Research and Policy, 2010

The prior literature on determinate sentencing has been largely descriptive, critical, and withou... more The prior literature on determinate sentencing has been largely descriptive, critical, and without a comprehensive empirical focus regarding the development and consequences of this major justice reform. A common claim made in these prior studies is that determinate sentencing has resulted in our current prison overcrowding crises (i.e., Austin & Irwin, 2007). This paper responds to this empirical void through an assessment of Florida's efforts to implement determinate sentencing over the past 30 years. Included in the assessment is a study of the comparative effectiveness between indeterminate and determinate sentencing in terms of post-prison recidivism. The major findings are that Florida's incremental shift from indeterminate to determinate sentencing that culminated in the 85% time-served law passed in 1995 has not been as punitive as expected and has not been the primary reason for Florida's exponential increase in the prison population. Rather, the major increase ...