Espectrofotómetro
BUENAS PRÁCTICAS DE USO DEL ESPECTROFOTÓMETRO
By all indications, gang activity in large metropolitan areas has become a major social problem. Driveby shootings, carjackings, drug trafficking, and other predatory offenses by active gang members and their associates are com- mon occurrences in urban areas. Although social programs have been imple- mented to reduce youths’ risks and enhance their resistance to the pressures of gang participation, the primary response of the criminal justice community has been to increase the severity and certainty of punishment for gang-related offending. In Nevada and its major cities, Las Vegas and Reno, the twin goals of severe and certain punishment are promoted through enactment of antigang statutes in the criminal code and creation of specialized gang prosecution units to increase the conviction rate for gang-related offenses.
Even though national surveys of the prevalence of gang prosecution units have been conducted and the largest U.S. cities often provide annual summaries and internal reports about the operation of their gang units (see Genelin 1994; ILJ 1994; Reiner 1992), scant attention has been paid to process evaluations of the onset of antigang legislation and impact evaluations of the effectiveness of antigang statutes and gang prosecution units. In fact, no comprehensive research has been conducted on the social, political, and economic obstacles to enactment of antigang legislation and how competing interests influence the structure and scope of the final statutes.3The frequency with which these statutes are used in criminal court decisionmaking and the effectiveness of gang prosecution units in smaller jurisdictions also have not been addressed in previous research. This being the case, the results of the current study constitute an empirical benchmark that fills a major void in the understanding of the prosecution of gang cases.
The results indicate that some antigang statutes are widely used (especially those that address aiming firearms) whereas others, such as provisions against driveby shootings and gang sentencing enhancement, are less commonly employed. Once adjustments are made for different offender and case attrib- utes, gang prosecution units in Clark and Washoe Counties yield conviction and incarceration rates comparable to those for defendants processed in other prosecution tracks. The results of this study have several implications for other
jurisdictions that have or are considering establishing antigang legislation and gang prosecution units.
First, antigang legislation in Nevada was enacted with little social and political opposition. The passage of such legislation in other States would probably follow a similar path. Media coverage of gang crime and specific in- stances of brutal and random attacks on citizens provide a strong background for the mobilization of antigang control measures.
Second, criminal justice officials have used claims of escalating gang crime to increase their organizational resources. This was especially true of the police and prosecution in Clark County. Calls for increased resources were answered, even though there was no evidence from court data in this jurisdiction that gang crime had increased over time. If the experiences of Nevada are represen- tative of other States, local media coverage of gang crime will play a major role in the development and support of antigang legislation and gang prosecution units in other jurisdictions.
Third, antigang legislation provides district attorneys with additional leverage in prosecuting gang members. Although most charges under the antigang statutes in Nevada do not result in a conviction under the specific statute, the threat of conviction under the gang enhancement statute may serve as a major enticement for a guilty plea on other charges. Most jurisdic- tions across the country have not used antigang legislation, relying instead on existing statutes for criminal prosecution. However, other States may benefit from the implementation and selective use of a gang sentencing enhancement statute similar to Nevada’s, which doubles the penalty for gang crime, because it mandates a largely nondiscretionary prison sentence for these offenders.
Finally, specialized gang prosecution units are an important arena for processing and adjudicating gang cases. Whether other jurisdictions should establish such specialized units, however, depends on the gravity of the gang problem and specific expertise of the district attorneys. Rather than establish- ing a separate unit, designating one deputy district attorney as the “gang pros- ecutor” may be sufficient for smaller jurisdictions in addressing gang crime, especially if that person has had hands-on training in prosecuting gang mem- bers. Although external changes in the structure and composition of gang prosecution units may pose a serious threat to their effectiveness, this problem was minimized in Nevada by making a special effort to retain the most quali- fied gang prosecutors in spite of this changing political environment.
Notes
1. Under the Nevada Revised Statutes (193.168, Section 6), a “criminal gang” is defined as any combination of persons, organized formally or informally, so constructed that the organization will continue its opera- tion even if individual members enter or leave the organization, which (a) has a common name or identifying symbol; (b) has particular con- duct, status, and customs indicative of it; and (c) has as one of its com- mon activities engaging in criminal activity punishable as a felony, other than the conduct that constitutes the primary offense.
2. Logistic regression is a statistical technique used to assess the relative importance of selected variables and whether the impact of a particular variable remains significant after considering its relationship with other variables in the model. A type of multiple regression, logistic regression is used primarily when the outcome variable (like conviction or acquittal) has only two values.
3. The political and economic nature of the antigang legislation in Nevada is addressed at length in the final report for this study (NIJ grant 94–IJ– CX–0053).
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